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hot and lively

Saturday, 5. April 2008, 13:46:23

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Once upon a time, there was only one important free mail service. When I left Oslo University to go to London and knew I was going to loose my student address, this was where I went to get a new mailbox. And even a couple of years later, when I started working for Opera, bugs affecting Hotmail were top-top-top priority. (Opera 7.51's bug 143675, "Opera deletes random messages from my Hotmail inbox" remains one of the scariest bugs I've analysed. Few bugs match that one in obvious and devastating violation of the user's trust.)

Well, how times have changed... A quick search of bugs filed for the respective services since GMail launched shows that there are roughly 3 times more GMail-bugs than Hotmail bugs in the bug tracker since 2004. Apparently, GMail's popularity has skyrocketed while Hotmail's has dropped, right?

Not so fast. Sometimes I see lists of E-mail addresses wherever random people register for newsletters or sign up for something in a reception. Technical people who tend to use Opera more frequently may lean heavily towards GMail, but among the general population Hotmail / Windows Live Mail is still a giant.

This is why I'm very glad to say that it should now be possible to use Hotmail's AJAXy interface with Opera 9.2x and 9.5. It's thanks to a sophisticated browser.js patch from David Bloom and an extra "spoof as Firefox" setting. If you're a Hotmail user, let me know how it works for you!

it's so nice to say ... goodbye!new spec for old key events

Comments

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Could you elaborate on how we should be able to get this to work? Hotmail still shows me the 'light' interface, which is 'better for my browser'. I may be blind but I can't find a way to select the new interface.

By F_V, # 5. April 2008, 14:20:25

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I blogged about it a while ago. At least at that point hotmail did hide the upgrade link in opera. Se screenshot in my blog. I am on opera mini now so i can't be bothered to test again right now. But you should be able to upgrade using ie then ushe microsoft live hotmail advanced interface in opera.

By NoteMe, # 5. April 2008, 15:35:20

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F_V: it should start working more or less automatically when Opera has fetched the site patching updates. You can do a "Help > Check for updates" and see if that works.

Other things to check

* On http://www.opera.com/docs/browserjs/ , the final bullet point in first list should contain a date - Match 21st 2008 or later should be the right version.

* If you log in to mail.live.com and look at "Tools > Advanced > Error console" you should see a message that starts "Opera has modified the JavaScript on mail.live.com (FireAnt.Debug.Trace tries to use arguments.callee.caller". (There will be many other reported errors, select "JavaScript" in the bottom right drop-down to find this more easily)

Finally, I think you don't need to restart Opera but I know Hotmail has some "this is an unsupported browser" cookies, so it may help if you still have problems after checking for updates.. Let me know how it goes!

By hallvors, # 5. April 2008, 20:01:17

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I see that it tries to load the ajaxy version, but I get the "Is this taking too long? Try the classic version" message.

By burnout426, # 6. April 2008, 05:43:36

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It works on 9.2x, but on 9.5 build 9864 it stucks on loading (Is this taking too long? Try the classic version)

By Black Hope, # 6. April 2008, 06:33:37

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OK, it magically started working today when logging in.

In 9.2 it works, although quite sluggishly. Other thing is that random text selections seem to occur, especially when using spatial navigation.

In 9.5 I can't get past the Loading screen.

By F_V, # 6. April 2008, 11:06:53

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9.5 had some known issues with JavaScript recently but I saw it working in a VERY new internal build. You may have to wait for the next weekly, sorry about that..

By hallvors, # 6. April 2008, 12:26:36

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@hallvors: Any reason hotmail fixes made it into browser.js and not gmail2 fixes? Just curious.

By fearphage, # 6. April 2008, 17:29:32

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How do I install this ?

By dapxin, # 8. April 2008, 04:38:57

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Nothing to install. It is automatic. At best, you can go to Help > Check for Updates to make it happen right now.

By fearphage, # 8. April 2008, 05:33:20

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fearphage: while I don't have really strict rules for what goes in, GMail 2 was not that much of a priority for several reasons: AFAIK it's still in development, some issues seemed like they should be fixed by us in core and the timing for core fixes in Kestrel was quite good, some things have been fixed by GMail, and finally I don't think end users notice that much of a difference between GMail 1 and GMail 2. At the moment Hotmail is a more stable target and less likely to fix things for Opera on their own. I may be wrong about any of those fuzzy factors in which case we perhaps should add patches for GMail 2.

By hallvors, # 8. April 2008, 15:00:56

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What is the date on the latest browser.js? I'm seeing:
The active browser.js file is Opera 9.50 , March 21, 2008.
But I thought it might be more recent than that..?

By kyleabaker, # 8. April 2008, 20:15:49

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That's the current version.

By hallvors, # 10. April 2008, 17:25:24

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@fearphage: You're familiar with the Gmail2 url that lets the latest Kestrel build login properly, right, ergo, no gmail2 fixes needed...?

By kamalesh, # 16. April 2008, 20:29:34

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Originally posted by kamalesh:

ergo, no gmail2 fixes needed
That might be going a little too far. Without any fixes, some aspects of gmail will be ugly and less functional. That url will get you into gmail2 and it will be "good enough" but it is not the same experience as using the script.

By fearphage, # 17. April 2008, 11:49:07

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Is it yet pushed in the portable version? I gotta ask it's people.

By BaselXXX, # 22. April 2008, 17:40:43

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I got it to use the fulll version on my Mac in Opera by masking as FireFox, and it works well :yes:

By Chas4, # 30. April 2008, 00:11:08

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