Release Notes

• This release includes significant security enhancements and fixes vulnerabilities in previous Opera versions and is a recommended upgrade. Upgrading is free of charge for users who have purchased an Opera 7 license.
• The release features whitelisting of top-level domains that have implemented anti-homographic character policies or otherwise limited the available set of characters to prevent URL spoofing through use of internationalized domain names (IDN).
• Registrars wishing to be added to Opera\'s whitelist must inform Opera Software of their policies and have these approved.

At first Glance

• New and improved security features
• Voice support
• \"Fit to window width\" abolishes horizontal scrolling
• Improved default menu and toolbar setups
• Support for XmlHttpRequest giving full Gmail support
• New Start bar gives easy access to useful features
• Notification of blocked pop-ups
• Simple retrieval of closed pages and blocked pop-ups.
• Elegant e-mail attachment handling
• Improved newsfeed reader
• Automated weekly check for new updates
• New User JavaScript feature

A separate changelog listing changes since Beta 3 is available.

Changes since 7.54u2
User Interface

• Improved default toolbar and menu setup. Most important changes:
  • Messaging and newsfeed menus added dynamically as accounts and subscriptions are set up.
  • \"Window\" menu is added if user opts not to display close buttons on each tab in Preferences > General.
  • Removed \"Navigation\" menu.
  • New Start bar drops down from the address field to allow quick access to home page, bookmarks, and the user\'s most visited pages.
  • New View bar toggled by button on address bar contains settings for modifying the page view, including new \"Fit to window width\" feature.
  • Yellow security bar displayed inside address field on secure pages.
• Improved preference dialog. Most important changes:
  • Split into four tabs; General, Wand, Web pages, and Advanced.
  • Added preferences for showing notification pop-ups for messages, blocked pop-ups, and completed file transfers (Preferences > Advanced > Notifications)
• The former \"Customize toolbars\" dialog is now located in Tools > Appearance and includes the skin settings.
• Notification of blocked pop-ups from trashcan drop-down button on page bar, which also allows for retrieval of closed pages and blocked pop-ups.
• Added dialog for reporting sites that do not work well with Opera. Available in the \"Help\" menu.
• Added integrated Opera Web search with keyword \'S\'.
• When starting download, allow transfer dialog to stay in the background.
• Multiple keyboard shortcut changes and additions. For a complete overview of the default keyboard shortcuts, press Ctrl+B
• Disabled keyboard shortcuts involving Alt Gr during inline find to prevent interference with typing of special characters.
• \"Save with images\" is now an option within the save dialog, found in the \"File type\" drop-down menu.
• Added support for simple Exchangeable Image File Format (EXIF) information in properties of .jpg files.

Display and standards

• Implemented Opera\'s Extensible Rendering Architecture (ERA):
  • Added \"Fit to window width\" feature that squeezes page contents to make them fit the width of the screen and avoid horizontal scrolling.
  • The \"Small screen\" mode now includes more of the page\'s original styling.
• Implemented support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 Tiny. See SVG demonstrations.
• New User JavaScript feature
  • Add your own .js file directories in Preferences > Advanced > Content.
  • Is disabled for all URLs using the HTTPS or opera: protocols.
  • Read more about User JavaScript
• Support for XmlHttpRequest -- Gmail Web mail fully supported.
• Support for CSS3 speech module (properties new to CSS3 are prefixed by \"-xv-\") and XHTML+Voice 1.2
• Support for DOM3 Load and Save.
• • Fixed styling issues with the tag; makes the Wordpress administrative interface display correctly.
• Transparent background (wmode) support for plug-ins.
• Changed calculated line height to be based on actual font size rather than specified font size.
• Allow mixing of background-position and keyword, in accordance with CSS2.1.
• Borders on text fields can be removed with CSS.
• Require \"dir\" attribute for BDO elements to be valid and override bidi in standards mode.
• JavaScript pop-ups now respect general scroll bar settings.
• Implemented XMLHttpRequest.getAllResponseHeaders and XMLHttpRequest.getResponseHeader
• Added support for RegExp.leftContext and RegExp.rightContext
• Web specifications supported in Opera 8

Printing

• Added \"Fit to page\" feature that squeezes page contents and prevents margin overflow.
• Background images now printed by default.

Messaging

• E-mail and chat account handling moved to the \"Tools\" menu. \"Mail\" and \"Chat\" added to main menu and panels when the corresponding accounts are set up.
• The contacts panel is only displayed if e-mail or chat accounts are set up.
• Improved handling of e-mail attachments
  • Attachments in sent and received messages are now displayed above the message header.
  • New \"Save attachments\" dialog allows for saving multiple attachments in one operation.
  • Attached images are also displayed in the message body.
  • To display all attachments inside messages as in previous versions, add \"Show Attachments Inline=1\" to the [User Prefs] section of opera6.ini
• Improved handling of contacts with multiple e-mail addresses.
• Added options to mark message threads as read (keyboard shortcut M) and go to next unread thread (shortcut N.
• Several improvements to quick reply: expand automatically when typing multiple lines, handle one draft per message, and reset focus to message list after replying.
• When user sets up a gmail.com account in the \"New account\" wizard, correct values are filled out automatically.
• Improvements to chat client
  • Status is now set globally in the chat menu.
  • Added \"ban\" and \"kick with reason\" commands, as well as typed \"/invite\" command.
  • Support for irc: URLs.
  • List of servers updated and expanded.
  • IRC settings are now stored in incoming options file rather than in accounts.ini.
  • Setting in IRC account properties for whether or not to accept incoming connections.

Newsfeeds

• Newsfeed reader is available without activating e-mail client. Separate \"Feeds\" entry added to main menu when first newsfeed subscription is activated.
• Support for and auto-detection of Atom newsfeeds.
• Newsfeed icon displayed inside address field when newsfeeds are linked from a page. Click to subscribe.
• Improved detection of HTML content in newsfeed items.
• Default time between checks for newsfeed updates set to 3 hours.

Voice

• New feature -- Windows 2000 and XP only.
• Control Opera\'s interface and navigate Web content using your voice.
• Support for Web pages written in XHTML + Voice (requires document to be served with an XML MIME type)
• Read more about Opera with Voice

Miscellaneous

• Automated version check performed weekly to ensure user has the latest and most secure Opera version.
• Added automatic downloading of language files if the language is selected and the file is available for download.
• Enabled downloading of the file ua.ini, which specifies how Opera should identify itself to specific Web sites.
  • Can be edited manually.
  • 1 = Identify as Opera
  • 2 = Identify as Mozilla
  • 3 = Identify as Internet Explorer
  • 4 = Identify as Mozilla, hide Opera ID completely
  • 5 = Identify as Internet Explorer, hide Opera ID completely
  • File updated automatically through the Opera version check. Local edits will not be overwritten.
• Allow redirect URLs to be loaded from cache. Improves offline browsing.
• \'$\' in searches now works as intended.
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