Some Opera desktop browser news
Published June 22nd, 2007 12:33 PM EDT By Daniel GoldmanAfter a bit of silence on the development of the next major upgrade to the Opera desktop browser (Opera 9.5, codenamed ‘Kestrel’) and with the stream of Opera Mini news, there’s finally a bit of news for all of you desktop fans.
Since the release of Opera 9 a little over a year ago, Opera has continued development on the rendering engine that will be included in Opera 9.5. The new rendering engine includes improved CSS3 support, superior SVG support, and a brand new JavaScript engine (with support for ECMAScript 4 ‘getters’ and ’setters’). From the screenshot below you can see how Opera 9.5 passes the CSS Selectors test.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been testing internal versions of Opera 9.5 and have noticed a great deal of improvement, specifically in the area of website compatibility. It’s become a habit for me to download and install the (internal) nightly build of Opera 9.5 each day. Between all the bug fixes and improved plug-in support, Opera 9.5 will be a superior browser to the current public version.
Opera 9 is already one of the speediest browsers around, but that hasn’t stopped us from improving it even further. The speed performance of Opera 9.5 is much faster, both in terms of benchmarks and more importantly on real webpages.
For those of you using Opera on Mac or Linux, you’ll notice a difference in how Opera integrates with your platform. For example, on the Mac you’ll see a nice new visual look and feel to the browser.
And… there will be some new features and updates. One of the new features has been censored from the screenshot below. 
Any guesses?
The Opera Desktop Team is planning on releasing a build of the new Opera 9.5 browser within the next few weeks. Read more about it on the Desktop team blog.
Support for CSS Selectors in Opera 9.5 (enlarge)
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I hope the streams of publicity that opera mini gets will help kestrel on the marketing side
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finally, another weekly!
not sure what the censored bit is. inline find? web dev tools?
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finally another weekly in sight!
not sure what the censored bit is. inline find? web dev tool?
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Tiny widgets?
Anyway, I’m very excited about the upcoming weekly!
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Weekly, please? I have been tortured.. blarg!
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news! news!
http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/kestrel-is-coming
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I know you said it dan, but you just called it ‘more desktop team blog’… I didnt even look at the link…
Shout it next time!
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I was hoping Opera will feature at one point some font smoothing but according to the screenshot, it seems this will be platform dependent?
It would be nice to have at least clear type enabled by default on windows…
Eirk
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Still the same butt-ugly skin. Anything more professional, Opera?
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Exciting news. But I can’t for the life of me guess what’s been censored. I’ll just have to be patient!
(’Nightly builds’… You lucky man, Dan!)
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Did you guys notice the new location of the zoom?
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ClearType SUCKS when you use good old CRT!
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LOL…didn’t notice it, as that’s about where I have my zoom right now.
My status bar consists of: address field, “Go”, Fit-to-Width, Image toggle, user-mode toggle, Plugins toggle, status bar, Zoom, Identify As…
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Hi daniel,
can u also post some screenshots.
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That’s funny, because most people seem to like it better than IE and Firefox’s default skin.
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new location? my ‘+’,'-’ & ‘*’ keys haven’t changed place :p
they look good there although I’ll probably remove them when I get the new opera (no need for buttons when u know the shortcut keys) which I hope will be soon.
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Richard - the skin is for *changing* - do so!! - there are hundreds of skins in the forum, also ‘how to make your own’ ..:)
got a date! “in a few weeks”
er, ClearType is *only* for LCD…
And the position of almost everthing can be changed…
A lot more details at desktopteam/blog/ …
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Instant love
(Yes, I’m in Windows now, but the Opera UI on Linux kinda sucks)
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Daniel, will htere be updated browserJS to enable the full version of Windows Live Hotmail? when using Opera i get the “classic” version that lacks the advanced features, with a message telling me i should use IE6 or Firefox 1.5. i’ve long since abandoned IE as my main browser and Firefox just doesnt “feel” right to me.
Also, perhaps you guys at Opera could get the Open The Web team on Microsft’s case (if not already so) to get them to fix this problem and make their website standards compliant and stop sniffing out and black listing Opera.
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aside: to the Opera skin, i always just install emil rsd black skin right away.
too many great skins, even more ugly ones but there are plenty to choose from.
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I would not even dare to hope it is a Mircroformats icon hiding behind there :p
- ØØ -
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Yea Daniel, I had noticed zoom in the lower right corner, but it was after I’d seen the picture several time (I’m not that good at noticing new things).
BTW: I hope that the censored thing is a docked widget. That would be awesome…
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Let’s hope it will work better with Yahoo mail. I often test my mail with Firefox and Opera, and working with Opera is painful–there is always a lag. With Firefox the response is immediate, whether loading, or storing or deleting emails, or going from one function or folder to another.
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Hope there will be also a native Windows x64 release for the brand new 9.5.
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I hope that’s a new spellcheck feature being added.
Can’t Opera use the current Aspell dictionaries to make inline spellchecking possible? Pidgin has already done this.
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blah blah. AUTOFILL. please!!!
COMEON OPERA GET WITH THE 1990s!!!
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it is OBVIOUS that some posters here have not seen the desktopteam/blog/ -
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it’s about time to use a new skin
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I’m starting to wonder if the 64-bit Linux/BSD packages are actually going to contain a 64-bit version of Opera, or if they are just packages that were made on a 64-bit version of Linux…
Aside from getting the plugin wrapper to work right, I doubt it would be that hard to compile a 64-bit version of Opera in Linux. The tools are already there…
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Nope! If Opera was to change the skin every time someone complained it would never stop changing. You’ll always have someone complaining about stuff.
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Personally, I love the current skin. It’s one of my favorites. There are only two others that I like even remotely as much as the default skin, and they are the Opera 6 skin and Carthago by Scipio.
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This is excellent news! Can’t wait..
I wonder if the Wii browser will ever get updated?
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Its the new screen reader support
Am i correct???
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Yep, AUTOFILL please! (at least optionally)
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Hi all!
Does someone know the exact date of the first Opera 9.50 weekly build?
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pejakm: Yes, It
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The ability to copy & paste pictures and graphics, as well as text (I hope)