The second public beta of Opera 9.5 (Kestrel) was officially released today, boasting many performance, security, and user interface enhancements.

One of the most useful features is called “Quick Find.” It is a full text history search that can be done directly from the address bar. CNET’s Download Blog quickly took notice, publishing this favorable review.

Opera 9.5 Beta 2 also includes alternative tab-closing behaviors. By default, when the user closes a tab, the last active tabs takes focus. For long time Opera users, this makes sense. But it seems to be a sticking point among Firefox users. In Firefox, when a tab is closed, the very next tab takes focus. Users can now choose between the two options in the preferences menu.

Fans of spatial navigation will notice selected links are now highlighted, similar to Opera Mini 4 and the Wii browser.

Opera Link now synchronizes Notes in addition to bookmarks, personal bar, and Speed Dial entries.

Many security enhancements have been added to new beta. Fraud Protection is now enabled by default. An example of an Opera Fraud Protection warning can be seen here. Support for Extended Validation (EV) certificates has been added. (Read more about EV certificates here.) And in the address bar, users will now see a silver lock on yellow field for regular secure sites, a gold lock on green field for secure sites with EV, and a question mark on gray field for HTTPS sites with problems.

Download Opera 9.5 Beta 2:
http://www.opera.com/download/?ver=9.50b2

Changelog for Windows:
http://www.opera.com/docs/changelogs/windows/950b2/

Press release:
http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2008/04/24/

Take the guided tour!

It is finally official. Opera Dragonfly is the name for Opera’s forthcoming developer tools. The alpha will be released on the 6^th of May. The application won’t be feature complete, but shows a good foundation of what Opera Dragonfly will become, and the vision of the app. Even in its current form, it is very useful for debugging web sites, and certainly far better than what we have had previously.

It’s important that web developers and designers that will find a use for Opera Dragonfly leave feedback once the alpha is released. This will let us know what functionality is important, and what improvements we need to add. We are committed to making Opera Dragonfly a first class developer tool, that fits the needs of real world web developers.

This is the first project I’ll be the lead of the launch, so it should be an interesting and busy couple of weeks. Things are looking very positive so far. I’m looking forward to seeing developers use Opera Dragonfly and seeing how easier it makes debugging issues in Opera. The easier this process is the better it is for web developers, Opera, and especially our users who will benefit from better web site compatibility in the long run if Opera Dragonfly is successful.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a welcome message for our new Opera Watch bloggers over on the My Opera homepage (screenshot below).

(My Opera homepage)

The Opera browser was a Webware 100 winner in the category of ‘browsing.’

Here’s what Webware said about Opera:

“Opera is one of the oldest browsers around. It’s also made its way into all sorts of consumer electronics, including mobile phones, gaming portables, and even home video game consoles. Opera has combined many technological services into its desktop Web browser and is commonly regarded as the first to implement tabs for viewing multiple Web pages in the same window.”

It’s interesting to note that IE7, Firefox, Safari, and Maxthon also won in the ‘browsing’ category. It makes you wonder, though, how much the Webware 100 awards actually mean…

I recently made a video showing off WinGogi (the Windows version of the preview build available at Opera Labs) scoring 100/100 on the Acid3 test and passing the Acid2 test. In that video I also mentioned that it was a lot more efficient on Google Maps. I said that current weekly and stable builds of Opera have a hard time with Google Maps. While I was testing out some stuff in a virtual machine running Vista x64 (the same version I made the video on, and the same version I normally browse on) I found that this was not entirely true. The latest weekly build at that time (Windows build 9864) of Opera 9.5 runs Google Maps much better than I thought.

With Opera, the most common cause of performance and stability issues (not only like the one I ran into, but crashing issues as well) are related to a single file. This file is opera6.ini and it is where Opera stores all of your settings. The issue is believed to be caused over time as you update from version to version of Opera (due to this reason, weekly build users like me tend to experience this issue much more frequently), or when system crashes and such cause corruption to the opera6.ini file. When there are discrepancies in this file, it tends to cause problems in Opera ranging from lowered performance and hang-ups to crashing.

Fortunately for those of us suffering from opera6.ini related issues, the fix is as simple as deleting/renaming the opera6.ini file. The down side is that you will have to reconfigure Opera as if it were brand-new, as Opera will create a new opera6.ini file with the default set of preferences the next time you launch it (note that just a re-install of Opera cannot fix this issue). The plus side is that you can simply rename opera6.ini to opera6.ini.bak (or any other name you want) so that your old opera6.ini file is still there in case generating a new opera6.ini didn’t fix your problems.

So, how do you go about deleting opera6.ini? It’s simple. Just follow these instruction:

• Open “About Opera” (click help, then click on “About Opera”).
• Find the path to the preferences file.
• Copy and paste that path into the address bar in “My Computer”.
• Make sure that Opera is no longer running at this point, otherwise this will not work.
• Find the file named opera6.ini (or a file called opera6 that Windows claims is a “Configuration Settings” file).
• Rename that file to something like opera6.ini.bak or backup_opera6 so that you keep a backup copy of it.
• Close “My Computer”, and open Opera.
• Now you just need to set Opera back up the way you like it.

To make it easier to assimilate these instructions, I’ve also made a short video detailing how this works. The video can also be downloaded in WMV (7.7M) and XviD (9.5M) formats. Both are 800×600 pixels in size, and were recorded in Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 running in VMWare.

It has been nearly a month since leaving Opera Software; I’m adjusting to life outside of Opera. The new project, which I’ve started working on, has taken up lots of my time; it hasn’t left much time for blogging here on Opera Watch.

Opera Watch is a great resource for Opera users/fans and potential users alike; I really want to see it continue and be ‘the place’ for Opera news on the Web. My new project, however, hasn’t left me much time for full-time blogging.

I’ve asked a few members of the Opera community to join the Opera Watch team and help with the blogging.

I’m delighted to announce our new team, which will hopefully continue to grow over time.

New bloggers
Please help me give a warm welcome to Arthur Wilkinson (a.k.a GT500), Kyle Baker, Kelson Vibber, Tamil, Charlie Reinehr (a.k.a. BAMAToNE), and David Storey.

I suspect these names will be familiar to many of you.

I’m really excited to have David Storey, Opera’s Chief Web Opener, on board too. His knowledge of Web standards is immense and whose opinion I greatly respect. It’s great to have you on board, David.

I’m pretty excited to have these new bloggers on board. I look forward to a new era of Opera Watch.

As for me, I’ll still be blogging here, though not at the same rate and frequency (since starting Opera Watch in 2004 I wrote a total of 963 posts).

Here’s a bit about our new bloggers to help you get to know them better:

Arthur Wilkinson
Arthur Wilkinson has been using Opera on the desktop side since at least early 2001. He discovered Opera while learning Java programming. It was recommended in his first Java Programming book for testing Java Applets since it was the only Windows browser at the time that supported the Sun Java Runtime Environment. Since Arthur made the switch those many years ago he has found to love the advanced features, faster browsing, better security, and especially the trend to build in more features than he actually needs.

Kelson Vibber
Kelson Vibber is a web developer in Southern California. He was first introduced to Opera by a college classmate in 1999, when both were working in a campus computer lab. These days, he uses both Opera and Firefox on Windows and Linux on a daily basis, as well as other browsers for development purposes.

Kelson has been involved in promoting both Opera and Firefox, and launched the Alternative Browser Alliance campaign to encourage greater cooperation among both browsers’ fan communities.

In his spare time, he enjoys reading science-fiction, fantasy, and comic books, and has maintained a fan website dedicated to the super-hero, The Flash, since 1996.

Kyle Baker
Kyle Baker was born in Western North Carolina in 1986, where he grew up with his parents and two older brothers. His first chance to use the Internet was not until the year 1997 when his family got a brand new personal computer and dial-up Internet access. It was not for another few years before he was first introduced to Opera.

Kyle has been using the Opera browser for approximately eight years now. He mainly uses the desktop version of Opera, but has in the past used Opera Mini, Opera Mobile and Opera for the Nintendo Wii. Kyle first began using Opera as his browser of choice due to the fact that Opera’s tabbed browsing feature allowed him to accomplish tasks much faster over dial-up Internet access than other alternative browsers that he had tested. Shortly after choosing Opera as his daily browser, he became interested in web design and development which also led to an interest in web standards (an area that Opera has been very loyal in supporting).

Kyle’s current occupation is a full-time student. He is currently a computer science major at North Carolina State University. He does a little bit of web design as a hobby and voluntarily manages and maintains three separate web sites (a personal blog, a small forum for BMW automobile enthusiasts and a club website for A.C.M. and A.I.T.P. at North Carolina State University).

Charlie Reinehr
Charlie Reinehr works as an IT administrator at The University of Alabama. He is a frequent contributor on the Opera Forums and has been an Opera user for the better part of a decade. Charlie runs the largest and most popular Opera group on Facebook.

Tamil
Tamil has been writing Opera tips, tricks and tweaks on his blog since 2005. His blog, which reads like a FAQ, has become well read over the years. Tamil is also a very active member of the Opera Forums, with over 82,000 posts.

David Storey
David Storey heads up the Open the Web initiative at Opera. This small global team is tasked with improving the compatibility of web sites across Opera’s wide range of browsers, as well as promoting web standards, accessibility and good practices, so that the web will work for all standards-aware browsers, platforms, devices and users. On his blog, Slightly Ajar, he discusses this work, as well as random topics, from travel to music. David previously worked for CERN, home of the World Wide Web, before taking up his post at Opera Software.

You can remove all typed-in addresses using delete private data (Tools → Delete Private Data… → Clear history of typed-in addresses).

To remove a (mis)typed-in address,

1. Note path to Opera directory (Help → About Opera).
2. Close Opera.
3. Open opera.dir in any text editor from Opera directory.
4. Remove the line containing unwanted entry & save. Never delete first line as it contains number of typed-in addresses. Opera will update first line automatically.

To remove an entry, delete that line in opera.dir file

If you also want to remove site from drop down list of suggestions, see How to remove specific webpages from your browsing history?

Congrats to the Opera team on becoming the first browser to reach the 100% pass rate in the Acid3 test.

In an internal build of the Opera browser, the Acid3 test, which was only very recently released, reached a 100% pass rate.

A technical preview of this internal Opera build will be posted on labs.opera.com in the next week or so.

For now, the screenshot below shows Opera and the Acid3 test on the latest WinGogi Desktop build. WinGogi is the Windows version of Opera’s reference builds used for the internal Core testing.

It’s always nice to be first.

Opera passes the Acid3 test!

I know many of you are waiting for some new information on Opera Dragonfly. David Storey just posted an update to his blog, not really saying much about Opera Dragonfly itself, but rather a bit more about its upcoming launch.

Tomorrow will be my last day here working at Opera Software.

After working the past year and a half with some very talented people, I’ve decided to leave Opera and work on something new.

Being part of a team that literally has an effect on millions of people on a daily basis is truly an amazing thing and something that not many people get to do. With the exploding popularity of the Web, the browser is perhaps the most used application on the computer (and soon, maybe, even on the phone).

Before joining Opera, I was blogging here on Opera Watch for a few years as an observer to and outsider of the company. Now that I’ve been on the inside, I’ve learned much about Opera and the browser industry.

I’ve been privileged to work with a great group of people, many of whom I always wanted to meet prior to joining Opera.

Ever since I started using Opera on my computer around 7 years ago, I’ve been a fan. And now with Opera Mini, I’m leaving Opera a bigger fan than when I first joined.

I use Opera Mini on a daily basis; I’ve become a huge fan. I’m extremely amazed to see what our developers have been able to accomplish with this tiny, cool browser. In fact, I continue to be impressed every time I see new capabilities and features added to Opera Mini. It’s an amazing feat for an application with less than 100kb in size.

As a fan of Opera, I hope that Opera will continue to push the envelope and help the Web move forward in terms of implementing Web standards and coming forth with new ideas.

I’ll always be proud to say ‘I worked for a company that made Opera Mini, Opera for the Wii, Opera for the computer, Opera Mobile, and Opera on the devices.’

I’m proud to say ‘I worked for a company that brought the Web everywhere.’

What about Opera Watch? Will I continue to blog here? Good question, glad you asked. In coming days I’ll talk about the future plans for Opera Watch. I will, however, say that Opera Watch will continue to be the place for Opera news on the Web.

Today we had another first for Opera Mini. Helio became to first mobile provider in the United States (US) to deploy Opera Mini on their mobile phones.

Not long ago, Helio users got together and hacked the Helio Ocean phone to make it work with Opera Mini. It was a hit. Helio, the company, listened to their users and are now officially deploying Opera Mini.

Now that is something I would like and expect from mine and other mobile carriers/operators. Listen to your users, and give them the full Web on a normal browser.

Download Opera Mini on your Helio Ocean by dialing “67372″ (OPERA).

Opera Mini on the Helio Ocean

As you can see from the screenshot below of the Acid3 test, we’re working hard on it. Opera now passes 77 out of 100 on the test. I took this screenshot with the latest public build of Opera 9.5, build 9841 (on WinXP).

Congrats though to the Safari WebKit team; they’re up to 93% on the Acid3 test.

It’s great to see the browser vendors in an arms race over this. It sure will help with compatibility and moving the Web forward.

The Acid3 test on Opera 9.5 build 9841

The folks over at the Brighthand blog got their hands on the upcoming Opera Mobile 9.5 browser (screenshots and video). Head over to their blog, and read their review of the browser (Hint: they loved it).

“All in all, my first impressions of Opera Mobile 9.5 are very positive. If the final version is even better, then this application is on the path to be a serious competitor to Apple’s Safari as the most powerful mobile web browser. I suspect that once again Opera Mobile will prove itself to be an indispensable asset to serious mobile web browsers.”

Read the Opera Mobile 9.5 review on Brighthand.com

Watch live the special Rock Opera party we’re throwing at SXSW. The show will run from 17:30 CDT (22:30 UTC) to 22:30 CDT.

Visit rock.opera.com for all the details.

Rock on with Opera!

Live broadcast will start at 5:30 PM CDT

Lots of companies and organizations are giving out swag at this week’s SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas. But the coolest swag, according to Wired, is Opera’s beer koozie (pictured below).

From Wired:

“The coolest: An Opera beer koozie (pictured). This backs up the “most forward-thinking browser developer” shout-out for Opera by Compiler, Underwire’s sister blog.”

Nice.

Opera beer koozie

Opera, Firefox, and Internet Explorer (IE) will go at it during the ‘Browser Wars: Deja Vu All Over Again?’ panel at SXSW this coming Monday.

Representing Opera will be Charles McCathieNevile, Opera’s Chief Standards Officer, who will go against Brendan Eich, the CTO of Mozilla Firefox, and Chris Wilson, the IE Platform Architect for Microsoft.

It was an exciting (and a bit controversial) panel last year. Hopefully we’ll get this panel discussion on video for those of you not attending SXSW.

Fight on!