Software update: Opera 8.00 beta 2

Opera Software has released a second beta version of their Opera 8.00 web explorer. The program includes tabbed browsing, a popup blocker and an email module with an extensive spam filter. As the release notes and changelog below show us, we have been working hard on new features and many bugs have been fixed:

This 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.

Changes since beta 1:

User Interface:

• Enabled downloading of the file ua.ini for site-specific changing of the user agent string. Check is performed automatically with the “Check for new version” function.
• Added dialog for reporting sites that do not work well with Opera. Available in the “Help” menu.
• Renamed “Customize” dialog to “Appearance”. Skin settings included in the new dialog.
• When starting download, allow transfer dialog to stay in the background.
• Clicking and holding the “Back” or “Forward” button will show a dropdown with history.
• Improved session manager.
• Removed workspace mode from start-up dialog.
• Let dragged history list elements contain a URL and a title, allowing to drag and drop them to more toolbars and external programs.
• Both typed and redirected URLs will now be saved to address field drop-down history.
• Added font preference setting for reading email.
• Keyboard shortcut changes and fixes.
• Added checkbox for using proxy on local servers.
• Fix for parsing IPv6 addresses in proxy dialog.
• Fixed regression making it impossible to save Web pages in .txt format.
• Prevent notifications from showing up when other applications are running in full-screen mode.

Display and scripting:

• Added support for document.selection and document.getSelection in form input fields.
• Added support for TextRange with methods collapse, move, moveStart, and moveEnd, required by Google Suggest.
• Solved issues with XMLHttpRequest. Google Suggest is now fully supported.
• New and updated ERA settings, multiple fixes related to “Fit to window width”/ERA.
• Added support for simple Exchangeable Image File Format (EXIF) information in properties of .jpg files.
• Solved data:URI decode issues.
• Display correct image type in properties of .ico files.
• Fixed display issues with the “input” and “button” elements.
• Added Mac encodings “macintosh”, “x-mac-ce”, “x-mac-cyrillic”, “x-mac-greek” and “x-mac-turkish” to list of known encodings.
• Solved issue with links on non-UTF-8 pages containing named entities or numeric references with escaped HTML characters in forms data part of URL.
• Fixed regression causing hidden radio buttons to be unintentionally selected.
• Multiple plugin fixes.
• Multiple scripting fixes.
• Speeded up scanning for encoding declaration.

Messaging and Newsfeeds:

• Added support for and auto-detection of Atom newsfeeds.
• When user sets up a gmail.com account in the new account wizard, correct values ​​are filled out automatically.
• Improved handling or quoted-printable encoding. QP is now decoded by default in incoming messages, in violation of RFC2047 §5.3. RFC compliance can be met by setting “Allow Incoming QuotedString QP=1” in accounts.ini.
• 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.
• Improved handling of IRC URLs. Will match the server name in the URL against all servers listed for an account, and only create a new account if none match.

Security:

• Added whitelist of safe top-level domains for IDN.
  • TLDs are considered safe if they have implemented anti-homographic character policies or otherwise limited the available set of characters to prevent spoofing.
  • Current whitelist contains: :no:jp:de:se:kr:tw:cn:at:dk:ch:li:
  • List is in opera6.ini and is updated automatically in the Opera version check.
  • Domain names from other top-level domains that contain characters outside Latin 1 will be displayed in punycode, an encoding syntax designed for use with IDNA, specified in RFC3492.
• Added support for the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) — real-time requests for certificate status.
• Improved security dialog launched when clicking keypad icon in address field.
  • The padlock icon is now displayed when the protocol is HTTPS, regardless of security state.
  • An open padlock is displayed if the HTTPS site is considered insecure.
  • Adding the organization name from the certificate in the address field of secure sites.
• Optional padlock button that can be placed on any toolbar now behaves similarly to padlock in address field.
• SSLv2 and 40-bit encryption are enabled by default again, as they are required for some sites to function properly.
• Read experimental support for TLS Extensions and TLS 1.1. Setting is disabled by default.
• Show warning triangle when asking user to allow full permissions to a signed Java applet.

voice:

• Added support for the “speech” media type.
• Multiple voice related fixes.