Download Opera 9.50 beta 2

Opera today released the second beta release of version 9.50 of its namesake browser. Opera is a free-to-use internet browser with features such as tabbed browsing, a pop-up blocker and an e-mail program with a spam filter. Downloads are available in 31 different languages ​​and for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Freebsd and Solaris operating systems. The second beta does a lot better in the Acid3 test and now scores 78 out of 100 points. Of course, many more changes and improvements have been made. Below is the full list of changes since the first beta release:

User interface

• Full text history search is now part of the address field, with better results and better performance.
• Introduced a new security notification scheme in the address field; see Security.
• Added alternative tab closing behaviors. The preferences now include the following options when closing a tab:
  • Activate the last active tab (default)
  • Activate the next tab
  • Activate first tab opened from current tab
• New spatial navigation highlighting, similar to the one used in Opera Mini 4 and the Wii browser.

Shortcuts

• Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right for Back and Forward are no longer specific to Mac, but also apply to Windows/Unix.
• “Save Draft” shortcut Ctrl+S removed due to the new autosaving of drafts (change is not new but was not listed in previous documentation).
• Shortcut for “Add attachment” in the compose window is now Ctrl+O instead of Ctrl+S.
• Shortcut Ctrl+Enter now sends a message, in addition to Ctrl+Shift+S.
• Changed the handling of “Delete” in mail filter views, with Shift+Del for “Move to Trash” and Del for “Remove from Filter View”, in place of Ctrl+X.
• Shortcut for “Duplicate Tab” has been removed.
• Shortcut for “Reopen Closed Tab” has been changed from Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Z to Ctrl+Shift+T
• Changes in Keyboard Shortcuts between Opera 9.27 and 9.50 Beta 2

Mail, Chat, and Feeds

• Improved IMAP performance and reliability.
• Faster startup times on systems with NTFS and ReiserFS file systems.
• Improved search results in Opera Mail when using Quick Find.
• Opera can now be set as the default mail application from the control panel.
• Improved feed download speed when there are many existing feed messages.
• Reduced CPU usage when downloading torrents.
• Numerous bug fixes and optimizations.

Display and Scripting

• Added MathML support. See the article on Dev.Opera.
• Opera now cloaks document.all. See the discussion on Hallvord’s blog.
• Improved performance of Web pages with XMLHttpRequest (AJAX).
• Added support for getClientRects and getBoundingClientRect.
• Added support for the CSS color and background-color properties for the ::selection pseudo-element.

ACID3

• Zero bytes in encodeURIComponent and encodeURI are now handled correctly.
• Unicode escapes can no longer be used to put non-identifier characters into identifiers.
• getSVGDocument is now supported in an iframe.
• createDocumentType now throws an exception for malformed qualified name.
• Fixed NodeFilter returning true => 1.
• Fixed HTMLTableRowElement.rowIndex and .sectionRowIndex returning undefined for table rows created via DOM.
• HTMLButtonElement.type now defaults to “submit”.
• Fixed form control collection not indexed by name when outside the main document tree.
• Fixed Range.surroundContents().
• Fixed insertNode to not collapse range.
• Fixed removeNamedItem() and removeNamedItemNS() to throw a not-found error.
• Fixed NodeIterator to function well also under dynamic changes.
• Fixed Date.UTC() to do proper 1900 year offsetting.

Miscellaneous

• All mail and history searching now occurs in a separate processor thread.
• Opera Link now synchronizes notes, in addition to bookmarks and Speed ​​Dial entries.
• New search.ini includes Google Images and Wikipedia.
• Improved compatibility with Gmail 2.

Security

• Improved back-end for Fraud Protection, now enabled by default.
• Added support for Extended Validation (EV) certificates.
• Added automatic updates or root certificates.
• Introduced a new security notification scheme in the address field:
  • gold lock on green field for secure sites with Extended Validation
  • silver lock on yellow field for regular secure sites
  • question mark on gray field for HTTPS sites with problems
  • no notification for normal sites
  • fraud warning on red field for blacklisted sites
• Opera now distinguishes between local servers on localhost, intranet servers, and remote servers on the Internet. Local servers can use remote resources, but not vice versa.

Windows specific changes

• Improved performance of painting on Web pages demanding graphics-intensive operations.
• Windowless mode for Silverlight 1.1 now works.

Mac specific changes

• A new plug-in architecture improves reliability.
• Enabled windowless plugins.
• Improved performance of painting on Web pages demanding graphics-intensive operations.
• Improved start up time.

UNIX specific changes

• A new plug-in architecture improves reliability.
• Enabled windowless plugins.
• 32-bit plug-ins (like Flash Player) and 64-bit plug-ins now work out of the box in 64-bit Linux builds.

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