Opera 9 is out

Opera Widgets - Widgets are small AJAX applications that provide specific functionality - like getting your favorite news, converting currency and so on. Opera Lab has posted documentation on Opera Widgets - not only how to use them but also how to make them. Go to My Opera Community to download Widgets.

BitTorrent - BitTorrent has become one of the most popular file transfer protocols around. Opera Lab has built it right into the browser so you can download torrent files easily. No more hassle finding the right port, no worries about setting upload and download speed.

Customize your search engines - Use your favorite search engine in the search box. Go to the site you want and right click on the search field site and click on the search field. You will then be prompted to "create search".

Improved content blocker - Cosmetic surgery for Web pages. Just right click on a page and select "block content". Any content not greyed out can be blocked with a click. Select "done" and see the page the way you want.

Improved pop-up blocker - Just try it with some nasty popups. Opera Lab has added more intelligence to help weed out even more pop-ups. But since not all pop-ups are created equal, use the trash can to retrieve pop-ups you may want.

Site specific preferences - For those of you who want to control settings for specific pages. Want to accept some cookies and deny others? How about setting your own style sheet to make the site more accessible? Just right click on the page and select "Site preferences".

Thumbmail preview - Opera conserves system resources and uses less memory than other browsers so it's easy to have many tabs open at once. But just what tab had that video you wanted? Using the thumbnail feature, you can find out by resting the mouse on any tab.

As with any of our technology previews, this is not meant to replace your current version of Opera.

User Interface

• New Opera Widgets feature. Widgets are small Web applications that live outside the Opera window. Press F6 to enter widgets mode. See the widgets tutorials for more details.
  
• Added content blocking feature. Right click on a page and select "Block content", then click on content that you want to block. Alternatively, use Tools > Advanced > Content blocked to manage blocked content.
• Added search shortcut editor. Right click on a form input to add it as a search shortcut, or use Preferences > Search to manage search shortcuts
• Enabled support for BitTorrent.
  • New search shortcut 'b' searches BitTorrent
• Added site specific preferences user interface.
  • Press F12 and choose Site preferences to set preferences for the current site, or use Preferences > Advanced > Sites to manage site specific preferences.
  • Preferences that can be set on a per-site basis can now be accessed using Preferences > Advanced > Sites > Default settings.
• Web page thumbnails are now shown when hovering tabs.
  • Thumbnails are also available when switching tabs using Ctrl+Tab. These are disabled by default but can be enabled using the [User Prefs] Use Thumbnails in Window Cycle setting in opera:config.
• Added grouping by date and site to the History panel.
• Added syntax highlighting to source viewer.
• CSS errors are now reported to the message console.
• Tabbed browsing mode now opens a new tab if all existing tabs are closed.
• Local stylesheets can now be specified as a directory using the [User Prefs] Local CSS Files Directory setting, and all stylesheets in that directory will be used to populate the on-demand user stylesheet menu.
• New styles for opera:about, opera:cache, opera:config, opera:error, opera:history, opera:plugins, file: view, and Info panel.
• opera:config says what changes were saved.
• opera:config now allows linking to individual preferences, and searching within headers.
• Simplified bookmarks and Wand dialogs.
• Added keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Enter to auto complete¨"www" and "com" when used in the address field.
• Ctrl+B can be used instead of Ctrl+Shift+V for paste-and-go.

Messaging and Newsfeeds

• New e-mail header toolbar.
• Improved IMAP folder synchronisation.
• Improved moving of email between IMAP folders.
• Fix for duplicates showing in IMAP sent view.
• Fix for messages showing blank
• Added support for importing and exporting feed lists in OPML format, using File > Import and export.
• Default mail views can no longer be renamed through the mail interface. They can be renamed using language packs.
• Added a warning when sending mail without a subject.
• User stylesheets are no longer applied to mail, news, and chat.
• Added smiley menu to chat and mail toolbars.
• Added CTCP flood protection to IRC chat.

Display

• Added support for CSS 3 opacity.
• Media queries now understand several CSS length units, and can check additional media features.
• CSS rules that are only partially correct (for example, '1px solid notrecognised') are now ignored.
• Printing now uses backgrounds from print media instead of screen.
• Text-decoration is retained on absolutely positioned links.
• Attribute selectors now use the specified value of URIs, instead of resolved values.
• Button elements now respect display:none.
• Multiple fixes for styling of legends and fieldsets.
• Allowed coloring of text and backgrounds in option and optgroup elements.
• Fixed a regression with CSS attribute selectors failing to understand percentages.
• Improved handling of tables in ERA.
• Improvements for BIDI, including handling of padding-right, align="justify", and alignment in ERA.
• Improved handling of vertical-align.
• Improved handling of CSS 3 UI element states pseudo-classes.
• The align attribute will now apply to TR, TBODY, THEAD and TFOOT as well. Block-alignment will not be inherited from table or inline-table.
• @import is now supported in user stylesheets.
• Fixed handling of alternate stylesheets in XML.
• Added support for -o-text-overflow:ellipsis, synonymous to text-overflow:ellipsis in the current CSS 3 working draft.
• Updated display:inline handling on tables according to upcoming CSS2.1 specification update.

Changes to defaults

• Anonymous table cells in a display:table; now have a default vertical-align:middle;
• Form default margin-top is now 0, and margin-bottom now 1em.
• Several changes to the default margin and padding of legends and fieldsets.

Script

• getAttribute and related methods now retrieve the specified value of URIs, instead of resolved values.
• Improved DOM error reporting.
• Multiple fixes for XPath and XSLT.
• Fix to prevent reprocessing of scripts when a script element is moved through DOM.
• Enabled getElementById to retrieve elements based on attributes set to the ID type, by the DTD.
• Improved handling of the load event when navigating back and forward through history. See the knowledge base article for more details.
• Improved redrawing of table rows when dynamically changing styles.
• Added Node.text property, equivalent to Node.textContent
• Added support for the Element.currentStyle property.
• Canvas:
  • Fix for rect() and fill().
  • Added support for standard CSS color styles such as rgb() and color keywords.
  • Improved handing of resizing the canvas.
  • display:none on images in HTML no longer causes those images to fail to draw in canvas.
  • Many path() fixes.

Forms

• Fix for selecting text with different sized fonts in rich text editing.
• Added support for inserthtml, contentreadonly, increasefontsize, and decreasefontsize in rich text editing.
• Rich text editing now allows selection of images.
• XHTML forms are no longer submitted if they do not have an action attribute.
• Added support for the datetime input type.
• Fix to allow inputs to have a large maxlength value.
• Improved keyboard accessibility of Web Forms inputs.
• Enabled the htmlTemplate property.
• Added support for the datalist element and list attribute.
• Added support for Web Forms 2.0 step="any".
• Added support for oninput and onforminput events.
• Removed support for maxlength on file inputs (this section of Web Forms 2.0 has also been changed).
• Added support for Web Forms 2.0 repetition.

Images

• Added support for YCCK and CMYK formats in JPEG images.
• Multiple improvements to SVG 1.1 basic and SVG DOM support.

Plug-ins

• Initial implementation of NPP_GetValue().
• Re-enabled scripting of plug-ins with Java using LiveConnect.

Security

• Security bar is now greyed for sites using an encrypted connection, that have a low security rating.
• Updated expired TrustCenter root certificates.
• Fixed a TLS Extensions format error.
• Security bar is now greyed for sites using an encrypted connection, that have a low security rating.

Miscellaneous

• Rewrote server push handling.
• Fixed handling of target="_top" and target="_parent".
• Removed support for the Content-Location HTTP header as a base HREF.
• Site patching can now download certain site specific preferences as well as Browser JavaScript and user agent overrides.
• Multiple stability fixes.

Windows-specific changes

• Added experimental support for NTLM authentication.
• Fix for importing Internet Explorer favorites.
• When first run, Opera will attempt to import bookmarks from the default browser. Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera are supported.
• Known issues with widgets on Windows 95, 98, ME and NT:
  • Widgets may fail to render correctly.

Download Link

• Link: http://snapshot.opera.com/windows/o90p2_8212.exe
• File size: 3.99 MB
• Build: 8212
• Released: February 7, 2006

I'm now using the TP 2 of the Opera browser. It's really nice, working fine.
One improvement already I've noticed - the e-paper which Opera 8.51 couldn't open properly, with Opera 9 TP 2 I've just read it. Though it was unable to show all the option properly, still no problem found to view the complete e-paper of today.

The reason why I'm saying Opera 9 beta 2 could not open the e-paper properly is here:

Look at the screenshot of Firefox:

Times of India on Firefox

Look at the marked area of the page. It's showing an option 'Page Size' which is absent in the following shot of Opera 9 TP 2:

Times of India on Opera 9 TP 2

Look at the marked area of the page. The option of 'Page Size' is absent here.

Have you downloaded it? Are you using it? Are you facing any problem?