Changelog for Opera 7.21 for Unix

We recommend that you download and install this upgrade.

New since 7.11

Document and page layout

• Implemented support for bidirectional text (BiDi)
• Fine-tuning for speed in page rendering and JavaScript
• Use label property on multi-line edits to disable unwanted pop-up menus and selection possibility
• Removed caption for image documents
• Get locale from OS and use corresponding code page
• Support "list-style-type" value "decimal-leading-zero"
• Bottom margin fix plus optimizations
• Use smaller bullets in handheld mode
• Various updates and improvements for handheld mode
• % height on tables
• Fix for not collapsing leading whitespace after floats
• Skip only one line break at the beginning of a text area
• Single-line forms text color should now be set correctly
• ISINDEX fixes
• Spatial navigation highlighting fix
• Support for action="mailto:..." in form elements
• Smarter redraw during page loading

Protocols and data flow

• New URL scheme supported: data (RFC 2397)
• Support for encoding unrepresentable characters in output as HTML entities (for use in forms)
• Changed default Accept header: "application/XML" instead of "application/xHTML"
• Accept header change ("XHTML+XML" and "XHTML")
• Removed Send charset to validator
• Added experimental support for IPv6
• Detect and report network errors

Fonts

• Various minor improvements and bugfixes in font handling
• Support for unicode characters outside plane 0 -- currently only for Xft fonts
• Support for Arabic shaping/joining of Unicode characters U+0621 - U+06D3, as well as alef-lam ligatures
  • Still no support for combining diacritics

Images and animation

• Enabled synchronized animations
• GIF animation fixes
• Improved image display speed

Color management

• Improved support for 8-bit color depth display (speed-up and dithering)
• Repaired support for truecolor visual on Solaris

Java

• Java now loads files through Opera, which fixes problem with Java not working through proxies
• Added compatibility code to let Java run quite a few "invalid" applets

Plug-ins

• Opera is no longer confused after Flash has shown right-click menu
• Using keypad numbers as input to Flash is fixed
• Made an attempted workaround for the hanging Flash problem
• Cleanup in plug-in listing related to file type, where a plug-in could be listed several times and for file types it should not have been associated with

Input methods

• Canceling input should now work
• Some doubling of characters and strings should be fixed

Skinning

• Support for CPU friendly Windows-like skin
• Improved support for skinning in the menubar

Hotlist

• Fixed a re-parenting problem in the hotlist that would result in lost bookmarks/contacts/notes: moving a parent folder into a child folder
• Do not place a copy of a bookmark/contact in trash when CUT-ing it
• Show an error dialog box if a hotlist list could not be saved to file
• Fixed a sort sync problem (hotlist vs. bookmark menu)
• Fixed a bookmark parser problem that prevented old bookmark files (pre version 6) from being imported
• Do not use 'BASEURL=' but 'URL=' in IE favorites import
• Fixed a save-selected-as problem where saved items could be out of sync with the selected items if the list was sorted

Panels

• Added context menu support in Window panel
• Pressing Enter/Return will now activate the selected page in Windows panel
• Show an archive icon for files with extension 'gz' in Links panel
• Clear Links panel when closing a window (use lock if you want to keep them around)
• Enabled drag and drop within the Windows panel
• Fixes to URL handling in Notes panel

Toolbars and menus

• New "Closed" menu under the "Window" menu on the main menu bar listing the 100 last closed windows
• Added support for bolded menu items
• Improved the algorithm that assigns accelerators to a pop-up menu entries to avoid possible duplicates (depending on the menu structure)
• Added context menu support (activated from keyboard) in hotlist toolbar
• Added find in page to "Customize toolbar" dialog box
• Added a "Clear" button that can be used to erase contents of the address entry field
  • Use "Customize toolbar" dialog box to activate it
• Support for opening a page at a specified index in the page bar, which enhances drag-and-drop functionality
• Move keyboard focus to document when pressing Esc in search dropdown, zoom dropdown, and search edit fields
• Let "Compose" from document pop-up menu use the mailto address of the clicked link
• Page cycler pop-up window will now expand into a new column when needed
• Support for toolbar extender in page and personal bar
  • Enable "Show extender" in the page and personal bar context menus to use it
• Proper enable/disable handling of "Add all to bookmarks"
• Fixed overflow problem in progress bar for large documents (percent value became negative, or just wrong in general)
• Made the page cycler pop-up window work when activated with mouse button and wheel

Dialogs

• Fixed a number of MIME type problems regarding download dialog handling
• Added support for confirmation when closing all pages or closing all but active page
• Append addresses that are entered from the "Go to" dialog box (F2) to the typed history list
• Added a "Minimize" button to the JavaScript console
• Show image file name (excluding path) in image property dialog caption
• New settings in Preferences dialog
  1. Load default (fallback) language file when changing UI language [Languages]
  2. Give page background color to documents when updated. No longer required to restart to see the change [Page style]
  3. Added option to style forms and/or scrollbars [Page style]
  4. Added "Smooth scrolling" option [Windows]
  5. Added "Open new page next to active page" option [Windows]
  6. Added option to tune delay before page is updated [Windows]
  7. Simplified interface for setting up trusted protocols and external programs [Programs and paths]
• Added "Pass Web address directly to application" checkbox
  • Activate in "File type" dialog box
• Save and restore "Show hidden files" and "Detail mode" settings in the file selector dialog box
• Fixed a dialog problem that could lead to a crash if many modal dialogs were opened at the same time as the parent relationship could be corrupted
• Fixed a download problem that caused direct download to show the "Save as" dialog box
• Fixed some problems with the saved folder location; it was lost when using the download dialog
• Fixed a problem that caused the file selector dialog to start with the saved save-directory even in file-open mode
• Reopen save dialog if selected file exists and user do not want to overwrite current file

Accessibility (mouse, keyboard, and shortcuts)

• Ctrl+Alt+Z available as shortcut for reopening most recently closed page
• Fix for entering special characters into edit fields while at the same time supporting various shortcuts
  • Differentiate between the special AltGr key and the left Control+Alt key combo, so that it is now possible to press AltGr+some key for special characters, but also Alt+Control+same key to produce a shortcut instead
• Let special forward mouse buttons try fast forward if no normal forward
• Support for function keys F13 to F20
• Support for Copy, Paste and Cut keys on Sun keyboards
• Do not copy text to mouse selection clipboard when moving focus to URL field with F8

Actions

• Added "Open background image" action
• Close page action returns false if nothing to close (makes it possible to do e.g. "Close page | Exit" actions)
• Moved handling of "Clear disk cache", "Clear visited history" and "Clear typed in history" actions to allow shortcut support
• "Maximize frame" will always open in the same page
• Added support for "Execute program" action
• Added support for symbolic "COMMA" and "SEMICOLON" tags for use in shortcut files

Drag and drop

• Support for accepting drag and drop from remote applications (using xdnd protocol) and dragging to other applications. Opera supports URL and text drags
• Added support for transforming a dragged filename "file://localhost/..." to "file:/..." Some programs (e.g. xmms) use the latter. The option must be set in opera6.ini:

    [User Prefs]
    Localhost In drag and drop=0|1 (1 is default)

• Added support for disabling drags. The option must be set in opera6.ini

    [User Prefs]
    Enable Drag=3 (default)
    1=links
    2=bookmarks
    3=links and bookmarks

• It is now possible to drag links from the mail view and the Web panels
• Fixed a drag and drop problem that occurred when the drop action opened a dialog window. The dialog window would prevent a proper drop

Window management

• The saved windows sizes in session files were in some cases wrong, which could cause a problem when normalizing a maximized window after a session was loaded as the window could be opened outsize the visible workspace
• Top level windows will now not open outsize or partly outside the visible desktop area
  • This could happen with certain window managers
• Improved the cascading of top level windows
  • It could be difficult to understand a new window has been opened because it opened right above the current window
• Added support for WM_WINDOW_ROLE property
• Added support for "Placement by Opera" preference setting
  • This allows toplevel windows to not be positioned by Opera, but rather the window manager when the window opens

    [User Prefs]
    Window Placement By Opera=0|1 (1 is default setting)

• Fixed a synchronization problem when minimizing a document page
  • The corresponding page tab would not always indicate the minimized state
• Fixed an "open in background" problem when the source window was a non-maximized page
  • The new page would be activated
• Improved handling when closing a page
  • If a maximized page is closed then the new active page will not be maximized if it was not already maximized
• Correct behavior for "always cascade" page setup mode

Privacy and security

• Added Actalis Root Certificate
• Improved Server Manager dialog so that it is now possible to press Delete on a server item and the most logical thing will happen, depending on context:
  • Server and associated cookies are removed
  • Server and associated wand logins are removed
  • Server and both cookies and logins are removed
  • Server is reset to default cookie filter
• Changed trusted protocol handling to also check URLs that do not use "://" in the URL, only checks for ":" before checking against the list of trusted protocols
• Totally rewritten authentication system * NNTP now uses NNTP number instead of message-id as Internet Location
• Adjusted security password policy: minimum 6 characters and either
  • At least one alphabetic character and one non-alphabetic character, or
  • At least one character from a non-western European character set (specifically: not Latin-1)
• Disable Copy and Cut menu entries for edit fields that contain a password (the Copy and Cut handling itself was already disabled)
• Fixed issue with decoding of cookie path, reported by Corsaire
• Manually setting authentication method should overrule reported CAPA capabilities.

M2, Opera's e-mail and news client

• Initial support for mail export to mbox format added for access points/views
• Improvements to the internal spam filter
• Make sure internal spam filter never is applied to news messages or outgoing mail
• Implemented new authentication-system in NNTP, added support for CRAM-MD5
• Added RFC2231 support
• Remove self when selecting "Reply All"
• Progress should show totals when multiple accounts have same status
• Toggling between list, message, and split view in mailer
  • Double-click e-mail will open the e-mail in new window
• If IMAP server does not give an AUTH capability, try all supported ones
• Allow composing an e-mail to multiple receivers by selecting "Compose" on a folder in the contact list
• Don't fetch/send messages when in offline mode
• Messages are now HTML, not XML
• Let user choose between deleting messages or just remove them from view in the warning/info dialog
• Initial support for groups and IDs in bookmark and contacts
• Added counter to "Trash"
• Support for showing only e-mail belonging to specified account -- dropdown in Hotlist, or available from "Mail > Show account"
• Support for account categories
  • Set category under "General" tab in account properties (Mail > Manage accounts.. dialog)
  • Also available from dropdown in Hotlist
• Support for hiding e-mail in custom views from other views (properties, "Filter" tab)
• Disable account dropdown from "Mail > Show account"
• Regexp filter support, see The Regex Coach - interactive regular expressions
• Improvements to authentication and auto selection of authentication methods; support for POP3 CAPA
• IMAP fixes
• Added sorting of the e-mail access menu
• Not show newsgroup messages in Unread by default
• Made e-mail view title into a button (will soon show menu to select other access point); makes it possible to change e-mail view without hotlist open
• Adding drop-down menu for selecting M2 view from the e-mail window
• Easy way to add filter to an existing view (filter on address or subject)
• Initial support for e-mail export to mbox format added
• Proper separator in search dropdown box and account selector
• Possible to undo/redo (Ctrl z/y) the actions of marking mail as read/unread or delete/undelete of e-mail
• Save active account information across sessions
• Save e-mail view mode (split or list)
• Regexp filter support in M2
• Option to hide messages from a certain folder from other folders (marking the messages in that folder as "hidden")
• Fixes to only showing e-mail/news accounts, preparing for hiding content of a view from other views (e-mail filtering)
• Added Account selector in e-mail panel (can be hidden from "Mail > Show accounts")
• Added emptying trash as a status-message in M2
• Basic support for RFC2449 (POP3 CAPA)
  • OperaMail should now work with AUTOSELECT POP authentication
• Open a message box asking about entering online mode if checking e-mail in offline mode
• Improved support for RFC2646, and added support for Unicode Standard Annex #14, "Line Breaking Properties"
• Incoming NNTP and IRC backends, and all outgoing backends, should default to Autoselect authentication if username and password is set

Wand

• Various fixes
• Auto-login with wand even if there is no username

Voice (speech and aural CSS)

• Added "speech" media type with "aural" as alias
• Implemented handling of voice-family according to CSS2 aural spec
• Implemented parser support for most of CSS3 speech

Kiosk mode

• Kiosk mode support has been reintroduced
• Visit kiosk information for more information

Command-line options and startup

• Remote commands will now work properly even when there is no Opera instance is running
• Fixed a problem when starting Opera from a remote machine while another instance was running on the locale machine
  • In some cases the locale instance would be activated
• Fixed a bug that caused remote commands not to locate an instance of Opera if this instance was in fullscreen or had been in fullscreen
• The language can again be specified with the '-language' argument
• Support for an alternative ~/.opera directory
  • Use the '-personaldir' argument with the path to the alternative directory
• Fixed a problem that caused the selected session file (not the automatically saved) not to be read on startup when the start dialog was not shown
• Opera will now print a warning message (in the terminal) if it can not find a language file at all (Opera will exit after this)
• Enabled support for '-debugplugin' command line argument and better error handling of plug-ins
• More verbose logging in Xft library loaders using '-debugfont' command line argument

External applications

• Fixed a regression with generic applications: append address at end of application name if there are no flags specifiers
• Fixed some problems with external mailer where the mailto link passed to the client could be empty depending on the format flag
• Improved telnet parsing; it is now possible to parse user and passwords in URLs as well

    %a (address) - Replaced by the address (server)
    %p (port) - Replaced by the port
    %u (user name) - Replaced by the user name
    %w (password) - Replaced by the password
    Example "telnet [-l %u] [%a] [%p]"

Sound

• Enabled support for more sound actions (startup and m2)

Miscellaneous

• Updated Help files
• Minor updates to user style sheets
• Added method to check for available upgrade of Opera
• Allow fast forward before page is completely loaded
• Fixed redirection of Automatic Proxy Configuration scripts
• Support for not displaying page address in window title by using an "opera6.ini" setting:

    [User Prefs]
    Show Address In Caption=0|1 (1 is default)

• Implemented <marquee>
• Implemented <blink>

New features since 7.20 beta 7

Advertisements

Unregistered users have the choice between two types of ads:

• Normal generic ads, like before
• Text ads from Google that are relevant to the currently visited page

If you choose the new format you will get text-based ads from Google that are relevant to the content of the page you visit. The currently visited page URL is used for finding the best ad and corresponding related searches. Google and Opera are committed to protecting the privacy of our users. Read about the Opera Browser Google Ads for more information about the system (and the measures we take to protect you).

Inline search

Pressing . or / starts an inline find without a search field. This is deactivated with a one second timeout or by pressing Escape.

• Search only links with , or Shift / prefix
• Possible to paste text into ongoing timed find
• Possible to use other actions like scrolling page etc while timed find is running
• Possible to find next/previous

JavaScript options

Added options for allowing scripts to size, move, raise (i.e. focus), lower, and set status bar text. This options is available in Multimedia preferences.

Middle mouse click support and panning

There is a new middle-click configuration dialog. The dialog will show the first time middle-click is used and allow the user to configure how Opera handles middle-clicks on links. Default is "Open page in background". Shift+Middle-click will bring up the configuration dialog again.

Opera also has support for horizontal panning.

Other

• Support for environment variable expansion in "opera6.ini" file for all file path settings
• Added "Never on entire server" to Wand manager
• Let pop-up progress appear inside any scrollbars
• Support for copying message text from message boxes
• Support for running Opera without showing the mouse cursor by using an opera6.ini setting:

    [User Prefs]
    Hide Mouse Cursor=0|1 (0 is default setting)

• Various new command line options
  • Support for '-version' command line option
  • Support for '-debugkeyboard' command line option
  • Support for '-debugdns' command line option
  • Support for '-restoreextensions' command line option. This option will force Opera to use default extentions for registered file types

Important changes since 7.20 beta 7

SSR/Handheld

• Recognize handheld in media attribute of XML style sheet PI to switch from SSR to handheld mode
• Recognize @media handheld inside <STYLE> elements and use author style sheet instead of SSR
• Enter handheld mode when matching certain doctypes (cHTML and WML)
• Always switch to handheld mode for WML documents "application/vnd.wap.xHTML+XML" now handled correctly

Privacy and security

• Changed default flags for certificate authorities when installing downloaded CA certificates to "deny all access", and "warn", for client chains, and "access, but warn" for other chains unless the user explicitly changes the settings
• Added handling of special date format strings that cause problems with some cookies
• Open security page in preference dialog box when clicking the security button on the progress bar
• Set-Cookie requests to delete cookies covered by the DNS verify policy are now first DNS verified

M2, Opera's e-mail and news client

• Show subscribe dialog after creating news account
• Made clickable area of attachments smaller and more visible
• Let Ctrl+Shift+S (send e-mail) execute quick reply in e-mail view
• Let Shift+F9 focus quick reply
• The e-mail context menu will now be used when right clicking on an e-mail body instead of the Web page context menu
• ".,?!)" are now removed from the end of non-URL encapsulated URLs in text/plain messages
• New Account Wizard now allows server:port for server names
• Default port will be used if the port given is "0"
• Auto CC and BCC possible under "General" tab in account properties

External applications

• Fixed a problem that caused the "Run in terminal" option to fail for external e-mail client
• Support for %U and %V flags for trusted applications
  • %u => Replace with address
  • %v => Replace with address but removing relative name or trailing '/'
  • %U => Replace with full address (protocol in front)
  • %V => Replace with full address but removing relative name or trailing '/' (protocol in front)

Other

• The mouse cursor shape could stop changing when using Qt 3.1.1
• Fix for smooth scrolling in lists. Lists would not be redrawn properly
• Show URL in statusbar when using A/Q to navigate
• Generate Meta button events if the incoming X keyboard event mask matches Mod4Mask; simplifies use of Meta as shortcut character
• Fixed a problem that caused Opera to print using the first printer regardless of what printer was selected in the print dialog
• Some skins did not work properly in the menubar on startup
• Do not append a trailing dot ('.') to the suggested filename if there is no extension when saving a file
• Strip text entered from address bar fields for spaces in front and at end, as search requests could othwerwise fail
• Make a backup of autopera.win when Opera starts after a crash or premature exit and chooses not to "Continue from last time"
  • The backup is named autopera.win.bak
• Remember settings for Hiragana/Katakana in International Fonts dialog
• Let pagebar redirect handling of actions to window in question, which makes it possible to have document context menus on pagebar buttons (like in Opera 6)
• In views where drag and drop is disabled, enable drag selection
  • You can hold down mouse button and move mouse to select different items
  • As in the preferences dialog, hold down button is list on the left and drag to quickly move through the preference pages
• Made it possible to select and open multiple files from "File > Open"
• Let goto-page dialog open a nickname on exact match
• Fix for too large favicons in page cycler
• Modified bookmark date sorting
• Enable back button immediately when opening link as this used to be disabled until page was fully loaded
• Made it possible to have actions specify the action value after an action string was specified, which makes it possible to:

  Show popup menu, "Internal access points", -3 to directly show the "All messages" submenu

• Do not allow setting of size or position of a non-restored window in the workspace (JavaScript could do this)
• Set active desktop window before opening a dropped item on the pagebar, which makes it possible to drop and open in correct toplevel window
• Fixed a problem that created a second window when the first was opened with '-iconic' on startup
• Let pop-up progress appear inside any scrollbars
• Do not change filenames that contain illegal characters as defined by windows in the Unix version
• Fixed a problem where the wrong File Types preferences were sometimes used for downloading files; now, the action is generated from the information in this priority:
  • MIME type (potentially content-sniffed MIME-type if MIME type is unreliable)
  • Server-suggested file extension (from the Content-Disposition header)
  • URL file extension