Opera 9 released

[Kelvyn]

Opera 9 has now been officially released, get the Windoze version here.

The install allows you to keep earlier Opera versions, and interestingly now includes a BitTorrent facility, so no need to use a separate torrent downloader. A quick look suggests that CSS2 support is improved, but have not had time to test properly. In any case I will only use it for site testing (and torrents...) because I still see no advantages over FireFox for general browsing and development.

[Andrew B.]

One thing I like about Opera is the "Find in page" feature is available without having to open it first. And in Opera 9, it automatically highlights all matches in the page.

I wonder, though, if Opera can run these Ajax applications: http://www.ajaxlaunch.com/

[Steve Rindsberg]

>>I wonder, though, if Opera can run these Ajax applications: http://www.ajaxlaunch.com/

Not as long as their browser sniffer spits at it and slams the door in its face.

[Andrew B.]

Are you saying you tried it and that's what happened?

[Steve Rindsberg]

>>Are you saying you tried it and that's what happened?

Yep. With Opera 8.something

The page it links from *does* suggest rather strongly that it's for Firefox and IIRC Mozilla. Still, I'd rather it told me that and let me try it just the same.

[iamback]

Originally Posted by Steve Rindsberg

>>I wonder, though, if Opera can run these Ajax applications: http://www.ajaxlaunch.com/

Not as long as their browser sniffer spits at it and slams the door in its face.

It's not so surprising that for AJAX a browser sniffer is used to detect Opera, instead of checking support for objects: until now, if you did that, Opera would lie about it so you'd think AJAX is supported when actually it is not.

If Opera 9 is just out and does really syupport AJAX it'll be a while before people will have adapted their software...

[Kelvyn]

Originally Posted by iamback

If Opera 9 is just out and does really syupport AJAX it'll be a while before people will have adapted their software...

The pre-release version has been publicly available for a couple of months just so that developers can test it out. I wonder how many did?

[iamback]

Originally Posted by Kelvyn

The pre-release version has been publicly available for a couple of months just so that developers can test it out. I wonder how many did?

As always, it's not all that easy to find real specs on the Opera site, but I found them after some digging.

One of my complaints since version 7 has been that they put in "support" for the link (navigation) tag - but implemented it incorrectly (no support for those link elements that can occur multiple times, for instance). Interestingly, their HTML, XHTML, and WML support in Opera 9 document (presumably the most detailed for the markup languages) does not even mention the link element.

The ECMAScript/JavaScript support specs (note the URL says "opera 9" but the heading says "Opera 8"!) does not even suggest AJAX support. Searching for "AJAX" on the site, you find a lot about Opera platform, Opera for mobiles and "widgets" (the latter presumably using AJAX) - but none for the "regular" browser.

If I were developing AJAX (for the web) I wouldn't be all that stimulated to download an Opera 9 preview to test it, would you?

[Kelvyn]

Originally Posted by iamback

It's not so surprising that for AJAX a browser sniffer is used to detect Opera, instead of checking support for objects: until now, if you did that, Opera would lie about it so you'd think AJAX is supported when actually it is not.

Well I just tried a "real life" AJAX test - Google maps. No problems at all. More importantly (to me) ajaxTunes runs just fine, too.

[iamback]

Originally Posted by Kelvyn

Well I just tried a "real life" AJAX test - Google maps. No problems at all. More importantly (to me) ajaxTunes runs just fine, too.

Well, maybe they should actually document the capability then...