New and improved features

Code name

• Opera 11.10 beta uses "Barracuda" as its code name.

Opera Presto 2.8 rendering engine

• Opera 11.10 beta uses the new Opera Presto 2.8 rendering engine as identified in its user agent string.

• Opera/9.80 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en) Presto/2.8.119 Version/11.10

Plugin installation wizard

• Enables easy installation of, for example, the Flash plug-in if it is missing from the system.

URL Filter API for Opera extensions

The URL Filter API for Opera extensions defines a DOM interface that allows extensions to add temporary rules to Opera's native content blocker. Rules added through this API are associated with an extension and apply as long as an extension is enabled. Once an extension is disabled or the browser is shut down, the temporary rules are discarded.

• It defines the API that is applied to an extension browsing context.
• An extension browsing context is a browsing context that implements the Opera extension interface (opera.extension).
• See URL Filter API for Opera extensions

WebP

Opera adds support for the Google WebP image format.

• This enhances Opera Turbo's compression performance with images.
• WebP is a new image format that provides lossy compression for photographic images.
• A WebP file consists of VP8 image data, and a container based on the Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF).
• See WebP: A new image format for the Web
• See RIFF Container

Feature improvements

Declarative UI

• Written in YAML:
• A human friendly data serialization standard for all programming languages
• A tool for visual layout development of YAML based CSS layouts
• Improves:
• Adaptation to different string sizes for different languages
• Changes in layout for a specific platform to get closer to platform guidelines
• Dialogs with variable contents
•  

Feature discoverability

• Subtle animations and messages have been added to improve discoverability of Opera features.

Opera Dragonfly beta 1

Opera has improved its Dragonfly debugging tool with the release of Opera Dragonfly beta 1. Opera Dragonfly covers the full debugging workflow, from inspecting network access and downloaded resources, to correcting JavaScript issues and seeing how CSS rules apply to the DOM. It supports all the newest web technologies, including SVG and HTML5 APIs such as Web Storage.

• JavaScript debugger
• Enables stepping through your code line by line, setting break points along the way.
• Monitor the exact expression or specific variable in your JavaScript code.
• Use the Break points panel to see exactly what caused a JavaScript fail.
• Added new types of break points and more granular control.
• CSS inspector
• Check out what CSS rules apply to which element, and what rules are inherited or set by browser defaults.
• Overridden rules are highlighted showing what styles are, or are not applied.
• Use the CSS editing feature to edit existing properties and values.
• Use the auto-complete feature to make editing faster and more convenient.
• DOM inspector
• Allows inspection of the updated DOM and all of its properties.
• The DOM can be edited to experiment with changes directly in the browser.
• Network inspector
• Allows inspection of the HTTP request and response headers.
• A summary of each request is shown, with the method type, response status and the time taken to be retrieved.
• Drill down to see full details of each requests header.
• Find latency, see how resources download and in what order, and even view cached resources.
• Resource inspector
• See all site resources such as images, scripts, fonts, HTML files and videos at a glance.
• Storage inspector
• Cookies and Web Storage can be dynamically updated, tested, inspected, and manipulated.
• Error console
• Allows you to see, filter and log any errors in your scripts, pointing to the exact position where the error occurred.
• Use the Error console in combination with the other tools to hunt down and fix your site's bugs.
• Debug your phone or TV
• Debug pages whether they are on your computer or a supported device, such as a phone running Opera Mobile 10 for Windows Mobile.
• You can connect to any device running Opera Presto 2.1 or above and debug using your computer's screen and keyboard. There is no need to struggle inputting test data with your phone's keypad again.
• Opera Widgets can also be debugged via remote debugging.
• Design utilities
• A color picker and a screen magnifier allow you to pick out colors from a website or widget.
• The average color of an area can be selected to make it easier to pick out colors from bitmap images.
• Chosen colors can be stored in a palette for later access.
• Open source
• Built using the open web standards you know and love, Opera Dragonfly's source is available to view.
• Not only that, but it is released on a Apache 2.0 license, meaning it is free as in freedom, as well as in beer.
• Join in the project, or just check out the source code at the Opera Dragonfly repository.

Mail

• Added support for phrase searching.
• Improved CJK searches.
• Improvements made to the panel, including a setting to disable automatic toggling

Search

• Search hijacking protection: Opera now prevents third party applications from hijacking searches and other customizations in Opera.
• Added a Search field to error pages, where the browser will make a search request over the net for suggestions and display them.

Speed Dial

• Added Speed Dial animation to help when reordering (dragging and dropping) existing Speed Dial cells, using smooth visual cues.
• Added a new "logo finder" which keys in on the main title of a page; diabled when "Reload every" is applied.
• Improvements have been made to the Speed Dial flow layout.
• Added the ability to set the number of Speed Dial columns (automatic by default).
• Speed Dial can now be zoomed.
• Added a new dialog when adding/editing Speed Dials
• It is now possible to add a custom title to Speed Dials, through the new add/edit dialog.
• Sites can now reload Speed Dials automatically using one of two methods:
• HTTP header: Preview-refresh: seconds
• HTML code: <meta http-equiv="preview-refresh" content="seconds">
• The Speed Dial thumbnail/icon is now determined using these criteria (in order):
• Send a http header to tell the server it is a Speed Dial request
• Detect big icons: <link rel=icon,apple-touch-icon ...> and display them instead of a thumbnail
• Find the important part of the page (logo), and zoom in closer
• Apply CSS view-mode: minimized when generating the thumbnail

Web specifications support

Further Opera web specification support references are located at:

• Web specifications support in Opera Presto 2.8
• Web specifications support in Opera products: an overview

CSS

• Gradients
• Added partial support for the gradients section of the W3C CSS3 Image Values/Replaced Content module.
• Using the Opera -o- vendor prefix, Opera supports:
• -o-linear-gradient()
• -o-repeating-linear-gradient()
• <color-stop> is supported.
• <gradient> is only supported in background and background-image.
• <gradient> is not supported in list-style-image and border-image.
• See CSS3 Image Values/Replaced Content support in Opera Presto 2.8
• See W3C CSS Image Values and Replaced Content Module Level 3
• W3C CSS Multi-column Layout Module support
• See CSS Multi-column Layout Module support in Opera Presto 2.8
• See W3C CSS Multi-column Layout Module
• W3C CSS Device Adaptation (viewport) specification support
• See W3C CSS Device Adaptation
• See CSS Device Adaptation (viewport) support in Opera Presto 2.8
• Opera CSS cursor property values support
• "-o-zoom-in"
• "-o-zoom-out"
• See CSS -o- vendor extensions support in Opera Presto 2.8
• See W3C CSS cursor property values.

Encodings

• Removed support for UTS22: 1.4 charset alias matching.
• See Charset Alias Matching
• See Legacy Encodings support in Opera Presto 2.8

HTML

• Moved the accesskey attribute to HTMLElement (HTML5).
• See HTML5 Section 7.4.2: The accesskey attribute
• Made HTML5 section, article, nav, etc., elements block elements by default and added the style rules.
• See W3C HTML5: A vocabulary and associated APIs for HTML and XHTML
• See HTML5 elements, attributes, and APIs support in Opera Presto 2.8
• See HTML5 Forms support in Opera Presto 2.8

WOFF

• Added support for the W3C Web Open Font Format (WOFF).
• See W3C WOFF File Format 1.0 support in Opera Presto 2.8
• See W3C Web Open Font Format (WOFF)