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Two revolutionary features in Opera 9

Wow, if I’m not careful this is going to turn in to a promotional blog for Opera.

So, I’ve been playing with Opera 9 which came out earlier today (in a dual release for Windows and Mac, which is refreshing). It’s an impressive package—it’s fast, it renders every page I’ve throw at it so far, it passes Acid 2, supports Canvas and SVG and has a neat widgets implementation. Performance on Google Maps is a bit sluggish but other than that it’s been extremely snappy. The tab screenshot thumbnails are a nice touch.

There are two features however that set it head and shoulders above its competitors in terms of raw utility:

  1. You can browse cached documents offline! I’m not sure when other browsers forgot how to do this but it’s been years since I’ve been able to unplug from the network and still view pages that have been saved in my cache.

    In fact, this feature is almost too effective: I had to keep double-checking to make sure my WiFi was definitely turned off. A visual indicator that you are viewing an offline document would be a very useful addition.

  2. You can quit your browser and reopen it to the same state. Other browsers have been slow to cotton on to the fact that my browser state is important data—I frequently leave interesting pages open for days at a time and a browser crash causes me real pain. Safari and Firefox both have extensions that enable this but it’s great to see it built in to the core product.

    Sadly, Opera doesn’t persist partially completed form data (so you’ll still lose that half-written blog entry if you weren’t smart enough to write it in a text editor and paste it in at the last moment) but it’s still a huge improvement over the rest.

As far as I can tell those two features have been in Opera since before the current release, but I’d never noticed them before. Here’s hoping other browser manufacturers follow suit.

While the interface is leaps and bounds ahead of Opera 6/7, it still has a few crufty edges: the preferences are hard to navigate, the text in the tab screenshot window comes across as an afterthought, there’s a randomly placed recycle bin in the upper right hand corner and it took me a while to find a skin I liked (tango cl). The default behaviour for command-clicking a link is to open a new tab and switch to it; my preference is for opening in the background but I can’t work out how to change that option (though shift-command-click does what I want). Overall though it rates extremely well.

As usual, it’s worth looking over the detailed changelogs (windows, mac). There are some real gems for scripters; Here’s the list in full:

  • Added support for XSLT 1.0 and the XSLTProcessor constructor.
  • Added support for XPath 1.0.
  • Added support for DOM level 2 Style Sheets and associated parts of DOM level 2 CSS.
  • Implemented designMode for rich text editing.
  • Added support for the CONTENTEDITABLE attribute and contentEditable property.
  • Implemented support for canvas, as described in the Web Applications 1.0 draft, as well as the opera-2dgame context.
  • Added support for Audio, as described in the Web Applications 1.0 draft.
  • Multiple improvements to XMLHttpRequest support.
  • Added support for onmousewheel events.
  • Added support for document.load and document.adoptNode.
  • Added window.getSelection and associated methods.
  • Improved handling of offsetTop, offsetLeft, and offsetParent.
  • Removed support for “javascript:” URLs in CSS.
  • Pages using certain JavaScript events will reload when visited in history. A knowledge base article is available.

I’m going to use Opera 9 as my default browser for the next week or so to see how well it holds up. I’ll report back on the experience later.

Posted 20th June 2006 at 11:42 pm

This is Two revolutionary features in Opera 9 by Simon Willison, posted on 20th June 2006.

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26 comments

  1. When I first abandoned IE, I tried out Opera but was overwhelmed by it - that was back in the days of version 7. After using Firefox for some time, I gave Opera another shot, and soon became a complete convert. I'm excited about the updates in Opera 9, which should leave no more reasons to consider it a non-mainstream browser.

    The "sessions" feature you mentioned was one of the primary reasons I switched - I used to hate losing all the open IE windows I had. There are so many little touches about Opera that are just so useful... like when I go to paste a URL in the address bar, I can choose "Paste and go" to save one more click or keystroke.

    Joey A. Tyson - 20th June 2006 23:57 - #

  2. SessionSaver makes Firefox handle sessions.

    Peter Harkins - 21st June 2006 00:45 - #

  3. If you install one of the session saving extensions (there are a few available) for Firefox then it will remember saved form data (both partial forms and submitted ones) so I think it still trumps Opera in that respect.

    Paul - 21st June 2006 08:44 - #

  4. I have to agree, Opera has come on leaps and bounds. Still looks like a dog on OS X, but its fast and feature-filled. BTW - to get sessions AND text typed that you've typed into forms (such as in blog posts) Omniweb does this.

    Jon Hicks - 21st June 2006 09:01 - #

  5. You can get the sessions thing in Firefox with the Session Saver extension - it is very handy!

    Matthew - 21st June 2006 09:07 - #

  6. The recycle bin is not randomly placed: it acts as a menu to re-open closed pages and also to access blocked pop-ups. It belongs where it is on the pagebar. :)

    J. King - 21st June 2006 14:01 - #

  7. To all people posting links to FF extensions for session saving, allow me to point out this sentence from the original text:

    Safari and Firefox both have extensions that enable this but it's great to see it built in to the core product.

    Jeremy Dunck - 21st June 2006 14:27 - #

  8. Haha. It dumped support for the javascript psuedo url - that's awesome. Also the reloading of events isn't a quirk I knew existed in Opera. It's good to know it was blindly fixed :). The only real hassle that I used to run into is the offset's being miscalculated so it is also nice to see that it's fixed. Other than that, any update on opacity (yea, I know you said full support for DOM2 CSS)? I'll have to download it and see.

    Dustin Diaz - 21st June 2006 18:15 - #

  9. The change I am enjoying most is the remapping of keyboard shortcuts: ctrl+T now opens a new tab and ctrl+N opens a new window, which matches the default shortcuts for Firefox. (Ctrl+T used to add a bookmark, and ctrl+N was the keystroke for a new tab.) Overall, it's a very sweet release.

    Martin Sutherland - 21st June 2006 22:39 - #

  10. Since Opera 6.something (I think), I've been enjoying these features:
    • Shift+G - Stylesheet On/Off toggle
    • Shift+I - Toggle Images On/Off/Cached Only
    • F12 (option+F12) - Quick Preferences - lets you disable plugins, JavaScript, Proxies, Cookies etc.
    • USER_AGENT spoofing
    • Mouse Gestures
    Yes - It's been my default browser for atleast 5 years...

    Chriztian Steinmeier - 21st June 2006 23:04 - #

  11. I was an Opera user for many years. I have always said to those who would listen that Opera is an example of how to do commercial software correctly. Fanatical adherence to open standards, no lock-in, and impressive cross-platform support. They even host their own Debian repository which is up to date with Opera 9. They even name their directory structure "non-free" to match Debian's own repository naming scheme, and so your sources.list will clearly include "non-free" on the deb.opera.com line. That's classy.

    Mark - 22nd June 2006 04:48 - #

  12. (so you'll still lose that half-written blog entry if you weren't smart enough to write it in a text editor and paste it in at the last moment) lol, sounds very familiar ;) The default behaviour for command-clicking a link is to open a new tab and switch to it; my preference is for opening in the background but I can't work out how to change that option (though shift-command-click does what I want) usually if I want to open a link in a new tab in the background, I simply middle-click it (on windows).

    mattie - 22nd June 2006 11:21 - #

  13. It's fast, it's well-designed, it's lovely to use but by god if its lack of a Firefox-like extention system doesn't preclude me from using it :(

    I wish they'd implement one; Opera has a great community and I'm sure there'd be hundreds of great plugins out within weeks. There's just a few things I miss from Firefox every time I use Opera, and they're all the result of plugins (Web Developer, ColorZilla, MeasureIt, Greasemonkey etc etc).

    rob - 22nd June 2006 13:50 - #

  14. While Greasemonkey is an FF extension, Opera has built-in support for User JavaScript, which was introduced before Greasemonkey became available. Do you remember the Opera Bork edition? That was UserJS in action.

    See: http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/userjs/
    http://operawiki.info
    http://userjs.org
    http://userjs.org/scripts/browser/enhancements/aa- gm-functions

    Regarding the WebDev toolbar, see: http://operawiki.info/WebDevToolbar

    - y

    yitzhaq - 22nd June 2006 17:03 - #

  15. The killer new feature for me so far is content blocking. Ad blocking built straight into the native app...! That and site-specific settings, so I can enable plugins/popups etc for specific sites that use them.

    Ben Buchanan - 23rd June 2006 01:18 - #

  16. Not the best solution, but press alt+ctrl+e (notes) and use that to write your form data, it wont be lost due to closing or a crash. You can change opera's default shortcuts using ctrl+f12 >> advanced >> shortcuts >> keyboard setup >> edit

    peanutz - 23rd June 2006 07:02 - #

  17. Each time a new version of Opera comes out I try it and I always end up switching back to FF. Not being able to open new links in a background page/tab with command + click just kills it for me. Ah well, maybe in the next version!

    Andy - 23rd June 2006 10:34 - #

  18. Andy, try Ctrl-Shift-click (that's probably Command-Shift-Click in Macs) to open links in the background. Or middle-click, if you've got one. BTW, Ctrl-Shift-click has been around in Opera since before Firefox, or even Pheonix was around. I think that's evidence to show that Opera is a view of where other browsers will be two or three years from now.

    exclipy - 24th June 2006 11:08 - #

  19. I too have been using Opera as my default browser for about 5 years. It's the best for my purposes. I give FF a try every now and then, but rarely does it match Opera's speed.

    Randy - 24th June 2006 19:51 - #

  20. Another awesome skin for Ubuntu/Dapper Drake users is the Dapper skin that tries to make Opera look as integrated as possible into the desktop enviroment.

    Arve - 25th June 2006 00:36 - #

  21. Opera will let you change any keyboard or mouse shortcut to whatever you like.

    Preferences > Advanced > Shortcuts > Keyboard Setup > Opera Standard > Edit

    In the case of new windows/tabs in the background or otherwise type "open link" in the find box and change the shortcuts to whatever you like.

    You may want to create a backup copy of the default shortcuts first, though. Opera has so many shortcuts, that it's easy to overwrite some.

    Kevin Browne - 26th June 2006 21:09 - #

  22. For a visual indicator that you are in online or offline mode try this toggle online/offline mode button, it's icon/text changes as you are online or offline. Just drop it to any toolbar.

    Alexander Strotzky - 28th June 2006 16:23 - #

  23. Opera 9 is smart, fast, and web standards-compliant (what IE7 could have been?). In addition to what's been mentioned, View >> Small Screen is another entertaining if not useful feature--see what your site looks like on a cell phone (sorta). I think it was in version 8 as well, but as you said about the other features, it wasn't really noticeable before. The Opera Mini Simulator put it on my radar.

    Steve Stedman - 29th June 2006 05:24 - #

  24. Exclipy: Thanks for the suggestion. I was already aware that command+shift+click (as mentioned in the original article) and middle clicking with a mouse would open a link in a background tab. Annoyingly, when I'm on the move, I don't have a mouse and having been a long time user of Safari and FireFox, I'm used to using command+click. I know it's just one extra key, but it's enough of an annoyance to stop me switching to Opera.

    Kevin Browne: I tried your suggestion but was still unable to change the shortcut successfully. As I understand it, I need to find the action 'open link in background page' with the context of 'browser window (defaults)', which unfortunately doesn't exist. Creating it, and assigning the relevant shortcut still doesn't work.

    I think the common consensus is that it's not possible to get command+click to open a link in the background page, which sucks.

    Andy - 5th July 2006 19:02 - #

  25. I really don't understand this obsession with the FF command-shift thing. I think that's a clumsy way to open new window in background. Heck, it opens only new TAB in background. In Opera, it has been since version 5 or before that - you can just use mouse middle-click to open in new background tab. Or shift-middle-click on a link to open in new background WINDOW.

    It has always been using multiple internal windows (MDI interface) which IMO is WAAAYYYY better than tabs because it can work like tabs, and yet it can also work like windows. For eg, a pop-up window can be opened inside a main window with proper size. If you set this in FF to force pop-up in main window as a tab, and allow javascript to resize window, you'll end up with the pop-up resizing the main window. And that, IMO, is a stupid way of doing things!

    So if you wind up with a mouse that has no scroll/middle-click because you are on a Mac, think how stupid that is... being crippled. I wonder why Apple had to make the Mac so easy that they don't even expect people to remember 3 mouse buttons? Must be kinda a wrong target market since a lot of Mac users are very intelligent people.

    Well, to be fair, I'm on FF right now because Opera 9 keeps crashing after I install NOD32. I'm going back to the stable Opera 8.5. I hate the fact that 9 tries to be more FF by hiding the MDI and behaving as Tabs when all these years FF has been trying to be like Opera (but hiding the truth) including with all the extensions that mimics opera... And all these FF fan boys really has no clue.

    Come on! Opera has all the features FF has now back when FF was not even known as FF!

    UniCynic - 10th July 2006 00:21 - #

  26. Middle clicking a link opens the link in a tab in the background. Just to let you know

    Guy - 8th December 2006 15:23 - #

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