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:
- 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!
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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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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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!
- 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....
Comments
Note: Comments with a light blue background were made by the site owner.
Many have tried to guess the
You better not disappoint us on this one! :p
I don't think everyone will
I don't think everyone will like the feature. Some will say it's a waste of time. But you can't please everyone.
My guess: the new feature
My guess: the new feature will be address completion (including history and bookmarks) a la bash/zsh/ksh/tcsh command line completion.
What is the prize?. ;-)
Nope!
Nope!
I guess I will have to wait
I guess I will have to wait for Peregrine then... :smile:
My guess.
WebUI, something that is already in opera for devices(wii), but not in a desktop browser. I think its the 2nd interface opera needs. If its not, i'll make it a wish list request in the forum :)
Nope, that's not it. Why do
Nope, that's not it. Why do you want that?
Well just a thought as it
Well just a thought as it hasn't been in a desktop browser yet, and i feel in terms of customisation, would be better as a second UI, userjs's like bugmenot at the moment have to take the pages style and so on into account so the bar appears correctly, something like webUI maybe could be the answer, If i understand correctly what it could mean.
http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2007/01/08/
OK.
OK.
let me guess, how usefull a
let me guess, how usefull a feature nobody asked for is going to be..
it is going to be another widget-flop! i already can hear the laughter over the net, you advertise it as something as good as the sliced bread. just like you did with widgets. andyou wander why opera's cool-factor is BELOW zero..
ps. is it going to be a build-in sudoku game? to be honest, that game would have been more usefull than widgets [yes, i know that there is a widget for sudoku, alas it doesnt work for me]
ps2. "I don't think everyone will like the feature. Some will say it's a waste of time. But you can't please everyone." that is the lamest excuse possible.. i smell something realy bad aproaching
as for USEFULL and NEEDED changes - overflow-x and overflow-y CSS properties are more then needed NOW due to massive use of floating/draggable panels in webapps. opera always ends with absolute sh.. unnecessary scrollbars. is it that hard to tell USELESS from NEEDED? dont blah blah about resources allocation and different tasks for different people. people arent tables, they can learn and adapt to new tasks
ps3. do you use that new FEATURE? answer honestly before yourself. you dont need to voice your answer, just tell yourself, do you use it? would you, with straight face, suggest anyone use opera because of that feature? if both answers are NO, tell me, why waste time on it?
you know what feature i recommend to others? full-page-zoom. THIS is groundbreaking. firefox extensions, ease of use/update of them/firefox - that is groundbreaking. widgets ARE NOT groundbreaking, that was a concpet already failed introduced few years too late.
anyways, ill be there wednesday to see myself, and i hope it is good. or else ill stay with minefield
No one asked for mouse
No one asked for mouse gestures either. Yet, it's one of the features that Opera users love. Please don't judge the feature before you use it.
M2 .... yeeeeeeeessssss
Finally? It's the third one! :tongue:
Can you say if Opera will delete 0 byte files/empty directories?
Please, could you specify the century :tongue: :-)
Sorry Tim, maybe i've been a bit unpleasant, but i'm sad because M2 is a great product but has not been really improved in the past versions.
Cheers. G
I think it may be the fourth
I think it may be the fourth indexing back-end, but who's really counting? The last redesign was Opera 7.5, which caused the indexing corruption problems we have now. That's why I wrote what I did.
The storage back-end hasn't changed, so Kestrel most likely does not clean up after itself any better than in Merlin.
The user interface changes will most likely be in Peregrine based on the current deadlines. As Johan's post says, we're expecting a preview of Peregrine by the end of 2007.
I think it may be the
:)
I cant refrain
(p.s. yesterday i tried to add some emoticons in my post with my pc at home, but none worked. I add one today then.;) )
uhh - late
I truly hoped to see some more GUI-Improvements in M2 for years (at least it feels like this). And now you tell us, we'd see them - hopefully - by the end of 2007 as a preview. :(
We witnessed so many backend-rewrites (storage twice, if I remember correctly, indexing four times, as you stated, IMAP) but no breaking increase in terms of GUI, usability or news-handling. A shame, especially if I think about what great client I might use, if M2's priority would have been set a little higher.
M2 did not take advantage of its conceptual competitive edge. Now it is nearly gone. What a pity...
Opera notes quirk
I just remember one quirk: it's a pity that anchors not saved in Notes. :(
Tim, I put this note here because I know you also use Notes. So, maybe it will be fixed in not so far future. ;)
Anchors? Do you mean
Anchors? Do you mean fragments, by chance, i.e. the part after "#" in a URL?
Yes. Local anchors.
You right, I meant # part of URL.
Also Opera forget about this part in History (the same problem has IE). All other major browsers do this right (I tested Firefox, Safari, iCab, Netscape 4).
Try this link, for example: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Opera#Known_problems
Please file a bug report
Please file a bug report about the anchor problem with Notes. We have a bug report on the history issue.
Bug # 254074
Local anchors (# part of URL) not saved in Notes
Thank you!
Thank you!
MarsEdit
I'd try again with MarsEdit. I've got it working with Drupal 4.7 and categories (from my main taxonomy), but not input formats. I had to switch to the MovableType API. The BlogAPI module works with that pretty well, but I also had to get a newer version of Pathauto to get it to work in conjunction with BlogAPI. This may address your concerns.
I do see some duplicate taxonomy entries in the ME drawer, but I can set and unset them for posts. I can also round-trip posts, editing in both ME and Drupal, if needed.
http://www.jaharmi.com/trying_out_marsedit_for_posting_drupal_stories_again
It looks like the input
It looks like the input format problem is fixed in Drupal 5: http://drupal.org/node/12984. It's good to hear that categories are working, too. But yes, I will be giving it another try once I upgrade from 4.7. Thanks.
Meeting
Since we all already know the feature (thanks to Desktop Team) you should probably prepare something new... ;)
See you soon.
We can still talk about it.
We can still talk about it. :)