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Tech

First look: Opera 12 ups the ante

The latest release of Opera has some obvious cosmetic and UI changes, as well as several new under-the-hood functions. Overall, here are 12 changes worth noting.

Plug-ins run as separate processes
Plug-ins in Opera 12 now function as processes separate from the browser’s main operation. This is meant to provide better overall stability against plug-ins that are badly written or happen to crash, and to thwart any malicious ones devised to compromise security. Under this new architecture, if a plug-in misbehaves, Opera 12 will shut it down and continue running.

Do not track
Opera 12 can be set to prevent all websites from tracking your browsing activity, or only ones you specify. To turn this feature on to stop all websites from tracking, you go to Settings > Preferences > Advanced > Security and check “Ask websites not to track me.” Blocking a specific site from tracking you requires that you first visit it, right-click over a blank spot of the page, select “Edit site preferences” from the pop-up menu, Network, and then put in a check by “Ask websites not to track me.”


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64-bit processor support
To further increase its speed, Opera 12 now takes advantage of computers running 64-bit processors with 64-bit versions of Windows or Mac OS X. This makes Opera the first of the major web browsers to have a simultaneous 64-bit release alongside its 32-bit version for both platforms.

Hardware acceleration
Opera 12 supports WebGL and can use the graphics processor in your computer to further give a performance boost. However, these are currently tagged as experimental features, so both are turned off by default. To activate WebGL, you enter opera:config in the browser’s address bar, select User Prefs and enter “1” in the “Enable WebGL” box. For hardware acceleration, set “Enable Hardware Acceleration” to “1.”

Easier and faster theme changing
Changing the look (theme) of Opera 12 is a quick one-click process, and it doesn’t require a restart of the browser. Right-click on a blank area on the new tab/speed dial page, select Appearance, and choose a new theme in the pop-up window.

Easier to see security badges
In the address bar, the security badges to the left of a URL have been redesigned, which includes color coding, to make
them easier to see and interpret the privacy setting for the website you’re browsing.

Address field improvements and enhancements
Additions and fixes implemented into Opera 12’s address field include: Improved search term and URL suggestions are listed as you type, and also appear in the address bar drop-down window; smart URL shortening is now listed in the address field drop-down; URL and page content columns shown in this drop-down are now combined; and a URL’s page title and an excerpt from it are used for displaying full-page search results.

Webcam support through HTML5
Opera 12 now supports the WebRTC architecture for webcams, which allows real-time communication (RTC) between two users with webcams. WebRTC is an open project that uses HTML5 and JavaScript code to accomplish this, and is also officially supported by Google for its Chrome browser and Mozilla for Firefox.

Drag-and-drop through HTML5
Another HTML5 component bringing new robustness to Opera is the capability for a web page to include elements (such as text or files) that the user can drag and drop onto another page, or from the desktop onto the page.

Extensions can control tabs and windows
Extensions in Opera 12 are now permitted to interact with browser windows and tabs (or groups of tabs). For example, an extension can be written to open or close a browser window or tab. Obviously, this raises the spectre of malicious or untrusted sites cluttering up your browser with windows and tabs you don’t want opening, but is necessary to allow legitimate sites to have, such as web apps.

Right-to-left language support
Opera 12’s UI automatically mirrors itself when displaying right-to-left languages Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu, if your Windows or Linux computer is set to one of these language. The direction of the UI is determined by the direction of the language. Under one of these four languages, the sidebar, for example, which is normally set on the left side of the browser will be placed along the right.

Opera Unite and widgets phased out
The little-used features Opera Unite and widgets have been deactivated by default in Opera 12. Unite actually was innovative: It let you set up your computer to function as a server through Opera. Unite was promoted prominently as a main attraction for using Opera when it was first introduced, but for some reason it never caught on with users. Widgets are being phased out in part to remove users’ confusion with extensions, and developers of Opera widgets are being encouraged to write extensions instead. The code for these two lays dormant in Opera 12, but will be removed from upcoming versions of the browser.

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Essential browser tools for Web developers

Essential browser tools for Web developers
What the professionals use and recommend to their colleagues

Computerworld – Out of the thousands of cool add-ons out there for Firefox, Chrome and other popular Web browsers, only a select few make it onto the desktops of professional Web developers and designers. Which are the most useful for the day-to-day work of designing and developing websites?

Browser tools for Web devs

Code inspection, editing and debugging
Design assistance
Enhancing performance
Handy utilities
Boosting SEO
Collaboration

 

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Computerworld asked more than 20 professionals from across the country what they recommend to their colleagues and why. While they stuck mostly with free browser extensions, they couldn’t resist throwing in a few highly useful tools and services that are accessed via a browser rather than being true add-ons.

Here’s their hot list, where you’ll find some old favorites and, we hope, discover some new tools for your arsenal.
Code inspection, editing and debugging

These three tools make the job of viewing website code and prototyping page changes fast and easy. No need to touch the live code until you’re ready to commit to changes.

What it does: Inspects, edits and debugs website code within your browser.

Who recommends it:
• Matt Mayernick, vice president of Web development, Hudson Horizons in Saddle Brook, N.J.
• Josh Singer, president, Web312 in Chicago
• Richard Kesey, president and founder, Razor IT in Syracuse, N.Y.
• Ryan Burney, lead Web developer, 3 Roads Media in Greenwood Village, Col.

Why it’s cool: Probably the best known of all the tools listed here, “Firebug is the greatest add-on ever created,” Mayernick says. It’s not just the fact that Firebug lets developers inspect website code and elements, but how it helps with debugging that makes the tool great. “If I am writing JavaScript that’s changing the background color in a row, Firebug will show what’s happening to the CSS code in real time,” he says.
Firebug
Firebug displays the page’s HTML code in the lower left window and its CSS data in the lower right. Click to view larger image.

Firebug inspects the code by presenting the HTML and the CSS code in two side-by-side windows. “Firebug is indispensable. What’s cool is you can turn styles on or off or add styles on the fly. It lets me make changes live on the page without having to save or reload the files,” says Burney.

“It’s great for finding JavaScript errors,” adds Kesey. “When you click on an Ajax link, it reads out what the action is and gives you the response in an https: format so you can see what the headers were and what’s happening behind the scenes.”
Web Developer
Author: Chris Pederick
Browsers supported: Chrome, Firefox
Price: Free
Where to get it: Install Web Developer for Chrome or Web Developer for Firefox

What it does: Provides a toolkit for viewing, editing and debugging websites.

Who recommends it:
• Darrell Armstead, mobile developer, DeepBlue in Atlanta
• Jen Kramer, senior interface developer, 4Web in Keene, N.H.

Why it’s cool: “I love Web Developer because of the control it gives me over any site. It gives me the ability to strip a site down to its core, and lets me modify and tweak things to get it looking and working the way I want it to,” Armstead says. But that’s not all he likes: “I love the Outline Block Level Elements feature because it gives me a visual representation of how a site is built on the front end.”
Web Developer add-on
Web Developer displays the style sheets associated with a page and lets you edit them to quickly see how changes will look before actually making any changes to the website’s code. (Credit: Jen Kramer)
Click to view larger image.

Kramer chimes in: “What I like about it is the ability to look at CSS. It shows all of the style sheets available on the page, and I can edit those on the fly and see how it looks in the browser,” she says. “That’s particularly helpful to me because I work with content management systems. It allows me to style what’s being sent to the browser.

“Firebug has something similar, but I find it more difficult to use. It’s much harder to get a style sheet out of Firebug and into Joomla,” Kramer adds. For me, Web Developer works better.”
Google Chrome Developer Tools
Author: Google
Browser supported: Chrome
Price: Free
Where to get it: Included with the Chrome browser. Right-click on any Web page in Chrome and choose “Inspect Element,” or choose View –> Developer –> Developer Tools from the menu.

What it does: Provides tools for inspecting, editing and debugging website code.

Who recommends it:
• Jason Hipwell, managing director, Clikzy Creative in Alexandria, Va.
• Shaun Rajewski, lead developer at Web Studios in Erie, Pa.
• Ryan Burney, 3 Roads Media

Why it’s cool: Developer Tools is Google’s answer to Firebug for Firefox, but there’s no add-on to download: Google built it right into the Chrome browser.

“It is my favorite ‘extension’ because of its intuitive design, with HTML on the left, CSS on the right,” says Hipwell. “Inspect Element will highlight elements on a page as you hover over them, which makes it easy to find the div tag I am looking for. It gives me the ability to see changes on a live site, but those changes exist only on my local computer, making it a perfect testing environment. Its simplicity is really what makes the tool so effective.”
Chrome Developer Tools
Using Chrome Developer Tools, Clikzy’s Jason Hipwell has replaced the Computerworld logo with his own in just a few clicks. (Credit: Clikzy Creative) Click to view larger image.

Rajewski is also a big fan. “Developer Tools allows you to see the final output of what is rendered to [the] screen, and has the ability to highlight individual elements, view the elements’ CSS tags and inherited tags, and make ‘live’ changes to the code to see what it looks like in the browser without making file changes,” he says.

“One nice thing about Chrome’s Developer Tools is that it will give you the dimensions of things,” says Burney. Click on the image URL and up pops the image with the associated link, image dimensions and file type displayed. That’s something Firebug doesn’t do, he says. “Being able to know at a glance the dimensions of an object, that’s a big time saver.”

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Best Networking Tweaks for Windows Server, Vista and XP

Like most Sys Admins, my job includes managing both Linux and Windows machines. This is the start of a two-part series regarding tweaks I have found for networking in each type of system. First up: Windows.

I have labeled my findings based on where you’ll find it: either as an operating system feature, or in the device manager of the Ethernet adapter you’re using.
IPv6 tunneling, TCP, gigabit adapters and more will all work better with these simple adjustments

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Driver: Interrupt Coalescing / Moderation

Gigabit adapters in particular implement new algorithms to try to accommodate different forms of network traffic: especially when a good portion of it may not need that kind of speed (think web-facing adapters on 10/100 lines). However, it has been my own experience that Quickbooks can be particularly jumpy with this feature enabled. It goes by several different names (depends on the vendor) but you should only need to leave this on if you’re using a gigabit interface on an Internet-facing server.

Driver: Offloading (IP / TCP / UDP)

Many adapter drivers come with a form of offload engine for layer 3 or 4 protocols; there is also a “Large Segment Offload” feature on some adapters. These features are meant to reduce CPU overhead by having the network adapter do more of the work: however, a lot of network adapters are sub-par, and there is no harm in having the CPU do these tasks (disabling the offloads) for anything short of a server-grade adapter. The exception would be checksum offloading: that seems to be easily doable by any hardware.

2003 & Older: SMB tweaking

Microsoft has offered a set of registry tweaks that should improve file sharing performance on older Windows systems: they will have little or no impact on newer systems, for they use SMB version 2.

XP & Newer: Automatic IPv6 Tunneling

At GoGoNet Live, I was fortunate to question a Cisco engineer that took credit for having Windows implement automatic tunneling with XP and newer: he believed that providing IPv6 access, “native” or not, would spur application developers to honor API changes and continue to embrace the new protocol. Now that 2010 is almost out: 6to4 has been maligned by Google and Apple for breaking website access; ISATAP can be hard to work with; Teredo tunneling can be hit or miss (Microsoft does host some servers for use); and that desired application uptake has been largely ignored by the likes of Pidgin, Steam, and others. The speaker can be forgiven that his intentions went awry, when quite a few people (Linux and Windows) think the best way to handle IPv6 is to turn it off completely. Fortunately, you don’t have to slay the IPv6 beast: its a known fact we’ll be living with it starting in 2011, like it or not.

1. Commands to use on an “administrator” command prompt…
netsh interface ipv6 6to4 set state state=disabled
netsh interface ipv6 isatap set state state=disabled
netsh interface ipv6 set teredo disable

2. On Windows XP systems, you can also disable the “IP Helper” service: however, you’ll lose use of the portproxy function.

3. If you want to use IPv6, and your ISP doesn’t have it, consider free (and stable) tunnel services from HE, GoGoNet, and SixXS.

XP x64 & Server 2003: Compound TCP

With the Vista networking stack, a modified TCP stack was introduced. I use this “Compound TCP” when I can on the newer systems: fortunately, it has been backported to the 2003-based systems via hotfix 949316.

Vista & Newer: Standard Networking Tweaks

1. I make prudent use of Compound TCP, TCP timestamping, and TCP Chimney: the latter is a function of Windows that does partial TCP offloading when able. At the “administrator” command prompt…
netsh interface tcp set global congestion=ctcp
netsh interface tcp set global time=enabled
netsh interface tcp set global chimney=enabled

2. I prefer not to use IPv6 privacy addressing for troubleshooting purposes; it can be disabled with the following command…
netsh interface ipv6 set privacy state=disable

3. There is an additional tweak that can help deal with proper traffic routing: however, many routers don’t implement it correctly, and Battlefield Heroes doesn’t like it at all. Use at your caution.
netsh interface tcp set global ecn=enabled

And there you have … my list of favorite tweaks. Next up: Linux.