Oops they did it again!

Just when you thing what else can they do, they do something really cool. They integrated something called VoiceXML plug-in from IBM which let you control some aspects of the browser using your voice and also read back pages to you. This is currently a preview release to thoroughly test out the new features so there is only 1 version out. Final version will have both, a voice enabled and a normal version…

What else is new? A post on the SitePoint Forum by megamanXplosion explains better than I can do:

It gets rid of the error dialogs in favor of error pages so you do not get interrupted if a page in another tab doesn’t load. This has been one of my biggest gripes with Opera, no more!

Totally agreed mate. Considering the net connection I have this along with auto-refresh is a godsend.

You can choose if you want browser-only or internet-suite during installation. The browser-only option will remove the mail and chat menus, which can be re-enabled later in the preferences dialog.

Now, we will not hear the Mozilla Fanboys complaints about bloat and confused interface!

It contains the experimental VoiceXML plug-in from IBM. It is currently bundled, it will be separate once 7.6 is thoroughly tested and released as final. This allows you to talk to Opera and tell it what to do, and you can even have it read the page back to you in your own language!

Need to check it out!

Medium screen rendering has been introduced which, I think, is a mix between normal rendering and small screen rendering. It will have the speed of small screen rendering with the comfort of regular rendering.

Liked it… With some issues of course.

It seems that they have implemented the new cross-browser plug-in architecture which they’ve been working with Mozilla to create. I cannot say this for certain, but flash transparency (wmode) works now, which was a limitation by their old (NN4) plug-in format. So, I’m fairly confident in saying that they’ve implemented the new plug-in architecture.

No idea!

They are currently experimenting with a newer version of TSL encryption for secured sites. It’s known to cause problems on some sites; time will tell if they will keep this.

Ahem, again no idea!

It also implements a lot of the webmaster-goodies that I’ve been wanting to play with for a long time. It has XMLHTTPRequest, XMLSerializer, and DOMParser which are some of my recent requests on their forums, I can now develop full-fledged online applications with Opera now (this enables GMail compatibility as well)! It also contains DOM3 Load and Save functionality, I’m not exactly sure what that does, but I’ll figure it out! They have implemented the CSS3 Speech Module, so you can now use aural stylesheets to add speech capabilities for your Opera users who have the VoiceXML plugins installed. They’ve also fixed a lot of HTML, XML, CSS, DOM, and ECMAScript bugs.

Need GMail to fix itself for Opera. Otherwise I am happy as long as it is for good…

And, like every release Opera puts out, it includes numerous stability fixes. Not only that, but it also has more aggressive error recovery for HTTP pipelining, so we might see some speed improvements as well! (as if speed improvements were really necessary with Opera)

True true…

Get eet now: Opera 7.60 Preview 1