| Opera 9.2 adds "speed dial," web dev tools |
Apr. 12, 2007
 Norway's Opera Software yesterday released Opera 9.2, an update to its popular, freely-available web browser. The new version supports 31 languages and introduces a new "speed dial" function plus a set of alpha-level developer tools, according to the company.
"Speed Dial dynamically merges a default set of searches with your custom searches. The search engine in Speed Dial can be chosen in Search preferences," the team said in the release announcement. You'll also see a thumbnail of that site on the Speed Dial bookmark, unlike a regular bookmark, the team said.
The developer tools are some that have been used internally for some time by Web application developers at Opera Software, the spokesperson said. They come in the form of buttons that can be dragged to any Opera toolbar, Opera said. The new tools, as described by Opera, are:- Opera Developer Console -- includes a document object model (DOM) inspector, JavaScript inspector, CSS editor, and HTTP header inspector
- DOM Console -- for working on and inspecting various aspects of a page
- CSS Editor -- provides a live view of all stylesheets attached to a page
- DOM Snapshot tool -- for inspecting the source of a page, as parsed by the browser
You can see more detail regarding each tool, and download them, here.
Other key changes, according to the team, include:- Kiosk mode defaults to not displaying Speed Dial
- Added support for automatic search from address bar when entering more than one word
- Start bar disabled by default
- Added support for animated GIF images in skins
- IRC/quit messages now work properly
- Scripts in framesets now execute onload
Security measures enacted include:- Fix for character encoding inheritance issue with frames, which could enable cross-site scripting
- XMLHttpRequest now treats separate ports on the same server as a different server
- Fixed an issue where scripts could continue to run after leaving the page
Other improvement include multiple stability fixes; voluntary, anonymous usage statistics reporting feature added; Flickr Organizr now works correctly in Opera; and full-screen movies on YouTube now start.
To see a listing of all new features, plus some screen shots, go here.
Opera currently has a small slice -- less than 1 percent -- of the web browsing market. OneStat.com, meanwhile, reported that the global usage share of IE has grown to 85.85 percent -- a jump of 2.8 percent since last summer, by their counting. Firefox, on the other hand, is at 11.49 percent, a decrease of 1.44 percent since the web analytics specialist reported its July data.
You can download your own free version of Opera 9.2 here.
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