Opera | Technology Blog

Opera 9.63 Released

January 2nd, 2009

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A new version of the Opera web browser has been released on the last day of 2008. Opera 9.63 is an update to the current official release version of Opera. The update is a recommended security and stability upgrade. The new version can be downloaded directly from the official Opera website where it is available for all supported operating systems.

Existing Opera users can alternatively use the Check For Updates option in the Help menu to download Opera 9.63. The only other changes are one addition to the opera:config menu which can be set to close tabs by double-clicking on them. There are also four additions to the mail, news and chat functions of Opera.

List of security changes and improvements:

Manipulating text input contents can allow execution of arbitrary code
HTML parsing flaw can cause Opera to execute arbitrary code
Long hostnames in file: URLs can cause execution of arbitrary code
Script injection in feed preview can reveal contents of unrelated news feeds
Built-in XSLT templates can allow cross-site scripting
Fixed an issue that could reveal random data
SVG images embedded using tags can no longer execute Java or plugin content
Opera now imports .p12 private certificates

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Change Opera’s Speed Dial Thumbnails

January 1st, 2009

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Opera displays a set of up to nine thumbnails of websites on every blank tab that is opened in the browser. The Speed Dial feature provides the means to open nine custom websites faster than usual. It just takes one click of the left mouse button to load the selected website in a new tab in the Opera web browser.

The thumbnails that are used to represent the websites in the Speed Dial form are taken directly from the website. The best way of identifying the website is probably the title of the website which will be displayed below each thumbnail. The thumbnail itself is usually to small to be helpful in quickly identifying the website.

Tamil who runs a blog at the Opera website posted information on how to exchange the automatically generated thumbnails with custom ones that make it easier to identify the websites. The alternative thumbnails have to be created in png format with a suggest size of 256×192 pixels or less.

Opera 9.63 Update Released

December 16th, 2008

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The Opera development team has been busy the last weeks releasing the first public alpha version of Opera 10 and only a week later an update for the latest official version of Opera which raises the version to 9.63. The new update which became available earlier today is a recommended security update and every user with Opera installed should update the web browser immediately.

The update is already available when checking the Help > Check For Updates option from within Opera. It can also be downloaded directly from the official Opera ftp website for all supported operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh, Linux and mobile devices.

Here is the list of security issues that have been fixed in Opera 9.63:

Web Browser Benchmark Comparison

December 14th, 2008

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Several new web browser versions have been released in the last days which made it important to benchmark the latest official versions and the latest development versions of Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, IE and Opera to see how the browsers compare to each other. All browsers were installed on a Windows XP Service Pack 3 test system.

The browsers were tested running the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark, Kane’s Web Browser Javascript Benchmark and the Acid 3 test. Feel free to run the tests with your web browsers but note that results will vary as the computer’s hardware influences the test on different systems.

The only way to compare results is by running the tests on the same computer system using the same environment. The first two tests are testing the JavaScript engine of the web browser while the Acid3 test is a web standards test.

Firefox Cookie Editor

December 12th, 2008

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Mozilla Firefox offers no way to manipulate cookies directly in the web browser unlike the Opera web browser. While cookie editing is probably not something that the majority of users would ever want to dive in there might be some users who would want to do just that. This can be web developers who want to test their websites with various settings or for security experts who test the security of a website. Being able to edit cookies in the browser makes it much easier to manipulate them. The second method would be to edit the cookies manually on the system’s hard drive or with an external software capable of doing that.

Add N Edit Cookies is a Firefox extension that integrates cookie manipulation in the web browser. A link to the cookie editor is added at the end of the tools menu. It will load in a separate window that acts independently meaning that it is possible to use Firefox with the Cookie Editor window being open.

The main window provides access to a filter that can be used to locate specific cookies. By default all cookies are shown in the list sorted by their site and cookie name. A click on a cookie will display extensive information including the cookie’s content, the path, host and expiration date.

Effective Secure Cookie Management

December 10th, 2008

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How would an effective and secure cookie management look like? Most users would probably answer that it would make use of whitelists, blacklists and temporary cookies. The whitelist would contain trusted sites that require cookies to function properly. Trust would mean that you would keep the cookies on your system even after closing the session to make it comfortable working with the website.

The blacklist would contain websites that should not be allowed to place cookies on the user’s system. A die hard approach would be to start every new site in the blacklist and move it to either the temporarily allowed sites or the whitelist when needed.

The temporary list would contain sites that would require cookies to work properly but that are not trusted enough - or where it is not necessary - to be placed in the whitelist.