Simon Willison's Weblog: opera

What data structures are used to implement the DOM tree?

2013-02-17T13:31:00+00:00

My answer to What data structures are used to implement the DOM tree? on Quora

You may enjoy this post from Hixie back in 2002 which illustrates how different browsers deal with incorrectly nested HTML. IE6 used to create a tree that wasn't actually a tree! http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=103791...

Tags: chrome, data-structures, firefox, html, internet-explorer, opera, webkit, quora, firefoxos

Opera Unite

2009-06-16T11:00:31+00:00

Opera Unite

Opera’s big announcement: a developer preview (“labs release”) of their new web-server-in-your-browser feature, Unite. Includes an Opera-hosted proxy to help break through your firewall. The web server can be customised using server-side JavaScript running in an Opera Widget.

Tags: javascript, opera, operaunite, unite, webservers, widgets

Changes in Opera's user agent string format

2009-05-28T01:16:36+00:00

Changes in Opera's user agent string format

How depressing... Opera 10 will ship with 9.80 in the User-Agent string because badly written browser sniffing scripts can’t cope with double digits.

Via Douglas Crockford

Tags: browsers, browsersniffing, opera, user-agents

and now... Opera

2008-10-09T18:39:49+00:00

and now... Opera

Jon Hicks is joining Opera as Senior Designer. I absolutely cannot wait to see what he comes up with there.

Tags: browsers, design, jon-hicks, opera

Opera Web Standards Curriculum

2008-07-08T14:22:17+00:00

Opera Web Standards Curriculum

Opera commissioned an impressive sequence of articles from a bunch of very talented people to help address the monstrous learning curve for modern client-side development.

Tags: opera, teaching, web-standards, webstandardscurriculum

A browser sniffing warning: The trouble with Acid3 and TinyMCE

2008-07-04T08:24:34+00:00

A browser sniffing warning: The trouble with Acid3 and TinyMCE

Opera recommend “bug detection”, a step up from object detection and browser sniffing where your JavaScript includes mini unit test style fragments of code designed to test if buggy behaviour you are working around still affects the user’s browser.

Tags: acid3, browsers, browsersniffing, bugdetection, javascript, object, objectdetection, opera, tinymce

Google Gears renamed "Gears"

2008-05-29T00:38:43+00:00

Google Gears renamed "Gears"

“We want to make it clear that Gears isn’t just a Google thing. We see Gears as a way for everyone to get involved with upgrading the web platform.” Support for Firefox 3 and Safari is being added and Opera are integrating Gears with both their desktop and mobile browsers.

Tags: firefox3, gears, google, opera, safari

Opera Dragonfly

2008-05-06T19:04:41+00:00

Opera Dragonfly

Opera’s new Firebug-style developer console. Out in alpha and it shows (slow to load and the interactive console leaves a lot to be desired) but still looks incredibly promising, especially the remote debugging tools for working with Opera on phones and games consoles.

Tags: debugging, dragonfly, firebug, opera

Firefox 3's password remembering

2008-04-02T20:24:51+00:00

Firefox 3's password remembering

I’m loving Firefox 3, and the way it does password remembering (with a non-modal toolbar so you can tell if your password worked before deciding to save it) is just one of the major improvements. Opera gets this right as well.

Tags: firefox, firefox3, mozilla, nelson-minar, opera, passwordsaving

Quoting Mike Shaver

2008-03-27T13:35:53+00:00

Ian's Acid 3, unlike its predecessors, is not about establishing a baseline of useful web capabilities. It's quite explicitly about making browser developers jump - Ian specifically sought out tests that were broken in WebKit, Opera, and Gecko, perhaps out of a twisted attempt at fairness. But the Acid tests shouldn't be fair to browsers, they should be fair to the web; they should be based on how good the web will be as a platform if all browsers conform, not about how far any given browser has to stretch to get there.

— Mike Shaver

Tags: acid3, browsers, gecko, ian-hickson, mike-shaver, opera, webkit, web-standards

Opera and the Acid3 Test

2008-03-26T22:47:48+00:00

Opera and the Acid3 Test

Screenshot shows 100/100 (live code or it didn’t happen!)—Opera’s codebase must be in extremely good shape to fix so many issues so quickly.

Tags: acid3, browsers, opera, web-standards

Principles and Legality

2008-03-04T19:45:55+00:00

Principles and Legality

Eric Meyer notes that language about legality in Microsoft’s recent IE announcement suggests that Opera’s much criticised EU threat may have helped positively influence the result.

Tags: eric-meyer, ie8, law, microsoft, opera, standards

Blob Sallad - canvas tag and JavaScript physics simulation experiment

2008-01-26T12:25:06+00:00

Blob Sallad - canvas tag and JavaScript physics simulation experiment

Björn Lindberg provides a detailed code walkthrough of his brilliant canvas demo, inspired by Loco Rocco.

Tags: bjornlindberg, canvas, javascript, locorocco, opera, physics, tutorial

Full Page Zoom Is For Sissies

2008-01-19T07:36:47+00:00

Full Page Zoom Is For Sissies

Ryan points out that sizing everything in ems, while neat, imposes a pretty hefty maintenance cost and is rapidly becoming unnecessary thanks to the page zoom feature in IE 7, Opera and Firefox 3.0.

Tags: css, ems, firefox3, fullpagezoom, ie7, opera, ryan-tomayko

Jash: JavaScript Shell

2007-12-09T12:36:51+00:00

Jash: JavaScript Shell

An advanced JavaScript interactive shell bookmarklet that works in IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari.

Via Gareth Rushgrove

Tags: bookmarklets, firefox, gareth-rushgrove, internet-explorer, jash, javascript, opera, safari, shell

Taking the canvas to another dimension

2007-11-16T13:39:11+00:00

Taking the canvas to another dimension

Opera have finally released a test version with support for a opera-3d canvas context—Windows only for the moment, but Mac and Linux versions are promised “soon”.

Tags: 3d, canvas, javascript, opera

Opera 9.5 alpha, Kestrel, released

2007-09-16T20:34:34+00:00

Opera 9.5 alpha, Kestrel, released

“With history search, Opera creates a full-text index of each and every page you visit, and when you go to the address bar, you can simply start entering words you know have been on pages you’ve visited before, and items matching your search show up.” I just tried this; it’s magic. I’m switching back to Opera from Camino.

Tags: browsers, camino, full-text-search, history, kestrel, opera, search

Opera 9.5 (Kestrel)

2007-09-04T10:49:00+00:00

Opera 9.5 (Kestrel)

The latest Opera alpha includes a bunch of CSS3 features (including an almost full implementation of CSS3 Selectors) as well as the ability to use SVG for scalable background images.

Tags: anne-van-kesteren, browsers, css3, opera, opera95, releases, selectors, svg

The Wii Remote API

2007-08-06T21:32:28+00:00

The Wii Remote API

“allows the Web page to detect all Wii Remotes that are connected to the Wii [...] this makes it possible to make Web pages interact with up to four users at the same time, a concept not normally possible with traditional JavaScript event detection.”

Tags: javascript, opera, wii

Dev.Opera article index

2007-04-30T14:26:45+00:00

Dev.Opera article index

Should be of interest to all client-side web developers.

Tags: opera, web-development

Timing and Synchronization in JavaScript

2007-04-30T14:24:32+00:00

Timing and Synchronization in JavaScript

Comprehensive overview of how browsers (Opera in particular) load scripts and queue events, with suggestions for best practices.

Tags: browsers, javascript, opera, timing

Web Technologies for Opera Web Applications

2007-04-11T14:00:12+00:00

Web Technologies for Opera Web Applications

A one page summary of the various standards and extensions supported by Opera.

Tags: opera

IE 7 does not resize text sized in pixels

2007-04-04T22:40:10+00:00

IE 7 does not resize text sized in pixels

I said it does the other day; I was wrong. Text sizing is still broken, but it does have a full page zoom feature (like Opera’s but not as smooth).

Tags: ie7, opera, pixels

Improve your forms using HTML5!

2007-03-13T14:08:04+00:00

Improve your forms using HTML5!

Anne Van Kesteren demonstrates the Web Forms 2 support in Opera 9—new form attributes include autofocus, required and type=email.

Via programming.reddit.com

Tags: anne-van-kesteren, html5, opera, webforms2

wii.js

2007-03-12T22:23:29+00:00

wii.js

A JavaScript library that lets you detect the Wii browser, and provides easy hooks for reacting to keys pressed on the Wiimote.

Via programming.reddit.com

Tags: javascript, opera, wii

Opera Skins: Tango CL

2007-01-26T16:16:31+00:00

Opera Skins: Tango CL

This skin is the first thing I install when I set up Opera. It’s an enormous improvement on the default.

Tags: opera, skin

Sticking with Opera 9

2006-08-06T18:32:57+00:00

It's been a month and a half since I started using Opera 9, with a promise to report back later. I'm still using it, although some of the things I liked initially have faded while others have emerged.

Firstly, the ability to browse cached documents offline turned out to be a dud. The behaviour I was observing (where I could view pages from my cache while disconnected) was due to the following setting, in Preferences -> Advanced -> History:

As someone whose work involves making websites the idea of seeing stale documents for five hours is pretty horrifying, so I changed that to "check documents never" as soon as I saw it (I'm pretty confident that doesn't affect conditional-GET, which should work regardless). As soon as I did that I lost the ability to browse offline. Browser vendors take note: you can still be the first modern browser to implement a proper offline mode!

The disadvantage of changing those setting is that they can break JavaScript image preloaders, leading to an unsettling flicker when you mouse over some links. That's why I've left my image setting above to check every five minutes.

Despite losing offline browsing, other features have popped up that have kept me happy:

Opera is the only Mac browser I've used that includes a working full-screen mode; great for presentations.
Hitting space moves you down the height of the viewport, as with other browsers. Hitting space at the bottom of the page takes you to the next page in the 'sequence', if there is one. My first guess was that this used <link rel="next">, but it also works on Yahoo!, Technorati and Google search results pages which don't have those links. I suppose it's looking for any link on the page with 'Next' as the link text. Whatever it's doing, it works surprisingly well.
Site compatibility really is excellent; I run in to sites that don't work in Opera about as often as I do sites that don't work in Firefox. Part of that might be due to Opera's ingenious browser.js file, which includes Greasemonkey-style site-specific fixes and automatically updates itself once a week. Clever, but a bit scary at the same time.
The built-in IRC client is good as well - if it wasn't for Colloquy it would be my first choice for IRCing on the Mac.
Finally, Opera's low memory footprint continues to keep me from switching back to Safari or Firefox. My Mac (a two and a half year old PowerBook) is noticeably less sluggish now that those two applications have been relegated to JavaScript hacking (gotta love FireBug) and the occasional misbehaving site.

I haven't even touched Opera Mail yet, and the gadget support is something I played with once and never used again (but then I don't use Dashboard that much either).

Overall I'm extremely happy with Opera 9 and I'd recommend giving it a go - especially if you've tried and disliked an older version.

Tags: browsers, opera, opera9

Browser JavaScript in Opera

2006-08-03T17:37:25+00:00

Browser JavaScript in Opera

Opera monkeypatches some sites, and auto-updates the patches once a week.

Tags: javascript, opera

Two revolutionary features in Opera 9

2006-06-20T23:42:18+00:00

Wow, if I'm not careful this is going to turn in to a promotional blog for Opera.

So, I've been playing with Opera 9 which came out earlier today (in a dual release for Windows and Mac, which is refreshing). It's an impressive package - it's fast, it renders every page I've throw at it so far, it passes Acid 2, supports Canvas and SVG and has a neat widgets implementation. Performance on Google Maps is a bit sluggish but other than that it's been extremely snappy. The tab screenshot thumbnails are a nice touch.

There are two features however that set it head and shoulders above its competitors in terms of raw utility:

You can browse cached documents offline! I'm not sure when other browsers forgot how to do this but it's been years since I've been able to unplug from the network and still view pages that have been saved in my cache.

In fact, this feature is almost too effective: I had to keep double-checking to make sure my WiFi was definitely turned off. A visual indicator that you are viewing an offline document would be a very useful addition.
You can quit your browser and reopen it to the same state. Other browsers have been slow to cotton on to the fact that my browser state is important data - I frequently leave interesting pages open for days at a time and a browser crash causes me real pain. Safari and Firefox both have extensions that enable this but it's great to see it built in to the core product.

Sadly, Opera doesn't persist partially completed form data (so you'll still lose that half-written blog entry if you weren't smart enough to write it in a text editor and paste it in at the last moment) but it's still a huge improvement over the rest.

As far as I can tell those two features have been in Opera since before the current release, but I'd never noticed them before. Here's hoping other browser manufacturers follow suit.

While the interface is leaps and bounds ahead of Opera 6/7, it still has a few crufty edges: the preferences are hard to navigate, the text in the tab screenshot window comes across as an afterthought, there's a randomly placed recycle bin in the upper right hand corner and it took me a while to find a skin I liked (tango cl). The default behaviour for command-clicking a link is to open a new tab and switch to it; my preference is for opening in the background but I can't work out how to change that option (though shift-command-click does what I want). Overall though it rates extremely well.

As usual, it's worth looking over the detailed changelogs (windows, mac). There are some real gems for scripters; Here's the list in full:

Added support for XSLT 1.0 and the XSLTProcessor constructor.

Added support for XPath 1.0.

Added support for DOM level 2 Style Sheets and associated parts of DOM level 2 CSS.

Implemented designMode for rich text editing.

Added support for the CONTENTEDITABLE attribute and contentEditable property.

Implemented support for canvas, as described in the Web Applications 1.0 draft, as well as the opera-2dgame context.

Added support for Audio, as described in the Web Applications 1.0 draft.

Multiple improvements to XMLHttpRequest support.

Added support for onmousewheel events.

Added support for document.load and document.adoptNode.

Added window.getSelection and associated methods.

Improved handling of offsetTop, offsetLeft, and offsetParent.

Removed support for "javascript:" URLs in CSS.

Pages using certain JavaScript events will reload when visited in history. A knowledge base article is available.

I'm going to use Opera 9 as my default browser for the next week or so to see how well it holds up. I'll report back on the experience later.

Tags: browsers, opera, opera9

Opera Mini 2.0

2006-05-11T22:12:25+00:00

Just as I was getting thoroughly sick of the whole X-2.0 trend along comes a product I can really get excited about. Opera Mini 2.0 is a truly lovely piece of software. It's a free web browser for your phone, accompanied by a free proxy:

When surfing with Opera Mini, Web pages are optimized and compressed before being sent to your phone. This means that even though your mobile provider may charge you for the data which is transferred to your phone, the amount of data transferred is significantly less than it would normally be, making mobile surfing cheaper.

Most UK mobile data plans are pretty extortionate. I was quoted over £500 a month for an unlimited plan recently; compare that to Leonard Lin who pays $15 a month in the US. Having a compressing proxy is essential.

In stark contrast to the desktop edition the user interface is beautifully simple, relying mostly on the joypad to navigate with a full-screen editor for entering URLs and filling in forms. Opera's small screen rendering technology is used to linearise the page content while keeping background colours and images intact.

The one feature I'd love to see added is a "reload page with images" menu option. I generally browse with images turned off, and viewing a page with its images requires me to navigate to the settings screen, toggle images on, reload the page and then remember to turn images back off again afterwards.

Opera Mini doesn't appear to support JavaScript, but despite that nearly all the sites I've visited have been perfectly usable. Even Gmail works, thanks to an automatic fallback to their plain-old-HTML interface. With any luck it will become part of the accepted accessibility benchmark - I know I'll be testing sites with it in the future.

Tags: browsers, opera, operamini