Daily Archive for June 6th, 2008

Opera 9.5 gets improvements after feedback

Today the Opera Desktop Team released improvements to the new skin which was released only yesterday! The improvements come from an amazing 300+ posts by users like you and me in just 24 hours. What makes that even more incredible is that this is a beta and snapshot blog, so it’s typically just a small group of people who participate…but not this time!

The new skin has brought the Desktop Team a great deal of attention! If you have a digg account then you should help digg this!
http://digg.com/software/Opera_s_new_modern_UI

The improvements to the skin are aimed at correcting issues that were reported by the majority of the visitors yesterday. More improvements will come shortly (maybe Monday!), but for now the changelog consists of the following:

  • Improved contrast between active and inactive tabs in the tab bar
  • Higher contrast for the text on inactive tabs to increase readability, especially on laptops
  • Brighter background in the panels
  • A tiny bit more color: We added the Home button as default by popular demand
  • We tuned the color intensity of the color themes (Tools: Appearance: Color scheme) to be more usable with both this and other skins. Try it out again!
  • Improved visibility of the scrollbars
  • Buttons no longer grow wider when you press them
  • Nicer background for security status on https pages

To use Opera with the new improvements and test them out, you can go to the latest post or you can use the links I’ve posted below for you:

If you find a bug or an improvement to the skin or this build then help us all out by posting it here:
http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2008/06/06/turtle-wax

This post is an update to the initial Opera 9.5 skin improvements post from yesterday. To read more about this, you should read the post from yesterday.

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Turtle Wax


300 skin comments in a day :hat: We have tried to polish at least some of
the areas you commented on:

  • Improved contrast between active and inactive tabs in the tab bar
  • Higher contrast for the text on inactive tabs to increase readability, especially on laptops
  • Brighter background in the panels
  • A tiny bit more color: We added the Home button as default by popular demand
  • We tuned the color intensity of the color themes (Tools: Appearance: Color scheme) to be more usable with both this and other skins. Try it out again!
  • Improved visibility of the scrollbars
  • Buttons no longer grow wider when you press them
  • Nicer background for security status on https pages


WARNING: These are development snapshots: they contain the latest changes, but they also have severe known issues, including crashes and data loss situations. In fact, they may not work at all.

Known issues:
  • Dragonfly does not work when JavaScript is disabled.


Changelog
  • Fixed the panel selector dropdown
  • Fixed all search related bugs in the previous snapshot
  • Changed default Speed dial search engine from Yahoo to Ask
  • Made it possible to set a custom title for the Developer Tools (Dragonfly) Window using in the tool top level document<br />
  • Fixed a plugin crash


Download
Windows
Windows Classic
Macintosh
UNIX

Malware protection

If you're using the latest build, then browsing just got safer!

Since 2006, Opera has featured Fraud Protection, which protects you against phishing pages, and not too long ago we upgraded the backend part of it to provide even better protection using data from Netcraft, widely regarded as the best performing protector against phishing.

In collaboration with security experts Haute Secure we're now proud to announce the newest functionality to our Fraud Protection feature; Malware protection.
Everybody knows that there's more to watch out for on the Web than just phishing. Malware, in every imaginable shape and form, has exploded over the past few years. Viruses have been a problem for decades, and worms can in large part be blamed for the millions of spam messages people receive every day. But as the Web has evolved, so has its usefulness to crackers, and today malware on the Web is a major concern. Drive-by downloads using browser and plugin exploits are scary, and so is the creative social engineering that is used to make users download something innocent-looking, which in fact is malicious code that will harm your computer and/or steal your private information.

This is where malware protection comes in. While it is still important to maintain an up-to-date antivirus installed, Opera now offers an additional layer of protection, and will warn when you try to open a page that is known to contain malware, the same way it does when you try to access phishing sites.
Users already familiar with Haute Secure's popular anti-malware toolbar for other browsers already know how useful and important this is, and now, we have the same level of protection built directly into Opera, with a familiar interface.


Protection against malware will be enabled for everyone who has Fraud Protection enabled, and is live as of this post. If you would like to see it in action, grab the latest build and go to www.verybadsite.com to test it. We will soon be adding the ability for users to report new malware pages that are not yet detected, contributing to the "community watch" effect Haute Secure has been building since 2006.

Enjoy, and stay safe!