• Reported by liorean

So, the small Norwegian company releases another Beta. It's been some time since I last posted some substantial browser news here, and this release from Opera is worth a mention. Of all the browser development, Opera is the one I follow closest, because right now that's the browser where we see most changes happening. Let me list some of the things that has changed since the last Opera version I talked about, Opera 8 beta 1 (those that were in beta 2 will be marked so):

• Redesigned preference dialogue, similar to the Firefox redesign. Advanced tab still feels a bit overloaded, though.

• SVG Tiny 1.1 support added. (Beating Mozilla to enabling SVG in the default build...)

• Google Maps compatibility fix (XMLHTTPRequest fix)

• Google Suggest compatibility fix (XMLHTTPRequest fix, beta2)

• Google Suggest compatibility fix (TextRange fix, beta2)

• Not mentioned in the official changelogs: User JavaScript (Similar to Mozilla Greasemonkey.)

• Lots of XML fixes

• Lots of DOM fixes (including my pet peeve, exposing useful DOM interfaces as objects)

• A few CSS fixes

• Lots or internationalisation fixes.

Key mappings are still my main gripe against it. User interface has gone through a marvellous improvement since Opera 7.0, though. Especially when you get rid of that pesky ad by registering it, it's not any more bloated than firefox. The preference changes are especially noteworthy, though I think an improvement would be to move privacy and security prefs to a separate tab instead loading the list of things in the "Advanced" tab.

Google has, I'm sorry to say, made it so that Opera is now redirected to the plain HTML interface for GMail instead of the advanced interface for all versions of Opera. Sure, Opera 8 still has a number of rendering glitches on GMail's advanced interface, but functionality wise it works just fine. To still be able to use the advanced interface, make sure you visit http://gmail.google.com/gmail?nocheckbrowser when you're loggin in to GMail. Note that this will not work the first time you try to log in.

I'll probably come back to you on the User JavaScript feature, I'm working on something for it right now...

Of course, a little list of links:

• Opera 8 Beta 3 for Windows changelogs

• Opera 8 Beta 2 for Windows changelogs

• Get Opera 8 Beta 3 for Windows

• Opera Beta Testing forum

• Top Opera 8.0 Beta 3 changes