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I had alsready been using the Opera 9.60 beta for a month or so, and found it very solid, so I haven't noticed anything different from it over the past several days running the final build, but there are actually a raft of bugfixes and refinements with this final build (see the Appendix below).
New in Opera 9.6 are:
• Link it:
Opera Link now lets you synch custom Search engines and typed History. It also synchronize the shortcuts in your custom Searches.
• Feed Preview:
Click on the Feed icon on the right of the address bar in Opera 9.6 beta and you'll be able to preview the feed in a convenient two column layout.
• Speed Enhancement
General response is snappier with Opera 9.60. Speed - already an Opera strong point - seems to have been bumped significantly. I notice speed, being stuck with a dial-up Internet connection, and Opera 9.6's liveliness makes it among the fastest browsers I've used.
• Improved Security
Opera 9.6 is a recommended security and stability upgrade.
New Opera Mail 9.60
• Low Bandwidth Mode:
Opera Mail has been re-engineered to use as little bandwidth as possible.
• Follow/Ignore threads and contacts:
This allows you to cull unimportant messages easily and makes it easier to recognize important ones.
A more comprehensively detailed changelog appears in the Appendix below.
Opera has even provided a 'to do' list for exploring Opera 9.60.
• Create custom search shortcuts from any search field on the Web.
• Synchronize browser settings such as your custom search shortcuts, bookmarks and Opera's Speed Dial feature with Opera Link, and access your settings from your computer, cell phone or Opera-powered game console.
• Check out the feeds available on your favorite sites with Opera's feed preview feature. Just click on the feed icon in the address bar and find out what feeds you may be interested in.
• Set up an email account with Opera's enhanced Mail application. Try out Opera Mail's new "low bandwidth mode" and more powerful Thread and Contacts management capabilities.
Opera is a really excellent browser that deserves a much higher market share than the roughly 1 percent that it currently enjoys. It's fast, stable, I like the way it renders pages, although some profess to have issues there, it has the best download manager of any browser I've ever used - the pause and resume function actually works reliably, and features like the Zoom percentage menu and images loading toggles on the interface window are also the most convenient I've encountered. And of course if you like having your email client integrated with your Web browser, your only other alternative would be Seamonkey.
System requirements:
Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later.
System Support:
PPC/Intel
Free
Opera for MAc can be downloaded in two different packages:
Select package: Intel, International 7.9 MB
Universal Binary, International 13.5 MB
For more information, visit:
http://www.opera.com/products/desktop/next/
General information about Opera:
http://www.opera.com
Appendix New And Improved Features In Opera 9.6
Opera Link
Custom search engines and typed history (typed history is only the history you explicitly type or select from the address bar) are now joining bookmarks, notes, personal bar and Speed Dial in Opera Link.
Opera Mail
Feed Preview
Now you can preview an RSS/Atom feed before subscribing.
Follow/Ignore threads and contacts
Follow and Ignore are new features for users that receive numerous messages. It makes it easier to dismiss unimportant messages and easier to recognise important messages.
Activate this feature by selecting Follow/Ignore in the email context menu (or click the message subject header), then select either Follow Thread or Ignore Thread.
Also, you can click the names in the From or To headers to enable the following or ignoring of contacts.
Go To Thread
You can now also use "Go to thread" which means that you can view only the messages from that thread. This is useful for those that employ flat view.
Low Bandwidth Mode
Low Bandwidth Mode is a setting on mail accounts that makes Opera Mail use as little bandwidth as possible.
For IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol): Opera will only synchronise new messages and it will not fetch message attachments unless requested
For POP (Post Office Protocol): Opera will not fetch more than the first 100 lines of a message unless requested
Opera Scroll Marker
The new Opera Scroll Marker makes it easier to continue reading when you scroll through a Web page. At the end of the page it will indicate the previous position of the bottom of the screen so you can easily see where to continue reading.
Enable Opera Scroll Marker in the Preferences dialog box. Navigate to Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Browsing > Show scroll marker (check box).
Check the box to enable Opera Scroll Marker
Leave the box unchecked (default) to keep it disabled
Using the opera:config Preferences Editor opera:config#UserPrefs|EnableScrollMarker, you can also set Opera Scroll Marker to show every time you scroll less than a full page down or up. The options in the drop-down menu are:
0 — off
1 — show when reaching the bottom or top of the page
2 — always show when scrolling
Changelog since Opera 9.6 Beta 1
Security and stability upgrades have been made.
Changes since Opera 9.6 Beta 1
User Interface
Speed Dial thumbnails no longer disappear when deleting private data
Page encoding in site preferences can now be reset to automatic
Changed the default global history to 1000
Added a new default speedial.ini
Improvements to Opera Link include the synchronization of search engines and typed history
Fixed sorting by progress in Transfers
Fixed copying of multiple entries from the history manager
Fixed a bug that could cause notes to be lost when using certain characters
Fixed dataloss situation when note folders had more than one line in their name
Fixed spurious highlighting when using the space character in inline find
Fixed an issue that would prevent links in frames from being opened by the keyboard
Fixed error pages when entering an unknown protocol
Fixed an issue where custom search engines would not get a favicon
Mail, News, Chat
Added popular Chinese providers in mailproviders.xml
Now copes better with broken POP servers that send empty UIDLs
The "Large font" setting is now respected for subjects
Cache files from feeds no longer show up in Transfers
Feed preview pages now load properly when reopened from trash
Text strings on the feed preview page can now be localized
Added a fallback feed title for feeds without titles and added a handheld style sheet to the feeds preview
Feeds are now detected even when served as text/html
Fixed the synchronization of removed labels for IMAP accounts
Fixed an issue where the signatures wouldn't change if the default account signature ended with a space
Fixed an issue where sent message bodies could disappear under certain circumstances
Fixed a problem where messages would be reported as incomplete when the server reports the wrong message size
Fixed importing of files with LF line endings only
Fixed an issue where followed contacts would not be properly unfollowed
Fixed an issue where only the first followed contact would be shown in the Followed Contacts access point
Fixed an issue where the Followed Thread icon would be lost after restart
Fixed Quick Find in feeds
Fixed an issue where feed titles were truncated before ":" characters
Fixed an issue where feed status could get stuck on fetching
Fixed an issue where only a few feed itmes would be fetched
Fixed DCC transfers in IRC
Display and Scripting
Special characters are now displayed properly in the Address bar drop-down
Opera Dragonfly element highlighting no longer stays on the page after closing the developer tools window
Script focused elements are no longer highlighted
Fixed saving of SVG when right clicking
Security
Verisign and Comodo are now formally EV-enabled: see Yngve's blog post
Fixed an issue where specially crafted addresses could execute arbitrary code, as reported by Chris of Matasano Security; see our advisory
Java applets can no longer be used to read sensitive information, as reported by Nate McFeters; see our advisory
Miscellaneous
Browsing Intranet sites now works after changing proxies in a running session
Improved performance with large wand.dat files
Fixed Fast Forward on Google search results pages
Mac-specific changes
Made form buttons with zero padding prettier on Mac
Fixed an issue where opening the Java Console would freeze Opera on Mac
Changes since Opera 9.52
User Interface
Opera now remembers the bookmark panel position after restart
Added a setting opera:config#UserPrefs|ShowBookmarksInAddressfieldAutocompletion to prevent bookmarks from showing in the Address field auto-completion drop-down
When setting opera:config#TransferWindow|KeepEntriesDays to 0,
Opera now removes the transfer history when restarting
Sites using HTTP Auth are now saved in typed history
Opera now stops loading pages with iframes when closing the page or pressing stop
Page encoding in site preferences can now be reset to automatic
Browsing Intranet sites now works after changing proxies in a running session
Improvements to Opera Link include the synchronization of search engines and typed history
Changed the default global history to 1000
Added a new default speedial.ini
Fixed sorting by progress in Transfers
Fixed copying of multiple entries from the history manager
Fixed a bug that could cause notes to be lost when using certain characters
Fixed dataloss situation when note folders had more than one line in their name
Fixed spurious highlighting when using the space character in inline find
Fixed an issue that would prevent links in frames from being opened by the keyboard
Mail, News, Chat
Added popular Chinese providers in mailproviders.xml
Made all top-level access points (except All Messages) selectable
Now copes better with broken POP servers that send empty UIDLs
The "Large font" setting is now respected for subjects
Cache files from feeds no longer show up in Transfers
Feeds are now detected even when served as text/html
Fixed the synchronization of removed labels for IMAP accounts
Fixed an issue where the signatures wouldn't change if the default account signature ended with a space
Fixed an issue where sent message bodies could disappear under certain circumstances
Fixed DCC transfers in IRC
Display and Scripting
Improved Acid3 support: The document property has been removed from iframe objects for compatibility with Gecko, WebKit, and the Acid3 test
Added support for the caller property on functions: http://developer.mozilla.org/En/Core_JavaScript_1.5_Reference:Global_Objects:Function:caller
Special characters are now displayed properly in the Address bar drop-down
Opera Dragonfly element highlighting no longer stays on the page after closing the developer tools window
Script focused elements are no longer highlighted
Fixed saving of SVG when right clicking
Fixed an issue where custom search engines would not get a favicon
Security
Verisign and Comodo are now formally EV-enabled: see Yngve's blog post
Fixed an issue where specially crafted addresses could execute arbitrary code, as reported by Chris of Matasano Security; see our advisory
Java applets can no longer be used to read sensitive information, as reported by Nate McFeters; see our advisory
Miscellaneous
Added the Opera Core version (currently "Presto/2.1.1") to the User Agent header
Improved performance with large wand.dat files
Fixed Fast Forward on Google search results pages
Mac-specific changes
Made form buttons with zero padding prettier on Mac
Fixed an issue where opening the Java Console would freeze Opera on Mac
Charles W. Moore
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