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Opera Desktop Team

Opera code names uncovered

By Johan Borg. Friday, 16. February 2007, 16:31:14

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We've had some requests lately about where Opera 9.x is heading, so I'll give you a sneak peak into the current projects and their internal code names. We usually prefer code names over version numbers until the product actually ships.


Merlin

Merlin is the current code base, used for 9.0, 9.1 and the coming 9.2. On Merlin the main focus is on stability and only select new features are added. As you can see, the version number of the last preview build was 9.2, which normally indicates new functionality. The new feature is close to completion and will be unveiled here later this month. You have not seen it in a desktop browser before...


- Merlin falcons often hunt by flying fast and low, typically less than 1 meter above the ground, taking prey by surprise. Rolls-Royce used the same code-name for the engine that powered the legendary Spitfire.


Peregrine

The most important planned update to Opera on desktop. Peregrine will contain significant improvements in the user interface, improved standards support, improved performance, thousands of bug fixes and groundbreaking new functionality. In other words: We're pretty excited about it.

Previews of Peregrine will be found on this blog in 2007.

- The Peregrine Falcon is the fastest creature on the planet in its hunting dive, the stoop, in which it soars to a great height, then dives steeply at speeds in excess of 300 km/h. Suzuki named the fastest production motorcycle in the world after the Japanese word for Peregrine, Hayabusa.


Kestrel

Kestrel is the latest addition to our roadmap and fills the gap between Merlin and Peregrine. It will be the first release with rendering improvements from Peregrine. For the first time we will coordinate the desktop release with other Opera products, working towards a more unified Opera experience across devices. If you haven't done so yet, it's time to try out Opera Mini on your mobile phone.

- The Kestrel falcon is able to see ultraviolet, which helps them spot prey while hovering 10-20 meters over the ground. The Rolls-Royce Kestrel engine was later replaced by the Peregrine...

New weekly buildWorking hard...

Comments

FataL 16. February 2007, 20:38

To be clear:
I'm not against extensions, addons, API for them, etc. Just think that it is not piority #1 itself.

Alexis Deveria 16. February 2007, 21:00

@whatever3

If I made that kind of made money, I don't think I'd be hanging around making comments on the Opera Desktop Team blog...

...aah, who am I kidding, I'd be here no matter what kind of money I made. :smile:


Hey...does it also cost them 30% more for Internet Explorer 7? 'cause it's more popular than FF2...

whatever3 16. February 2007, 21:12

yes, as for now, until ie7 usage start to show tendency to overcome ie6 in our consumers target, ie7 is considered extra, opt-in browser. and, hell, it is one. they've fixed lots of things in it, but also created some impressive fcuk-ups.. we still find some impressive bugs in it:) and there is still not many detailed tech reviews of this masterpiece, thus making our work bit harder than with normal, and mostly well-known ie/ff/o bugs. heh, i fell more confident when working with exotic khtml than with ie7

in corporate world adoptions are late, mostly due to massive decision lag, and costs it generates to migrate thousands of workstations. the downtime alone can be worth milions, not counting software etc.

berend ytsma 16. February 2007, 21:13

@whatever3: I thinks it the wrong way of making websites the dayes.
You should first make them Opera and then the others. Most if the time you'll get there faster where you wan't to be.

And for hand writting stuf, Once you'll made them it's easy to adjust them to your liking, You don't have to write everything again for the next job.

Christian 16. February 2007, 21:17

@FataL: well, yes, nice information to refine my Opera Roadmap Prediction. At least I got some names and some wizards' believe is that knowing the name will give certain power ...

@Borg: thanks a lot, this explanations are really interesting and it is very nice to have at least little pieces of official information.

So, let's start guessing again:

Originally posted by Borg:

The new feature is close to completion and will be unveiled here later this month. You have not seen it in a desktop browser before...


Could be magic ERA, as it already works quite a while (maybe with flaws?) but is not officially documented yet for Opera desktop while usual for mobile and devices. The difference to former/current implementation (SSR with media:handheld or View-Small Screen, MSR with Fit to Width, etc) will probably be that the rendering modes could be applied automatically (refined for desktop, probably opt in). Name: Auto-Zoom

Background:

The remaining a bit shorter:
  • Opera 9.2, still based on Merlin, April 2007
  • Opera 9.5, codename Kestrel, including online profile synchronizing (similar to Osync), October/November 2007
  • Opera 10 , codename Peregrine, spring 2008 (although everybody - especially marketing - wishes this would be earlier), for new key features: I have to think about it ;-)

Zeppelin 16. February 2007, 21:23

Since there is no new build this week, I would like to say my opinion about opera in general

I am lawful user of opera (and M2) almost since I am an Internet user,

In addition I don't admire ff in spite I am a linux user and I support open source project.

BUT I regret to say that day by day I am "obliged" to open ff more often because of operas "site incompatibilities".

I wish these problems to be resolved, as no one wants to surf with two browsers...

--------
I wish and hope the best for opera (soon)...

andrew 16. February 2007, 21:24

peregrine.. where does that sound familiar from? took peregrine? :D

Christian 16. February 2007, 21:38

If I may ask a whish for the future code names (Opera 11): Bat Falcon - black, crepuscular and on the 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species

By the way: a good name for Opera Mini seems to be Taita Falcon

chesss 16. February 2007, 22:03

So does Kestrel come after Merlin or after peregrine ?

Nice code names btw

Tim Altman 16. February 2007, 22:09

Merlin -> Kestrel -> Peregrine

origPumu 16. February 2007, 22:15

Originally posted by mkoo:


hmm kestrel and merlin are both gallente frigates at eve online :=)



Nope, that are Caldari-Frigs! :smile:

Simon Houston 16. February 2007, 22:24

I'm guessing kestrel will come after 9.2, like 9.5 or so?

FataL 16. February 2007, 22:28

I'm guessing kestrel will come after 9.2, like 9.5 or so?

That is the reason why they use code-names instead version numbers till it will be clear... :smile:

Serpher 16. February 2007, 22:56

I'm wondering when it will be fixed issue with Transfer Tab in Polish version of Opera. Since Opera 9 this problem is - "Transfery 49710 6" (title of the Transfers Tab; I have a screeshot of this).
On the other hand... Opera could be have a new engine whose would be emulating the FF or IE engine because Opera don't want to show me some graphics on the site and some texts are in wonderings places.

Opera - Rulez!

Tjalve Aarflot 16. February 2007, 23:10

*one* wish for all these birds: update patcher, so we don't have to download the whole installer each time. Not that it take me more than a second to download, but I don't have any need for installing Opera, it's already on my system. I just want to update it now and then.

Oh, and another one: sleeker transfer window / download manager. And an optional widget engine that can start on desktop login or something. Would make all these nice widgets much more useful.

Tamil 16. February 2007, 23:23

Thanks.

:wait:

_Grey_ 17. February 2007, 00:05

Thanks for the info :smile:

Awaiting first Kestrel build with anticipation :smile:

Petter Nilsen 17. February 2007, 01:00

@mkoo: Merlin and Kestrel are actually Caldari frigates, not Gallente p:

Daniel Sitnik 17. February 2007, 03:58

Wow that is cool!
Can't wait for those falcons. :D

Paz 17. February 2007, 04:35

National Geographic Channel, eat your heart out!

Arthur Wilkinson 17. February 2007, 05:57

A new feature that hasn't bee seen in a desktop browser before? Sounds like fun... :wink:

Thanks for the info. Now I'm dying with anticipation for these new versions with cool new features, and extra speed.

Phoenix 17. February 2007, 06:07

too bad. no new builds to fiddle with ... :frown:

Rune Kenneth Meisingset 17. February 2007, 08:35

A new feature that hasn't bee seen in a desktop browser before? Is it 3d canvas?

K.L. 17. February 2007, 08:49

@whatever3:
i`m a web developer as well. and you are right with most ideas.
e.g. lack of oncontextmenu is very disappointing and doesn`t allow opera to stay side by side with ff and ie.

have you seen new widget for DOM? i suppose it will be standard feature now. but it is awful. people don`t do like this! DOM inspector should be core feature but not widget. it`s not handy at all. and where is ajax requests tracer? ff have it. so i still have to you ff for this core feature and opera for other dev things.

questions to all:
what about bookmarks? why i cant edit them right there? why i should open special manager window?
and where is HTML-letters-creation feature at M2? is it so hard to implement? =))))))
what about resend email as attachment feature? sysadmins love it. it`s very usefull for tracing spamers and viruses.

i don`t understand what opera devs do. browser should have feature for both advanced and novice users. but novice will go crazy of opera. can you imagine opera-targeted book "Web for dummies" or "Web in 24 hours"? i`m not.
and all this new standards support like CSS3...... IE is the big one. and untill it doesn`t support something nobody need it in other browsers. is it so hard to understand!

PS
we also have clients willing to have opera browser supported. and i just wonder why they want it. look at browsers (PC) market shares. opera is almost nothing.

SteveKong 17. February 2007, 09:01

I am quite sure that having an engine which emulates Firefox is not a good idea. Perhaps the better way is to give the user the possibility to render some tabs with an external engine, just like an add-on to firefox does.

@tdzark: I totally agree, we need an update mechanism like this and it have to work for useres not beeing administrator.

olli 17. February 2007, 09:02

coviex: If you wonder why your customers want all their users to be able to use their site maybe you are not in the right business? :-p

olli 17. February 2007, 09:06

We will add a automatic updater for a post merlin release

SteveKong 17. February 2007, 09:08

THX!!!

Insight in a current project:
Me: "What's about browser compatibility?"
MH: "The customer specified IE6."
Me: "Firefox, Opera?"
MH: "Nice to have but not needed."
Me: "IE7? It's out and people will use it?"
MH: "Perhaps in a future release."

Pallab De 17. February 2007, 09:09

We will add a automatic updater for a post merlin release


Cool. That is an imporant addition.

K.L. 17. February 2007, 09:35

@olli
you are right. its` a pitty but it`s not my business. i`m just an employee.

as for ALL users. well. a lot of customers even says "f... FF, forget it, just IE".

K.L. 17. February 2007, 09:56

sorry for offtop but here is my part of sociology, observations who like opera (in our company)

don`t like it:
- c- and flash-programmers
- senior managers
like it:
- php- and java-programmers
- middle managers
- designers

illiad 17. February 2007, 10:02

" look at browsers (PC) market shares. opera is almost nothing."

less than a year ago, FF was 'almost nothing' .....
look at the archives here..
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2006/February/browser.php




whatever3 17. February 2007, 10:15

but unlike opera, ff is relatively new player on the market, and opera has 10 years of experience in being a sidekick. unlike opera, ff has extensions, that give users abilityto have their OWN browser [please, do not tell ANYTHING about widgets.. wasted effort]

mostly due to hopeless marketing. a guy in blue panties and these latest owls/falcons thingies.. these are not cool, and you cant underestimate the cool factor.

Edmund Blackadder 17. February 2007, 10:20

@olli

I'd very much like the ability to also get experimental & tech preview builds via the auto-updater. Although I guess it should be opt-in via ini-file or at least fairly obscure preferences setting.

@whatever3

As I agree that there might be other things worth prioritizing over widgets, at least now they're coming to a mobile platform via opera mini(?), where there might be more use for them.

I bet a lot of the stuff we're asking for is in the works for Kestrel or Peregrine though, so at least there's some light at the end of the tunnel.

A.Ruzanov 17. February 2007, 12:35

@coviex
@whatever3
+1

@Indyan

I wanted to change my ua to fake alexa toolbar. No one in the forums was able to tell me, how to change my ua in opera without using other software like proxomitron.


opera:config#ISP|ID = SV1; Alexa Toolbar. Need restart.

alekksander 17. February 2007, 13:01

bad peregrine....

alekksander 17. February 2007, 13:10

ps. opera is like drug, you thing its weak and useless until you try and get addicted. i know it from my own experience..

ps2. mine avatar looks like a polaroid photo...

desperado666 17. February 2007, 14:05

Feature request

* Activate/ disable urlfilter.ini
* new email notify / notification area (Linux/Gnome)
details here http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=155156
* alsa sound support


* Flash 9 Support (some websites are not working with flash 9)
e.g. www.dsf.de , www.o2online.de




B 17. February 2007, 14:06

HI All,

i HAVE JUST SEEN THAT THE FLAW ON WWW.VIPMAIL.HU HAS BEEN FIXED.

THANKS A LOT GUYS

Lilo 17. February 2007, 14:13

Please work forward for a »real« web developer tool.
The current JavaScript solution is not really a useful extension for webprogrammers.

* Missing JS debugger
* Problematical Userinterface

Sorry to say this.

FataL 17. February 2007, 14:53

Originally posted by coviex:

and all this new standards support like CSS3...... IE is the big one. and untill it doesn`t support something nobody need it in other browsers. is it so hard to understand!

Sorry, but you so wrong here.
If not Opera, Firefox, Safari with new standards support we probably would see inupdated IE 6 forever.
Also you should know what "progressive enhancement" and "graceful degradation" are.

Khaled Khalil 17. February 2007, 15:28

@devs
congratulations, your brouser (ours) seems to be the only one to pass this test: http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html#top
for further information: http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/guide/

Edmund Blackadder 17. February 2007, 15:37

@Khaled Khalil

Is the nose suppose to turn blue as long as you're on the same horisontal *line* as the nose within the smiley face?

Vertically you pretty much have to touch the nose, or at least come close to it, but horisontally you only have to be anywhere within the smiley.

Is this correct behavior?

Mehmet 17. February 2007, 16:10

So exciting, looking forward to it.

A.Ruzanov 17. February 2007, 16:46

@olli

We will add a automatic updater for a post merlin release


He will download small delta-patch or full installer?

Viljami 17. February 2007, 18:05

As there wasn't new build this week, I think I could tell you my thoughts about Opera in genarel.
I'm always excited about new features, but Opera should also update their old features. I agree with desperado666 feature requests and I would like to point out some more features that Opera should maintain.

I've a dream that one day I could have all my stuff like mail and feeds, etc in Opera, but nowdays the rss in Opera isn't so usefull.
-It doesn't show tags of the feeds: <category>-element in RSS 2.0
-the options for feeds are very minimalist: one cannot even deside if he/she wants the notification (or I've not found it)
-The filtering system is kinda poor.
-and one cannot combine several feeds.
These are all essential features when (for example) one is subscribing feeds from news sites that don't have several feeds by category, only one feed for all news. But if the user is interested only in computer related news, he/she could turn of the notification from the news feed itself and make filter that notifies only when it catches feed with "computer-tag" on it.

Then there are some other minor disadvantages with mail (mostly with not-so-good filters) and FTP (well the lack of usefull FTP is major problem, but I think developpers know it and we'll one shiny day have it), but I'dont think this is place for me to complain about them, since they are minor things. But I'd like to hear from some developper what is the logic in following: in bookmarks the sites are arranged in alphabetical order, but when I perform "open every site in this folder" Opera opens the sites in order they were added to bookmarks.

But overall Opera is best browser I know. Thanks developpers, you are doing great.

strat89 17. February 2007, 19:16


"You have not seen it in a desktop browser before..."

Boggles the mind.

Yahia 17. February 2007, 19:17

Well, I must say I'm excited about teh new feature you're saying here...
But couldn't you improve existing ones?

I don't think I'm the only one who needs:
1. to customize the headers & footers when printing
2. a real and integrated webdev tool
3. an improved caching system

jeroo 17. February 2007, 20:49

I believe Netscape have code named their browser Dodo? :wink:

My guess is that Peregrine will be wild!

jeroo 17. February 2007, 20:54

Can anyone clarify the situation with Opera's UsageReport. Does it upload automatically and is it still useful for Opera dev's?

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