The focus of today's snapshot is to fix up some of the bugs introduced HTML5 Drag and Drop, plus fixes to a few more annoying bugs for good measure.

Known issues

• People without at least an SSE2 CPU will see painting issues (black in the user interface)
• Plugins not working on Windows 2000

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.

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• Windows 32-bit / Windows 64-bit
• Mac (Universal Binary 32/64-bit)
• Linux/FreeBSD

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Here at Opera HQ, we're buckling down for the final push before the beta launch of Opera 12. Right now, Wahoo is getting more complete, with even more fun things to come as we get closer to launch. We have one of those fun things today, in fact. This new snapshot includes the first look at the DirectX backend. Most users on Vista and Windows 7 will by default use this backend instead of the OpenGL backend for performance and stability reasons, but be aware that currently WebGL support using the OpenGL backend is more complete than when using DirectX.

There's also another change in this snapshot. After careful consideration and extensive testing, we've decided to let users of Opera 12 opt-in to WebGL and hardware acceleration.

We're doing this for an important reason. We want to bring the first true hardware accelerated browser to market. This means using the graphics processor to boost rendering speeds not only for the pages themselves, but also the UI of the browser. It means making it an awesome experience for as many Opera desktop users as possible, whether they're on Windows XP, Linux or Lion.

But in some cases, our hardware accelerated speeds do not yet beat our incredibly optimized software backend, Vega. Shipping a feature that could actually be less effective at boosting speed is a big no-no, especially if its a final release that many people will use for day-to-day browsing.

Now, if you're reading this blog post, you're probably in the group of people who will want to turn on WebGL and hardware acceleration. You enable these features by setting both opera:config#UserPrefs|EnableHardwareAcceleration and opera:config#UserPrefs|EnableWebGL to 1, then saving and restarting Opera.

Try it in this release and see how you like it. We think it ensures that Opera 12 will be a great release for everyone, whether you are a browser expert or just discovering Opera for the first time.

As Wahoo is approaching a beta release, we're focusing on stability and fixing regressions. This build includes an important performance and stability fix for plugins on Windows, and should speed up scrolling with plugins significantly.

Known Issues

• HTML5 Drag and Drop is work in progress. Things like dragging to and from external applications may not work. Some existing demo sites may not work fully
• HTML5test.com could freeze or show other problems on Mac
• OTW-8246 Opera 64-bit on Windows not supported on Google+
• DSK-361109 Address dropdown not populated when searching page content with multiple words
• CORE-45774 [Windows] [HWA] Border-color messes up background colour for element with border-radius with DirectX
• DSK-357831 [Windows] [HWA] Negative letter spacing with DirectX on 64-bit 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

• Windows 32-bit / Windows 64-bit
• Mac (Universal Binary 32/64-bit)
• Linux/FreeBSD

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With this snapshot we have put a great deal of attention on searching via the address field.

Previously there were some complains that Opera fails on searching parts of URL. From now on it should be much easier to find your favorite pages simply by typing words in address field.

For example, lets say you have important friends on Facebook. Assume you have visited https://www.facebook.com/barackobama previously. You would expect to be able to find it by typing "barack" in the addressbar. Starting from this snapshot you will be able to see proper suggestions in the drop down for the address and title of secure pages.

Handling more than one word provided in the address bar was not handled really well previously, as it resulted in matching only page content. This meant that the URL and title was not taken into account when typing multiple words. This has now been improved upon as well, allowing you to better norrow down your searches.

Try visiting example http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/z77-express-virtu-mvp-benchmark,3174.html and than typing "virtu" or "virtu mvp" in addressbar, like so:

In addition, the ordering of items in the drop down has been improved to better promote nicely matching rows when multiple words have been provided.

Providing entries with patterns similar to "5.60 NOK in USD", "foo.bar baz" or "Info.plist" should now execute the default engine searching instead of trying to open the page, rather than resulting in the "Invalid URL" page being displayed. Though we realise that there is still a little bit more work to be done to improve this even further.

Finally the "Show more" button will not be visible now, if there is only one more row to be displayed

Note that if you don't like to see Google suggestions in front of other items in the dropdown, you might turn it off in the config (this is not a new thing).

Known Issues

• DSK-358448 Runtime error 6025 pure virtual function call at startup Opera Next for some users
• DSK-359770 Out of Process Plugins causing tab related freezes (mostly on startup)
• HTML5 Drag and Drop is work in progress. Things like dragging to and from external applications may not work. Some existing demo sites may not work fully
• HTML5test.com could freeze or show other problems on Mac
• OTW-8246 Opera 64-bit on Windows not supported on Google+ (google plus)
• DSK-361109 Address dropdown not populated when searching page content with multiple words

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

• Windows 32-bit / Windows 64-bit
• Mac (Universal Binary with 32/64-bit)
• Linux/FreeBSD

Read more...

Please welcome focus-oriented URL shortening and the long expected optional favicons in the address field drop-down.

Favicons are off by default, but you can turn them on in the advanced configurations. Remember to save your setting before closing the page. You must also need to restart the browser for it to take effect.

We are trying to utilize the available space in the address bar space as best as possible. To this end, we’ve focused on optimizing what parts of the URL is displayed in the drop-down at different widths. Note in the screenshots below how different levels of the URL is collapsed as the drop-down gets narrower. You should see the most important information—the domain for security and origin, and the document title—in all sizes.

For comparison, here is a screenshot of how it looked in the previous snapshot. You’ll see how important information was lost; in sharp contrast to the refocused address field we’ve introduced now.

The excellent feedback we’ve gotten from the community is our greatest motivator. Keep the good feedback coming!

Known issues

• DSK-358417 (Extension preferences and localStorage lost on upgrade)

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

• Windows
• Mac
• Linux/FreeBSD

Read more...