I got tagged by Daniel Goldman in his Blog tag: 5 things I’d like to see in Opera post. It’s a very nice initiative undertaken to gather feedback from Opera users.

Here is how it will work:

Once you’ve been tagged by someone, share your list (on your blog) of 5 things you’d like to see in Opera, and then tag up to 5 other people who will then post their own lists and tag up to 5 more people.
Feel free to list the things you’d like to see in Opera on the desktop, Opera Mini, Opera Mobile, and/or Opera on the Nintendo Wii.

I have articulated my expectations from Opera in the past. Not so long ago I wrote Ten Things I Want to See in Opera 10. Here, I present to you a pruned down list of things I want to see in Opera.
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Welcome to another edition of Opera Bytes.

As far as Opera Browser for desktop is concerned this has been a rather non-eventful month. Kestrel (Opera v9.5) is still few weeks away and details are still scarce. Earlier this week The Desktop Team provided some teasers about Kestrel in their blog. This release should please Linux and Mac users. Not only will Opera integrate better with these platforms Mac users would also get a refreshed UI. Kestrel is also expected to deliver significant performance improvements.

The real big news this month was the release of Opera Mini 4 beta. Since I don’t have GPRS/Edge on my mobile phone I wasn’t able to try it out, however it has received largely positive feedback so far.
This is a significant upgrade to Opera Mini and features many changes. Airlan San Juan did an in-depth review of Opera Mini at his blog. Do check it out. If you want to testdrive Opera Mini head over to mini.opera.com/beta. You can even test it before installing on your mobile phone using the Opera Mini Simulator. However please keep in mind that this is a beta version intended only for testing and it is still buggy.
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Opera 10 (code named Peregrine) is slated to arrive later this year. As a long time Opera user I have my own expectations of Peregrine. Here, I present to you ten improvements that I want to see in Opera v10. I am not a codie so my wish-list doesn’t deal with under the hood rendering engine improvements (only exception being Wish #8), rather all of them are noticeable feature additions/improvements.

10. Better Download Manager : Opera already has an excellent download manager. In fact it’s much better than download managers integrated with other browsers. But there is always scope for improvement. I want to see ability to limit the bandwidth being used by Opera’s download manager. The ability to queue downloads would also be a nice addition.

9. Inline Spell Checker : The oSpell userjs is excellent as an inline spell checker. However, this is something that should be provided by Opera out of the box. Heck, even barebones Firefox has it!

8. Prioritize page loading : This feature was suggested by Scott at myOpera forums. He wants Opera to give higher priority to the foreground tab and load that webpage faster than the ones in the background. I think this is a wonderful idea and would definitely make Opera more productive.

7. Private Browsing : Safari has a neat little feature called Private Browsing. Firefox users can use extensions like Stealther and Distrust. Yes, Opera allows users to delete private data. But this is different. When it is enabled web pages are not added to the History, items are automatically removed from the Downloads window and information (including names and passwords) is not saved for Autofill. So only private data collected during Private Browsing is deleted. The utility of Private browsing is pretty obvious.

6. Rich Text Copy : Sometime back Opera removed rich text copy, apparently due to security concerns. Talk about paranoia! I hate the fact that they didn’t even give users the option. I hate the fact that I have to use another browser to copy text with all the formatting. Only other alternative is using a complicated solution devised by Lex1. I hope to see rich text copy back in next version. Plain text copy should remain the default (associated with Ctrl+C), but users should also be allowed to copy text with all formatting via the right click context menu and keyboard shortcut.

5. Activity Monitor : This feature is already present in Safari, and is extremely handy when you want to download streaming content. Currently I have to use Naviscope to monitor browser activity. This is something that should be built into Opera.
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Welcome to another edition of Opera Bytes. Since I am blogging fairly regularly now, I plan to do this on a monthly basis. In this edition I look back at the month of May.

Opera v9.21 for desktop was released on 21st May. This release fixes a critical vulnerability present in Opera’s torrent downloader.

Opera is one of the applications nominated for Webware 100 awards. You can vote for Opera here.
CNET is known for being biased against Opera (and towards Firefox). That is again evident from the nominations. How did Greasemonkey get a nomination? Greasemonkey is nothing unique or extraordinary. Opera provides the same functionality out of the box and similar addons are available for other browsers too (e.g. Creammonkey for Safari). Even more surprising is the exclusion of Opera Mini from Mobile category. Opera Mini is innovative and useful. PC Mag had commented that “If you only ever download one cell phone app, download Opera”. According to Hitslink Opera Mini had 0.16% of the browser market share during May. That is huge for a mobile browser. Accoding to Sun Microsystems Opera Mini most popular Java Application for mobile phones in the world.

The next version of Opera Mini (code named “Dimension”) is coming soon. Little is known about it as the moment other than that it would feature enhanced navigation. You can sign up for beta testing here.
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According to data collected by Secunia Software Inspector from over 350,000 inspections, Opera users are most likely to be running old versions of the software. According to this report 5.19% of all Firefox v2 installations miss security updates, whereas 11.96% of all Opera v9 installations miss security updates, and the numbers for Internet Explorer v6 and Internet Explorer v7 are 9.61% and 5.4% respectively.

I am not surprised that Firefox users are most updated because Firefox has an excellent auto-update system which automatically notifies its users when an update is available and downloads only the updated files. Opera also notifies it’s users when an update is available but it’s users have to download the full installation file manually from it’s website.
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Opera Software has announced yet another Widget Developer contest. Up for grabs are a Windows Mobile phone (that runs Opera), Nintendo DS Lite and Opera goodie bags. You can find more detail here. Few months back Opera gave away a Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS Lite in another Widget Developer contest. However, this time the contest has a definite theme - “Travellers”.

Widgets was one of the big new features in Opera v9. Since, its release Opera Soft has actively promoted it and encouraged developers to create widget. The surprise new feature in Opera v8 was userjs. However, Opera has done precious little to encourage userjs writers. Opera’s negligence towards userjs is evident from the fact that myOpera doesn’t yet have an userjs gallery. The only site dedicated to Opera’s userjs - userjs.org (created by Arve Bersvendsen - an Opera user), is now defunct. Userjs is a wonderful tool and scripts like oSpell demonstrate its power. Yet, there are very few quality userjs available for Opera (especially in comparison to the number of Greasemonkey scripts being developed by the large Firefox community).

Undoubtedly, widgets are useful (especially on Mobile platform) and I am happy to see Opera actively promising Widgets. Last time we got two fantastic widgets from the winners (Video Manager and Time and Date). If Opera Software makes similar investment into userjs, I am sure we would have more quality scripts being written.

Related : Top 13 Userjs Written for Opera

LaFlecha is reporting that due to a bug in Opera Browser, a malformed Torrent file (*.torrent) can cause it to consume 100% cpu resources thus making the system unusable. According to this report, this bug affects Opera for Windows running on Windows SP1 or SP2. A proof of concept code has also been published. It’s unclear if previous versions of Opera and Opera running on other platforms are affected as well. I am not sure about the severity of the exploit either. If it’s just a problem of high cpu usage, then its not a critical vulnerability. I checked with Secunia, but couldn’t find any mention of this vulnerability there. However, as a precautionary measure you can disable torrent integration in Opera. You can disable it by un-checking the box next to “Enable“.

If the report on LeFlacha is true then this would be the 4rth exploit to be discovered in Opera v9 in 2007 - compared to 3 in Mozilla Firefox v2 (of which 1 is unpatched), and 5 in Internet Explorer v7 (of which 3 are unpatched).

(via TorrentFreak)

Update (22nd May) : This vulnerability has been fixed in Opera v9.21. Opera’s advisory related to this exploit is available here.

Userjs is a powerfull tool that allows the user to modify a website according to his needs. It basically allows you to specify local JavaScript files for Opera to include on every page that you visit. It’s identical to what Greasemonkey does in Mozilla Firefox and Creammonkey does in Safari. It was introduced in Opera v8. However, only very few Opera users make use of this excellent option. My article on Customising Opera had an entire section devoted to userjs but that article is pretty much outdated. Hence, I decided to compile a brand new list.

Before Getting Started - Installing Userjs is very simply. You need to create a separate directory for storing all your userjs files. It may be anywhere on your hard disk. Then go to Tools –> Preferences –> Advanced –> Content –> JavaScript Options. Enter  the location of your userjs directory in the My Java script files box. Now you need to place all downloaded scripts in this folder.
I would also suggest that you download this script  by Tarquin for better compatibility with greasemonkey scripts.

13. Windows Media Player ActiveX Control - Recently Microsoft released WMP ActiveX Control plugin for Firefox, which made all WMP videos playable in Firefox. Of course, no big corporate gives a damn about a browser with 1% market share. Hence, as usual Opera users were left high and dry. Thankfully Hallvord has come out with a script that attempts to make websites using WMP ActiveX Control viewable in Opera. It’s not perfect, but you should install it.

12. The world through a Google - This script by João Eiras (xEarth) fixes most of the issues presented by Google Services like Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, Google Calender and Google Picassa Web. A must have if you use any of the services mentioned above.

11. Linkifier Plus - Converts text links to clickable hyperlinks. More information is available here.
If you experience problems with Linkifier Plus, give Ayush’s version a try.

10.  Ajax for Yahoo Mail Classic - I have written about this script previously on my blog. If you prefer the classic look of yahoo mail over its present clunky version (some of which doesnt work in Opera even after extensive patching through browserjs), then this script by Vivek Jishtu is a must have. It adds the ability to open emails inline, without opening a new page.

9.  No click-to-activate - Opera 9 requires you to click on embedded content like Java applet or Flash videos to activate them (if you want to know the reason behind this move click here). This can be extremely annoying while browsing an website which uses multiple flash videos or java applets. Allthough the webdesigners can easily override this behaviour very few of them actually do this. This script by Mark Wilton-Jones (Tarquin) allows users to override this browser behaviour.

8. Extra-download-links - Normally links to embedded objects are not visible in Opera’s Links Panel. This script by João Eiras (xEarth) adds invisible anchors for every image, embed, object, applet and iframe to the page which makes them available via the links panel for quick download.

7. Link Alert - This script by Mark Wilton-Jones (Tarquin) identifies links to specific file types, and displays an appropriate icon when the link is hovered. Additionally, it can also highlight links with “nofollow”, however this functionality is disabled by default.

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