Thoughts

Since the post-Opera9.5alpha1 release, Opera supports APNG. Now I was looking which standards Opera support or not. I found interessting pages and I thought what will come in the next releases. But I was also thinking about supporting standards in future releases (not only Opera9.5).
Here is my list I could collect. Two weeks ago I posted Operas compatibility to other browsers and noticed that not standarded tags were good to supported (old tags, which are on old historical pages)
My list also shows the status of the actual status of implemention of standarded scripts (sometimes the results rely on Opera9, sometimes on Opera 9.5alpha) I tried to get a full list with my resources or test-cases!) As you can see here(for graphics support and here(for script-languages) Opera should support all to get the list full and have no problems with othe browsers

graphics-Support
- JBIG 2
- JPEG 2000 (only Webkit native-support at this moment)
- MNG (only KHTML native-support at this moment)
- JNG (only KHTML native-support at this moment)
- PNG support (missing support for: Gamma correction for iCC-profile[tasman-support]; Color correction[tasman-support]; Interlacing; Integrity checking)
- full svg (at that time: 93,4%)(img tag)(In Opera9.5)
- animated svg in css
- SVG as a background gradient
- Rounded corners using border-radius
- Border-image(Safari supported!)
- Animated Favicons (at that time only Firefox supports)

Web standards
- HTML 4.01 (at that time: 86%)
- XHTML 1.0 changes (at that time: 92%)
- XHTML 1.1 changes (at that time: 58%)
- DOM (at that time: 84%)
- CSS 2.1 (at that time: 94%)
- CSS 3 changes (at that time: 19%) [web fonts]
- @font-face
- Opacity (rgba and hsl / hsla)
- resize
- text-justify:newspaper
- word-break:break-word
- box-shadow
- Multi-column
- text-stroke

Protocols
- native wais and gopher support
- better FTP-client
- better torrent-client
- PIM support
- BiDi support

other
- native Mikroformat
- native PDF support(not only at mac!)
- a build-in support for wmp/quicktime/etc

Resources
SVG support
HTML; XHTML; CSS2.1; CSS3 changes; DOM

By reading a really good article about programming webpages working in different browsers correctly (mainly for IE and FF); I get the link to this page and this page.

The two pages about the Proprietary Tags from Netscape and IE.

Although all of this tags aren't used by new pages, there are enough old, not updated, pages which have these tags in use.

Opera want to be more compatible to other browsers (or lets say to webpages). To get a step further Opera should add these old, unpopular tags for downward compatibility!

The tags that are used in:
For netscape
<blink>
<ilayer>
<keygen>
<layer>
<multicol>
<nolayer>
<server>
<spacer>

For IE

<bgsound>
<comment>
<marquee>

From these 12 tags are only basefont; marquee and blink supported by Opera(I discovered in the documentation on opera.com). I think is is really poor. Why don't support the ofter tags? (I know that some goes/went really on your/mine nervs)

On my last visit of my Opera/browser blogs I get one good, interesting and important impression: opera is an internet suit(nothing new) but is not really good in it!

How came I to this conclusion? It is really simple. The webbrowser (of course the most used object in the suit) is really good (especially in standards and secured session).

The problem is not that Opera has many implemented features! I think this is a good thing. Some are often used, some less or never used(depends on every user). But how they are implemented!

There are some users, which criticize that the numbers of programmers should rise proportional to the new implemented features.

Opera has got some features I want to have a closer look on:

• the IRC - client
  
• the "FTP - client"
  
• notes
  
• mail / M2
  
• download manager / bit torrent - support
  

IRC - client
I used the IRC a long time ago. I tested a few IRC clients. At first was Trillian. I used it to start in the quakenet, I had no experience with IRC and Trillian was already used for ICQ/AIM/Y!M
It was not really good, because you have really poor features.
After that I came to my favourite: mirc. I think it is the most used application for the IRC. It is really full of options and features.
After I had tested a few clients more, I came to opera, because I didn't want to install another application on the PC of my girl friend. And I was really shocked how opera is minimal.

FTP - client
What happened to me was really analog for the ftp compared to the IRC! Opera has only the ability to download or to look in folders on the server. The ability to upload something isn't included! I was really shocked, because even the Internet Explorer has this ability (ok, not good and totally buggy, but it has!)

notes
the notes are quit helpful. I'm a very forgetful person. So I'm very happy not have to search and install an extension/addon like the Firefox. But the ability to save the notes on the hdd or to share them with over persons/pc aren't already implemented. I'm working on 4 workstations in different buildings at the moment and it goes on my nerves that I can't sync the notes/feeds/mails/speeddial/etc.!

mail / M2
Why this buggy, wrong implemented IMAP-support? You read that I'm working on different places. To have all my mails on the same place I used for my important accounts IMAP. I think I have not to comment more on this topic

download manager / bittorrent - support
The download manager is good as the managers of their big competitions. But why not be better? Why do so many people take an extra download-manager like [url= http://www.getright.com/ ]getright? Because they are good! They have this, I was waiting since I changed from IE5 to something different! Nothing happened in the world of browsers. They slept. They forgot to implement the ability to
- start later the download (schedule);
- take more threads (one file is split up in many fragments and is downloaded at the same time faster);
- prioritize the downloads
and many more things.

And now my conclusion: Opera is really good in webbrowsing (newsfeeds and some other features), but have too many missed good and essential features in many protocols. But I hope this will change in future! (Like the M2; which will become totally reprogrammed and get a new and better imap-support)?
Maybe some time opera will also support gopher and wais ^^
Opera seems to the classic program that has implemented everything but is beaten by every single application, which is spezialisized (and often programmed by one or two persons)
It is really interesting that I was / am looking to old and new browsers for features that opera hasn't implemented or which would change my life and at the end I find implemented features that have many missed features!