7.50 Preview 2 for Windows

Info

• This is no longer our latest release. Please see our preview release page for more information.
• Build: 3613
• Released: February 17, 2004

Announcements

• Forum
• Newsgroup (Google Groups) or Newsgroup (news:// direct link)

Changelogs

• Major New Features
• Known Issues
• Detailed Changes

Major new features

Chat Revisited

Every aspect of Opera Chat has been improved. There's a new identd server to make connecting to IRC easier. We've fixed several other usability bugs with Opera Chat. You can now add IRC nicknames for your contacts and they'll show up in the Chat panel when they're online or away. Right-clicking in the Chat panel gives you the opportunity to set your away status. Don't forget to join us at #opera on irc.opera.com for some great chat!

Favicons in Bookmarks

Having trouble finding bookmarks? Opera now saves favicons in the Bookmarks panel, Bookmarks menu, and Personal bar. It's easier than ever to find the bookmarks you're looking for.

M2 Optimized

Building on the success from 7.50 Preview 1, we've polished M2 so it's ready for general use. We've fixed several problems that could lead to message loss. We've sped up reindexing, importing, downloading messages, reading messages; well, just about everything. It's now easier to mark messages as spam and marking messages as Not spam doesn't add a new contact. New mail notification is now more clear, too. Clicking on the notification tooltip will open your Unread view. The Mail panel selector button will show the number of messages in your Unread view and is highlighted when there's new mail since last you looked. Take the new M2 for a spin, we're sure you'll like her.

Start Panel 2.0

While still experimental, the Start panel has come a long way. The Start panel is now fully customizable. You can drag buttons and edit fields there, so you can make it suit your needs. And the slim and maximized Start panels can be customized with different buttons and fields. Got a search you think everyone should know about? You can make it a link on your web page that others can drag to their Start panel!

Transfers Made Easier

To keep useless information about downloads out of your face until you can actually use the file, we've made it so the Transfers panel doesn't open automatically. The Transfers button in the panel selector now includes the time remaining and the number of downloads. And when a download completes, a tooltip lets you know and the Transfer panel selector button is highlighted.

Panels Improved

The panels are now more usable and flexible. Maximized panels have different toolbar buttons than slim panels. And they have additional columns, providing usual information. The History panel, for instance, will tell you the pages you've visited most in the Popularity column. To make it easier to get info from the panels into Opera's work space, single clicking on panel items now activates them. Want to hide the panel selector to get a little more work space? No problem, just put your mouse at the edge of Opera's window, click, and it gets hidden.

Known Issues

• A lot has changed with the toolbars, so all the new buttons may not show with an upgrade install. Choose the "Opera Standard" toolbar layout in Toolbars and menus Preferenes to see all the changes.
• There are some lingering focus issues.

Detailed Changes

Chat

• Always set focus to the input field when you activate a chat window
• Set user mode to +i when connecting
• Added a server dropdown to Chat account wizard
• : is no longer required in multi-word commands
• Made Win-1251 the default IRC encoding for Russian users
• Support both arrow up and arrow down in chat input field for scrolling of the history input buffer
• Support away statuses on Chat panel context menu correctly
• Show own chat status in Chat panel
• Fixed bug where /names would cause duplicate entries in channel nick list
• Improved display of server messages, channel modes and /join, /part, and /quit messages
• Now send unrecognized commands directly to the server
• Added ability to save chat windows
• Only print disconnection message in rooms where the chatter belonged
• Added /j alias for /join (channel-type character still required, i.e. /j #opera)
• Added /msg alias for /privmsg
• Now prefixes room/channel correctly in all situations
• Fixed display (somewhat) when you are kicked from a chat room
• Don't pop up windows with /msg and /notices while still in initialization state (this will avoid most of the "welcome to WhateverNet" messages popping up when connecting to certain networks)
• Corrected display of IRC color codes
• Made VERSION reply the same as M2's User-Agent
• Added identd server. It is run only when connecting to a network and replies to requests on port 113 using the username of the e-mail address given in account settings
• Fixed a problem where the protocol would believe it was still connected after disconnection
• Fixed problems when connecting with a nickname that was too long for the server
• Added better parsing of allowed channel modes from the server preventing display of strange characters before nickname
• Added low-level logging; if you specify a log file in accounts.ini, all communication between you and the IRC server is logged
• Added correct reply for CTCP ping
• Added ability to send CTCP version

Contacts

• Fix for showing correct contact image for contacts with multiple email addresses
• When marking messages as Not spam, a contact is no longer added for the message sender
• Added contact status notification. Contacts currently on IRC will now appear in the Chat panel. If they're away, their icon will have a little clock
• Double-click on an online contact will now open up a private chat window with him/her

Cookies

• Fixed rejection of valid cookies when other invalid cookies were also involved
• Fixed third-party cookie problem on Slashdot. Added measures to prevent redirection from being used to bypass the third-party logic

Display

• Fixed several situations where loading specific sites would cause a crash
• Fixed a problem with the bottom CSS property in full-screen mode
• Fixed a problem with missing borders when using border-collapse and border CSS properties on TABLE
• Fixed TABLE display when using rowspan="0"
• Fixed problem where numbers and bullets were lost in nested lists
• Accept more MIME types for SCRIPT (now supporting application/x-javascript)
• Fixed an annoying blinking echo problem related to positioning frames
• Fixed a problem where deselections sometimes drew the same string twice (visible if your system uses antialiased fonts)
• Improved MARQUEE implementation
• Added WBXML content handlers and support for WAP Service Indication WBXML decoder (WAP-167-ServiceInd)
• Fixed some formatting problems at MSNBC.com
• Fixed line-height problem in TABLEs
• Fixed a problem where changing encoding didn't work on FRAME pages
• Fixed a display problem when using the letter-spacing CSS property in conjunction with :first-line
• Made it so the ad banner window cannot be zoomed
• Fixed a problem with loading images on pages that used Flash
• Fixed media queries fed via LINK or STYLE elements that included media types
• Support inheritance for CSS background properties
• Fixed text overlap problem at http://www.mundofox.com.br/
• Fixed corruption problem with PNGs in children of relatively positioned DIVs
• Fixed height calculation of IFRAME/OBJECT when border-width is used
• Broken 1x1 spacer gifs will no longer be transparent if they fail to render (i.e. link broken)

Javascript

• Crash fix: fixed crash when using array.reverse() on empty arrays
• Crash fix: fixed crash related to mutation events
• Clear in the JS console will now permanently remove entries (previously they reappeared on the next error)
• Fixed sending of the onload event to all FRAMESET elements
• Fixed a problem with innerHTML's handling of comments
• Added window.navigate() as an alias for location.navigate()
• Improved regex engine performance when matching against huge character sets in some situations
• Fixed output of array.slice() when non-existing properties were involved
• Fixed a problem with the delete operator if the expression given is not a reference expression
• Many fixes to DOM CSS. All non-system colors returned as RGB(r, g, b). Also, correctly quote strings
• Allow whitespace as well as commas to separate window features
• Fixed a problem with navigator.mimeTypes
• Made Node.prefix, Element.offsetParent and Element.tagName readonly
• Fixed return value from EventTarget.dispatchEvent (was negated)
• Prevent expansion of entity references in innerText()
• Strip multiple spaces in innerText() and outerText() so they return the correct number of characters

Java

• Fixed a problem opening applets with localhost in the address
• Fixed sounds in Java applets
• Made Ctrl-C work for copy in the Java Console (instead of Clear)

Keyboard / Mouse

• Let shortcut 5 toggle between maximized and restored page as the docs say it should
• Proper parsing of a mailto URL when activating the composer from the link right click menu
• Let a middle click on a mailto URL work

M2

• Fixed several problems that could lead to corrupt indexes and lost messages
• Fixed several memory leaks and generally improved memory usage
• Reduced disk activity, speeding up general M2 usage
• Crash fix: Fixed a crash when there were a large number of BCCs in an outgoing message
• Fixed Manage accounts dialog hiding accounts problem
• Made new mail notification popup more visible
• Fixed newsfeeds problem where the same messages would be downloaded over and over
• Added Spell check button to compose window
• Fix for messages ending up in both Drafts, Outbox and Sent at the same time
• Cleaning up handling of unread count to fix bug when dragging messages to the Spam view. This should also lead to faster marking of read/unread on systems with lots of messages
• M2 is now statically linked (i.e. M2 is no longer a DLL). See the Preferences section of this document for information about disabling M2
• Several fixes for sorting of From, To, and Subject
• Added more auto-filling of fields when creating m2 accounts
• Prevent opening of multiple authentication dialogs for one backend
• Avoid reindexing activity until the reindex dialog is shown on screen to avoid hang before startup
• Fixed FQDN problem when creating accounts
• Added auto-detection of real FQDN (if FQDN in accounts.ini is blank; otherwise that setting will override the auto-detection)
• Added self-repairing code if an mbox file gets out of sync with mailbase.dat
• Added toggle for mail smileys under View > Display (defaults to Enabled)
• Added Encoding drop-down to message composition windows (use the View button in compose windows to enable it)
• Made it impossible to import messages to RSS or IRC accounts
• Added missing Check and Check/Send buttons to the Customize toolbars dialog
• Fixed invalid InfoColor in mime.css
• Make Reuse existing page setting work for mail as well. If a mail page is open we will use that to show another view unless the user overrides with Shift+click or Shift+Enter. Result: Avoid large number of open mail pages unless the user really wants it
• Avoid full-text indexing of messages marked as spam. Full-text indexing will be performed if the message is marked Not spam
• Refocus mail/chat pages if reactivated through panel
• Attempt to make learning spam filter work well when trained with large number of messages
• Added semi-autodetection of RSS. Clicking on an RSS link will create a new newsfeed and open the Mail panel
• Show Unread count in Mail panel selector button
• Fixed a problem with storing labels for IMAP messages under certain circumstances
• Show warning dialog (twice) if a virus killer (wrongly) quarantines the mbox file, giving the user time to restore the file before any real damage is caused
• Use .mb* instead of .mb? as mailbox extension for generic mailbox import

Misc.

• Crash fix: Fixed crashes when system date far in the future was used
• Made upload progress bar work
• Readded icons in opera.exe used when setting Opera as default browser
• Fixed problem where Opera couldn't be set as default browser correctly on Win9x/Me systems
• Made /kioskbuttons have Address bar by default
• Fixed an IE bookmark import problem that would result in imported bookmarks having the wrong address
• Fixed a problem where trying to access localhost when working offline would prompt the user to go online
• Fixed an unescaping issue with UTF-8 encoded data: URLs
• Fixed problem with unknown content-type in HTTP redirect explanation when redirect is disabled
• Fixed caching of XML documents
• Fixed problem where using URL filtering causes page loading to stall when Javascript is filtered
• Fixed problem with boundary generation for multi-level multi-part upload elements
• Show about:blank in SSL frames if frame page is non-SSL

Panels

• Fixed several focus and usability issues related to panels
• Deactivate active page when maximizing panels
• Maximized panel toolbars can (and do) have different buttons than slim panels
• The Bookmarks, Chat, Contacts, History, Links, and Mail panels now react on single-, instead of double-, clicks. See the Preferences section of this document for information on disabling this behavior
• Items in single-click panels are highlighted when hovering over them (hovering styling is controlled by your OS)
• Added slim Start panel
• Made the Start panel customizable. Just drag items (search fields, for instance) to the Start panel to customize it. It can have different settings in slim and maximized modes
• Added panel toggle bar on the left side of the panel selector. Toggling will return the panels and panel selector to their previous position

Preferences

• Improved order of choices in Pop-ups drop-down
• Ensure that preview edit field is updated when font changes in font dialog
• Made the SaveTxtCharsPerLine= INI setting work again
• Added application/xhtml+xml MIME type to File types Preferences, instead of incorrect text/xhtml MIME type (must be deleted manually on upgrade installs)
• Disable M2 (Mail, News, and Chat) (NOTE: Kiosk mode settings will have precedence):

[User Prefs]
Show E-mail Client=0

• Disable single-click behavior in the Hotlist:

[HotlistWindow]
Hotlist Single Click=0

Security

• Fixed http://secunia.com/advisories/10760/ by using a center ellipsis on file names in the download dialog, which prevents using long file names to "hide" the extension of files
• Also fixed http://secunia.com/advisories/10760/ by removing "{text}" segments from suggested filenames and extensions. This shortens multple white-space to a single white-space character and prevents several types of tricks using long filenames and special filename syntax

Skins

• Added search field skinning
• Fixed off by one pixel on all sides
• Added native skin for editable drop-downs

Transfers

• Transfers panel no longer opened automatically when tranfers begin (toggle Show transfers panel on new tranfer from the View button in the maximized Transfers panel to reenable previous behavior)
• Show Time remaining and number of transfers (if more than one) in Transfers panel selector button
• Finished tranfers now cause the Transfers panel selector button to highlight (governed by [Selector Button Skin.attention] and [Selector Button Skin.hover.attention] in skin.ini) unless the Transfers panel is already open
• Added Transfer complete notifier tooltip
• Fixed problem with suggested filename in Download dialog when the URL contained certain characters

User Interface

• Crash fix: fixed crash for modified dialog.ini
• Crash fix: fixed crash when going back
• Crash fix: fixed crash when hitting arrow up in an input field without any text in the history buffer
• Google Rads are back!
• Favicons are now shown in the Personal bar, Bookmarks panel, and Bookmarks menu (and stored in \profile\images\)
• Fixed Wand so it won't ask what to do on a page with multiple logins if you've told it not to ask already
• Make sure the ad banner switches to the correct type when toggling the Main bar
• Fixed problem where Status bar wouldn't show when the Main bar was disabled
• Made all toolbars and fields locked when the Customize toolbars dialog isn't open (Address bar can still be dragged to copy URL)
• Pressing Cancel in the Customize toolbars dialog causes all changes to be lost
• Fixed some problems with search drop-downs that were searching with the wrong engine
• Included images for more items on context menus (Spell check, Add to bookmarks, etc.)
• Added a dialog box informing user bookmark import was successful
• Restrict large favicons on personal toolbar
• Removed unneeded Cancel button for some dialog boxes
• Made Quick find, Quick download, Account selector, Start search, and Date filter into dragable toolbar elements (you might need to reset your toolbars for these items to display correctly)
• When entering Customize toolbars dialog, empty toolbars will grow so they're easily visible