The Browser World

Opera just now announced the release of 9.50 beta 2 of its browser. There are many changes in this version compared to beta 1. These include changes in the User Interface, Shortcuts, Mail, Chat, Feeds, Display, Scripting, and Security

The original Release Note is as follows

Changes Since Opera 9.50 Beta 1

User Interface

• Full text history search is now part of the address field, with better results and better performance.
• Introduced a new security notification scheme in the address field; see Security.
• Added alternative tab-closing behaviors. The preferences now include the following options when closing a tab:
  • Activate the last active tab (default)
  • Activate the next tab
  • Activate first tab opened from current tab
• New spatial navigation highlighting, similar to the one used in Opera Mini 4 and the Wii browser.

Shortcuts

• Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right for Back and Forward are no longer specific to Mac, but also apply to Windows/Unix.
• “Save Draft” shortcut Ctrl+S removed due to the new autosaving of drafts (change is not new but was not listed in previous documentation).
• Shortcut for “Add attachment” in the compose window is now Ctrl+O instead of Ctrl+S.
• Shortcut Ctrl+Enter now sends a message, in addition to Ctrl+Shift+S.
• Changed the handling of “Delete” in mail filter views, with Shift+Del for “Move to Trash” and Del for “Remove from Filter View”, in place of Ctrl+X.
• Shortcut for “Duplicate Tab” has been removed.
• Shortcut for “Reopen Closed Tab” has been changed from Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Z to Ctrl+Shift+T

Changes in Keyboard Shortcuts between Opera 9.27 and 9.50 Beta 2

Mail, Chat, and Feeds

• Improved IMAP performance and reliability.
• Faster startup times on systems with NTFS and ReiserFS file systems.
• Improved search results in Opera Mail when using Quick Find.
• Opera can now be set as the default mail application from the control panel.
• Improved feed download speed when there are many existing feed messages.
• Reduced CPU usage when downloading torrents.
• Numerous bug fixes and optimizations.

Display and Scripting

• Added MathML support. See the article on Dev.Opera.
• Opera now cloaks document.all. See the discussion on Hallvord’s blog.
• Improved performance of Web pages with XMLHttpRequest (AJAX).
• Added support for getClientRects and getBoundingClientRect.
• Added support for the CSS color and background-color properties for the ::selection pseudo-element.

ACID3

• Zero bytes in encodeURIComponent and encodeURI are now handled correctly.
• Unicode escapes can no longer be used to put non-identifier characters into identifiers.
• getSVGDocument is now supported in an iframe.
• createDocumentType now throws an exception for malformed qualified name.
• Fixed NodeFilter returning true => 1.
• Fixed HTMLTableRowElement.rowIndex and .sectionRowIndex returning undefined for table rows created via DOM.
• HTMLButtonElement.type now defaults to “submit”.
• Fixed form control collection not indexed by name when outside the main document tree.
• Fixed Range.surroundContents().
• Fixed insertNode to not collapse range.
• Fixed removeNamedItem() and removeNamedItemNS() to throw a not-found error.
• Fixed NodeIterator to function well also under dynamic changes.
• Fixed Date.UTC() to do proper 1900 year offsetting.

Miscellaneous

• All mail and history searching now occurs in a separate processor thread.
• Opera Link now synchronizes notes, in addition to bookmarks and Speed Dial entries.
• New search.ini includes Google Images and Wikipedia.
• Improved compatibility with Gmail 2.

Security

• Improved back-end for Fraud Protection, now enabled by default.
• Added support for Extended Validation (EV) certificates.
• Added automatic updates of root certificates.
• Introduced a new security notification scheme in the address field:
  • gold lock on green field for secure sites with Extended Validation
  • silver lock on yellow field for regular secure sites
  • question mark on gray field for HTTPS sites with problems
  • no notification for normal sites
  • fraud warning on red field for blacklisted sites
• Opera now distinguishes between local servers on localhost, intranet servers, and remote servers on the Internet. Local servers can use remote resources, but not vice versa.

Windows-specific changes

• Improved performance of painting on Web pages demanding graphics-intensive operations.
• Windowless mode for Silverlight 1.1 now works.

More

Caution: Only Present In Firefox 3.0 Beta 5

How to call the alien

* Type about:robots in the browser

Here’s the Picture!
Read the rest of this entry »

PayPal, eBay’s electronic payment service, has planned to take the dramatic step of blocking people using older versions of Web browsers in order to prevent phishing attacks.

PayPal said a “significant” group of people still use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 3, released in 1996, and IE 4, which debuted in 1997. Those browsers lack a phishing filter, which can block users from accessing a reported phishing Web site.

“In our view, letting users view the PayPal site on one of these browsers is equal to a car manufacturer allowing drivers to buy one of their vehicles without seatbelts,” according to a paper released during the RSA security conference in San Francisco earlier this month. It also could mean eventual trouble for users of Apple’s Safari browser, which has no phishing filter.

Phishing sites are designed to look like the legitimate Web sites of major brands such as banks and seek to elicit financial and personal information. Users are often lured to the sites through unsolicited e-mail, or can unwittingly land on one if a phisher has bought a domain with a convincing-looking name or one with slightly differently spelling.

Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2 and Opera 9 have phishing filters, but Apple’s browser — Safari — does not. Safari also does not support Extended Validation SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Certificates, issued to Web sites that have been vetted as legitimate.

For Web site with that certificate, IE shows a green bar. Firefox’s address bar changes with white to beige and Opera denotes a safe site.