The main part of the changes in Opera 3.60 are under the surface, including tuning, upgrading, updating and bugfixing, but still, there are some new or revamped features that should please just about everyone. Here's a short list:
New buttons!
The buttons in Opera 3.60 are new! The set was created by Daniel Palm and Per Kronstrom in Sweden, and went on to win first price in our buttons contest hosted on our web site. If you wish to see the other participants', or download other buttons sets, please go to http://www.operasoftware.com/buttons.html - our regular Buttons Page!
Updated Hot List window
Our powerful Hot List feature (CTRL + F2), has now received quite a bit of a make over, giving it a nicer and more intuitive layout of functions! Go ahead and check it out! It's never been easier to create new folders and entries, to organize the list to your wishing or even use it!
Nicer interface
We've changed the interface a bit for Opera 3.60, which has been positively received by a lot of people. The new changes makes the program look more "3D" in some ways, and it will be easier to see the focus of the program.
Two new Options
The users of Opera have requested these options for quite some time now, and now they're finally here! Go to Preferences/Generic... to activate them:
Close Dial-Up connections
Opera can be made to disconnect your modem upon exit. This feature was much requested by people who'd grown accustomed to their previous browser's ability to do so, but will hopefully please every user of Opera just as much.
Confirm exit
If you want to remove the dialog box asking you whether you would like to exit Opera, this can now be done via the Generic Preferences menu.
Scroll Wheel support is back in flying colours!
Native Scroll Wheel support was removed from Opera 3.51 as we found it to be buggy in some instances. We have now gone through each line of code, fixing it for bugs, and in the process, we found ways of improving it too!
Added support for Euro symbol (€)
Following the airing of the EU's new currency, we added support for the euro symbol, but please note that this will only work on systems that have been upgraded for use of the euro symbol (a Windows upgrade is necessary for this to be viewed natively in Windows). If the symbol is showing in the paranthesis in the header above, your system supports this symbol. Other users will get a square box.
Combo Auto-Complete
Added "combo auto-complete" (CAC) to the direct addressing dialog and couple of other combos. To disable this feature add the following setting to opera.ini
Tip: If you drop down the list first (Alt+Down) CAC will track the
item found. For the "Direct URL addressing" dialog this dropdown
will happen automatically if the flag below is present and CAC is
enabled
Fixes
We have also gone through our code and fixed a number of bugs that have been annoying us. Amongst others:
Once again, we have added a number of really useful features without bloating
the size of the program. Amongst the most important are
| Java support for the 32bit version | Opera 3.50 now supports Java applets! Not natively, but via the plug-in from Sun. However, this is only working in the 32bit version, as the plug-in itself is only available in a 32bit version. It is large though.
The U.S. version is 4.9 MB and the International version is 7.5 MB.
How to get it to work:
This is how to install the Sun Java Plug-in:
Note: Please note you cannot install the plug-in in Opera's plug-in directory, as this will make the program not find the plug-in instead of fining it as it's supposed to. Instructions are also available on the Support Site. | ||||
| CSS 1 | Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a standard for displaying
and formatting HTML pages accepted by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).
Style sheets can either be defined within the same HTML document or referenced by an external style sheet file. This makes it very easy to format documents in a space-saving and consistent manner. The Document/User modes can now be specified by the user in the "Document Appearance" settings. This allows the user to specify how the documents should be displayed in the two respective modes. This can be very useful for web designers as they can quickly check the pages with and without CSS support. Opera 3.50 supports the larger part of CSS1 as outlined by the W3C at the moment. |
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| File Upload | Many web-based e-mail clients, such as MailExcite, Juno, Yahoo
and Hotmail allow you to attach local files to the e-mail. In order to do
this, the file upload function has to be supported.
With v3.50 you can now upload files, using the full functionality of these WebMailers. Sign up for Opera's new web-based OperaMail service! |
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| TLS 1.0 | As the first browser on the market Opera is now supporting TLS 1.0 (transport layer security), the successor of SSL v3. | ||||
| Shortcuts | Not quite new in 3.50, but nevertheless worth a mention are
these new shortcuts:
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| Name Completion | Name completion is very useful if you want to save time when entering URL. Here you can determine which domains Opera should use for the completion task. (Name completion is not available if you are using proxies.) | ||||
| User definable tool bar icons | You can now create your own tool bar icons! Both GIF and JPG formats are supported, and even the size is variable. See our buttons page on the support site for more information and some great new button sets that you can download and install! | ||||
| New supported plug-ins |
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| New download window | The new download window is called the Transfer Window and is a lot more informative and functional than the previous one. You can now see graphically how much of the file has been loaded, how much longer it will still take for the download to be completed, and some other miscellaneous file information. You can also take direct action once the file is completely downloaded. In other words, you will like it! ;-) | ||||
| Printing of document background | You can now also print the background of a webpage. If you don't want that option, turn it off. It's under File/Print Scale and Margins. | ||||
| And... |
Here's a list of all the other enhancements
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| JavaScript | Our customers have asked us to add JavaScript, as many sites now use this to function and navigate. You can switch the use of JavaScript off any time you like, if you feel that it makes your browser instable. |
| New address list | Many of our customers have asked us to review our powerful but unintuitive address list. We have taken their advice to heart and completely redesigned the address list. You can now have various levels of sub-folders. IN addition, we have developed a docked Hot List, that makes adding and retrieving URLs simple and efficient. |
| Secure Socket Layer (SSL 2.0, 3.0) | Accessing secure sites for online purchases and banking has become paramount for many of our customers. We have heeded their advice and added SSL. You may switch it off any time you like. |
| Netscape Compatible Plug-ins | |
| Useful new keyboard shortcuts | Ctrl-A - marks all text Ctrl-R - reloads document Ctrl-I - reloads all graphics W/S - Jumps between all headers E/D - Jumps between all elements 6 - Jumps to 100% zoom 7 - Zooms out by 100% 8 - Zooms in by 100% |
| Opera:cache | To view the content of the Opera cache directory |