Opera

Changelog for Opera 9.5 Beta 1 for Windows

Release Notes

• This is a beta version of Opera. Use only on properly backed up computers and do not install over previous Opera versions
• This release uses new storage and indexing formats for Opera Mail (including feeds). If you copy your Mail directory from an existing profile, you will be prompted to convert all accounts into the new format and re-index your messages. You will not be able to downgrade to a previous version of Opera after starting the conversion process
• Dragging buttons and links to arbitrary toolbars is now disabled by default (with exceptions). Please see the User Interface section of the changelog for full details

Changes Since Opera 9.24

User Interface

• Bookmarks, Personal bar, and Speed Dial data can be synchronized with other instances of the browser via the File > Synchronize Opera menu option; the most recent Speed Dial data will always be used when synchronizing
• Redesigned Address bar drop-down displayed when entering text in the Address bar:
  • Includes excerpts from previously visited pages
  • Improved visual design
  • Orders entries by popularity
  • Local file auto-completion
• Re-enabled Status bar by default and moved some UI elements from View bar to Status bar; View bar is now disabled by default
• Simplified Download dialog
• Closed windows are now also displayed in the Trash can and the Window > Closed menu
• "Open with" functionality added to web page context menu and Transfer panel/page
• Content blocking improvements:
  • Added site-specific toggling of content blocking
  • Fixed problem where opening the Details dialog for a page would cause some blocked paths to change
  • Double-clicking entries in the Details dialog now edits them
  • Only show filters that cause content to be blocked on the current page in the Details dialog
  • CSS and JS files matching blocked patterns are now also shown in the Details dialog
• Added ability to save only the active window as a session (File > Sessions > Save This Session > Only save active window)
• Added Undo for Speed Dial
• Disabled dragging links/favicons to arbitrary toolbars (exceptions: Personal bar and opera: buttons); hold Shift or open the Tools > Appearances dialog to enable dragging
• Fixed problem with multi-word bookmark nicknames
• Wand will no longer block form submits, making it possible to see if login was successful before storing your login credentials
• Default to saving as Web archives and remember format selection
• Switch to title casing for menu text

Customization

• Allow cascading dialog.ini files
• Added new delay action for setup files: delay, X where X is milliseconds. It will delay asynchronously the rest of the actions defined in the string until the specified time has expired
• Added .mini toolbar state (used in the Status bar) to make buttons and padding 80% of normal size
• Moved several files into the "defaults" profile sub-directory for improved consistency

Accessibility

• Major refactoring of keyboard shortcuts
• Added a setting to enable single-key keyboard shortcuts in Preferences > Advanced > Shortcuts
• Experimental screen reader support:
  • Added support for Microsoft Active Accessibility API (MSAA)
  • Preliminary support for Window-Eyes, JAWS, NVDA, and OS X VoiceOver
  • Collaborated with GW Micro on improved compatibility with future releases of Window-Eyes
  • Basic implementation of Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA)
• Spatial navigation improvements:
  • Restore navigated element when moving in history
  • All keyboard navigation methods (spatial navigation, Ctrl/Cmd+Up/Down, inline find, etc.) should now work based on the same elements, which allows you to use spatial navigation after inline find, etc.
• Keyboard shortcuts using Ctrl/Cmd+Shift no longer always open in a background tab

Mail/News

Back-ends

• Performance improvements, including reduced memory usage, reduced disk accesses, and reduced freezing when checking for new mail/feeds
• Improved IMAP reliability, especially when fetching mail with multiple clients
• When using "Leave messages on server", POP3 messages are permanently removed from the server when the Trash view is emptied (disable by setting "Permanent delete=0" for the relevant account in accounts.ini)
• Connections are no longer initiated before the Start-up dialog is dismissed
• Experimental IMAP Keyword support: messages marked as Spam will automatically be marked with the $Spam keyword; existing keywords will generate new filters
• Fixed several problems handling multipart messages and message attachments, including messages sent from Apple Mail
• Fixed problems updating the list of newsgroups available on a server
• Messages in the selected IMAP sent folder will be shown in the Sent view
• Fixed problem where mail was never sent if it initially failed to send

User Interface

• New, experimental notification system: each message will generate a notification, though one notification per account will appear if more than three messages are received
• Refreshed Mail panel, which replaces the status pane with account icons
• Pressing F5 will check for new messages in the current view; useful for manually checking for new feeds
• Replaced "Save as draft" button in the Compose window with a "Discard draft" button: drafts are auto-saved once text is entered in the message body
• IMAP folders are displayed in a hierarchy, as appropriate
• The Mail panel now indicates nested filters or mailboxes
• Users can now decide how many messages to download when subscribing to a newsgroup
• Fixed multiple problems caused by using a master password
• Mail passwords are now stored in the Wand password database
• Improved handling of message threading
• Added option to filter/search based on message bodies only
• Improved spatial navigation of messages
• Added Ctrl/Cmd+S shortcut to add attachments to messages

Import

• Made Netscape, Eudora, and Opera 5/6 import options available cross-platform
• Fixed problem importing mail from Thunderbird
• Fixed multiple problems with the Outlook Express importer
• Fixed problem sending mail from accounts created by importing mail

Chat

• Notifications can be limited to private messages rather than all channel activity (can be enabled in Preferences > Advanced > Notifications)

Display and Scripting

Rendering Engine

• Fixed numerous stability issues
• Plugged numerous memory leaks
• Many performance improvements throughout
• Added support for the CSS3 overflow-x and overflow-y properties (demo)
• Added support for the CSS3 text-shadow property (demo)
• Added support for the CSS3 Selectors (demo)
• Added support for the CSS3 outline-offset property (demos)
• Added support for the CSS3 background-size property (only accessible via the custom -o-background-size property)
• Added support for the CSS3 currentColor color keyword
• Added support for the CSS2.1 white-space: pre-line value
• Added support for the :-o-prefocus pseudo-class, which allows styling of form elements reached via spatial navigation
• Added support for the custom -o-language-string(n) property for use in User and Internal Stylesheets to allow localized strings in stylesheets
• Added support for the custom -o-table-baseline property, used to determine which row of an inline-table will be used as the baseline of the table. The property accepts either an integer or inherit value, where the integer refers to the table row to use as the table's baseline. -1 refers to the last row of the table and -n refers to the nth row from the bottom. If the integer value is 0, the bottom margin edge of the table will be treated as the table's baseline. The initial value is 1. This property only applies to inline-tables
• Added support for the label attribute of option elements
• Greatly improved table layout algorithm
• Major improvements to the shrink-wrapping algorithm
• Greatly improved support for the CSS outline property
• Support the min-width and max-width properties for elements styled with display: table-cell (such as td and th elements)
• Disallow use of percentage width values for the border-width property
• Removed support for class selectors starting with a digit in Quirks mode
• rowspan=0 is now also supported in Quirks mode
• Fixed problem where the :lang() selector did not correctly match the full string
• Improved support for @import, @media, @namespace, and @page at-rules
• Support the color attribute for hr elements
• Updated tabindex attribute handling: any element with a tabindex that is a positive number should be reachable by tabbing. Elements with a negative tabindex should never be reachable by tabbing
• Support overflow in inline-table and inline-block elements, which fixes unclickable links and truncated content on Dell.com
• Fixed problem where certain MHTML files displayed blank until resizing the page
• Fixed redraw problem when reducing the width of td elements via DOM
• Support for the display: table-column and table-column-group values on elements other than col and colgroup
• Fixed problem with using percentage height on blocks inside table cells
• Allow changing the background of input type=image elements
• Fixed incorrect use of padding on table elements when setting the border-spacing property and using the separated-border model
• Inherit frameset encoding into frame documents, using the same restrictions as used for inline frames
• Media queries are now dynamic, allowing them to update when the window size is changed not just when the page loads
• Fixed problems displaying full-screen YouTube videos
• Fixed problems focusing the message composition area on Gmail
• Store the original strings in HTML attributes for use by CSS selectors and DOM

JavaScript/DOM

• Rewritten ECMAscript engine, which is more flexible and uses less memory
• Added support for JavaScript 1.5 Getters and Setters
• Added support for the DOM 3 Core Node.isSameNode method
• Added support for the DOM 3 Core Text.wholeText attribute and Text.replaceWholeText method
• Added support for the DOM 3 Core Node.compareDocumentPosition method (used by Google Pages)
• Added support for the Gecko DOM Range.comparePoint method (used by Google Pages)
• Added support for the HTML5 {Document,Element}.getElementsByClassName method
• Added support for the HTML5 Navigator.onLine attribute and the Window.{online,offline} events
• Added support for the HTML5 Canvas.getImageData and Canvas.putImageData methods, including support for creating an ImageData object using the ImageData interface
• Added support for the HTML5 Canvas.transform, Canvas.setTransform, and Canvas.isPointInPath methods
• Added support for the HTML5 Element.tabindex attribute and the Element.{blur,focus} methods
• Added support for the Microsoft XMLDocument class used for all XML documents (except SVG and XHTML) for cross-browser consistency. The DOM 3 Load and Save Document.async attribute and Document.load method will no longer work in the Document class
• Added support for the document.moveFocus{left,right,up,down} methods for directing spatial navigation via JavaScript
• Added support for the start and stop methods of marquee elements
• Insert em tag instead of i tag when using italic execCommand parameter
• Fixed problems changing the font size of textarea elements via DOM
• Fixed problem that caused non-breaking spaces to be inserted in textarea elements as seen at Gmail
• Corrected name of LSLoadEvent.input attribute (was LSLoadEvent.filter)
• Fixed various bugs where mouse events had built-in effects before script event processing was finished (cancelled mousedown should not move focus, blur/focus events caused by mousedown event should be processed after rather than before the mousedown event causing them, and so on)
• Stopped showing text nodes in script and style elements when using the Document.all collection
• Trigger an onload event for images set to display:none
• Fixed canvas locking in the 2dgame context to allow updating when the canvas is locked and fixed the update function to actually work
• Disabled Document.length, as it caused problems in the Apple.com CoverFlow demo
• Remove the text attribute from the HTMLSelectElement collection
• Date.getYear() now returns full year when the year is > 1999 or < 1900 for cross-browser compatibility (despite breaking the JS spec.)
• Removed IE-compatibility where Document.getElementById treated name and id attributes the same, which caused problems with jQuery
• No longer share events between the Window and Document objects
• Fixed problem where the Date method with an out of range day parameter became the current date and other cross-browser consistency issues
• No longer create multiple text nodes when there's more than 32KB of data in the text node
• Fixed problem changing the type attribute of button elements
• Fixed problem where setting the scrollTop attribute for textarea elements didn't scroll the textarea contents
• Several fixes to Document.activeElement to make it work more consistently
• Give xml tags within HTML documents a documentElement attribute
• XMLHttpRequest now resolves URLs according to the HTML base element
• Event.keyCode will now return keyboard codes for punctuation keys in addition to alphanumeric keys, which fixes issues with keyboard navigation at Gmail
• Fixed problem displaying maps on theaa.com caused by scrollTop working on both the html and body element simultaneously
• document.body.{clientHeight,clientWidth} and document.documentElement.{clientHeight,clientWidth} now return the correct values in Strict mode, which fixes issues with Novell GroupWise
• Made event capturing more cross-browser compatible: No longer capture load events if listener is attached to the window and fire capturing events at target; attach listeners to the document object if you need to capture load events from within the document
• No longer lose the value of an input element created via DOM when changing the type attribute, which caused problems when editing del.icio.us bookmarks
• References to undefined variables as a single statement will now correctly throw an error
• Added support for the CSSOM ElementLayout.{getClientRects,getBoundingClientRect} methods (demos)
• For scrollWidth and scrollHeight on the html element, return the size of the html element instead of the size of the document (viewport)
• Fixed problem where onmouseout event did not fire if an element's innerText changed while it was being hovered
• Corrected return value of getComputedStyle and currentStyle
• Encode attribute values in innerHTML as required by HTML5

SVG

• Added partial SVG Tiny 1.2 support
• Added support for using SVGs in img elements and the CSS background-image and list-style-image properties
• Added external reference support for SVGs
• Use Opera to render SVGs embedded using the embed element, not just the object element
• SVGs can now be used as the source for canvas drawImage and createPattern operations

Rich Text Input

• Use line/paragraph breaking in rich text editor: Enter should insert block-break (new paragraph) and Shift+Enter should insert line-break (br element)
• Improved handling of inserted and removed elements

Other

• Fixed numerous inconsistencies and specification violations in the SVG, DOM, WML, Web Forms 2.0, XPath, and XSLT implementations
• Added support for UAX #14 Line Breaking Properties and UAX #29 Text Boundaries annexes
• XSLT document() function will no longer cause an XSLT processing error if it is not called
• Enabled RTL support in text inputs (including Opera Mail) and form elements
• Fixed problem where the HttpURLConnection Java object did not support getHeaderField and getHeaderFieldKey
• Allow installation of certificates that generate warnings
• Always obey server-set Expiry header

Security

• Disabled SSL v2 and weak ciphers

Miscellaneous

• New internal page, opera:historysearch, which searches the content of visited pages
• Redesigned Info panel: it now includes the page display mode, download date, META tags, links to stylesheets and JavaScript files, etc.
• opera:cache now shows only cached items in memory; cache files no longer use file extensions
• Added "Drag to scroll" (disabled by default) which allows scrolling by "grabbing" the page, much like on mobile phones with touch screens
• opera:config will now function correctly with the "Enable JavaScript" preference disabled
• Numerous improvements to mailto link handling
• Automatic page refreshing can now be overridden via the "Reload every" context menu item
• No longer attempt to follow automatic redirects when navigating in history
• Improvements to handling of full hard disks
• Partial Extended Validation certificate support: no user interface has been added yet
• Added support for the httpOnly parameter of the Set-Cookie header
• Disable "Allow raising of windows" by default
• Added support for the BitTorrent peer exchange protocol, which is compatible with libtorrent and µTorrent
• Added support for JIS X 0212 in EUC-JP code set 3 and ISO-2022-JP
• Added support for JIS-Roman output in ISO-2022-JP
• Enabled auto-detection of ISO-2022-JP-1 support
• Added zh-SG and zh-MO as known language codes and SG and MO as country codes for selecting Chinese variant

Windows-specific changes

• Associate Opera with .xhtml, .mht, .svg, and .torrent files
• Removed option to associate Opera with URL Shortcuts
• Auto-scroll icon now appears where clicked instead of centered on the page
• Add drop-down shadows on Windows 2000, XP, and Vista if Control Panel > Display > Appearance > Effects > Show shadows under menus is enabled
• Better support for the Default program settings dialog in Windows XP and Vista
• Dropped support for Winsock 1
• Fixed problem where transparent GIFs used as backgrounds would turn black when the page was zoomed