The Good Life... a weblog about life, technology, and the Opera web browser

It's time once again for Tim's Opera Bits, the periodic posts that bring together Opera Software news from across the Internet. Without further delay, here's what's happening:

1. Opera Mini 3.1 is out and about. This release mainly contains bug fixes, but also adds support for managing your newsfeeds. Get it while it's hot!

2. You may recall that Opera 9.0 is code-named Merlin. Recently, the Desktop Team announced the code-names for the next two major Desktop releases, Kestrel and Peregrine. Merlin, Kestrel, and Peregrine are all names of falcons, in case you're wondering. There's a few more details about the names in the announcement post.

   Each release since 9.0 (including the forthcoming 9.2) has been based on the same code branch with only very important changes included from our development code branch. See, we stopped taking most bug fixes into Merlin back around June 2006 in an effort to improve stability and meet our deadlines. Meanwhile, we've continued to add features and fix bugs in both the rendering engine and Desktop-specific functions. All of those rendering engine changes will be included in Kestrel, though some of the changes in the user interface will have to wait until Peregrine. Of course, we'll be able to include even more rendering engine changes by then, as the work never ends.

   And just what rendering engine changes am I referring to? David Storey has already provided details about several of the changes in his post, Upcoming CSS3 support in Opera. David lets us know that Kestrel will have support for many more CSS3 Selectors, as well as the text-shadow property. Rijk was good enough to make a screenshot of Opera's forthcoming text-shadow support and include a few more details. Additionally, some more of Opera's bugs have been squashed, including a long-standing rounding problem, various XSLT bugs, SVG problems, and a whole lot more.

   And what of the user interface changes? One of our major initiatives for Kestrel and Peregrine is improving accessibility. As such, Opera will again include screen reader support in Kestrel for the first time since Opera 7.0 was released. Charles McCathieNevile has more details about this support in his recent blog entry, Speaking out.... We have a lot of work to do in this area, but things are progressing nicely. Everything may not be finished in Kestrel, but I hope it will be.

   Let's not forget about our beloved Opera Mail. Opera Mail will finally have a new indexing back-end, which will fix the long-standing problem with index and search corruption. We've also spent some time on our IMAP and POP back-ends, adding in some more user-requested functionality. Opera Mail is now faster and more efficient than ever before. A heap of user interface improvements are planned, but it's not clear if they'll be included in Kestrel, Peregrine, or later.

   Note: I should mention that the exact version these features will be available in is tentative. This is our current plan, but plans change.

3. Johan Borg, the Desktop team project manager, let us know that the next weekly build will include a new feature never before seen in a Desktop browser. Many have tried to guess the new feature in the comments to the blog post, but no one has even come close.
4. This Thursday, Jon von Tetzchner, the CEO of Opera Software, will be chatting live via IRC at 5pm CET. That's 11am on the East Coast of the USA. Stop by #webapp on irc.opera.com for a chat.
5. Opera on the Wii ain't just for browsing. Daniel Goldman posted a letter from a father whose children were using Opera on the Wii to play educational games. It's great to see our products helping children get interested in learning.
6. Lawrence Eng, a Market Researcher for Opera Software, wants to know Why is it important that more people know about and use Opera? There are a lot of great responses in the comments to his post, so check them out. As for me, Opera makes my life easier because I can browser faster (not just load web pages faster, but accomplish my task more quickly) and easier. I want everyone to have that convenience.

7. Daniel Goldman let us know about WiiMinder, a web site that adds tabbed browsing to Opera on the Wii. It's a very interesting concept and the user interface is pretty nice. However, it caused a number of glitches when I tested it for a bit, including zooming out randomly (usually while scrolling) and going back in history for no apparent reason. I do applaud them for their efforts, as their UI integrates seamlessly with the browser.

   While testing, I quite enjoyed playing Missile 3D over at WiiCade. Opera brings a whole 'nother level of gaming to the Wii by allowing Flash-based games. Plus, you can watch Homestar Runner on your TV. Strong Bad e-mail!

8. Last but not least, the next DC Metro area meet-up is next Wednesday, February 28th. We'll meet from 7pm to 9pm at the Panera Bread in Silver Spring. More details are in the original blog post. If you're able to join us, you'll get to see me demo that new feature Johan talked about on the Desktop Team blog! I hope to see you Wednesday!

That's about it. I'm interested in answering some more of your questions again in the next Tim's Opera Bits, so please leave them in the comments. Until next time, take care and happy browsing!

PS: This is my first post written while using MarsEdit, a blogging client for Mac OS X. It's pretty nice, but doesn't really enhance by blogging experience. Plus, it can't handle Drupal's input formats or categories. Back to using Opera's notes feature for backups....

Downloadable Music vs. CDs

Today, Steve Jobs posted a note on the Apple Inc. web site about iTunes and Digital Rights Management (DRM, AKA anti-piracy). You should go read it, as it's quite good. It's OK, I'll wait. Done? Good. According to Jobs, about 10% of the music sold in 2006 is downloadable, DRM-protected, and purchased online. The remaining 90% is sold DRM-free on compact discs.

In his note, Jobs talks about the restrictions the music industry imposes on Apple, such as strict requirements that any breaches in DRM security must be fixed within a matter of weeks. DRM must be bulletproof, according to the music industry. The majority of downloadable music sold online has always been protected by DRM, so the music industry finally has a medium where they control how music is shared. Unfortunately for them, a non-DRM'd format is already the de facto standard. Since the mid-90s, MP3s have been available for download via newsgroups, web sites, and P2P networks. It's no wonder that DRM'd music has met so much resistance.

iTunes and Norway

If you haven't heard, the Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman has ruled that the iTunes' DRM violates Norwegian consumer protection laws because it prevents consumers from using their music on digital music players other than the iPod. Most people outside of Norway don't know how many consumer protections are in place in Norway. It's actually quite nice being a consumer in Norway, compared to the United States. For instance, most non-disposable consumer electronics in the US have something like a ninety day warranty on defects in the manufacturing process. In some cases, it's one year. Norwegian law requires a minimum five year warranty on these products (if I'm not mistaken, Norwegians please correct me).

One of the things I really liked about Norway is that it was obvious that big companies hadn't stripped away the rights of individuals. The iTunes case is the same sort of situation. Many people argue that Apple is no more responsible for making sure their songs are compatible with their competitors' MP3 players than printer manufacturers are responsible for making sure their printer cartridges are interoperable. However, they're missing the point. The Ombudsman seems to be saying that purchasing music is more than just buying a certain file format. It's buying the right to listen to the music as you see fit.

DRM and Me

I applaud Steve Jobs' willingness to remove all DRM restrictions from music on iTunes as soon as the music studios allow it and I hope this redirects the Norwegian Ombudsman to the real culprits here: the music industry. To this day, I haven't purchased any DRM'd music or copy-protected CDs and I have no intention of doing so. I'd really like to buy some DRM-free and music industry sanctioned downloadable music, though. Please Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI, make it happen.

I finally got around to joining Facebook. Rebekah joined a couple of months ago and I know she's reconnected with some old friends, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. I've only been in touch with one of my college friends semi-frequently, so I'm looking forward to reconnecting with some others soon.

Since I signed up this morning, I've been poking around, looking for people I know. I sent out about a dozen or so friend invitations today and I'm happy to say that I have friends. Yay! It's always nice to have bits of technology to connect you to other people. Of course, being a geek, I'm a bit of a social inept, so I'm not sure what the etiquette is for Facebook, but I'll figure it out. Or I'll get over it. Probably the latter.

I've found that working in Quality Assurance tends to leak into the other parts of my life. I usually notice this most often when I'm interacting with web pages. There are so many little things about Facebook that annoy me. For one, I can't join my college's network since I don't have an college e-mail address any more. That's the only way to join a college network. That's just silly. Also, there's totally no way to say that I'm married to a person on my friends page. I can say that "We hooked up", "We dated", "We lived together", she's "In my family", etc. But I can't say that we're married. "Practically married", but not married. I guess that's a side effect of targeting the college croud, but I don't think it's too far fetched.

This is my first social network experience, so it'll be interesting. I'm looking forward to it. I'd rather use a web site to get to know someone (again) than go to a party and drink beer, so at least that's something in its favor.