7.50 Preview 4 for Windows

Info

• This is no longer our latest release. Please see our preview release page for more information.
• Build: 3714
• Released: April 14, 2004

Announcements

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

Changelogs

• Major Changes
• Release Notes
• Detailed Changes
• Platform-specific Changes

Major Changes

Continued User Interface Experimentation

In our efforts to improve the user interface, there have been a couple more changes in this preview. The Personal bar has been reenabled by default, the Start panel has been replaced by a Search panel, and maximized panels and manage dialogs have been dropped in favor of manage pages/windows. There's also a new New page button on the Page bar that makes it easy to open a new page.

Improved Opera Mail Resource Usage

Opera Mail (the mail client formerly known as M2) has received lots of attention this time around. It should use less memory, require less time to start-up, and clean-up after itself better.

Optimized Performance

In our on-going effort to be The Fastest Browser on Earth, this release should start-up and exit faster. Doing routine user interface actions like toggling and resizing panels should also be faster.

Release Notes

• Toolbars have changed, so you may need to revert to the default toolbars (Toolbars and menu preferences) to see all the changes in this release
• Due to changes in the Opera Mail database structure, mail will be reindexed on the first startup after installation

Detailed Changes

Chat

• Added ability to fetch the away message of contacts and try to interpret the result (i.e. if their away message is "Lunch", show the "Out to lunch" icon)
• Added preference (Account settings > Outgoing) for commands to be performed upon connecting to a server
• Added option (Account settings > Outgoing > Open private chat windows in the background) to open incoming private messages in the background (enabled by default)
• New query windows are now opened if you send a message using /msg (or any other alias that will map to PRIVMSG) and no chat window existed for the recipient
• Fixed problem showing reason for /kick when you are kicked
• Added support for /query <nickname> to open a private chat with someone
• Fixed problem reconnecting to some IRC servers, namely tweakers.net
• Fixed problem sending text to channels after connecting to certain networks
• Fixed a problem with contact names showing in channels when you had many contacts
• Added support for the extended list command for certain IRC servers
• Fixed a problem storing the nickname chosen after connecting to a server where your preferred nickname was in use
• Added dialog for accepting invites
• Strip away the NOTICE message that mIRC sends you when someone sends a file to you
• Added display of file size when receiving a file via DCC
• Disabled the Delete context menu item when selecting an IRC server name in the Chat panel, as Delete only works for channels
• Added some progress information when listing rooms
• Added the possibility to refresh the chat room list
• Fixed problem receiving files when the filename had spaces in it
• Fixed problem where (null) was shown as the originator of a channel mode change instead of the server
• Hide channel mode display when first joining a channel

Display/Rendering (Presto)

• Improved stability
  • Fixed crash at http://www.ilrezzonico.it
  • Fixed crash when a page uses certain CSS for drop-down menus
  • Fixed freeze in some cases when CSS display: run-in was used
  • Fixed crash at http://spraydate.spray.no/
• Fixed several memory leaks
• Improved CSS support
  • Fixed bug where floating elements with clear: both CSS would contribute to a table's width
  • Fixed bug where bottom margins were ignored on floated elements
  • Fixed problem where LI bullets inside a hidden DIV were visible
• Fixed some bidirectional text problems
• Added support for the non-standard clear="both" BR attribute (fixes problem at VersionTracker.com
• Several fixes for GIF images violating the standard
• Fixed 100% CPU usage caused by tiny, stretched, animated GIF
• Fixed compatibility issue with Mozilla's Almost Standards mode
• Fixed problem where disabling Enable sound in Web pages didn't work

Forms

• Fixed handling of TEXTAREAs with more than 32KB data
• Improved style removal when Enable styling of forms (Page style preferences) is disabled
• Fixed problem with words appearing off the right edge of TEXTAREAs (and in Opera Mail) if a line started with a tab character
• Fixed problem passing variables with empty values
• Added support for the non-standard autocomplete="off" INPUT attribute

Keyboard & Mouse

• Added new shortcut: pressing Alt+X in any edit field will convert a hex value which is selected (or preceding the cursor) to the corresponding Unicode character

Kiosk Mode

• Allow Alt+Space menu when using /NoMinMaxButtons command line option
• Enabled Page bar when using /KioskWindows command line option
• Disabled Panel selector when using /NoHotlist command line option
• Added /NoPanel as alias for /NoHotlist command line option

Mail (M2) - Backend

• Improved start-up time and memory use
• Mail > Search now only uses preindexed data for immediate results
• Improved threading, in particular for the Active threads access point
• Fixed problem parsing In-Reply-To headers that included comments
• Allow some slack on compression of mbox files. Previously, they've been compressed on each exit, now only if compression will recover 10% disk space or in order to correct errors
• Fixed problem where last bytes of messages in escaped encodings (e.g. iso-2022-jp) could be lost
• Fixed problem with half-missing message subjects if the Subject header was folded (see RFC 2822 §2.2.3)
• Fixed crash when unsubscribing from an IMAP folder while messages were being downloaded from it
• Improved word detection for full-text indexing
• Allow escaped linefeeds in BODY parameter of a mailto: link
• Improved INI file clean-up when mail, news, or chat accounts are deleted
• Fixed problem where Re: and Fwd: in subjects were included in Base64- and QP-encoded strings
• Fixed problem where own address was not added to BCC when doing a Reply all and using the Auto BCC feature
• Enabled Show filtered in the Sent view by default (Sent view > View > Show)

Mail (M2) - User Interface

• Only show mail system tray icon and attention color for Mail panel selector button if there are new messages in Unread since last check
• Added setting (Preferences > Programs and paths > Show e-mail client) to disable all Mail functionality
• Fixed problem in Filter properties dialog where text was mixed up when filter rules were selected
• Added confirmation dialog before Mailing lists or Newsfeed views can be deleted from the Mail panel
• Show in sub-menu will now be sorted alphabetically
• Changed mail account status text from Disconnected to Ready to connect
• Fixed problem where New filter was sometimes disabled in the Mail panel
• Removed UTF-16 and UTF-32 from Outgoing encoding drop-down

Newsfeeds

• Support detection of RSS feeds via LINK REL="alternate". The first feed detected on a page can be added by pressing the Newsfeed button on the Navigation bar or by selecting Navigation > Site navigation > Newsfeed.
• Improved handling of creative content in the Description field of RSS feeds
• Fixed problem handling caching of RSS feeds

Other

• Fixed crash if Aspell failed to create a session
• Fixed a crash when cookies were deleted before the cookie accept dialog was dismissed
• Fixed problem importing UTF-8 encoded Netscape bookmark file
• Fixed double unescapes in data URLs
• Improved mapping of extension to MIME type, especially for upload. MIME types in the default list take precedence over other MIME types that are mapped to the same extension
• Reenabled support for Content-Disposition: attachment
• Fixed problem displaying directory listings containing #
• Fixed problem resolving partially completed automatic proxy configuration URLs, e.g. without file://localhost/
• Fixed problem viewing .pac files within Opera

Plug-ins

• Fixed crash when using the Acrobat 6.0 plug-in
• Fixed crash when the Citrix ICA client plug-in is embeded in a web page
• Fixed problem where the Adobe SVG plug-in only worked after going back
• Fixed problem where Opera would download files even if they were sent to GetRight
• Fixed problem using the RealPlayer 10 plug-in

Scripting

• Fixed crash when pages included an empty SCRIPT element of type VBscript
• Fixed crash when a SCRIPT in an IFRAME caused the IFRAME to be removed from the parent document
• Fixed crash at http://www.workpac.com
• Reverted return value of color properties to #rrggbb and instead of rgb(rrr, ggg, bbb) per http://www.damowmow.com/playground/canon.txt
• Fixed double colon in Element.tagName on elements created with createElementNS
• Implemented support for data property write for IFRAMEs on HTMLObjectElement
• Fixed problem with location.hash not being set
• EventTarget.dispatchEvent will now throw UNSPECIFIED_EVENT_TYPE_ERR for invalid events
• Fixed enabling of plug-ins when their CSS visibility is changed (seen in menus at Gamesweb.com
• Fixed problem where mousedown also triggered mousemove event
• Fixed problem where parent.document.body would be undefined when returning to a FRAMEs page with the RAM cache off

Security/Privacy

• Fixed problem with repeated SSL reconnection attempts under certain circumstances
• Increased maximum number of cookies per server to 30
• Fixed loading issue on secure sites after accepting a pending certificate
• Improved information displayed about certificate problems

Skinning

• Added sort ascending and descending as new preferred border skins for the list headers (can be used instead of having a separate image for sort up/down)
• Added missing cry smiley (:'( to skin)
• Transfers and Mail panel selector buttons are now colored blue when in Attention mode to match the text attention color

Transfers

• Fixed problem opening files with their default viewer more than once after download
• Corrected folder opened when using the Open folder command on the download notifier if the default download folder wasn't used

User Interface (Quick)

• Enabled Personal bar by default
• Merged and re-enabled Image and User/Author mode toggle buttons
• Removed maximized panels in favor of Manage pages (and Manage windows in SDI)
• Changed Start panel to Search panel
• Testing use of pages instead of dialogs for manage tasks such as Manage bookmarks and Manage contacts
• Enabled Show transfers page on new transfer by default. It can be disabled from the View button in the Transfers page (Tools > Transfers).
• Added New page button to the Page bar. It can be disabled by toggling Show new page button in the Page bar context menu.
• Disabled dropping of links/images in the same page/window the drag started
• Added drop-down to Quick find fields that remembers previous entries
• Fixed problem with selection of toolbar setups after toggling panels
• Fixed problem where there were several ways to end up with an empty workspace in SDI
• Show only when needed setting on for the Page bar now hides the bar if there is only one page and we are in SDI mode
• Fixed text in spelling checker dialog
• Fixed bookmark naming issue if TITLE tag spanned multiple lines
• Changed Wand dialog to use OK/Cancel instead of Yes/No
• Fixed problem updating bookmark visited time for framed pages
• Fixed problem updating the format of the ad when switching from a window with a banner to a window with an ad strip
• Fixed problem with 404 response when requesting favicons
• Fixed a problem where some favicons would not show in the panel selector toolbar
• Corrected page icon when page has finished loading and favicons are disabled
• Fixed problem with selection of dictionary search as default search for a window
• Fixed shortcut key generation algorithm for button tooltips (now generated the same way as menu shortcut keys)
• Fixed enabling/disabling of menu items, in particular for items using ORed actions (i.e. Go to link element, "home" | Go to link element, "start")
• Fixed unnecessary jumping in lists in some cases
• Correctly set focus to the active window when a panel is closed
• Fixed problem preventing Opera from getting focus after clicking on program shortcut to open a new page/window
• Fixed crash when right-clicking in inline edit fields
• Disabled context menus in drop-down menus in toolbars
• Fixed problem where the browser context menu was shown when right-clicking Java applets
• Changed progress bar to show show hours instead of minutes when needed
• Fixed problem with lowercasing of parts of Javascript URLs with "://" in the source when added as bookmarks or buttons
• Search.ini entries can now be used as custom buttons in toolbars.ini. Use SearchButton, 1 or Button, "Amazon.com search"=Search, 1, where 1 is the search number in search.ini.

Platform-specific Changes

• Removed override in Save as dialogs if the user changes the file extension
• Fixed problem opening links from other applications if Opera wasn't already open
• Fixed problem with reply to WWW_GetWindowInfo DDE request when page has no TITLE
• Fixed several problems with IMEs
  • Fixed cursor jumping problem with Korean IME after inserting a null space
  • Made keyboard shortcuts work when IMEs are active
  • Fixed problem where IME language bar would be disabled by Opera
  • Fixed problem with mismatching candidate words and caret position when using an IME on Win9x/Me