This is the weekly Sage of Windsong (charles hogan)

Well I just returned from watching men in black three staring will smith. It was just what I needed a relief from the worries of the world for a few hours. It was light and entertaining as I expected will to do. Now I think that I will return to beta testing Opera 1250 soon to be Opera 13

Hello Opera Fans ,

I haven't had much to report on the Progress of Opera 12 for the Last few months. As you know Norway had been dealing with some traumatic issues this summer.These events occurred in Oslo Norway the Home of Opera's Corporate headquarters.

This tragic event is One that we hope will never repeat itself ever again in Norway. One of the staff members of Opera ,our own harrvard was supplying one of the few live feeds of News of the events as they unfolded that horrific day.

As you would expect the events were quite disruptive to all businesses in Norway. The Opera community the world over shared their grief and sorrow.

With the Famous Nordic courage, The Opera staff returned to there jobs determined to show the world that they could not be defeated. Work has resumed on Opera 12 at a blinding pace. Opera wahoo 12 is preparing to leave it's per-alpha mode and move into Beta.

Many of the improvements that the user will notice but not see will be Implement full support for new ECMAScript 5 features For us technologicly challenged types it means more speed

on the top end the first thing that you will notice is a little star in you address field.

This is the New and much faster way to add or remove sites from your speed dial or bookmarks. It has a simple dropdown menu to select from this will change adding a speed dial button or book mark into a one click operation .The new feature will remind you that you have previously place a site in speed dial or bookmarks and the menu will change to a remove mode . the star will be yellow if there is a existing marker.as you can see in the image below. I really think that you will grow rather fond of this new improvement to Opera.The star is just part of the many subtle but powerful changes and improvements coming to Opera 12. you will now be able to add a bookmark or Speed Dial Button at the click of a mouse

You will soon discover a few more improvements as you explore Opera 12. One is in the mail system. The way you delete messages has changed just a bit. This will make it a great deal more convenient and simpler managing messages. When you delete a e-mail that you have received it is no longer removed from the view. A trash can favorcon will replaced the open envelope. You message in now marked for deletion . if you change you mind a wish to UN-delete the e-mail you can do that from the same area.A message will only be completely removed from view and the folder by emptying the trash bin.

There has been a great deal of fixes and core changes in opera that you have been waiting for and will love. In fact even though Opera 12 is still "Pre-Alpha" ,you will be hard put to find the few bugs that are still being worked out. Opera Developers are putting a great deal of heart and hard work into Opera 12.

OperaUnite is now in perfect operating order. there is no longer the nagging 404 page not found for the Unite Home Admin page. however you will have to reinstall your unite applications after you first Install opera 12.

Voice is working as ever in 12. I discovered that if I opened a page in a background tab voice will work the first time in most cases. If I Open the page on top I will have to reload the page to get speak to work.



Another new feature that has been added is using the keyboard space bar to scroll down the page which is very convenient when reviewing long pages

Just a little hint about what it might feel like it hop into the driver seat of Opera 12. some Lab test have shown that a certain Browser named after south African tours at a whopping 100 times slower that opera. And a certain Shiny browser 30 times slower and Opera don't even have Hardware Acceleration yet

that is all that I have to report to you right now . Now that the production pace has picked up you should be seeing quite a few more entries between Now And the Christmas Holidays. We All know that Opera loves to play Santa and leave big gifts under the tree

cheers!!

Opera Desktop browser was given a completely new look today with the unveiling of Project Featherweight Today. At first glance, It is as refreshing as a cool Norwegian Mountain Breeze Dancing through a forest.It Appears that the days of bulky cartoon Favicons and ballooning buttons are gone.OperaNext Project Featherweight has cut to the chase and is all business. The new Layout is quiet professional looking and geared to easy access to key functions.

Now here is a brief list of the changes and improvments made to the Interface.

• Brand new toolbar icon set
• Brighter, softer colors for backgrounds and borders
• Padding and alignment improvements
• Updated status bar design and content
• No more button borders in the address bar
• The Home and Fast Forward buttons now optional
• New "tab fold" attention state - no more blue blob
• New window gradient for OS X

As you Can see , Opera is Stripping down to Fighting weight for the world Title Browser bout. I Hate To say it, but Opera is beginning to resemble a certain other competitor who we won't mention here,who's name starts with a "c" ( Here is where I am suppose to insert the disclaimer stating that any similarities between Opera Featherweight and "other" Browsers, both living and dead is purely coincidental )

Throw in the Changes and improvements that has be made to Speed Dial(Inserting buttons), Presto 2.9.168 for improved CSS parsing speed,and Mail improvements .And I can say with confidence that Opera Users are going to be in for a Pleasing and Impressive mid Summer experience when 11.50 Goes Public.

cheers!!

Hello Opera Fans,

It Has Been A while since I have updated you on the Progress Of Opera 11.10 code named "Barracuda". The Developmental Team was hard at work all weekend, with two rare weekend updates. One of which was posted on a Sunday . today Opera released Opera 11.10 Release Candidate 4 for final test before a Public Release scheduled for tomorrow unless any release blocking bugs are detected.

I Think That you will be Proud of the work that your Team has put into Opera 11.10. Opera Barracuda as the name implies is capable of quick burst of speed when need and also long silent runs when it needs to reach it's prey. Opera 11.10 is both stable and Fast.

The First of The Changes that you will notice after you install will be A Item that I spoke of in My Last Post Speed Dial. Speed Dial has been Completely Remodeled and improved. When you First Load Speed Dial, You May Panic thinking that you are having major Problems with the Install because you Old Speed Dial Configuration may not look quite right in the New Speed Dial. Not to worry Correcting it easy.





Open up the all new Speed Dial Configuration and get to work customizing Speed Dial to your Own Personal Taste. As you see you can now set the number of columns that you have or let Opera do it for you . and while you are there you can pick a background image for SD and set the zoom level. [a little note here: Opera will refresh the button image when you reset the zoom . That is normal]

You may Have noticed that you have a few new buttons added that you didn't have before.This may have been a result of a few plugs for new myopera community portals, fast mail and other stuff.As alway it is a simple task to right click and change



Here you might want to note that if you uncheck the Hide [+] in SD config you will find a "HUGE PLUS BUTTON" at the end of your buttons . that is how you now add buttons to Speed Dial .


when you are done adding buttons , Check Hide again and the "HUGE PLUS BUTTON " will vanish .

[Note: Some Older Opera Skins May NOT be compatible with Opera 11.10 It may be time to go shopping for a newer Skin..]

Another little Item that I found which may or may not be new is in the right click image menu . "Use image for Speed Dial Background ".

For The Web Designers


You will find that Opera is now supporting a whole range of Hot new HTML5 and CSS3 features such as linear gradient

Also their is now support for another kewl CSS3 standard, multi-columns which will save you a world of work. with this you set your style then just type in one div and the columns will fill like word wrap. the three columns here are all type in one div.



The last thing that I would like to mention is the addtion of support for the new webp image format

This is a new open source image format that will some day replace the jpg standard. From what I can tell of webp the advantages to it is you can pack it down about 28 or so smaller that a jpg with about the same image quality . This will be a big help to break the Internet log jam . and it could speed the loading of pages on your site.

Lol, Even as I type, Opera Developers have posted yet another RC4.1 update ( I think that they need to cut off the Coffee) As always there has been a huge number of fixes and core changes to Opera 11.10 I think that you will enjoy the fruits of all there hard work as I do..

Opera Barracuda Rocks!!

cheers!!

There is a New Shark in the tank !! It is the New Opera Code named "Barracuda" read about it here http://my.opera.com/RomDos/blog

Whoot, Here it is, the first hard Proof that the Hard Work that The Opera Developers have put into Opera 11.01 has Paid off.

For the first time ever Opera has passed both the Internet Exploder and FireFox on the list at the prestigious Peacekeeper Browser Speed testing Site !!!!!Opera is Now Running head to head with chrome. Opera is Now second on the listing good job gentlemen.....






This Screen shot says it all

cheers!!

Happy Holiday and New Year,

Well fans we have started out the new year with a great new Release of Opera 11 and a world of new extensions to play with. Which brings me to the Point of this Post,extensions. To date there are 302 new extensions available for installation. They cover a tremendous range of new features and functionality for Opera that we never had before.This is why I have decided to start reviewing extensions an well a breaking Opera news. I plan to muddle thought the different new or Outstanding extensions one at a time and review the hot items as they become available for download.

One trend that I see that is very good for Opera is the fact that many third party developers have begun to take notice of Opera. Many have developed extensions for Opera such as "LastPass","Readit" just to name a few. One such third party extension that caught my attention recently was the new "Web of Trust", better know as "WOT", extension for improved web security.

Did you ever wish that you had know what type of site you were getting ready to enter? Were you going to find yourself buried in spam after visiting a site. wish that you had never gone there? or have you spent hours researching a online merchant trying find out if it was safe to make a purchase? Do you wounder what you kids are looking at when your not home? If your answer is yes to any of these questions, then "WOT" is going to be a must have extension for you!!!

Web of Trust is a safe browsing tool, which warns you about risky sites that cheat customers, deliver malware or send spam.


Web Of Trust can be found with this link

Web of Trust is a Peer driven web site rating extension that has been available in most other modern browsers for a while and is now available for Opera 11. This extensions is powerful additional personal protection tool for you Opera web browsing experience. WOT has quite a few Security tools accessible with the click of the mouse. Among these are search security rating Icons placed in your search results so you can know where you are going at a glance.There too a pop-up rating chart when you hover over the icon.there is also warning screens that are set to your personal preferences.if you go to a web site and want to check there rating or rate the site yourself just click on the extension Icon button. There is so much more to tell about this powerful extension that I will move to screen shots to save space.

Here is a Shot of the search Icon add-in at work. I did a search that I know would pull up some doubtful sites


As you can see the suspect site has a red icon. The rating panel shows that it had a low safety rating. It is not the kind of site you want to visit! You might want to note that there is a child safety rating. You can set up WOT to block any sites that have a low child rating

At this point you may be wondering where WOT gathers there rating data. An that answer is you and millions of other users like you. the wot extension has a build in peer rating poll so you can add you rating and comment on the site instantly . As seen in the shot below.



As you can clearly see You can control your setting and learn how to use the Web of Trust by accessing ether setting or guide in this panel.

Another Item that I liked was the site by site rating system. It is active each time that you enter a site that has be rated. There will be a yellow light on the wot button to lets you know that a rating for the site is available. Click on the button to view the rating for the site you are on, as seen below.



At this point I need to mention for the sake of honest reporting that there is a tiny bug extension bug that affects the pop-up panel .The width shrinks with each click of the button till it closes entirely then it resets to full size. This was the only thing that I found wrong with a otherwise flawless security extension. I have consulted with the opera developers and have been assured that the bug would be corrected in future releases. However I did find a good work around for this is to click on the post comments link and edit and view ratings from that page. Ah new Technology what would we do with out it! lol life would be so simple if there were no bugs to deal with...

To summarize, Combine with the already tremendously Powerful Opera 11 Security Features adding the WOT extension will make you almost bullet proof. remember a informed decision is the best security you can have the web and WOT can help you with that. With all the Holiday goodies out there and the kids home surfing for the season , it is a good time to review you system security. I think that you will find that the "Web Of Trust" is a must have item as is did every with the tiny faults. I can live with the bug till there is a fix in order to get the great added security.

cheers!!

P.S. The WOT home page has a complete set of tutorial youtube videos to get you going fast and great community support.

Whoot , I am having a great time beta testing the public Opera 11 beta!! you should try it.

That's Right,

You hear it first here!! With the latest Snapshot Opera had enabled web sockets for testing. For all you technologically challenged types, this simply means that Opera will be opening up to a world of new and fun things on the web. With a web socket Opera will have full duplex communication with a web site.

For you Gamers, you know that full duplex communication is what you have when you use your multi player games online. With this new feature you will not even have to leave your browser in the future. It will be a matter of sign up log-in and play. no installing the games needed!!!


Take a look into the future..... not available to the public just yet



This is going to be fun for Christmas note: the sample can now include Opera in the list of compatible browsers with this new technology. Web sockets will open us up to a whole world of applications that need a two way connections such as video chat, instant messaging, collaborating online work, sharing video editing in real time just to name a few things that might be done with Opera soon. It's use is limited by the imagination of web developers only.

I don't know about you but I am getting excited about the future of Opera and the Internet. So keep in touch right here for updates on the horizon

cheers!!

Greetings Fans,
For the Past few weeks The Opera Desktop team Has been as tight lipped about upcoming new features in Opera as Steve Jobs is about new I-phones. The Beta testers have considered kidnapping haavard and forcing him to watch old chrome speed ads till he revealed the secret of what the new features might be. Since the new Snapshot with the new features is due to be released sometime tomorrow, we decided not to risk it and would just wait. (lucky for haavard)

However their has been a few tiny leaks here and their. What this blogger did manage to glean, might newsworthy. Whatever they are adding will be in the side panel... and "might" have something to do with one of two things, the Mail or RSS feeds. Beta Tester have been speculating that The RSS News feeds will get their own button and folder, separate from the mail folder . I think would be a nice improvement.

As we all know, the mail routine development has been neglected for some time now during the race to enable HTML5 in Opera . A long overdue overhaul of the mail system would be much appreciated by Opera users.

For now, one can only guess as to what the New features could be. Second guesses are still flying around in the Shapshot chat room. Some think they will enable Hardware Acceleration for a test drive in this next snapshot. Some think it might be a calendar , and some were swearing it would be changes in opera unite.

I Guess what ever the "New Feature" is, We All will have to wait till tomorrow to find out. I am sure that whatever it is, it will be a great new Feature for Opera.

cheers!!

P.S. Opera Mini is also now #1 in 9 of the 11 Next-11 nations...Just became 1st in Iran and Turkey. Opera Mini now #1 in 3 out of 4 BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China