Opera 9.5 (Kestrel) Alpha is out

[LeperousDust]

Not many people care about poor old opera, but it really is one of the better browsers out there. 9.5 also known as kestrel brings a whole host of new features plus better/faster rendering more google support (as half of there stuff never seemed to quite work properly with opera 9.2).

See a review here (http://cybernetnews.com/2007/09/03/cybernotes-exclusive-opera-95-features-video/). Daz it now syncs with my.opera.com (your own user details) and remembers bookmarks speed dial page (an amazing feature that browsers should have had for years!) and personal bar.

Basically opera has everything already included, it does everrything out of the box very well. I'm still messing about with the alpha along side the current 9.23 stable but i can't fault it so far... Execpt they've missed out the inline spell checked that really would sell it for me. However this is an Alpha release so things can only get better!

Discuss. :cool:

Oh and you can get it here (http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/) the opera weeklies (well so much weekly anymore :D) blog.

[Joe 90]

tried to use Opera before, but after using firefox for so long its hard to use something different when it doesn't work the same and feels 'empty' and 'new' in comparison.

[LeperousDust]

I'd sorely consider forcing yourself to use it for a week or so, rather than rely on another browser on your "lazy" days. I think you'll find there are a lot of power features. Firefox can be made to do the same, but its like building a jenga tower with everyones own blocks (extensions) to the same effect. Everything is designed and built to definately work on the off with Opera. Save wand which is working in this Alpha, but being an alpha i'll let them off, i've just filed a bug report to sort it out :)

Opera is formidable, its only problem was when firefox was rising to power opera wasn't free, if it was things probably wouldn't be how they are today!

Out of the box opera support:
Feeds (albeit crap atm, but theyre sorting them 9.5 onwards)
POP/IMAP Mail (used to be awful again thats one of the major improvements for 9.5)
Bittorrent, doesnt do anything for me i use newsgroups
Newsgroups, for browsing rather than binary downloading unfortunately chaps but its still good for signing up to newsgroups like the opera.beta newsgroup
They are the big main features, its got all the other stuff as well as the fastest rendering engine out of any of the browsers so far:

Internet Explorer 7: 18 seconds
Firefox 2: 15 seconds
Opera 9.23: 12 seconds
Firefox 3 Nightly: 11 seconds
Opera 9.5 Alpha: 8 seconds

Definately give it a try i say!

[Joe 90]

i'll install it on my machine at work tomorrow :)

will it import all my firefox stuff?

*edit*
in fact i'm too impatient for that so its on my home PC now :) nowt else to do whilst watching 'this is england'

[LeperousDust]

Imports all these :):
http://www.twobeds.com/upload/userfiles/LeperousDust/imports.PNG

I hope you're impressed!

[Del Lardo]

Been using Opera for longer than I can think of now I try to think of it and despite trying most of the other major browsers at some point I've always ended up coming back to Opera.

[Joe 90]

oo this scroll feels a bit different...

*edit*
its shown itself now...just had to go back into toolbar customise and it was there ready to be gone.

oh, btw - wtfs this 'wand' button?

oo i do like this 'speed dial' page when i open a new tab

[LeperousDust]

Wand remembers your passwords for you, except mine isn't quite doing that in this alpha build so far :p It's only inputting username and then submitting the form without password. Which is to say the least useless... I;ve already submitted a bug report, if yours is behaving the same by all means submit on too.

I'd suggest going into preferences going to advanced, then security. Set a Master Password, and then set it to ask "once per session" and tick "use master password to protect saved passwords" and tick "fraud protection" if you want to be very sure about sites, but tbh its an uneeded check if you have any sense. Its the same feature that IE has basically checks all sites against a white/black list...

Anyway with all that set up it now remembers passwords for all your visited sites and asks you for one master password the start of an opera session (when wand is used) just to ensure someone else isn't using your opera behind your back :)

[Joe 90]

whoo w1n - thanks :D

its not too bad so far - got a few widgets open on my other monitor and other than the crap looking toolbar buttons its quite nice :)

[LeperousDust]

I actually hate the widgets, mail, rss, and torrent crap, oh and panels, haha but avoiding those is quite easy really. The widget thing feels horribly stuck on to me. They are working on integrating it properly or so i've heard so you can dock them and control them properly... But i'm not sure what that would entail just yet...

Glad you like it anyway :) Give it a week of solid use, see how it goes!

[Del Lardo]

argh!! I can't use 1/2 to change between tabs. My life is over :(

[LeperousDust]

I fell for that too, they changed the default "alt ctrl t" to "alt J" !!?! for the transfers window, and 0 and 9 doesn't zoom in and out. Go to settings and change them all back in advanced and keyboard shortcuts... If you're not entirely sure i'll talk you through it for ya :)

My inline find doesn't work either annoyingly, not sure if its a bug or an ommision, i can't actually enable it in opera:config its gone!?

[Daz]

Basically opera has everything already included,

... Execpt they've missed out the inline spell checked
;)

Still doesn't look like it will match Google browser sync unfortunately. Bookmarks is a good step, but GBS does my cookies and history as well. That speed dial page looks very swish though, I like that.

[Davey_Pitch]

Alex, the official Opera Pimp ;D

[Feek]

I'll give it a try, I used to flit between Opera and Firefox.

[Joe 90]

;)Google browser

Google Browser?!?!?!


quite enjoying Opera tbh. stumbled accross mouse gestures before as well so threw them around a bit....don't like the way the bookmarks toolbar works though - right clicking is like right clicking on a mac...it just doesn't offer me what i expect

[Daz]

Google Browser?!?!?!
Google browser sync (http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/browsersync/). Though it wouldn't surprise me one day :p

[LeperousDust]

;)

Still doesn't look like it will match Google browser sync unfortunately. Bookmarks is a good step, but GBS does my cookies and history as well. That speed dial page looks very swish though, I like that.
:( Damn, i'm going to convert you one day! Spell checker is on the way there is one called Aspell but i wont lie its not a patch on the FF and IE7 its not inline you have to run it and i think its clunky...
Opera's History/Bookmarks are saved in the roaming folder so i can't see why it wouldn't be easy to implememnt a similar thing for Opera but nobody has bothered yet (damn 1% of market share!)
Alex, the official Opera Pimp ;D
;D :cool: Somebody has too :(

quite enjoying Opera tbh. stumbled accross mouse gestures before as well so threw them around a bit....don't like the way the bookmarks toolbar works though - right clicking is like right clicking on a mac...it just doesn't offer me what i expect
Mouse gestures really tip the scale for me like sync does for daz, FF just can't get gestures as tightly integrated which is a shame. Once they become second nature you won't be able live without them and you'll be annoyed windows doesn't use them in its GUI explorer!

I agree with the bookmarks quote, also trying to select more than one bookmark to delete for instance without navigating to the webpage is a nightmare. Bookmarks and the whole Panel thing isn't very well thought out, needs sorting out really, not sure if that will happen though...


Pim, pimp, pimp. Tell me how you get on Feek, you should love it though ;)

[petemc]

I've flirted with Opera over the years but personally I'm sticking with Firefox. RSS is handled by www.bloglines.com. Newsgroups I never use. Torrents are handled by my HTPC running Az 2.5. Mouse gestures I can live without. Bookmarks are synced with del.icio.us. My passwords are backed up into 1passwd which are then safe in Keychain and backed up into .Mac. Not to mention Greasemonkey for website addon scripts, Adblocking plugin, the webdev toolbar, EXIF plugin, and so on. Opera is a great browser, it is fast but for me it lacks certain things I'm now used to with Firefox extensions n stuff. How is adblocking on Opera? I've never got it to be as good as FF's Adblock extension. I do love an ad free web.

[Feek]

That's a point, the ability to simply right click an image and block it (ie adblock) is very important to me, is there anything like that and other fully automated ad removal tools supplied or available? I only realised a while ago that some of the websites I visit at home are full of adverts but they get stripped out by adblock.

[Davey_Pitch]

Google browser sync (http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/browsersync/). Though it wouldn't surprise me one day :p
Very cool. Does that work on machines at home and at work, for example?

/off topic

[Daz]

Very cool. Does that work on machines at home and at work, for example?
Yep, and cross platform. All my Firefox installs have it, including portable firefox on my USB key, and all my Linux installations. No matter which client I'm on it's always the same environment - bookmarks, history and cookies (saves logging into sites all the time) - an absolute godsend.

[LeperousDust]

Adblocking has been hidden in Opera under something called Content Block for ages now... urlfilter.ini is the white/black list and you can download updated lists which block all the general adverts that adblock would. If you don't like anything on a webpage right click chose content block and then either shift and click to block things (flash as well) individually or just click on them to block all images from that address. It's very good :)

Also you can right click on websites and edit site preferences so you can decide if you allow certain websites to even attempt to run scripts or open popups etc... as well as use greasemonkey userJS

I haven't seen an ad in years! I only realised this when i stand alone (rather than upgrade) installed 9.5 because i had to update the urlfilter.ini profile, but nothing a copy and paste from my 9.23 profile didn't fix :)

Yep, and cross platform. All my Firefox installs have it, including portable firefox on my USB key, and all my Linux installations. No matter which client I'm on it's always the same environment - bookmarks, history and cookies (saves logging into sites all the time) - an absolute godsend.

I am kinda jealous :p But then for the most part i take my laptop everywhere i go, so im usually using the same physical copy. Only problem is when i'm using Opera on friends PC's (well actually thats the problem none of them have it).

[Daz]

I use my laptop a lot, but I also have a desktop, 2 work machines, numerous virtual machines and even then I can sometimes find myself on an unfamiliar desktop. Plug the key in and I've got everything I need (including an entire linux OS if needs be :p).

Platform independence, it's the way forward.

[Flibster]

I thought I was an opera pimp? :D

Been running this since last night. Works well. Yet to really find anything that I can consider a serious bug. Tis nice.

Got portable apps (http://portableapps.com/) installed on a 4gb memory stick along with a bootable BartPE install.

Browser on that is take care of with OperaUSB - only V9.23 but its great.

Simon/~Flibster

[Feek]

Arse.

Typed a reply, it lost it.

It's installed but the trash can isn't there, which was a big thing on that video. It was there but did nothing when I clicked on it so I closed a tab, clicked on the trash can and the can vanished. Can't seem to get it back now.

Plus, I'm running my tabs wrapped so I have three rows of six tabs. Is it possible to customise the tab width so that I can set them smaller and have less rows?

And alt-s doesn't work to send :(

[Feek]

The tab width is a killer for me, without being able to set it, I loose far too much screen for my liking.

[LeperousDust]

I don't think you can set tab within any of the GUI's but you'd be shocked as to how customisable the whole GUI actually is in the ini files. I'll have a search around :)

Trash can i can't help you with, mine worked out the box and just worked like its always worked! I assume that's an alpha bug you're getting...?
Alt-s i don't have a clue what you're talking about sorry :p?

You're not having a good time here Feek are ya? ;D

//Edit: Tada! (http://my.opera.com/Tamil/blog/change-tab-width)

[Feek]

Ahahaha, that edit works. It's fiddly and doesn't quite work the way I expected but playing around with the figures does give the desired result.

alt-s is the key combo in IE and FF for submitting messages in a forum text box but it does nowt in Opera and I actually have to click to reply.

[LeperousDust]

Ahhh, i see, i can't be bothered checking right now, but i know due to the change log on the shortcut keys it probably did work with 9.23 but its been taken out see here. (http://my.opera.com/Rijk/blog/)

[LeperousDust]

I've just found this (http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=203769) too which may be similar to your trash can bug? I'm not experiencing these issues, my trash can works and stays there no matter whether windows are opened/closed/restored etc...

[Joe 90]

right, well i've been loving Opera till about 2mins ago.

I've been doin some web dev today and now i'm looking at this browser with the hope that it'll create itself a 'web dev toolbar' like FF.

is there such a thing in existence? afterall this thing claims to do all FF can...

[LeperousDust]

All here:
http://dev.opera.com/
Toolbars and allsorts of advice, check the forums too :)

[Joe 90]

fantastic thanks :)

[MarcLister]

'lo all Opera users. I see LeperousDust is converting people over to Opera. Good to see that. Been using Opera for a few weeks/months now and I'm really happy with it.

LeperousDust persuaded me to try out the 9.50 Alpha and I'm very happy with it. Currently using it in place of the 9.23 release. I think I am nearly close to fixing the crashing issue I sometimes get.

[LeperousDust]

:D

[Flibster]

Just upgraded my work machine to 9.5

Sadly - lots of RSS feeds on it, so it's estimating 2 days to convert everything and reindex it. :D

Few niggly things with 9.5, mostly with the shortcuts for me though. Easily sorted. :D

Simon/~Flibster

[LeperousDust]

Yeah they've really screwed all the shortcuts up, its been mentioned a lot. A lot of people aren't happy, me too really. But i'm getting on with it,and changing them back as i go :D :p

[LeperousDust]

Can i just ask, what happens for everyone else when you press ctrl & space?
I've hit this a few times by accident and i've only just worked out how i'm getting here by accident tonight... Horrible Opera easter egg!

[MarcLister]

Google? Actually could be just the homepage it goes to?

[LeperousDust]

Ok, so i does, now the question remains who of my friends changed my homepage to meatspin? ROFL...

Prooves how little (well never really) i use my homepage, what is the point in opera with speedial, personalbar and bookmark links? Its a bit archaic really...

[MarcLister]

Ok, so i does, now the question remains who of my friends changed my homepage to meatspin? ROFL...It was only recently I found out what Meatspin was. :shocked::puke:

Prooves how little (well never really) i use my homepage, what is the point in opera with speedial, personalbar and bookmark links? Its a bit archaic really...I'm using my homepage (google.co.uk/ig) less and less. The Opera portal page or whatever Opera defaults to was quite good for me. I don't really need much from a homepage, just something that isn't too slow to load and isn't too erm cluttered. A nice simple layout to start my web browsing. Might change it back.

[MarcLister]

How is everyone getting on with Kestrel? I've downloaded the 9542 build from http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/.

I've noticed that when I do a search from the browser such as "g Manchester" if I type a long search string or type a lot quickly then Opera freezes and I have to wait 20 seconds at least for it to "catch up" with what I wrote and to carry out the search. Now I just tried doing a "g search term" in 9.23 and I didn't get this. Can anyone else who has the in-line searches setup and has 9.23 and a Kestrel build test this for me?

[LeperousDust]

Yes, started suffereing from exactly the same problem, as my history filled up, because it has the new indexed history function. Latest build fixed that and my wand password problems, as well as streamlining a few other things :) All good for me!

[MarcLister]

Latest build? Newer than the 9542 build? Getting feelings of deja vu here! ;)

[LeperousDust]

Oh sorry the latest beta build fixed that bug for me, i read your post wrong. I had that problem before when my history was turned on (i just turned it off and stopped using it) but now it seems to work again with the new build...

[MarcLister]

Set Addresses in the History page to 0?

[LeperousDust]

Yeah i turned them off, its an indexing history search bug i guess, hard to pin down though, even when i set my history to something tiny it still happened, so i turned the advance history index search (or whatever the hell its called) off, so its back to how it is in 9.23, just url searching as you type... Hope you understand that :D

[Joe 90]

looks like i need a new build - was hoping it'd auto prompt me for an update - would be glad to get rid of these wand issues!

still on build 9500 here :(

[LeperousDust]

Yeah i wish betas prompted for new beta releases like the current build moan about new releases...

[MarcLister]

9562 out.

http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/

[LeperousDust]

Bloody hell you're on the ball, grabbed this before by accident, trying to check if a cookie problem is mine or a known bug.

Right click on a page "Edit site preferences" do this on a site you know uses cookies, and then check if you can see the cookies, i can't see (or delete) any. Theres one particular website i have to do this with fairly often because i forget to click the logout button then it throws a hissy when i try to go back to it... I used to just delete its cookie and that sorted it out, and i now can't :(

[MarcLister]

Bloody hell you're on the ball, grabbed this before by accident, trying to check if a cookie problem is mine or a known bug.That's what the ladies say to me all the time. :cool:

Nah I just checked what looks to the the Opera desktop team's blog page. It seems they've released the first Kestrel alpha but if you want the absolute cutting edge alphas you have to check out that page.

Right click on a page "Edit site preferences" do this on a site you know uses cookies, and then check if you can see the cookies, i can't see (or delete) any. Theres one particular website i have to do this with fairly often because i forget to click the logout button then it throws a hissy when i try to go back to it... I used to just delete its cookie and that sorted it out, and i now can't :(Nah same for me. Tried it on BD and BBC News and no cookies shown. BD should have cookies for login and BBC News cookies for location (UK or not) and WMP or Real for media playback.

Just checked BD in 9.23 and I can see them there so its deffo a 9.5 Kestrel bug.

[Joe 90]

right, this is really gettin on my tits - how the hell do you stop opera insisting on downloading your torrents - its crap at it.

every time i want to get one i've got to open up firefox cose at least that asks what to open the file in. Just had a torrent open for like 5mins but still its just sat there doin nowt - crappy app :(

[Flibster]

right, this is really gettin on my tits - how the hell do you stop opera insisting on downloading your torrents - its crap at it.

every time i want to get one i've got to open up firefox cose at least that asks what to open the file in. Just had a torrent open for like 5mins but still its just sat there doin nowt - crappy app :(

Tools | Preferences | Advanced | Downloads

Untick hide file types opened with Opera - should see Torrent inthe list somewhere. Edit it - select open with default application or other app and point it towards the exe - or you can just delete the entry. :D

Piece of piss. :D

[Joe 90]

i thought as much, which is why i was confused to sort the file extension list to see this -

http://www.marksweb.co.uk/images/uploads/notthere.png

[Flibster]

You've still got Hide file types opened with opera ticked. ;)

[LeperousDust]

My alpha won't listen to all my extensions, for instance asx (for when i visit my radio 1 bookmark) is opened up as text characters, even though in the preferences its set to open with default player (and i've even tried pointing directly to the program. It's something i'm just dealing with atm...

[MarcLister]

Build 9594 out.

http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/

[Joe 90]

whoo thanks :D

[MarcLister]

No probs. Just trying to beat LeperousDust. ;)

I was a ted fed up with Kestrel so I went back to 9.23 last night. Damned thing keeps crashing on me. Might go back to Kestrel now there is a new build out.

[Joe 90]

lol yeah - you did well to get it in first :D


i've had no problems (other than the wand not doing its job) so far :D

[Joe 90]

on a different note i've just come accross a new version of better gmail on digg and noticed that Opera can often run the same scripts that Greasemonkey can run for FF users...

http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9796742-2.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Webware

any idea how to add these scripts to opera?

[MarcLister]

Try something like this. http://userstyles.org/styles/1807

Click on the Load as User Script button and I think you want to copy and paste the text into a text file with say Notepad. Then save it as Gmail.js. Go to Gmail and then press F12 and choose "Edit Site preferences". Go to Scripting tab and in the User script box choose the Gmail.js and that should be it. Press F5 to refresh Gmail and hopefull it'll work. I hope.

Oh and Gina Trapani does the Better Gmail. She is the editor of Lifehacker.com. http://lifehacker.com/software/gmail/lifehacker-code-better-gmail-firefox-extension-251923.php

[Joe 90]

how do you edit links in the personal bar? its the one thing that still makes me miss Ff - i've got too many links in some folders and also links that now go to the wrong places so it needs editing

i've googled and still can't find any answers!?!

[MarcLister]

Where are you adding the links from? I've just had a look and the only way to add links seemed to be from the bookmarks?

[Joe 90]

okay - i've tried to illustrate that here (http://www.marksweb.co.uk/images/uploads/personalbar.jpg) (full size screen cap)

so as you can see its just my personal bar... you can add links as shown but i have no idea how to edit them.

[MarcLister]

Tried right-clicking on them? Do you add them yourself or add them from your bookmarks?

[Joe 90]

right click does exactly the same as left click in any of the personal bar links :/

originally i think i added them from the bookmarks but now i've been adding them via the option you see in the above image.

[Joe 90]

this new release is gettin really annoying - this personal bar bug where it crashes all the damn time is bad!


also does Opera offer a markup explorer?

i've come across an odd problem with phpBB so i'm trying to get an idea of what CSS is being applied to an element when i'm browsing using opera.
any ideas how to do this?

[Joe 90]

whoo i win this time - build 9600 out

9.5 beta coming -
Thursday next week (25 Oct), Opera 9.5 beta will be released.

http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/

[MarcLister]

Feck. I hate you. :huh: Does 9600 fix your personal bar bug?

We both beat LeperousDust anyway. ;D I only check that page on a Friday so meh!

[Joe 90]

thankfully its in the fixed list
Known issues fixed
[BUG 264975] Fixed display of smileys in mail and chat
[BUG 290358] Bookmarks cannot be selected from the Bookmarks menu
[BUG 290355] Opera crashes when clicking bookmarks in Personal bar
[BUG 280536] Opera on OS X will sometimes freeze when exiting Preferences

[MarcLister]

Raay! :)

[MarcLister]

Opera 9.24 released. Fixes http://secunia.com/advisories/27277/

http://www.opera.com/download/

[Joe 90]

9603 - http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/

Changes:
Several stability fixes
Fixed problem loading Babelfish when trying to translate selected text
Disabled thumbnails in tab cycle by default; re-enable using opera:config#UserPrefs|UseThumbnailsinWindowCycle
Included Opera 9.2-compatible keyboard shortcuts file
Improved performance of history searching in the address bar drop-down
Fixed problem where web pages could load in chat tabs
Fixed some margin collapsing issues
Improved Opera 7+ mail importer
Fixed several issues with Windows 98
Fixed mail header display on OS X
Added an option on UNIX to chose the dialog toolkit: opera:config#FileSelector|DialogToolkit. 0 is auto detection, 1 is Qt dialog, 2 is GTK dialog.


Known Issues Fixed
Yahoo! Mail Beta crashes Opera.
[BUG 291258] Framesets don't work. Gives blank page on Gmail and other sites
[BUG 291335] Bookmarks in sub-folders are moved to the root folder
[BUG 290618] Viewing messages with smilies in Opera Mail may cause Opera to crash
[BUG 291267] Filters in M2 don't work
[BUG 290943] This build fails the Acid2 test


[b]Known issues
[BUG 291580] Mails are blank on first click if messages bodies aren't downloaded when fetching
[BUG 291608] Clicking any mailto link will cause a confirmation dialog
[BUG 290416] Widgets don't work after restarting Opera
[BUG 267632] Images don't display when printing
If you used the Brushed Metal skin in the previous release, Opera for OS X will crash on startup
Won't run correctly on Windows 95
OS X version may cause persistent freezes on start-up
POP server cleaning has been disabled: When disabling the "Leave messages on server" option, existing messages on the server are not removed
[BUG 287170] On OS X, UI thumbnails have black backgrounds when using native skins
[BUG 184894] Native OS X UI elements cannot be used in skins
[BUG 286384] Yahoo mail is broken
[BUG 280261] Removing messages from filters does not work
[BUG 213115] Queued mail is sent at the next check, instead of waiting for manual action

[Jasper]

Better is a matter of opinion. I tried Opera when Firefox was so slow that it became nigh on unusable, but they've sorted out the speed issues with Firefox so I've got no reason to keep using Opera. For me, the way to use it wasn't intuitive enough, and I actually ended up binning it because I couldn't figure out how to stop it using its own RSS reader. It also doesn't have a decent web developer toolbar.

I can't wait for the new version of Safari, personally - it seems to have all of the features I use for day-to-day browsing (re-open closed tabs, re-open history tabs, amazing ctrl-f function, that sort of thing), and I can switch to firefox when I need to work.

[LeperousDust]

Beta (http://www.opera.com/products/desktop/next/)'s out guys, sorry to beat you to it ;)

Better is a matter of opinion you're right Jasper, but Opera is fairly easy to configure and use in my opinion, for instance RSS feeds would be in preferences - advanced - downloads type in xml in the search field there make sure hide operas whatever isn't checked and then either select use system default or force it to use something totally different...
On the Dev note it seems to have a pretty bloody big dev following if you ask me, i'm not one so i don't really know properly, but there dev section is lively helpful and apparently pretty good...

[Joe 90]

cheers alex.

i agree with Jasper on the dev side tbh.
the firefox dev toolbar is great, can't beat it tbh.
the opera dev javascript 'thing' is okay, but just not as good - but thats not enough to stop my opera usage... i just have a stripped down copy of firefox for any quick dev needs that spring up. :)

[MarcLister]

Looking good (the beta). Might try it at the weekend. Which starts now I suppose. Yay. ;D

[MarcLister]

I'm having some issues with Opera 9.24. Sometimes when I close a tab and Opera sorts out the tabs it crashes on me. It can do this several times in one go. And when I restart Opera and continue with the previous session it crashes again before its even finished rendering the pages.

So I can either try to fix the issue or is the 9.50 beta series now stable enough? I tried the 9.50 beta a while ago and it was OK. One or two teething problems that drove me back to 9.24. The latest 9.50 beta I tried, a week or so ago, crashed when I had already shut it down. ;D I would shut Opera and then Windows told me it had crashed. :shocked:

So any ideas what is wrong with 9.24? Or should I stop being a pansy and switch to 9.50 latest beta?

[LeperousDust]

I've been using 9.5 beta permanently for months now. Fine with me, but YMMV obviously... There are a few niggles but not so many now (cookie handling is my main issue) i'm just dealing with them as i go, there not really that bad for me. Gmail support is on and off every other build which is probably the only most annyoing aspect, but it works atm :D

[MarcLister]

Do you always install the latest beta every Friday or whenever? I might switch back to 9.5. It was a tad annoying but no-where near as annoying as 9.24. However I cannot understand why I get the crashes all the time.

[LeperousDust]

Yeah i just keep upgrading it, keeps getting better and better for me personally...

[MarcLister]

I might try it again in that case. :)

[MarcLister]

Hi Alex. Still playing with Kestrel?

[LeperousDust]

Yeah, haven't stopped, its working great for me, i just keep updating to the latest alpha and it just gets better and better, i only had one bad run with a dodgy alpha and had to toally reinstall with the previous. Anything that doesn't work i just check if its in the bug list, if its not i help out.

Still the spellcheck and whatnot i've found extra really do add value too... Couldn't go without the spell checker and oget extension at all now at the very least...

[MarcLister]

oget extension?

[LeperousDust]

easily integrates external download managers with opera, they can either fully take over, or become a standard right click menu. Although the right click menu is just an editing of an ini file, this still makes it as easy as a click of an exe :) Everytime i "upgrade" an alpha i'd have to re-edit the ini file which was starting to really pee me off as i absolutely love the power and speed of free download manager (especially with my http newsgroups).

[LeperousDust]

As |Show| has reminded me, new build out tomorrow (this evening), how is everyone "testing" it getting on? Any drawbacks? Anyone else using the spell checker? Or any other clever UserJS i haven't come accross yet?

[MarcLister]

Haven't really been using the latest Kestrel builds. Sorry. :(

But I have been wondering if there is a tool or plugin for Opera that enables me to validate HTML/XHTML pages? Kind of like the Firefox validator extension.

[LeperousDust]

No idea mate, i don't do that kind of thing, i'll look around, checked the dev forums?

Erm, right click on the page and click validate, is that what you're after?

[Flibster]

I've had a couple of interestin things. They've fixed one of them, but the other hasn't been.

I can't export my feed list - just crashes. :(

[MarcLister]

No idea mate, i don't do that kind of thing, i'll look around, checked the dev forums?

Erm, right click on the page and click validate, is that what you're after?Yeah I know about that. However it takes you to the W3C site. I was wondering if there was an Opera version of the Firefox extension that shows a bar at the bottom of the window. If the page validates, you see a green tick. So an in-house sort of thing rather than passing the page to an external validator.

[LeperousDust]

No idea, i'd guess thats actually quite tricky are you sure the firefox extension doesn't talk to W3C anyway? Testing validation is surely quite intensive, or at least requires a lot of rules, and if the W3C change things you need updates too? Surely passing it to the men themselves is a better way?

I honestly have no idea though.

Flib. I can't stand the primitive feed manager with opera (and mail client at that too). I use (thanks to Daz) google reader for everything now, so so much nicer, and also works very well on my mobile :)

[MarcLister]

Quite sure. :) Scroll down to "Advantages" on the link below.

http://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/

[LeperousDust]

Apart from searching the forums and dev.opera.com i couldn't help you, it's really not my thing sorry...

[Joe 90]

But I have been wondering if there is a tool or plugin for Opera that enables me to validate HTML/XHTML pages? Kind of like the Firefox validator extension.

unfortunately there aint - thats the one reason i still have FF installed - web dev toolbar and firebug.

Opera has a dev console but i don't like it and not many others do either...
I stick with FF for any dev work and Opera for my standard 'browsing' :)

[Joe 90]

btw...

if you want the Opera dev console then bookmark;
javascript:(function(){var ele=document.documentElement.appendChild(document. createElementNS('http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml','script','script'));ele.src='http://devfiles.myopera.com/tools/developer/8679/devConsole.js';ele.parentNode.removeChild(ele);;}) ()

[LeperousDust]

Unfortunately guys, all the good developer stuff is to come in Opera 10. But 10 will be a big major overhaul. 9.5 is the introduction of the new engine futhark, which replaces presto (which wasn't slow/bad anyway!) 10 will be a real leap/implementation of what the new engine can do!

[Joe 90]

i look forward to it :)

[MarcLister]

Does anyone know of any free download managers that work with Opera? Thinking that the built in manager isn't brilliant.

[Joe 90]

i use Free Download Manager (http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/) :)

[LeperousDust]

I've already mentioned this marc, get with it :p
Get whatever external one you like the features of (i prefer FDM too), and install oGet :)

[MarcLister]

I knew you did. I just couldn't find it. ;)

Does FDM work with Opera on its own or do I need oGet?

[LeperousDust]

It does integrate itself with Opera, and by editing a few ini files you can have it so it's part of the right click menu... But oGet is easier, it leaves the opera download manager there, and you can use the external download manager if you want more control over bigger files or whatever... You can fully silently integrate it but some php scripts go mental when the referer changes and what not and think you're leeching... I would advise against fully integrated and silent, its not a graceful fallback...

[MarcLister]

Cheers. I'll play with oGet later.

[LeperousDust]

oGet, not iGet you apple fanboi :p

[MarcLister]

Meh same thing. :D

[MarcLister]

I tried oGet but it didn't catch any links and pass them to FDM. I can right-click on stuff and send it that way but I don't want to do that. What am I doing wrong?

[LeperousDust]

Choose "full integration with opera" then set FDM to "silent monitoring" that way every link that opera would normally download gets passed straight to FDM, and FDM will take the link and add it to its list without any questions. But i warn you this doesn't always work well, as i said earlier a few sites check referrers etc... and get uppity when you're passing links around (they think you're leeching) which ends in usually downloading "index.html" or "index.php" etc... And some button javascript downloads get totally confused too sometimes... Your better relying on the integrated download manager and using the rightclick download as and when you need it on large downloads (where you gain the the most from a separate download manager).
But try it out by all means.

[MarcLister]

Snap. I did that. Tried it on FileHippo. Right-clicked on a file link and got the index.htm page. Think I will persevere with Opera's built in gubbins.

And any idea of the timeline/planned schedule(s) for 9.5 full release and Opera 10?

[LeperousDust]

Opera 10 no chance, and 9.5 probably "When its ready" like Mobile Opera 9...

[MarcLister]

Cheers. So Opera aren't following a schedule for 9.5? Just working on it until they are happy with it enough to release it.

And Opera 10 is still in the planning stages?

[LeperousDust]

AFAIK, i've not heard anything mentioned as a strict date, we were promised it orginally at the end of 2007, but it seems that was missed :p Nothing has really been added as a release date after that...

Opera 10 is just paper planning i guess, but since its basically a big update of 9.5 it should be more on track than 9.5 (remember 9.5 is the big layout engine rebuild hence why it acts quite a bit different to 9, presto vs futhark)

[LeperousDust]

11th Feb Opera 9.5 for mobile will finally properly debut, can't wait to give this a spin on my mobile!

w00t! (http://www.opera.com/b2b/solutions/mobile/video/)

[Joe 90]

wow - this preview video looks amazing - bring on monday! can't wait to not have to use IE mob anymore!

will this cost the same as the others... might actually have to buy it now.

[Daz]

I'll definitely give it a try and probably buy it if I like it. I've been looking at mobile browsers for a while and just haven't found anything. Minimo is unstable, Deepfish looks good but is probably way off and whatever Google's got cooking isnt going to be here soon.

[MarcLister]

Anyone know of any tricks to hide Facebook ads?

[LeperousDust]

i don't seem to get many, but a lot are like google ad words which are a pain to hide as well...

[MarcLister]

I'm getting quite a few. :(

[Joe 90]

Anyone know of any tricks to hide Facebook ads?

Right Click > Block Content.

Click ads > click done.

[MarcLister]

Right Click > Block Content.

Click ads > click done.That would block a particular ad image and not the frame or container the ads are in. I'd block one ad and then another will appear in its place.

[Joe 90]

well i must of blocked all their ads then cose i don't see any on facebook anymore.

this is the advantage FF has over opera... the ad-block addon. :(

[MarcLister]

Yeah Firefox does have a better adblocking feature when the adblocking extensions are installed. I'm sure Opera will try to improve it.

[LeperousDust]

Unfortunately Opera won't since they aren't open source, blocking adverts would put big companies against them, its the wrong message...

[MarcLister]

Well to be precise, they aren't blocking the ads. We are. Opera are just giving us the ability to block ads. And they are doing that now.

[LeperousDust]

Yeah but thats why they've never made it easy, unlike firefox's extension...

Here (http://operawatch.com/news/2006/07/why-opera-wouldnt-include-an-adblock-feature-in-the-browser.html) is a decent article...

[MarcLister]

Hmm a bit of an interesting situation/loophole that. Nice article to read. Thanks.

I just hope their web development tools improve so that we have a decent DOM inspector rivalling that of Firefox. I have to say that the DOM inspector and the Web Developer/HTML Validator/Firebug extensions make FF bloody brilliant for making websites/pages. :D

[LeperousDust]

They will get a lot better, but that's down for Opera 10 development I'm afraid, as Dev tools are seen as improvement on functionality but not core to the browser (of course), 9.5 is about core engine development, and 10 is about making it nice to look at and use...

[MarcLister]

Getting the odd error with Opera not being able to find oGet. I thought I had removed it properly but I sometimes click something or download something and I get an error message that oGet couldn't be found. Any idea what files I need to edit? Could re-install but that would be a pain. :D

[LeperousDust]

Not a clue, why don't you want oGet? I think its bloody handy thing to have, and you don't "have" to actually use it. Most of the time i use the inbuilt download manager, unless its a huge ass file...

[MarcLister]

It just didn't work very well for me. :(

[LeperousDust]

What didn't work? There isn't much to not work :p? It just passes a url over to your installed manager, unless you used "silent" which as i said, gets tricky with scripted downloads etc... theyre more hassle than theyre worth...

[MarcLister]

I seem to remember that I set FDM to not bother downloading anything smaller than 4Mb or something. Yet it still kept capturing them when I want the smaller downloads to be handled by Opera. I want an external download manager to handle big files that I can resume if something goes wrong.

[LeperousDust]

Problem is oget just passes things to FDM. So you either set oGet to silently filter everything to FDM at which point FDM sees < 4mb and say "no", or you tell oGet to shut up and use the normal download manager, and when you're after something bigger just rightclick on the link and "Download with oGet" or if there are lots "Download all via ftp" and filter out what you need etc... Thats how i use it and it works grand, and i'm downloading allsorts off html newsgroups so lots of big things and little things too... I did try it in silent mode but as i said in theory its good in pratice its a nightmare...

[MarcLister]

Ah. Thanks for posting. Sorry for the late reply, didn't see this. :)

Tbh I think its more trouble than its worth for me. Might just back up my Opera files and reinstall. :)

[MarcLister]

Opera 9.26 out. http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/

:D

[MarcLister]

You know how you can press '.' (the full stop button) in Opera to get a little search window in the bottom left of the screen? Is it possible to get the search to carry on searching through the document? I.e. using the normal search I can search for a term and if found it gets highlighted, I can then move on to the next instance. Is this possible with the fullstop search?

[LeperousDust]

f3 - next term
shift f3 back a term

:)

I'm still waiting for Opera Mobile 9 grrrr

[MarcLister]

Thank you very much. :D