At first glance

• New start-up dialog
• SDI/MDI mode
• New default skin and button set
• Unicode Worldwide Character Standard support
• Hotclick
• Hotlist panels
• Personal bar
• New set of help files
• Enhanced image rendering, with full support for PNG alpha transparency
• Support for international URLs

Install

• Installer creates an \"opera6.ini\" file, which is used by Opera 6.0
• The default write directory has been changed from \"c:\\opera\" to the directory in which Opera is installed
• Opera only imports \"opera.ini\" settings from a previous installation of Opera if installed to the same directory

User Interface

• Support for both MDI and SDI
• Personal bar with bookmarks, search fields, and drag-and-drop support
• New in-line \"Find-in-page\" search field
• New powerful drag-and-drop Page bar in SDI mode
• Panels can be added to (and removed from) the Hotlist
• Quick preferences added, with instant access to important settings
• Improved skinning functionality
• Possible to search bookmarks
• Bookmarks icon changes color to indicate visited links
• Added \"Open\" and \"Save\" buttons to full button set
• The e-mail, instant messaging, and news clients can be turned off in \"Preferences\" (requires restart)
• \"Preferences\" has been reorganized and some dialogs changed
• (Ctrl+Tab) makes switching between document windows easier
• Fix for documents with no scrollbars
• Scrollbars added to Hotlist panels
• Added support for personalized icons in Contacts list
• View buttons added to clients
• Space saving options to show or hide details added to clients
• Fixes for moving back and forth in history
• Brand name added in \"opera:about\" for customized versions
• Improved borders when zooming
• A \"go to homepage\" command will open the \"set homepage\" dialog if no homepage is set
• Shift-clicking on a window bar will close the window
• Focus fixes
• New \"Import\" and \"Export\" menu entries under \"File\"
• It is now possible to choose not to show the validation upload warning
• \"Button bar\" is now called \"Main bar\"

Standards

• New CSS parser with Unicode support
• Full support for WML 1.2
• Full PNG support

Speed and Memory Optimization

• Improvements to Bookmark manager
• ECMAScript optimizations
• When 9x systems run low on resources, Opera will give a warning
• Enhancements to cache and cookie control
• Improved display speed

E-mail

• Option to import e-mail from a Microsoft Outlook Express account
• Transport Layer Security (TLS) support is added for POP and SMTP
• Semicolon can be used to separate recipients

Accessibility

• General improvements to zooming
• Pressing [F12] opens Quick preferences
• Active bookmark folder menu is opened when [Ctrl+Alt+A] is pressed
• Pressing [Esc] in the URL field sets focus to the document
• Backspace goes back in history
• Pressing [Shift+F7] sets focus to personal bar
• Added keyboard shortcuts to back [Alt+Z] and forward [Alt+X] drop-downs
• Added keyboard shortcut for uploading document to validator [Ctrl+Alt+V]
• Pressing [Ctrl+Alt+Shift+V] validates document in the background
• Pressing [Ctrl+Alt+Shift+H] opens \"History\" in the background

Read about keyboard navigation in Opera, or press [Ctrl+B], for a detailed list of shortcuts.

ECMAScript and JavaScript

• General improvements
• CGI arguments can be chopped off the URL returned by \"location.pathname\"
• Support for \"window.print()\" has been added

Instant Messaging

• Address field possible to change only when adding new account
• Fix to \"Always be visible to this contact\"

Documentation

• New help files
• New \"Tip of the Day\" file
• New \"Readme\" file (replaces the \"Install\" file)
• New \"Start-up\" file

Languages

• Improvements to the Web language dialog
• User defined language works better

Miscellaneous

• New start-up dialog with MDI/ SDI option, exit dialog off by default
• Possible to run more than one instance of Opera, provided the instances do not write to the same files
• Full support for LiveConnect
• Proxy settings can be automatically configured
• Improved support for \"IFrames\"
• The \"plugin-ignore.ini\" file can be used to tell Opera to not load certain plug-ins
• A search performed in one window can be redone in another window (F3)
• Minor fixes to \"copy and paste\" functionality
• Option added to open pop-up windows in the background (drop-down)

New since the beta release

• Print selection added (text only)
• Improvements to \"copy and paste\"
• Use [Ctrl+Alt+PageDown] and [Ctrl+Alt+PageUp] to switch between pages inside an SDI window
• Mouse gesture DOWN (open link in new page) works in the banner window
• Pressing [ESC] in the Personal bar sets focus back to where it came from
• The installer skips the language and country dialog if these variables are already set
• Help files are updated
• Skin images can be defined in \"buttons.ini\"
• Resource savings on Win9x, especially with maximized windows in MDI or many pages in SDI
• More speed optimization and improvements to memory and resources usage
• Fixes to some printing issues
• Fixes to some focus issues
• Fixes to other known issues