Planet Opera
02.07.2009
Slashdot
Browser Vendors Force W3C To Scrap HTML 5 Codecs
snydeq writes "Major browser vendors have been unable to agree on an encoding format they will support in their products, forcing the W3C to drop audio and video codecs from HTML 5, the forthcoming W3C spec that has been viewed as a threat to Flash, Silverlight, and similar technologies. 'After an inordinate amount of discussions on the situation, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that there is no suitable codec that all vendors are willing to implement and ship,' HTML 5 editor Ian Hickson wrote to the whatwg mailing list. Apple, for its part, won't support Ogg Theora in QuickTime, expressing concerns over patents despite the fact that the codec can be used royalty-free. Opera and Mozilla oppose using H.264 due to licensing and distribution issues. Google has similar reservations, despite already using H.264 and Ogg Theora in Chrome. Microsoft has made no commitment to support <video>."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Opera Developer Network
Opera Scope protocol specification released
With great pleasure I can announce that we have released the Scope protocol specification which is used in Opera Dragonfly and some of our internal QA tools. Currently Opera Dragonfly uses the STP/0 version, but for future version of Opera we will switch to the STP/1 version, which all new clients are recommended to use.
One of the reasons to release this documentation is that we hope that other browsers and users agents will interested in adopting Scope in their products. If this is the case, we’d like to standardise the specification through a standards body, so that there will be one standard way for tools to interact with the browser. Having this would allow any developer tools to work with any browser that implements the specification. This would be great not just for debugging tools like Opera Dragonfly and Firebug, but also IDEs and QA tools.
One of the key design decisions for Scope was to make sure it works well when debugging remote devices, such as a mobile phone or TV. Debugging on a device is difficult, due to limited screen size, resolution or input method. Scope allows you to connect your device to a computer running a Scope-enabled tool, so you can debug directly from the computer. Since we started work on Scope, both Apple and Mozilla have released or are in the process of releasing a mobile browser, and Google has come on the scene with a desktop and mobile browser of there own. Being able to debug remotely is likely now important functionality for them as well.
You can read more about the Scope protocol on the Opera Dragonfly blog, written by one of the Scope Engineers, Johannes Hoff: Scope Protocol release: how the fat lady sings.
Christian Sinding-Larsen
Drop IE
It's getting close to that time of the year again when Opera innovates the web. In anticipation of that, I just wanted to share this little thingybingy.
drop_ie.svg
Opera Dragonfly
Scope Protocol release: how the fat lady sings
Today we are happy to release the specification for the Scope protocol. This is the protocol used for communication between the Opera browser and Opera Dragonfly. It is also used here at Opera for automated testing.
Since the release of Opera Dragonfly, we have tried to keep the project open source. The source and its documentation is available under BSD licence, but it is difficult to expand it or create something different without the protocol specification. This release wants to rectify that.
The documentation is more or less as we have used it internally to communicate inside the team, which means that some documentation is missing simply because everyone on the team knew what it was about. If something is unclear, let us know in the comments.
One of the reasons we are releasing right now, is that other browser makers have started discussing how to do remote debugging. Since the very start we have focused specifically on this, so we want to share our experience and ideas with everyone else.
The specification is split into two parts. The current implementation, which we call Scope Transfer Protocol 0 (STP/0), is an XML based protocol. Our experience has been that this is too slow once you start transferring big data structures, like DOM trees. One of the advantages of the XML protocol was that it was easy to create a client for it in JavaScript using XMLHTTPRequests. It is also very easy to debug visually without the need for special tools to parse the data.
The next generation protocol, STP/1, is what we are currently working on. It is just a sign of things to come, but we will release it in a public build as soon as it is ready. There might be changes to the protocol before that time. The protocol continues to support XML, but we have added two more serializers: JSON and Protocol Buffers. The messages are the same in an abstract sense, but they can be rendered to different data structures. This means that we can keep our XML tools mostly unchanged, but switch over to Protocol Buffers for faster transmissions, or to JSON for the sweet spot between easy of use by JavaScript and low bandwidth usage.
Our next release will be a public build of Opera using STP/1, together with tools to help you get started with communication through STP/1.
Enjoy the read!
Ars Technica
Firefox 3.5 downloaded 5 million times in first 24 hours
Mozilla officially released Firefox 3.5 on Tuesday. The new version of the popular open source web browser has attracted considerable attention and is already seeing rapid adoption. It was downloaded over 5 million times during the first 24 hours. This falls short of the record-setting 8 million downloads that Firefox 3 had during its first day, but it still reflects the intense enthusiasm of the browser's fans.
Firefox's popularity has rapidly climbed over the past few years, bringing it up to between 20-30 percent of the global browser market, according to various Web analytics firms. Based on data collected from 850,000 web sites, tracking firm whos.amung.us says that Firefox 3.5 by itself now accounts for roughly 2.5 percent of the browser market, more than the total marketshare of rival Opera.
Click here to read the rest of this article
date: 02.07.2009, 15:03, author: segphault@arstechnica.com (Ryan Paul)
Anne van Kesteren
Web Video Codecs
Despite mention of codecs being removed from HTML5 for now, I think there is all the indication that this open video thing might actually work. Where with open video I mean a format that can be implemented without having to pay any royalties. I believe it is very important that standards and formats we actively deploy to the Web are both royalty free and documented in enough detail that independent implementations can be made. In terms of usage it seems pretty clear that Wikipedia will be using Ogg Theora and Vorbis. In a previous post on Web video I mentioned Dailymotion. Since then The Video Bay has been announced. It would be really great if YouTube started delivering Ogg Theora and Vorbis as well, but so far Google has not shared much about this. Firefox 3.5 has been released with — based on limited testing — a great implementation of the video element. Opera has announced support for Ogg Theora and Vorbis for a post Opera 10 release. (I suppose we will make that announcement on a non-mailing list place in due course.) Google Chrome will support Ogg Theora and Vorbis out of the box. (Chris DiBona from Google meanwhile explained why Google thinks that Chrome’s usage of H.264 is done in such a way that downstream usage of FFmpeg is not covered by their patent license while still complying with the LGPL by the way.)
The other good news about Theora is called Thusnelda. The Xiph.Org Foundation is working hard on making a better encoder for Theora video. The nice thing here is that the format itself is stable. So an encoder that makes the video more compressed and of higher quality will run fine in existing decoders (e.g. the one shipping in Firefox 3.5). The quality is getting really close to H.264 and is better than older formats which are also still widely deployed on the Web today.
I think the HTML5 specification should make the requirement for Ogg Theora and Vorbis. Everything we do has the risk of patents after all and Mozilla and Opera not being able to commit to H.264 is a red herring. H.264 is not suitable regardless as it is not a royalty free format. And once Ogg Theora and Vorbis support is in browsers and content is encoded using these formats, hardware support for it will most definitely come.
01.07.2009
FavBrowser.com
Firefox 3.5 vs. Safari 4 vs. Opera 10 vs. Chrome 2 vs. IE8
Adrian Kingsley Hughes from ZDNet has benchmarked Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.5 and 3.0, Safari 4, Opera 10 (alpha!) and Chrome 2.0 browsers using SunSpider, V8 benchmarks.
Chrome 2 wins in both benchmarks which is followed by Safari 4. In the V8 benchmark suite however, other web browsers lag behind by up to 36 times.
Results are as follow:
Slashdot
Firefox 3.5 Benchmarked, Close To Original Chrome
CNETNate writes "The tests prove it: It's the third-fastest browser in the world, and over twice as fast as Firefox 3. In terms of Javascript performance, Firefox 3.5's new rendering engine places it squarely above Opera 10's beta and Internet Explorers 7 and 8 (based on previous benchmarks), plus it's getting on for being almost as quick as the original version of Google Chrome. Also, the new location-awareness feature was testing in central London, and pinpointed yours truly to within a few hundred meters — easily enough for, say, a Starbucks Web site to tell you where your nearest Starbucks is."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Tamil
Use user style sheet to modify the look of a website in Opera
A user style sheet is a text file with CSS declarations. It allows you to have control over the look and feel of website. It can be used to hide annoying things like ads, change fonts and colors, etc.
!important declaration should be added to a rule to take precedence over author style sheet.
User style sheets can be applied to all sites (restart required to apply style sheet) or per-site basis (reload required to apply style sheet).
Example 1: Hide friend request link in My Opera
My Opera friend request link in top bar
- Create a text file with the following and save preferably inside profile\styles directory with CSS file extension.
/* Friend request */ #friendrequest { display: none !important; }
CSS to hide friend request link and share this button - Add path to CSS file in site preferences.
Path to CSS file in site preferences - Reload page to apply style sheet.
My Opera friend request link hidden by CSS
Example 2: Hide sponsored links in Google
Useless Google sponsored links
Google sponsored links can't be blocked by content blocker but it can hidden by following CSS code.
/* Top sponsored links */
#tads { display: none !important; }
/* Side sponsored links */
#mbEnd { display: none !important; } date: 01.07.2009, 17:26, author: address-withheld@my.opera.com.invalid (Tamil)
FavBrowser.com
Opera Mini Servers Updated to 4.11.458
One of the best things about Opera Mini server updates is that you don’t have to edit or download anything to enjoy them.
The latest upgrade offers enhanced site compatibility, synchronization improvements, a fix for web pages with internal links and download option for binary files.
For more details, see the announcement post.
Opera Mini
Server Upgrade to 4.11.458
- enhanced site compatibility
- a fix for pages with internal links
- improved synchronization
- binary files are always offered for download
Since JavaScript site patches are used to improve site compatibility, an enhancement allowing developers to bypass those patches has been included. The setting is available when entering the "
config:" URL, but should always be enabled for normal usage.All users automatically benefit from the upgrade (no manual change is needed, though it is possible to check the server version using the "
debug:" URL).Happy surfing! :cheers:
date: 01.07.2009, 14:50, author: Gerald Senarclens de Grancy
Opera Developer Network
Standards.next presentations
Last Saturday, I had the pleasure to attend the first edition of Standards.next, an informal bootcamp about tomorrow's web standards, organized by my fab colleagues Bruce and Henny. A quick overview with lots of links to online resources:
- Bruce Lawson presented HTML 5: Are you mything the point?. There's a video available, showing Bruce in all his glory.
- Dean Edwards showcased his html5.js library, which implements Web Forms 2.0 in a range of browsers, allowing anybody to start using this technology right away: enjoy the video, and be sure to check it out once Dean releases the library.
- Remy Sharp talked about HTML5 JavaScript APIs (PDF version). All Remy's demos are available on the HTML5 Demos site, and there's also a video.
- Martin Kliehm showed that Canvas can be used for more than for drawing spirographs: get all details in his HTML5 and Canvas slides, referenced links, and video snippets.
- And to finish, Steve Faulkner gave an excellent overview of the debates surrounding HTML5 and accessibility.
Also worth a peek: the event pictures of our man Patrick H. Lauke.
If you're interested in attending future Standards.Next events, I recommend keeping an eye on the #standardsnext Twitter query, or subscribing to the Standards.Next feed.
30.06.2009
Opera Community News
Techy money saving
With the re-emergence of words such as ârecessionâ and âcredit crunchâ in our everyday vocabularies, you may find yourself racking your brain for new ways to cut back and save more.
Rowan Mulder
Firefox 3.5 released!
The next big release by Mozilla is upon us, Firefox 3.5 has been officially released for Windows, Linux and Mac and is one of the most anticipated browser releases of this year.
Following the release of Internet Explorer 8, Chrome 2 and Safari 4, the second most used browser in the world gets updated to 3.5. It may only be a zero-point-five addition, but this doesn't mean it's without any noteworthy feature, in fact, it's the opposite.
Performance
One of the major changes in this release is the inclusion of TraceMonkey, which makes JavaScript much faster in Firefox, following Chrome's V8 and Safari's Nitro engines. Although initial benchmarks have shown that it's not faster than either of the competitors, it does give them a solid third place, well beyond Internet Explorer and Opera. Other performance work has landed in for the rendering engine, which now uses speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
Standards
A lot of work has been put in doing HTML5 work, a standard which is still a work in progress. Similar to Opera, Firefox uses Theora for audio and video playback when the new <video> or <audio> elements are used. This means you won't need any plug-in installed in addition to your web browser to view movies, or listen music when browsing compatible web sites. Other new technologies include geo-location support, native JSON (a common way of representing data for JS), and web worker threads.
Further support has been added for: downloadable fonts, CSS media queries, new transformations and properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 local storage and offline application storage, <canvas> text, ICC profiles (the first after Safari!), and SVG transforms.
Privacy
And last, but not least is Private Browsing Mode, which offers similar functionality to Safari, Chrome and IE: visiting web sites without leaving any traces. No cookies, no history, no cache is left, which makes it all the easier to browse pr0n or finding a birthday present on a shared PC or Mac.
Summary
Mozilla Firefox 3.5 offers a compelling upgrade towards all existing Firefox users by bringing in a lot of features that the competition already had picked up. Although you might say that they've been playing a (partial) catch-up game, it still offers enough (technical and tweaked) enhancements to separate itself from the competition and remain the fierce competitor it has always been.
You can download Firefox 3.5, in 70 languages for several platforms from the official Mozilla web site.
FavBrowser.com
How to Remove/Disable Opera Systray Icon
If you love clean working environments, then this is a must use tip for every Opera user. Ever got annoyed by system tray icon? Want to remove it? It’s easier than you thought.
Windows
Right click on Opera shortcut > Properties
Find target fields which should look similar to this:
Target: “C:\Program Files (x86)\Opera\opera.exe”
Replace with: “C:\Program Files (x86)\Opera\opera.exe” /notrayicon (with quotes).
Linux
Find your launcher and edit it by adding -notrayicon in the end.
opera %u -notrayicon
Opera Desktop Team
Link fixes and Unite search engine blocking
Search engine synchronization should be working again now, but those who are upgrading from certain previous Opera 10 builds (including the Unite labs build) may have problems with some search engines not being synchronized. If this happens, try to set opera:config#OperaSync|SyncClientStateSearches to 0 (no restart required).
Note: All Solaris builds and some FreeBSD builds are missing. The Windows MSI package is English-only.
Highlights
- Search engine synchronization should now be working again
- Added "robots.txt" to prevent search engines from indexing Unite services by default
- Fixed several Opera Unite crashes
Known Issues
- Some search engines may be missing when synchronizing with some previous Opera 10 builds
- Text nearly invisible on incactive/greyed-out buttons
- Native skin is work in progress
- Some Windows users may get an error related opera6.ini in the system32 folder. This can be ignored
Changelog
User Interface
- Set Large Images=0 for native skin
- Fixed the Pagebar Skin so that it does not have a negative padding left
- Fixed Bug DSK-232501 (Crash when activating message from mail notification while cert approve dialog is open)
- Fixed Bug DSK-249063 (unremovable English entry in Spelling > Language should be grayed out): The preinstalled dictionaries will now have full name in the choose default language page in the wizard
- Fixed Bug DSK-250617 (Text overlaps in UI)
- Fixed Bug DSK-255452 (New initial BitTorrent dialog leaves unnecesary short space for checkbox label): Also fixed so it is an Ok/Cancel dialog
- Fixed Bug DSK-255971 (Session not saved when closing Opera)
- Fixed Bug DSK-256929 (Bookmarks visited/unvisited icons hardly distinguishable)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257266 (Missing padding on hover in main menu)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257336 (First pixel at the left side of the menu button doesn't activate the menu button)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257343 (Progress indicator height inconsistency)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257346 (Pages in Window menu no longer reachable by their number)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257349 ("new tab" button too high up in tab bar wrapped to multiple lines)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257355 (Panel buttons overlap search field's focus ring)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257378 (Dragging produces text-only buttons): by Reverting Fix to Bug DSK-257195 (Panel header text becomes unbolded when customised)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257439 (Disabled UI buttons should probably have dimmed text color)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257593 (Adjust memory/cache changes)
Core
- Fixed a memory leak
- Fixed Bug CORE-20064 (Event.origin on message events returns origin of current window and not the origin of the message)
- Fixed Bug CORE-21557 (Move media player plug-in doesn't paint until window resize)
- Fixed Bug CORE-22049 (Certificate with HTTPS CRL URL to site with same CRL and certificate warning trigger run-amok dialog opening)
- Fixed Bug CORE-22293 (moveTo inconsistencies on some platforms)
- Fixed Bug DSK-252565 (Click on link at TV2 crashes Silverlight in Opera)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257534 (Disabling spell checker in multiline edit boxes crashes Opera)
Opera Unite
- robots.txt now added, with search engines disallowed by default
- Fixed Bug CORE-19330 (Possible to embed unite:// on http:// pages): also made sure that unite services can not manage each other
- Fixed Bug CORE-21620 (Webserver crash)
- Fixed Bug CORE-21680 (Incorrect escaping/unescaping of characters in WebserverRequest.uri)
- Fixed Bug DSK-247847 (Wrong handling of "username too short" error from auth server)
Windows
- Set max values for the automatic memory cache
- Fixed Bug DSK-249688 (Systemwide settings are not read)
- Fixed Bug DSK-254706 (/settings command-line flag is not functional)
- Partial Fix of Bug DSK-257293 (Opera fails to find any mails after 9.64 to 10 upgrade)
Unix
- Correctly specify Linux 64-bit Qt4 when uploading crash logs
- Fixed Bug DSK-256111 (Webserver doesn't serve proxied requests in Qt4 builds)
WARNING: This is a development snapshot: It contains the latest changes, but may also have severe known issues, including crashes and data loss situations. In fact, it may not work at all.
Download
Opera Press Releases
Serving up more Opera Mini in Europe: Opera opens new data center in Poland
Opera has signed an agreement with TeliaSonera International Carrier to provide Opera with colocation in establishing a new data center in Poland. As Opera's fourth data center worldwide, the facility will operate as the server hub for Opera Mini, allowing the mobile browser to expand its network in Europe. By relieving other servers of the processing responsibilities, Opera's Poland-based servers will enable significantly faster page downloads for users.FavBrowser.com
Hello, FavBackup. Version 1.0.0 Released
If you were following our Twitter updates, then this shouldn’t be a big surprise for you.
In any case, I would like to introduce you a quick and easy way to backup and restore your browser settings: FavBackup
You can either backup separate setting such as: bookmarks, passwords, etc. or do a complete backup. This is just an initial release, lots of things are planned, and auto update is one of them.
Opera 10 support should be added soon, waiting for reply from Opera Software to confirm all the paths.
29.06.2009
Hallvord R. M. Steen
'ESPN FLASH detection system' meets Flash 0
Even in the classy company of bad version detection scripts we've met since we started testing Opera 10, this Flash detection approach stands out. That script goes to great effort to require an update every.single.time Adobe releases another Flash version.It starts with a bold claim to be the ESPN "Flash detection system", no less:
// Author: Danny Mavromatis // Version: 2.07.0 // Created: 10/29/2001 // Updated: 3/6/2006 // ESPN.com FLASH detection system var f2 = false; var f3 = false; var f4 = false; var f5 = false; var f6 = false; var f7 = false; var f8 = false; var f9 = false;
Look at all those variables. What might they be used for? Read on:
var fD = navigator.plugins["Shockwave Flash" + isVersion2].description;
var fV = parseInt(fD.charAt(fD.indexOf(".") - 1));
So, first it extracts one single letter that precedes a dot in the plugin's description of itself. This is presumably the plugin's major version number, you know the 8 in "8.0", the 9 in "9.0", and, um, the 0 in "10.0". Then:
f2 = fV == 2; f3 = fV == 3; f4 = fV == 4; f5 = fV == 5; f6 = fV == 6; f7 = fV == 7; f8 = fV == 8; f9 = fV == 9;
..it just sets the corresponding "f"-variable to true. If the major version was 8, f8 will be true and so on. A great way to make sure the code will require maintenance - new variables for each new version. And then comes the real gem:
for (var i = 2; i <= mV; i++) {
if (eval("f" + i) == true) aV = i;
}
// alert("version detected: " + aV);Let's see, we just had a variable fV which contained Flash's major version number (or at least its least significant digit) - but this script has severe amnesia. What was that number again? Better use a loop and 8 eval() calls to check the value of that variable. You never know, do you?
Now, dear readers - Mr. Mavromatis clearly needs some help with this code. Obviously, complexity and maintenance requirements are among his design goals. The natural question is whether there are good, non-obvious ways this script could be improved to be more complex and require even more maintenance? Suggestions welcome in comments.
Update: Danny Mavromatis responded in comments and - though he no longer works on the ESPN site - has made sure that the page where we found this problem has been updated. Kudos to Mr. Mavromatis for his quick response and sense of responsibility. I wish more web developers would act this way!
No more personal attacks, please!
date: 29.06.2009, 18:16, author: address-withheld@my.opera.com.invalid ( Hallvord R. M. Steen)
Web Standards Project
Introducing The Open Web Education Alliance
The W3C recently announced an exciting new incubator group - The Open Web Education Alliance (OWEA) - that is certain to have a significant impact on helping web standards and best practices find their way into classrooms around the world. The mission of OWEA is to bring together companies, schools, and organizations involved in shaping the education of Web professionals to explore the issues around the topic of Web development education and create solutions for improving it.
Many organizations like Opera, Adobe, Yahoo, WOW, and WaSP InterAct have been diligently working to develop curricula and outreach programs to help schools better prepare their students for a career on the Web. OWEA will bring many education initiatives together in a broad collaborative.
“ The mission of the Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group, part of the Incubator Activity, is to help enhance and standardize the architecture of the World Wide Web by facilitating the highest quality standards and best practice based education for future generations of Web professionals through such activities as:
- fostering open communication channels for knowledge transfer
- curriculum sharing between corporate entities, educational institutions, Web professionals, and students ”
- The Open Web Education Alliance Charter
OWEA’s origins can be traced back to Web Directions North in Denver in February, where WaSP emeritus and CSS Samuri John Allsopp brought together educators, industry experts, and representatives of the W3C to explore ways of uniting the various education efforts already underway. Four months later, OWEA has transformed from a collection of ideas at a meeting to a W3C incubator group. The Web Standards Project has a strong representation in OWEA, and will be contributing content from InterAct to the initiative.
This is a huge step towards improving web education! Want to stay informed? Subscribe to the WaSP InterAct Twitter feed.
Opera Community News
Blog this
No, you don't have to blog this, but find out how to easily blog a cool photo you've discovered and show off your My Opera favorites! :cool:
Opera Developer Network
Why is Opera Mini booming in Indonesia?
It is not just Opera Mini, but the whole Mobile Web is booming in Indonesia.
As shown by State of the Mobile Web Report, Indonesians' average page view is 400 odd pages and they also enjoy the second biggest Opera Mini user base after Russia.
So why is the Mobile Web booming?
- Cheap access. There are more than 10 telcos pitting against each other and each one offers good pricing. On average you pay about USD0.10/Mb.
- Bad landlines. The Mobile Web is the perfect substitution for an unsatisfactory landline experience.
- The Berry factor. The mass appeal for BlackBerry and its push email application meant that going online became part of the "Berry craze".
- Traffic jams. During rush hour, what better to do than to surf the web?
I've presented the case in The New Wave of Mobile Internet, Universitas Krisdwipayana and the FreSh forum.
Here are the slides for the mobile browser trends and the boom in Indonesia.
28.06.2009
Nicklas Larsson
Internet without DNS
One common complaint about Opera Unite is that Opera controls the operaunite.com domain, and that this reduces the freedom of the user that just want to share some stuff, or access personal data from another machine, Opera will be the one providing your computer with a name so that you can find it.This is nothing new, DNS is already a system where you have to go to some of the providers of top domains, and ask them kindly to get an address. (if not a domain name speculator has already got the address you are looking for)
For each new social site, you usually have to create a new name in that name space. One difference with Opera Unite is that not all people have a domain name, but needs one to be able to find the machine, and that motivates why Opera provides the operaunite name space.
But, I do think that name spaces for social sites, for Opera Unite, and even the regular name space for DNS is bad. We hand over the decision of how to reach your own computer, what to call it, to someone else.
DNS was probably invented to make it easier to find a machine without having to remember the IP address. But, now we have search technology that can help us find content, the name of the site does not matter that much anymore. If search technology had been in place before DNS was invented, maybe DNS would not have been there.
Think about it, a DNS free Internet, where you can use some kind of certificates to make sure that you are on the site that you think you are. (the way we look at security by looking at the domain name will of course need to be replaced by some other mechanism)
date: 28.06.2009, 20:44, author: address-withheld@my.opera.com.invalid (Nicklas Larsson)
27.06.2009
Jeff Schiller
Oh The Things You’ll Learn
I was playing around with a new project recently and wanted to figure out the complementary color of a given color. All you need for this are the RGB values of the color for which you want to find the complement.
There are lots of ways of specifying a color on the Open Web:
- rgb(255,0,0)
- rgb(100%,0,0)
- #FF0000
- #F00
- “red”
And it’s not just the 17 CSS color names, there are 147 cool-sounding extended color names like papayawhip. So given that a user can input a color in all sorts of ways, what’s the right way to do this?
The Hard Way
You can build a parser that determines the color format, parses hex and rgb strings and has a table that maps 147 strings to rgb triplets. It turns out there are a lot of JavaScript libraries that already do this. Here’s one.
But then I thought: why am I including yet another JavaScript library to do this parsing when the browser must already know how to map from hex, rgb or color name to an RGB triplet (or equivalent) in order to render the color in the first place? Surely there’s a way to extract this directly out of the DOM?
The DOM Way
It turns out there is. It’s called the CSS DOM and I always seem to forget about this document. Piecing together information from the SVG DOM and the CSS DOM, this is how you would get the red value of a fill attribute on a circle:
var red = someCircle.getPresentationAttribute("fill").rgbColor.red.getFloatValue(1);
That’s just a bit perverse, but at least it’s possible.
In testing this I was delighted to discover that Opera and WebKit let me do it. Sadly, Firefox does not.
The Best-Laid Plans…
Here’s where the plot thickens. Seems like the CSS Working Group was chartered to produce a new version of the CSS DOM to make the interfaces less clunky. Seems like the CSS WG sent out a notice strongly warning browsers not to implement certain DOM interfaces in the CSS DOM. Seems like it’s six years later and there’s no new document.
Unfortunately this is where my sad little tale ends. Erik of Opera suggests that the SVGT 1.2 uDOM is really the right way to do this. It doesn’t matter that I agree with him because I don’t think Webkit or Mozilla have any interest in implementing this any time soon.
It seems kind of sad that folks have to write JavaScript libraries to do color parsing when the browsers already do this natively. It also seems really weird that the SVG DOM interfaces extend obsolete CSS DOM interfaces (SVGColor extends CSSValue which Bert Bos mentions in his email).
#DOMFAIL ?
26.06.2009
Opera Desktop Team
Second build of the week
We have also enabled some experimental UPnP code, so please report any unexpected network related issues that you come across. There may be more crashes than usual when using Unite with UPnP enabled, but any crashes can simply be reported through the new crash dialog.
In addition to that, we have the first 64-bit Qt4 builds for Linux.
As a final note, the native skin is still not finished, so there is no reason to comment on it yet. (Let's see how many of you actually read this ;))
No automatic updates this time around.
Changelog
User Interface
- Changed name of "Transfers" to "Downloads"
- Tweaks to the windows native skin
- Added Turbo warning icon
- Added Open Folder button to file browse control
- Partial fix for Bug DSK-247823 (Menu item 'Edit > Check spelling' must be updated) The desktop part of the new rewrite on how to turn on and off spellcheker
- Fixed Bug DSK-254466 ("Add contact" mail button - inconsistent capitilization)
- Fixed Bug DSK-255284 (Translated strings in Romanian do not fit Crash and Appearance dialog)
- Fixed Bug DSK-256214 (Unite status button: More space needed for translation)
- Fixed Bug DSK-256583 (Double click on note to insert into mail doesn't work when replying)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257018 (Some buttons get bigger when focused)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257029 ("Open Service" should be disabled if the service is in the trash can) plus: consistently disable "properties" for trashed Unite services
- Fixed Bug DSK-257076 (New "synch opera" button in Speed Dial is too small)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257089 (Windows native: Text in Speed Dial search field impossible to read with dark background image)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257143 (Tiled background in Speed Dial isn't remembered)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257190 (Unable to edit file/folder chooser boxes by hand)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257195 (Panel header text becomes unbolded when customised)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257223 (Update dialog, new version download size value does not fit)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257233 (Automatic Turbo mode not reflected in status field)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257256 (Crash when performing mouse gesture while gesture dialog is open)
Core
- Fixed Bug CORE-2227 (Onload script not executed in frameset where one frame's src is set to "#")
- Fixed Bug CORE-22239 (Make sure MultiEdit fields will be spellchecked if the spelling checker is turned on when it doesn't have focus)
- Fixed Bug CORE-22240 (Make sure there is no active sessions and spellcheckers when a user turns off the spellchecker)
- Fixed Bug DSK-251746 (Aborting print from VG.no crashes Opera)
- Fixed Bug DSK-256927 (File with spaces not opened after download)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257213 (WMP not painting when going back/forward (and sometimes not on first load))
- Fixed Bug DSK-253679 (When you reply to a message the cursor is invisible)
Opera Unite
- Experimental UPnP changes
- Fix for a bug that prevented every device but the first to notify the correct opened port to the proxy
- Fixed Bug CORE-22068 (WebServerResponse.closeAndRedispatch sends a 405 under a POST request)
- Fixed Bug DSK-253872 (Cannot start root service)
- Fixed Bug DSK-255768 (Wait until the webserver and the services are initialized before restoring unite: URLs from sessions)
- Fixed Bug DSK-257145 (Opera crashes on startup when Unite is disabled)
- Fixed Bug DSK-256640 (Crash when starting Unite)
Windows
- Fixed Bug DSK-254084 (Two entries in Add/Remove Programs after upgrading with MSI installer (as admin on Vista, or limited user on XP and Vista))
- Fixed Bug DSK-254083 (Error dialog when selecting current limited user in the Run As dialog when autoupdating using limited account on XP)
Unix
- Fixed Bug CORE-21872 (Crash when starting Unite)
- Possible fix for Bug DSK-224080 (Flash content makes opera crash on Sparc Solaris), add workaround for Sun X bug
- Fixed Bug DSK-240834 (Qt4-shared build uses Qt3 settings)
- Fixed Bug DSK-253944 (Plugin wrapper crash)
- Fixed Bug DSK-255517 (Move ttf fonts from Suggests to Recommends in Debian packages); modernized the list of font packages
Mac
- Fixed Bug DSK-203698 (Aqua skin progressbar display issues)
- Partial Fix of Bug DSK-255214 (White artifact cover entire page when reloading using Reload button)
- Fixed Bug DSK-256977 (Missing background styling for dropdown menus at play.com)
- Fixed Bug DSK-256991 (Opacity related crash)
WARNING: This is a development snapshot: It contains the latest changes, but may also have severe known issues, including crashes and data loss situations. In fact, it may not work at all.
Download
Haavard K. Moen
Opera Unite powered BitTorrent tracker
It looks like someone has started work on a BitTorrent tracker running as a Unite service. The creator now needs help to find bugs, which is why he made a public announcement about it.You can find the tracker's homepage at Google Code.
I'm pretty amazed by this service, and I really can't wait to see what kind of Unite services other people can come up with.
Not knowing much about the specifics of this service, I wonder if it would be possible to create a network of "decentralized" BitTorrent trackers for redundancy purposes. Since a Unite service is easy to set up, just about anyone could run a BitTorrent tracker, and if several of them connected in a network of "trusted" trackers continuously mirroring each other, there would always be a tracker available even if someone disconnects a computer running the tracker.
Time will tell how far Unite can take things, I guess.
date: 26.06.2009, 12:47, author: address-withheld@my.opera.com.invalid (Haavard)
Opera Community News
Member of the Week
This week we meet a member from the ... Catty Planet? :cat:
25.06.2009
FavBrowser.com
Internet Explorer vs. Firefox vs. Chrome vs. Safari vs. Opera
It seems that everyone is testing web browsers this week.
While some sites are posting usual SunSpider results, Codexon has decided to run something closer to the “real life situations”.
As a result, he loaded 10 web sites and calculated load time.
Sites used:
Baidu.com – Chinese Google
Blogger.com – Popular blogsite
Facebook.com – Popular social site
Google.com – Popular search Engine
Havenworks.com – A poorly designed site weighing 820 kb with over 280 images
Live.com – Microsoft search engine
Myspace.com/tom – Typical Myspace profile
Reddit.com – Social site
Wikipedia.org – Online encyclopedia
Results (less is better):
Average Loading Times (in ms)
Opera 204 Safari 205.2 Chrome 205.5 Firefox 416 Internet Explorer 556.8
For some graphs and more details, please visit the original post (site is down atm).
As you can see, Opera is a winner here, followed by Safari and Chrome. Don’t forget the famous Microsoft quote: “To actually see the difference in page loads between all three browsers, you need slow-motion video.” Expect for that fact that IE is 2.5x slower…
Thanks to Bob for sending this!
date: 25.06.2009, 16:53, author: Vygantas Lipskas
Review Opera Mini and Win Trip to Norway
BlackBerryCool.com is running a nice contest in which you can win all inclusive trip to Oslo, Norway and visit Opera Software headquarters. Other prizes include: software gift cards, accessories and an advanced preview of an unseen version of Opera Mini (now that’s cool).
Things you need: Blackberry and Opera Mini
For more information, check the contest page.
date: 25.06.2009, 16:35, author: Vygantas Lipskas
Browser Comparison Test: Internet Explorer vs. Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome
PCGamesHardware Writes:
PC Games Hardware tested the speed of the internet browsers Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8, Mozilla Firefox 2.0, 3.0.11 and 3.5b99, Opera 9.6 and 10, Safari 3.1.1 and 4.0, Chrome 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 with the benchmarks Peacekeeper and Sunspider and checked them with the Acid tests as well.
[Read]
