Opera

Opera 7 for Windows Changelogs

New in Opera 7.0 Beta 1

Opera version 7.0 beta 1 is now available for download.

Opera 7 is faster and smaller than Opera 6, yet adds many new features! Again, Opera has proven that less is more. Opera has a completely new rendering engine, a revolutionary e-mail client, and can combine SDI, MDI, and tabbed browsing.

Changelog

Opera 7.0 beta 1 for Windows has the following changelog:

Opera's new rendering engine (also known as "Presto")

• Support for page/document reflow
• Support for DOM (Document Object Model) level 2
• Support for dynamic HTML
• Extended CSS2 support, including e.g. styling of form elements
• 100% ECMAScript support
• Improved HTML 4.01 support
• Complete WML 1.3 and 2.0 support

See the Opera 7 specifications for more details.

M2, Opera's new e-mail and news client

• Automatically generated access points, a revolutionary method of viewing and organizing e-mail
• Support for SMTP authentication
• Support for news servers with password authentication
• Integrated spam filter
• E-mail import from Eudora and Outlook Express
• Account wizard
• Possible to label messages, which makes messages easily accessible
• Support for POP3, IMAP, and ESMTP
• Support for threaded display of mailing lists
• Quick reply can send a reply without opening a compose window

For more information about M2, please refer to the M2 tutorial.

User interface features

• New MDI/SDI combination gives users the best of two worlds by allowing surfing in both MDI or SDI, with tabs (or even a combination) without restarting Opera
• Extended and vastly improved drag-and-drop support
  • Rearrange or move toolbar items using drag-and-drop customization
  • Move bookmarks, tabs, and MDI pages between SDI windows
  • Open or save any page link, or make it a desktop shortcut
  • Rearrange the address, search, and zoom fields
• Menu items can be moved, added, or removed by editing "menu.ini"
• Extended support for skinning, where skins are in zip files
• Color schemes can be selected from the view menu, and new schemes can be added by editing the "menu.ini" file
• Page bar replaces MDI window bar
• User mode address-bar icon has drop-down menu
• New 3D buttons
• Enhanced alphablended effects

Hotlist features

• New floatable download and transfer manager, with drag-and-drop support
• Bookmarks can be shown as panels
• History is implemented as a panel
• All MDI pages and SDI windows can be managed from the Windows panel
• E-mail manager
• Hotlist can float or dock either left or right
• Single-click opening of bookmarks can be enabled in the "opera6.ini" file by changing the "Hotlist Single Click=0" setting in the "[HotListWindow]" section

More features

• Installer supports both multiple user accounts (profile strategy) and single-user installation, i.e. Opera can install with separate settings for each user on Windows NT/2000/XP
• Press Shift+F11 to enable small-screen mode, which emulates a hand-held (small-screen) device running Opera
• Support for multiple user style sheets, including 100% CSS-made text browser, that can be applied to any Web page
• New JavaScript console can be opened from "Window > Special > JavaScript console"
• Opera's new session manager lets you choose between (multiple) saved sessions from the start-up dialog
• Opera's FTP client supports the EPLF directory format as well as resume download "guessing"

Accessibility

• Support for alternate style sheets
• Built-in accessibility user style sheet
• Support for access keys on Web pages
• New navigation bar supports page/document navigation defined using link tags
• Keyboard shortcuts for all actions can be customized (added, removed, or modified) in "input.ini", and Opera even supports shortcut sequences
• Dynamic on-the-fly generation of access keys in menus

Documentation

• Help files are not included in the beta version
• Information about Opera 7 beta is available on Opera.com
• Text files are updated

Miscellaneous

• Global setting-file location changed from Windows directory to opera.exe directory -- used to include new settings added by the installer
• Support for accepting requested pop-ups only
• Support for favicon and icon files
• Improved "Send link in e-mail", which supports the RFC1738 format
• Updated "Identify as MSIE" version number from 5.5 to 6.0, and added keyboard shortcuts
• Status bar is off by default, and tooltip for link addresses is on by default
• Opera 7 beta cannot be installed over a previous version of Opera

See the changelog for Opera 6.05.

And the Opera 7 specifications.