Opera 10.53 beta 1 (with Opera Widgets for Desktop) for UNIX changelog

Release notes

This is a beta version of Opera. Please use it only on properly backed up computers. It incorporates new features, stability improvements, security fixes, and changes for UNIX operating system platforms. For your reference, the changelog for Opera 10.10 (with Opera Unite) for UNIX is available at the Opera Changelogs for UNIX Web site.

Release date: May 4, 2010

New features

Better integration with UNIX desktop environments

Opera Carakan JavaScript engine

Opera Presto 2.5 rendering engine

The Opera Presto 2.5 rendering engine includes the following additions and improvements.

CSS
HTML
SVG

Opera Vega graphics library

Opera Widgets for Desktop

Although they run outside the browser, Opera Widgets have been treated as entities inside the browser in many respects. The new Opera Widgets for Desktop ends this dependency on the browser and moves Opera Widgets to the next level: that of first-class applications. Above all, Opera Widgets for Desktop gives widgets the potential to replace some native applications on the computer.

Opera Widgets for Desktop includes the following features:

Non-modal notification messages

Private browsing

Web Storage

Web SQL Database

Changes since Opera 10.10 (with Opera Unite) for UNIX

User interface

Added
  • A new widget installation/uninstallation process wizard
  • Widgets can be installed:
    • System wide (DEB, RPM, TAR packages generated on the fly)
    • User space (default)
  • Option to open the main Opera Menu with the new Opera "O" button, or replace it with the traditional Opera Menu bar
  • Support for widget window resizing on UNIX platforms
  • New user interface version for the UNIX widget installer
  • A success page to the widget installer
  • Getting focus on a widget in major UNIX desktop environments
  • Handle -pd when invoking widgets on UNIX
  • Widgets missing their own icons get the opera-widget as their icon
  • Package widget installation wizard on UNIX platforms instead of the wizard used for Mac and Windows
  • Automatic running of locally installed widgets immediately after their installation
  • Workable file and directory selector for X11 mode operation
Improved
  • KDE/Gnome skinning integration with matching open/save dialogs
  • Default installation location changed for TAR packages
  • The UNIX widgets installer
  • Panels using GTK/KDE native colors
  • Respect for the preference setting for "Enable Core X Fonts" when loading fonts
  • Printing support
Fixed
  • Widgets import on UNIX platforms
  • Widget taskbar entries having random or no icons
  • Widget install failing on FreeBSD without unzip
  • Keyboard shortcuts ceasing to work
  • Trying to open an already opened widget by bringing it to the foreground rather than starting a new copy
  • Widget secondary click menu not displaying correct keyboard shortcuts
  • Problem with widget notifications
  • Widget being presented on the widget panel if manually removed
  • Not being able to install multiple instances of one widget
  • Opera Unite Music Player and Ebook reader widgets always capturing focus
  • Not being able to install a widget with default settings as a standard user
  • Default widget name being displayed in the widget panel even if a custom name was set
  • A widget with a long name failing to install
  • Buttons in dialogs having the correct order for a GTK application
  • Not being able to interact with windows opened from dialogs
  • Problem when exiting Opera under KDE4
  • Excluding bitmap fonts where it is possible to use an alternative
  • Speed dial configuration being broken
  • Double click popup menu not closing properly
  • Trying to open a file whose file name has spaces in it leads to errors
  • Problem when adding a plug-in path
  • Font antialiasing causing texts to render badly at different sizes
  • "Save Image" causing a problem on Ubuntu and related distributions
  • Absence of 24px icons
  • Scrollbars being redrawn to fit content that covered them under KDE
  • Installing a widget causes Opera to shut down instantly
  • Shut down when installing an Opera Unite application on 64 bit UNIX/Linux
  • Shut down when trying to "Open" or "Save" using X11 only toolkit
  • Issue when using the right mouse button and wheel to change tabs
  • Ctrl + Tab stops working after tabbing to the current tab
  • Problem on startup
  • HTML5 video not working
  • Find in page stops working if search string starts with a space
  • Fontswitching fails during printing
  • Missing TLS 1.2 client certificate authority support
  • DOM issue affecting some Facebook games
  • Not being able to access Google sites when TLS 1.1 is disabled

Mail, news, chat

Added
  • Ability to get block quotes as text
Fixed
  • Chat notification appearing if a chat tab is active
  • Attachments not being accessible for sent messages
  • Ghost e-mails appearing in the Trash folder after emptying it and restarting Opera
  • Message not loading when it is deselected and selected again
  • Mail being blank when using fit to width
  • Attached files not being sent if mail is sent immediately after attaching them
  • Opera Mail welcome e-mail message not being localized

Display and scripting

Improved
  • Font drawing being optimized via direct access to core graphics
  • Numerous site compatibility and speed improvements to the Carakan JavaScript engine
Fixed
  • Excessive CPU and memory usage on startup
  • Incorrect mouse cursors in Flash
  • Icons missing from menus in 16-bit colour mode
  • Slow scrolling performance
  • Opera selecting the bold version of a typeface instead of the normal version
  • Thumbnails having yellow backgrounds
  • An issue where only the first mouse onclick event was received for users of compositing window managers
  • Appropriate CJK fonts not being used; wrong font on initial loading, and correct fonts are ignored
  • Opera Dragonfly not selecting an active tab when opened
  • Problem with SVG DOM
  • Widget freezing when connecting to debugger
  • Problem that caused Opera to run out of file descriptors
  • Missing 24px icons now being added to all packages
  • An issue with the proper file selector parent (in nested dialog hierarchies)
  • X11 File selector needing a file type selector

Network

Improved
  • Parallel lookup of IPv4 and IPv6 to improve performance
Fixed
  • Cookies received over NPAPI being incorrectly parsed

Miscellaneous

Added
  • New EULA for the Opera desktop browser for open source operating systems

Security

Fixed
  • Fixed a vulnerability in Renegotiation feature of the TLS protocol
    • See our advisory (http://www.opera.com/support/search/view/944/)
    • See the Opera Security blog article (http://my.opera.com/securitygroup/blog/2010/01/23/alpha-testing-tls-renego-fix)

UNIX packaging

Added
  • Added uninstall script for tarballs:
    • Also uses whiptail or dialog if available
    • Also has --help and similar command-line options as has the install script
  • All scripts (install, uninstall, opera wrapper script) can now be run from any directory; no need to cd first
  • Added support for Opera Widgets:
    • Added wrapper script bin/opera-widget-manager
    • Added man page for the wrapper script
    • Added desktop menu entry
    • Registering the MIME type for Opera Widgets
Improved
  • Changed the naming scheme:
    • Eliminated references to gcc and Qt versions
    • OS name in tarball names
  • Simplified the wrapper script
  • Tarball layout brought in sync with other packages
  • Install script for tarballs rewritten:
    • Using dialog or whiptail if available, to present a nicer user interface (can be disabled with --text)
    • Removed workarounds for old desktop environments; only FreeDesktop.org-compliant environments are now supported
    • Removed --prefix in favor of the user/system alternative
    • Removed support for DESTDIR
    • Added support for user-specified suffix
    • Added unattended mode (no questions asked)
    • Added silent mode (no output at all)
    • Added upgrade functionality
    • Added automatic rollback after a failed installation or upgrade
    • All options can be specified either interactively or from the command line
    • Checking whether the OS and CPU architecture are compatible
    • Checking whether the system supports RPM or Debian packages and recommending them
    • Added proper up-to-date --help
  • No longer shipping a fixed prefs file in /etc anymore (although it can still be created manually if necessary)
  • Reviewed metainformation in Debian and RPM packages:
    • Dropped Qt dependencies
    • Providing www-browser, mail-reader, imap-client and news-reader on Debian
    • Added dependency on GStreamer libraries necessary to play OGG Theora/Vorbis
    • Removed obsolete plug-in recommendations from Debian packages
    • Added dependencies on libxft2 and libxrender1
    • Removed mentions of gcc and Qt versions from the package version field
    • Updated package title and description text
    • Updated RPM package icon
  • Simplified install and uninstall scripts in Debian and RPM packages:
    • Removed workarounds for old desktop environments; only FreeDesktop.org-compliant environments are now supported
  • Shipping the necessary LGPL copies (version 2 for GStreamer and 3 for glibc)
  • Updated application icons for Opera, Opera Widget Manager, and Opera Widget files
  • Man pages updated:
    • Removed obsolete information
    • Man pages mention correct paths in all types of installations
  • Resolved reasonable lintian warnings in Debian packages and added overrides for the remaining ones
  • Resolved reasonable rpmlint warnings in RPM packages
Fixed
  • Issues affecting handling of -pd, -sd, and -bd command line options
  • Fixed shipping of plug-in wrappers:
    • Linux packages for amd64 now contain two plugin wrappers and an automatic switching script
    • All other packages contain only one plugin wrapper

Documentation

Opera Help

Need help? Hit F1 anytime while using Opera to access our online help files, or go here.