This is the first time I'm posting on the desktop team blog, so let me introduce myself quickly.
I'm Remigiusz Bondarowicz and I'm leading the desktop team in Poland.

For the last couple of months we have been working hard on bringing
Opera Widgets onto the next level … first-class web applications.

Today we posted an Opera Labs release , so you can already preview the result!

With the new Opera Widgets for Desktop we managed to break the dependency between widgets and the browser interface. From now on you don't have to have the Opera Browser open to run a widget. Furthermore, each widget runs in a separate process and integrates with the platform much better. We also give into your hands a new widget mode called “Application” so you can equip your widgets with the system default window decoration theme.
These are just some of the many new features and enhancements introduced with the new Opera Widgets for Desktop.
For a complete list of features please refer to the article Opera Desktop Widgets Evolved.


Warning:
This is a development snapshot: it may contain some bugs and incomplete features.

¡Hola! We released 9.64 today. This release is a recommended security upgrade for all those running the latest stable releases. See the Security Group blog for some more details.

Changelogs are available:
Windows
Mac
Linux/UNIX

Go download it - and browse the web securely!

We released 9.62 today, which addresses some security issues. This release is a recommended upgrade for all those running the latest stable releases.

Changelogs are available:
Windows
Mac
Linux/UNIX

Go download it!

…closer to 9.60 - with a special attention to our Chinese mail users

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.

Known Issue

• Dragonfly is still a bit unstable…
  

Changelog

• Several stability fixes
  
• Fixed copying of multiple entries from history manager
  
• Fixed DCC transfers in IRC
  
• Fixed quick find in feeds
  
• Added popular Chinese mail providers in mailproviders.xml
  

Download
Windows
Windows Classic
Macintosh
UNIX

Today's post will be a bit unusual in the sense that it won't be about Opera itself, but rather about how Opera is brought to you. This post will attempt to explain to you how we get from a lump of source code that can be compiled in a lot of different ways with many different options to the Opera packages that you can download and install from this blog.

Install? That is already a complex process on its own. You do it once and never think about it again, but the fact is that installation is a crucial process and it has to work properly, otherwise you can't enjoy your favorite software! So, how do we fit all our code in an executable, then pack it in an installer?

There are essentially two processes that take part here: Building and packaging. We have a build system that realizes both of them. The first part of it is a web interface that collects build requests from everyone and then dispatches them to our build servers, each of which can make a build for the requested OS. The second part is a script, partly different for each OS, running on each build server which takes care of building and packaging.

The building part is pretty much the same on each platform: it obtains the requested version of the source code, compiles it with the right options and builds it into an executable (and libraries). The compilation part is taken care of by a compiler specific to the platform on which the build is made and it mostly takes care of itself, as long as the source code is correct.

At that point, everything is ready for packaging, and the script becomes very different depending on the OS. I will talk more specifically about packaging on Windows, since I am responsible for the Windows part of the build system.

There are two kind of packages on Windows: MSI packages made with InstallShield and "Classic" packages made using an old version of the WISE installer. The WISE installer is relatively easy to configure. It takes a sort of installation script, written in its own scripting language, and just executes it. It uses an additional DLL to realize functions that are not possible with only the script itself (like detecting Windows Vista). Although it is nice and easy, the WISE installer is not very well adapted to Windows versions more recent than Windows 98.

InstallShield is a much more powerful tool and MSI installers are a lot more complicated to put together. I won't get into much details here, but there is a huge amount of configuration that can be applied to an InstallShield package. It relies on an ISM file (Installer definition) which is XML formatted and indicates what the package should do, once compiled.

The packaging script starts by opening the installer definition file and set up a few things in it, preparing languages and translations of the installer itself. It enumerates all the files that need to be in the package and puts them in the right place. After a few more tweaks it builds the MSI package. The process is done once for each MSI package. The WISE installer is built along with the english-only MSI package but the process is trivial in comparison.

Maintaining and improving the build system and packaging scripts is no small task, but also an important task. Without it all builds and packages would have to be made manually!

This was it, a small peek at a hidden, but important part of Opera development.

In other news, our QA team has started their own blog - head over to the new QA blog for more peeks "under the hood".



Changelog:

• Fixed a URL encoding issue in javascript: URLs
  
• Fixed an issue with the BBC iPlayer RealPlayer plugin not working
  
• Several stability fixes
  
• Fixed a problem where GMail would not load
  

Download
Windows
Windows Classic
Macintosh
UNIX