Opera community blog

Here at MyOpera we are currently researching on some stress testing applications. Basically, we want to be able to:

• evaluate the impact of performance-related code changes simulating real production load
• have a "cache warm up" procedure

Tools of the trade

There are many stress testing applications out there. We are still looking for alternatives, but so far these seems roughly what we need:

• httperf - a simple HTTP threaded performance measuring application written by HP research labs
• siege - multithreaded stress testing load generator, flexible and simple to use
• jmeter - a Java desktop application that can visually define workload for stress testing, lots of possibilities. Can also analyze web server logs and replicate production load. IMHO, the interface sucks badly.

There's also another common tool for database-only stress testing, super-smack. Probably we will use this for db queries optimization and benchmarking.

Progress so far...

Siege has been the simplest and quickest to set up and use. We already built some custom workload profiles for MyOpera, to test cache contention with production-like load and to warm up our cache/backend servers after application upgrades. It could also be used as a simple functional test tool, for instance to verify that a list of urls are working correctly. But we already have that, and Jmeter is much better for that purpose.

BTW, if there's anyone with JMeter experience, please speak up! I'd love to hear from you... :-)

Hi My Opera members! This is your favourite My Opera lead developer speaking :-)

We have scheduled a hopefully short downtime of systems to get a new release out. Tomorrow, at least for some of us here in Old Europe, at 09:00 UTC, 10:00 CET. There were about 60 squashed bugs and all pre-flight checks show green lights.

We hope to have the smallest possible downtime, but we are preparing the ground for really big and exciting new features, to be released gradually in the next few months!

Stay tuned for the changelog of this release and other stuff... Thank you!

We're kick off the new year with a beast of an update. Let's take a closer look at some of the changes.

New navigation

We got new drop down menus at the top of the page (or tabs, if you are surfing with a mobile). We added these to make it easier for you to find your way between your own page and the community pages. You will find all community related things under "Explore", personal things under "My page", and Opera stuff under... (yes, you got it) "Opera"..

Some of you will surely ask: "What about my page, I use my own CSS. Have you changed any HTML?".

Yes, we have changed the HTML for the top menu but it should look fine on your page because we always include the top menu CSS. In your account pages you can select if you want a black or white top menu, like before. (note: we changed the default settings for this, so some of you might have to reselect it)

The new menus also brings a stronger branding to all of our pages with a sweet My Opera logo on top. This has been done to create a feel of one community.

Faster loading

My Opera now loads faster than before. We have optimized the default design a bit. This is the first step towards building a faster and more efficient site. (more)

Find other members from your country

Now you can easily find other My Opera members from your own country! All you need to do is to make sure that you have selected a country in your profile, and then you will be able to click the country name to see other members.

We have even added features for sorting by last updated status, name, forum posts, or newest members (if you want to see oldest members, just remove &inv=1 from the URL)

Watch > Subscribe

The old "watch" feature has changed name to "subscribe", and you can now find an archive of all your blog and photo subscriptions in one place.

The subscription buttons have also moved from the (no longer existing) black top bar into the page itself. The buttons looks like this, and you can find them next to any blog post or photo album, etc:

The buttons have toggle functionality. This means that if you click them once they will spotlight/subscribe the specified item, and if you click them again you will turn the spotlight/subscription off.

Spotlights

The new spotlight buttons have also moved into the page, next to each item that you can spotlight:

The spotlights are no longer restricted to only 15. Now you can have as many as you like.

Previewing blog themes

It's now possible to preview blog themes, and see what they look like before you apply it.

Smilie drop down

Next to each comment box (or quick reply in the forums) you will now find a smilie drop down, to make it easier to add smilies.

New help section

We have a brand new help section. It's not complete, but we think it's a good start. We also added a link to the help section from the footer of all pages.

New contact pages

The contact pages have been updated in the same style as the help pages.

Forums

We added a direct link to "all posts by this user" at the side of each forum post, and also a link to "find users by country".

Photos

Some HTML have been changed on the photo page because of the new spotlight and subscribe buttons. We have also moved the zoom button, and fixed a bug that made the zoom button visible even for smaller images.

After you have uploaded a new photo to an album, you will now see a small thumbnail that has a direct link to the photo itself.

We fixed a bug so that the number of photo comments is always visible, even when the album is set to friends/members only.

Shoutbox

The encoding issues for Japanese posts should now be resolved.

New default photo

There is a new default picture (a camera) for members who have not yet added their photo.

People > Members

The name of this section has now changed to Members.

Opera

The Opera section has changed. It's now easier to find the skins, and there's even some new Opera buttons available. Why not take this chance to try the latest version of Opera and recommend it to your friends.

News items

If you get a new message, or a notification about a new comment, etc. Then it will be shown in a small bar below the top menus.

Edit status

The edit status feature is now mainly available on your profile page.

Account pages

We have restructured the account pages to make them easier to use.

Messages

Fixed a bug that always showed sent messages as unread. Fixed a Wii CSS bug, and added a number on the top of the inbox tab, showing how many unread messages you have.

We also made it impossible to send messages for new users who have not yet activated their account (this is to stop spammers).

Edit friends/members

We have added a more visible link to the edit friends page and changed the layout from 3 to 2 columns (because it works better for people with lower screen resolutions).

Sign up

The page that is shown after sign up have been changed. Tell your friends to sign up now and take a screenshot, to find out how it looks...

Error pages

The error pages have been slightly updated.

Links

We have fixed some bugs on the links pages, and made sure that it no longer says "URL" below all links without description.

New favicon

We have a new favicon!

And..

a lot of small bug fixes..