Web Browsers And Packages
Release: 2010-07-13
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Opera and other Presto based Browsers
Presto 2.6, used in Opera 10.6, is a Crystal Level web platform using the Core 2 layout engine and the new Vega graphics engine and Carakan scripting virtual machine. Opera is available for many environments. This cutting-edge, web-standards supporting browser has support for:
- HTML 4.01 (HyperText Markup Language);
- HTML 5 'Subset';
labelattribute foroptionelements;- HTML 5's
<meta charset="">; 'named character reference;- HTML 5 Forms except for
progress,meter, input typessearch,telandcolor; - contenteditable and spell checking support (but not spellcheck attribute);
canvasElement;- HTML 5's
audio,videoandsourceelements (Presto 2.5); - Partial HTML 5 Offline Web Applications support (AppCache,
manifestattribute, manifest format,navigator.onLineproperty); - WAI-ARIA adds support for Accessible Rich Internet Applications;
- Cascade StyleSheets (CSS) level 1, Visual & Interactive and Paged level 2.1 provides a realistic way of adding presentation and layout to your document structures;
- Some main and custom CSS 3 features;
- The ability to style and script with unknown markup;
- For image support we have GIF89a, JPEG, PNG, Icons (.ico, .png, .jpg, .gif), BMP (Windows Bitmap), XBM (X Bitmap), WBMP (Wireless Bitmap) and SVG;
- Document Object Model (DOM) level 1 (HTML, XML), 99% of level 2 (Core, HTML, XML, Views, Stylesheets, CSS, CSS2, Events, UIEvents, MutationEvents, MouseEvents, HTMLEvents, Traversal, Range), some Level 3 (bits of Core, LS (Load & Save), LS-Async (Asynchronised Load & Save) and XPath as well as partial XML and Events), Bits of DOM 5 HTML exposes the document to scripting interaction;
- JavaScript 1.6 (without multiple catches);
- Selectors API level 1 allows an easier way to access parts of the DOM using CSS-like selectors;
- GeoLocation support (2.6);
- Element Traversal API and the
childrenproperty (2.1.1); - In Presto 2.5, to compliment cookies, the Web SQL Database Storage allows local database performance and capacity with SQLite, and its support for SQL, to store information beyond the abilities of cookies;
- Also in Presto 2.5, the Web Storage's
sessionStorageandlocalStorageallow local database performance and capacity with SQLite for name/value pairs.
Canvas feature support includes:
- Stroke and fill colours;
- Rectangles;
- Paths;
- rgba/hsla colours;
- Canvas Text (Presto 2.5);
- Shadows (Presto 2.5);
- Linear and radial gradients;
- Patterns;
- Translations, rotation and scale;
- Bring in pixel images;
CSS level 3 features supported includes:
-
hsl(),rgba(),hsla(); - Namespace and Speech Modules;
-
opacityandbox-sizingfor layout model switcher; - Most of CSS3 Media Queries and its own
-o-linking properties for XML; -
text-shadow; -
::selectionpseudo-element selector, Structural pseudo-class selectors (like:nth-child,:not,:empty,:first-of-type, etc),:enabled,:disabledand:checkedUI state pseudo-class selectors and the:targetselector; - From Presto 2.2:
@font-faceAt Rule with multiplesrcvalues,local()andformat()functions (support for TrueType and OpenType fonts as well as SVG Fonts); - Since Presto 2.5, support for Multiple Background Images, proper
border-radius, properbox-shadow, CSS Transitions, CSS 2D Transforms;
Native Media format support:
- WebM (VP8 video and OGG Vorbis audio);
- OGG Theora Video;
- OGG Vorbis Audio;
SVG support includes:
- Groups, Titles, Descriptions, metadata, defs and use;
- Stroke and fill colours;
- Basic shapes (Rectangles, Rounded Corner Rectangles, Lines, Circles, Ellipses, Polylines and Polygons);
- Paths;
- Opacity;
- Text (since Presto 2 Second Edition (SE));
- Text on a path (since Presto 2 SE);
- SVG 1.2 text (
textArea,tbreak, etc) (since Presto 2 SE); - Hyperlinkg;
- Clipping, Masks, Markers, Patterns (since Presto 2 SE);
- Linear and radial gradients (rendered since Presto 2 SE);
- Translations, skews, rotation and scale;
- Bring in pixel images (rendered since Presto 2 SE);
- Conditional switch;
- SVG declarative animation;
- SVG Fonts;
- SVG (at least 1.1) Filters (since Prest 2 SE);
- CSS support (CSS properties were not supported on SVG text before Presto 2.5);
- SVG Views;
- Scripting support (since Presto 2 SE);
- Scripted animation (since Presto 2 SE);
- SVG integrates with webpage (true transparent background);
- SVG 1.2 Tiny
audioandvideoelements (Presto 2.5);
In the realm of XML:
- eXtensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 and 1.1 with Namespaces & XML-Stylesheet Processing Instruction (PI);
xml:idAttribute;- eXtensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) 1.0, 1.1 (without Ruby Annotation) and Basic 1.0;
- Wireless Markup Language (WML) 1.0 to 2.0 & XHTML Mobile Profile provides document structure primarily for the mobile and PDA market;
- CSS for Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) 2 to present math and sciences expressions on the web;
- Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 and partial 1.2 Tiny for ultimate 2-dimensional vector image display on desktop and mobile;
- eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) 1 & eXtensible Path Language (XPath) 1 allows the ability to convert document structure into other document structures;
- RSS and Atom news feed support;
- XML Events for current and future script event handling;
- XHTML+Voice 1.2 (includes VoiceXML 2.0) for Text-To-Speech and Speech Recognition handling;
- Limited XML Document Type Definition support only to process Entities in the Subset;
providing an excellent platform for experiencing the World Wide Web.
Opera passes the Acid 2 Test which tests Cascade Stylesheet (CSS) support. More about the Acid 2 Test from the Web Standards Project (WASP).
Opera 10.5 also clocks 100 out of 100, passing all tests and one test took 15 to 30 attempts, on the Acid 3 Test which tests DOM, scripting, HTML, SVG and various other technologies for Web 2.0. More about the Acid 3 Test from the Web Standards Project (WASP).
In order to allow users to navigate and use interactive webpage features using the keyboard (part of making webpages accessible) Opera provide the following: You can tab through form controls in general, audio and video. On MS Windows and Linux/Unix platforms use control+down arrow to highlight each link at a time or control+up arrow to highlight the previous link. On Apple Mac OS X use command+down arrow to highlight each link at a time or command+up arrow to highlight the previous link.
Opera Features
Not just on the desktop, but various forms of Presto/Opera are available for smart phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and home media systems amongst other embedded environments.
Presto is also used in Adobe Dreamweaver, Nintendo DS Web Browser, Nintendo Wii Web Browser and many TV Set-Top Boxes and mobile web browsers.
Opera features a web browser, M2 mail client and newsgroup component complete with RSS news feed support plus built in chat client. All email, news and feeds are now stored in an internal database to help improve performance.
Popup window blocking prevents unsolicited advertising and the Rewind and Fast Forward controls allow giant leap to the back or the front of your history queue. Quick Find scans your browsing history for suggestions of autocomplete web address'. Opera Links allows synchronisation of bookmarks between Opera on multiple computers and mobiles.
Support for HTTP, FTP and BitTorrent downloads. Saved sessions and per-site preferences, add search engines and widgets improve the quality of your web experience. CSS Media Types that Opera includes all, screen, print, projection, handheld and speech. To view your website with your print stylesheet go to Print Preview; to view with projection stylesheet you can use Opera Show/Full Screen (F11) and to view with handheld stylesheet go to the Small Screen mode. Opera also supports alternate stylesheets.
Plus for Web Developers Opera 10 has access to Opera Dragonfly: a set of debug and analysis tools for HTML, XML, CSS, DOM, ECMAScript/JavaScript and Network (how long pages, images, scripts, styleSheets, etc took to download).
Also note that due to websites still using browser sniffing scripts and sniffing for a single version digit; Opera 10 and higher's main version in the UserAgent String is Opera/9.80 (with current real version as: version/10.60 at the end).
Opera 10 introduces Opera Turbo. A way for Opera to load webpages as fast as broadband even when using slow connection speeds. Plus an update feature has been added to Opera 10.
Version 10.1 introduces Opera Unite. It adds a web server and a collection of web applications to provide the ability to share content on the internet and directly share photos, movies and other files to other computers directly.
Version 10.54 (for Windows and Mac) uses Presto 2.5. It adds support for CSS 3 multiple background images in one declaration, CSS transitions, 2D transforms, proper box-shadow and border-radius. It has a new graphics rendering engine called Vega and a new scripting virtual machine called Carakan.
Opera 10.54 has a more Chrome look to it. On Windows Vista and 7 it has support for translucent titlebar and status bar. Opera also supports live previews of each tab, separately, from Windows 7's taskbar.
In Opera 10.6 (Presto 2.6.30) for Windows, Mac and Linux: seems to have lost Win7 Taskbar Live Thumbnail support but does now have support for Geolocation, WebM audio and video and 50% faster JavaScript.
Opera Mobile and Opera Mini
Version 10 of the main mobile version of Opera web browser is available for many types of SmartPhone. It is a Layout Level Web Browser that uses an adapted Presto 2.4 which does not support HTML 5 Native Media or SVG audio and video. Also Opera Mobile does not support CSS 2D Transforms, border-radius, box-shadow, Canvas Text, Web Storage, Web Database Storage, MathML StyleSheet or news feeds.
There are Windows, Mac and Linux builds of Opera Mobile 10 allowing you to test them on your desktop.
Opera Mini 5 is available for any Java 2 Micro Edition supported device including SmartPhones and other mobile phones. Opera Mini 5 is also freely available for Apple's iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Using a proxy server to do the web browser processing of webpages with an adapted Presto 2.4, applying about 90% compression and then sending that static, highly compressed data stream to the mobile device and Opera Mini just opens and displays it like a document viewer.
In addition to the things that Opera Mobile does not support, Opera Mini (or rather the Opera Mini Proxy Server) does not support CSS downloadable fonts, the new HTML 5 forms features, CSS transitions, Canvas Shadow, SVG systemLanguage or SVG animation.
Using Microemulator you can test Opera Mini on a desktop with Java 2 Standard Edition 1.4 and higher and the Microemulator application which emulates a Java 2 Micro Edition environment.
Features that need to be added to Presto
- From CSS3:
- Some form of CSS Multiple Column Layout;
- Support for the Web Open Font Format (.woff);
- From HTML 5:
- SVG inline in text/html documents;
- HTML 5 Forms
inputtypetel, searchandcolorsupport; - HTML 5 Offline Web Applications support (
applicationCache, online and offline body events); section,article,aside,nav,hgroup,header,footer,mark,time,progress,meter,figure,figcaption,detailsandsummaryelements;
- From SVG:
- Support for XHTML seamlessly inline in SVG;
- From Scripting APIs
- Drag and Drop;
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