updates Meet the browser: Opera Next

[halcyoncmdr]

9.5 is available

After lots of late night testing and bug fixing, 9.5 was released today. :hat:

We would like to share some fun facts with you:

Opera is now available in 29 languages, 6 more than in 9.27 and more are coming

The number of Opera users has more than doubled since the release of 9.0

We fixed a new record of bugs, including 2350 showstoppers

The desktop team ate 12 pizzas while fixing bugs in 9.5 RC :chef:

IMAP is up to 4 times as fast in 9.5 than in 9.2

Almost 500.000 of you were already using betas of 9.5

Opera 9.5 is now available on http://www.opera.com/download

Enjoy!

The desktop team

---

http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2008/...-5-is-available

It is build 10063, so not the RC build.

[Crazysah]

YAY! Finally! It is here before Firefox 3.0!

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Edit: Nevermind, fixed it :)

Edited June 12, 2008 by DrunknMunky

[alxz.310]

Opera 9.5's very good imo, I ditched firefox 3 because of the scrolling issue with fixed backgrounds :p

[Steve Gosselin]

Towards 9.51

By csant. Friday, 20. June 2008, 04:56:56

It's time for maintenance - we have been fixing several of the most reported issues in 9.50 - including a rather nasty crash on Yahoo Mail. Have fun testing - and as always, we'd appreciate feedback.

WARNING: These are development snapshots: they contain the latest changes, but they also have severe known issues, including crashes and data loss situations. In fact, they may not work at all.

Changelog

Fixed crash on Yahoo! Mail.

Fixed a crash when clicking the feeds button.

Fixed a crash when installing Shockwave Player 11.

Fixed some issues with the search engines when upgrading from 9.2x: it is now possible again to edit the Google search.

Fixed a leak when printing or in print preview.

Fixed a GDI handle leak in the transfers window on Windows.

Fixed thread expanding in Mail when receiving new messages

Fixed some issues with subscription to IMAP folders.

Fixed a too zealous reconnection of the IRC client.

Fixed "reuse current tab" feature in speed dial on Mac.

Finetuned some issues in the new skin.

Download

Windows 10071

Windows Classic 10071

Mac 4877

UNIX 2050

Source

Towards 9.51 @ Desktop Team

[JOHW]

This build solved some of the crashing issues I had with Google Images :D

Wonderful!

[Denis W. Veteran]

Hope this fixes the rendering bugs seen while scrolling. On Windows black or white boxes appear above the forum feed up there ^^^. On Linux when smooth scrolling the entire page does not necessarily repaint.

edit: Netvibes's news reader has FINALLY been fixed after almost a year.

Edited June 21, 2008 by rm20010

[JOHW]

I never noticed this problem with 9.5 or this prerelease of 9.51 on windows?

[Steve Gosselin]

Hope this fixes the rendering bugs seen while scrolling.

Not fixed for me...

[Steve Gosselin]

Opera 9.51 RC 1

By olli. Wednesday, 25. June 2008, 06:45:55

Hey

We have fixed the worst issues after 9.50 and are preparing for a 9.51 update.

Please look out for regressions :-)

Changelog

Added option to toggle mouse flips, and decoupled them from the mouse gesture setting again

Fixed drag/drop of tabs - always drop the address

Fixed menus on deviantart.com

Fixed TinyMCE 2.1.x editor

Feeds now show the first time you subscribe

Fixed crash when printing chat

64-bit linux is back

Download

Windows 10074

Windows Classic 10074

Mac 4879

UNIX 2052

Source

Opera 9.51 RC 1 @ Desktop Team

[Steve Gosselin]

Opera 9.51 RC 2

By csant. Friday, 27. June 2008, 09:37:33

More fixes in the pipeline for 9.51! As always, we appreciate constructive feedback. Main focus was on stability and the installer - some issues that users have encountered when upgrading from 9.27 should now be finally solved.

Changelog

Security status should be now always correctly set when navigating from HTTP to HTTPS.

Fixed an issue related to OCSP and CRLs that would lower security level - Yngve has a detailed article. You'll have to manually check for updates to activate this fix.

Fixed an issue in the content blocker that might cause no page to be loaded anymore.

Fixed a crash on Yahoo! Mail (now really!).

Fixed a crash with userjs.

Fixed a crash related to Dragonfly.

Fixed a crash on Print Preview.

Fixed an issue that caused unwanted line breaks in rich text editors.

Fixed loading of stylesheets when navigating in history.

UNIX specific:

Fixed an issue that would prevent pages from closing on Qt4 builds.

Fixed saving of changes to plugin configuration.

Download

Windows 10080

Windows Classic 10080

Mac 4885

UNIX 2059

Source

Opera 9.51 RC 2 @ Desktop Team

[Crazysah]

This build is really good and works well.

[Steve Gosselin]

Opera 9.51 RC 3

By csant. Tuesday, 1. July 2008, 06:45:04

And one more RC for the upcoming 9.51! Lots of nice fixes in this one - and we need your feedback, specially on:

• upgrading (we did some more tweaks to the installer)
  
• saving (of images, of web pages, of "stuff")
  

Changelog

Fixed proper clearing of textarea when no-cache is set.

Fixed a crash on print preview.

Saving of images is not recorded in transfers anymore.

Fixed window.close() not functioning after invoking context menu... (this also fixes closing Dragonfly…)

UNIX specific:

Fixed printing on Linux

Download

Windows 10081

Windows Classic 10081

Mac 4886

UNIX 2061

Source

Opera 9.51 RC 3 @ Desktop Team

This build is really good and works well.

Yes.

[JOHW]

Opera 9.51

By csant. Tuesday, 3. July 2008, 08:09:11

We released 9.51 today, which addresses a few security and lots of stability issues. This release is a recommended upgrade for all those running the latest stable releases.

Changelogs are available:

Windows

Mac

Linux/UNIX

Go download it!

FYI, RC3 (10081) = Final

[JOHW]

Opera 9.52 snapshot "summer edition"

By olli. Friday, 11. July 2008, 10:03:05

Hei

We are still doing polishing on Kestrel and have some more crashfixes etc for you all to play with.

Please look for regressions since 9.50

Changelog:

Lots of stability fixes

Fixed an issue with history navigation: an iframe with document.write is not added to history anymore

Fixed an issue where IRC would disconnec users without informing them

Fixed window.close() not functioning after invoking context menu - now also in widgets

Fixed an issue where "Mark all as read" in M2 would also mark as read some mails not visible in the current view

Fixed creation of POP aim.com account

Changelogs are available:

Windows

Windows Classic

Mac

Linux/UNIX

[Steve Gosselin]

Opera 9.52 snapshot "summer edition"

Excellent snapshot build!

[JOHW]

A peek under the hood

By julienp. Friday, 18. July 2008, 13:48:34

Today's post will be a bit unusual in the sense that it won't be about Opera itself, but rather about how Opera is brought to you. This post will attempt to explain to you how we get from a lump of source code that can be compiled in a lot of different ways with many different options to the Opera packages that you can download and install from this blog.

Install? That is already a complex process on its own. You do it once and never think about it again, but the fact is that installation is a crucial process and it has to work properly, otherwise you can't enjoy your favorite software! So, how do we fit all our code in an executable, then pack it in an installer?

There are essentially two processes that take part here: Building and packaging. We have a build system that realizes both of them. The first part of it is a web interface that collects build requests from everyone and then dispatches them to our build servers, each of which can make a build for the requested OS. The second part is a script, partly different for each OS, running on each build server which takes care of building and packaging.

The building part is pretty much the same on each platform: it obtains the requested version of the source code, compiles it with the right options and builds it into an executable (and libraries). The compilation part is taken care of by a compiler specific to the platform on which the build is made and it mostly takes care of itself, as long as the source code is correct.

At that point, everything is ready for packaging, and the script becomes very different depending on the OS. I will talk more specifically about packaging on Windows, since I am responsible for the Windows part of the build system.

There are two kind of packages on Windows: MSI packages made with InstallShield and "Classic" packages made using an old version of the WISE installer. The WISE installer is relatively easy to configure. It takes a sort of installation script, written in its own scripting language, and just executes it. It uses an additional DLL to realize functions that are not possible with only the script itself (like detecting Windows Vista). Although it is nice and easy, the WISE installer is not very well adapted to Windows versions more recent than Windows 98.

InstallShield is a much more powerful tool and MSI installers are a lot more complicated to put together. I won't get into much details here, but there is a huge amount of configuration that can be applied to an InstallShield package. It relies on an ISM file (Installer definition) which is XML formatted and indicates what the package should do, once compiled.

The packaging script starts by opening the installer definition file and set up a few things in it, preparing languages and translations of the installer itself. It enumerates all the files that need to be in the package and puts them in the right place. After a few more tweaks it builds the MSI package. The process is done once for each MSI package. The WISE installer is built along with the english-only MSI package but the process is trivial in comparison.

Maintaining and improving the build system and packaging scripts is no small task, but also an important task. Without it all builds and packages would have to be made manually!

This was it, a small peek at a hidden, but important part of Opera development.

In other news, our QA team has started their own blog - head over to the new QA blog for more peeks "under the hood".

Changelog:

Fixed a URL encoding issue in java script: URLs

Fixed an issue with the BBC iPlayer RealPlayer plugin not working

Several stability fixes

Fixed a problem where GMail would not load

Download

Windows

Windows Classic

Mac

Linux/UNIX

[4CxbqFxVnstmA Veteran]

I am really looking forward to 9.52. I had some problems with 9.51 and so went back to 9.50. But Opera is such a cool program it is the only closed source Linux program I use (being a bit dogmatic about these things). It really is that good. :D

[wellofsouls]

http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2008/...s-all-in-one-go

File I/O, Video, 3D Canvas - all in one go!

By csant. Saturday, 19. July 2008, 06:09:15

file i/o, video, 3d canvas

We have previously released experimental Labs builds containing File I/O, <video> and 3D <canvas>. For the first time we now have bundled them all into one build. On all of our desktop platforms.

Head over to the Labs to read more about the newest singing, dancing labs build… and to download your build!

WARNING: These are development snapshots: they contain the latest changes, but they also have severe known issues, including crashes and data loss situations. In fact, they may not work at all.

Opera Desktop preview builds

Date: July 18, 2008

To learn more read All together now: Video, 3D, File access.

Download:

Opera 9.52 preview for Linux/UNIX

Opera 9.52 preview for Windows (MSI installer)

Opera 9.52 preview for Windows (Classic installer)

Opera 9.52 preview for Mac

[JOHW]

9.52 August Snapshot

By toman. Friday, 1. August 2008, 11:55:16

Coming back from a two week vacation just to find the office half empty because the others have gone on vacation is a bit boring, but at the same time it is very relaxing, giving me a slow start.... The boring part is that so little happens at work when people are on vacation. While I was expecting to make a small changelog this time, I didn't expect it to be this small. Anyway, give the build a spin, we're closing in on 9.52 final now.

WARNING: These are development snapshots: they contain the latest changes, but they also have severe known issues, including crashes and data loss situations. In fact, they may not work at all.

Changelog

Readded the Windows shell menu to the Transfer context menu

Fixed an issue with lists not displaying correctly when text rendering is RTL

Fixed opening of files in external applications when disk cache is off

Fixed issue with low quality on YouTube video previews

Fixed mail appearance when Opera is installed in a folder with a "#" character in its name

Fixed RealPlayer on BBC

Added work-arounds for problems with various POP servers

Fixed problem updating signature when switching accounts

Quite a few stability fixes

Download

Windows

Windows Classic

Mac

Linux/UNIX

[Crazysah]

Yes! Thank you!

[wellofsouls]

Readded the Windows shell menu to the Transfer context menu

NICE! :cool:

[sunny155]

Great! I am going to upgrade!

[JOHW]

Getting closer to 9.52

By Cato. Friday, 8. August 2008, 12:53:27

All right. Another snapshot for you as we're getting ever closer to version 9.52.

WARNING: These are development snapshots: they contain the latest changes, but they also have severe known issues, including crashes and data loss situations. In fact, they may not work at all.

Changelog

Fixed problem where some IRC commands were not working

Fixed problem where UI would not update after unsubscribing an IMAP folder

Fixed problem where content blocker add a too general block rule when using the Details button

Several improvements to the skin

Embedded YouTube videos should work more often now without having to reload

Windows: Fixed opening PDF files in Acrobat Reader plugin when the folder contains special characters

UNIX: Made the -geometry command line argument work even when Opera was previously maximized

Download

Windows

Windows Classic

Mac

Linux/UNIX

[thealexweb]

Any timeframe for the release of Opera 10, e.g. Q2 2009, ect?