I've been updating this site since last month. One of the things I added is able to serve gzip-encoded page. On top of that, my site is also able to serve gzip-encoded CSS and JS file Just scroll to the bottom of every page and you'll notice a line that says something like "Gzip enabled , CSS compressed , JS compressed". This will give an indication whether they are enabled or not. In other words, this will make pages load faster as well as saving some tiny bandwidth.

I've written a how-to thing that gives you an idea how to achieve that with PHP using ob_gzhandler(). For this to work you'll need the appropriate version of PHP, zlib extension and web browser that supports compressed web page.

Link: [PHP] How to enable Gzip compression on output buffer

Next topic will be on how to shrink, compress and cache CSS/JS files. Those who're using heavy AJAX and CSS styling will benefit from this.

Opera 9.20 is out. Upgrade your Opera or grab yourself a new copy here.

So, version 9.20 huh? Opera 9.20 is packed with a few more new features compared to 9.10. They're Speed Dial for lazy people and Developer Tools for non-noobies.

Speed Dial
Opera Speed Dial is basically a 9 small clickable boxes displayed in a blank page (when you open a new tab). The interesting part is, above the 9 boxes, it has a simple search input powered by Yahoo!. It's kinda like Firefox and Google, IE and Live search, Opera and Yahoo! thing... It's the battle between search engines and browser, accept Microsoft owns IE and Live search...weird thing...

Opera Developer Console
Opera now includes a developer console that can be added into the browser with many new features. The developer console includes new tools including DOM inspector, JavaScript inspector, CSS editor and HTTP header inspector.



*NOTE*
These are developer tools that have been used internally for some time by Web Application developers at Opera Software. These tools are meant as early previews, and should be considered alpha quality software. They are provided on an as-is basis, in the form of buttons that can be dragged to any Opera toolbar.

All of the tools should work in Opera 9.0 and later. To learn more, look through the documentation page.

Finished on the intro part, one thing I found annoying is that the 'Detach' is disappeared in the tab menu (right click on any tab) after I upgrade from 9.10 to 9.20. According to somebody in Opera forum, that's a bug and the 'Detach' shouldn't appear in the menu originally. Can't verify the correctness but that sucks. I have to drag and drop the tab out of the program in order to detach it, I still think a simple click on the menu is a better option for lazy people like me.

Updated the Javascript and CSS for site-wide top horizontal navigation bar. The menus are now displayed correctly in IE7.0/Win.

The script, FreeStyle Menus, is borrowed from Angus Turnbull. Check out his site.

See Site News Archive for more info.

Found a cool trick to display (nearly) all pictures on the web page you currently browsing.

1. Open your browser
2. Visit the page by typing the address of the web page in the address bar and hit [ENTER]
3. Once the page has finish loading, copy & paste the below code to the address bar and hit [ENTER]
   
   [ Hide ]

   [ Highlight ] [ Text ]

   javascript:Ai7Mg6P='';for%20(i7M1bQz=0;i7M1bQz<document.images.length;i7M1bQz++){Ai7Mg6P+='<img%20src='+document.images[i7M1bQz].src+'><br>'};if(Ai7Mg6P!=''){document.write('<center>'+Ai7Mg6P+'</center>');void(document.close())}else{alert('No%20images!')}

Firefox has its own media browser if you need something like that.

I don't know why, it seems that the "Search King" Google and Microsoft doesn't like Opera. I can understand why Microsoft sort of hates Opera, and you can find alot of news and rumours on the dark side between Microsoft and Opera. However it seems that there is no negative news that shows Microsoft hates Firefox. For Google, I still remember GMail does not support Opera when it first open the service to public. Now the problem no longer exists. But then, Google Reader and Opera is not living in harmony. In Opera, the elements in Google Reader are cramped up together. Firefox is working fine on it. It seems like Google and Mozilla has some sort of alliance thing between them. Maybe open-source thing will always be the most attractive/peaceful ones among others eh ?

I'm a big fan of Opera for years, but I don't hate Firefox. I still use Firefox once in a while. However, it's just a pain in the ass (alright, maybe it's not that serious) to open Firefox specially for Google Reader, while using Opera to surf other websites. I use Google Reader almost everyday to read news/feeds. For Opera fans out there, here's a fix to make Opera to work perfectly with Google Reader :

1. Download Reader.js (contributed by unknown coder)
2. Visit Google Reader main page
3. Go to Tools menu, select Quick Preferences -> Edit site preferences -> Scripting. Under the Use Javascript file, point that to the newly downloaded Reader.js
4. Refresh the page and get ready to read thousands of feeds that you subscribed ;)

Enjoy ;)

Stupid Firefox 1.5.0.6 unable to wrap up one long url link in one of the blog entry, causing the whole page has a "wide screen" view.

The fault
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx? familyid=32BC1BEE-A3F9-4C13-9C99-220B62A191EE&displaylang=en

I purposely put a space after the details.aspx? to avoid weird rendering in Firefox browser. Opera and IE wraps/breaks up the string on "-" but obviously Firefox doesn't treat that "-" as a point to break up long string

I upgraded the Opera in my workstation's computer from v8 to v9, everything just works fine. It's great to see fast performance on that old, slow and half-way-to-trash-bin computer that runs on Win2000.

Beware though, you may need to becarefull if you want to do a clean installation. For my case, I uninstalled my Opera 8 to go for Opera 9 on my personal notebook. Some files are not removed/deleted and left behind in the "Opera" folder after the uninstallation. Those are your configuration files and the ones that are important to me is, Opera bookmark. I thought the installer will be smart enough to import the old bookmark if it found the opera6.adr file lying around in that folder. The fact is, it ignore it and overwrites it with a clean file. That would be disastrous if you didn't backup your bookmark. For my case, I'm lucky that I did backup before I uninstall it. For Opera Sessions, it's gone forever since Opera does not include functions to backup it.

Anyway, Opera 9 is the first windows-based web browser that passes Acid2 test. Opera 9 now comes with a command called opera:config that allows user to access some of the "hidden" settings for the program. Can't understand why it has to be that way...sort of "hidden" feature for power users only. Can't it be included in the normal preferences window ? The same question of mine goes to FireFox as well. Source code viewer ? hmm.. quite a simple one, not that great though. But I didn't expect it will highlight the source in detailed like other text editors does, it's just a web browser anyway, not a source code highlighter. New layout is used for display HTTP errors, about Opera page and some of the "opera:command" page. Just go to "Help-> About Opera" via the menu and you'll know what I mean. Clean and slack layout I would say.

Widgets ? Not that cool as Opera advertised... The only widget that I found practical would be the BBC News Reader widget. I still can't see the point why or for what purpose they make widget exists in Opera. I remembered before that, Opera claims that "... widget will remains running even though Opera is closed...". But now Opera kills all the widget before closing itself =) Did the developers realized that there is no point for widgets to run around without Opera running ? I don't see native Bittorrent support in v9.0 as a great help out to me, since I use other BT client for that because I believe those clients are better than Opera when it comes to large files. However, I do see that this Bittorrent support is a smack on Opera's rival face - see what I'm capable of... world's first web browser with BT support ! hehe...

After upgrading to 9.0, I need to change my CTRL+N and CTRL+D habit to CTRL+T and CTRL+B. It's years that I used that 2 keyboard shortcuts and it's difficult for me to change over. I guess I'll just stop writing and continue playing with it for sometime. My thanks to Opera development team, great job !

*update 2006.6.22* dammit.. my notes in Opera is gone too... =(

Opera Software today released Opera 9, its newest Web browser for PCs. You can download it free in more than 25 languages for Windows, Mac, Linux and other platforms from www.opera.com. Opera 9 enhances the way you access, share and use online content by including innovative widgets - fun, small and useful Web programs - and support for BitTorrent™, the popular file distribution technology. Even while adding these improvements, Opera 9 maintains the security and speed millions of Opera fans have come to expect.

"For Opera 9, we worked hard to push the limits of what people expect from a Web browser, with increased speed, new Web standards support and innovative features such as widgets and BitTorrent," said Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software.

"Even though we shaped this browser for the Web’s future, we have the powerful features people want and need for their surfing today. I truly feel Opera 9 has something for everyone."



Can't wait till I get home and upgrade my Opera to 9.0 . Grab a copy for yourself here.

Related:

• Opera 9.0 press release news
• Opera 9.0 features
• Opera 9.0 screen shots
• Opera 9.0 changelog

Running Unicode test on server-side... If you see gibberish below that means your browser doesn't support the font... or just simply my code isn't working like what I expected...

English
You kidding me?

Chinese (Simplified)
花间一壶酒，独酌无相亲
举杯邀明月，对影成三人
月既不解饮，影徒随我身
暂伴月将影，行乐须及春
我歌月徘徊，我舞影零乱
醒时同交欢，醉后各分散
永结无情游，相期邈云汉

Chinese (Traditional)
子曰：「學而時習之，不亦說乎？有朋自遠方來，不亦樂乎？
人不知而不慍，不亦君子乎？」
有子曰：「其為人也孝弟，而好犯上者，鮮矣；
不好犯上，而好作亂者，未之有也。君子務本，本立而道生。
孝弟也者，其為仁之本與！」

Russian
По оживлённым берегам
Громады стройные теснятся
Дворцов и башен; корабли
Толпой со всех концов земли
К богатым пристаням стремятся;

Ancient Greek
Ἰοὺ ἰού· τὰ πάντʼ ἂν ἐξήκοι σαφῆ.
Ὦ φῶς, τελευταῖόν σε προσϐλέψαιμι νῦν,
ὅστις πέφασμαι φύς τʼ ἀφʼ ὧν οὐ χρῆν, ξὺν οἷς τʼ
οὐ χρῆν ὁμιλῶν, οὕς τέ μʼ οὐκ ἔδει κτανών.

Sanskrit (should be right-aligned)
पशुपतिरपि तान्यहानि कृच्छ्राद्
अगमयदद्रिसुतासमागमोत्कः ।
कमपरमवशं न विप्रकुर्युर्
विभुमपि तं यदमी स्पृशन्ति भावाः ॥

Tamil
ஸ்றீனிவாஸ ராமானுஜன் ஐயங்கார

Czech
Dejte mi libru kávy Java, dvě libry Rio, šest liber kouskového cukru a paklíček cikorie.

Korean
비겁한 사람은 죽기 전에도 여러번 죽는다.
그러나 용감한 사람은 한번 밖에 죽지 않는다.

Japanese
コンビニエンスストア全国大手のファミリーマートの道内１号店が７月７日に札幌市東区本町１で開店することが９日、明らかになった。これによりファミリーマートは全都道府県出店を達成し、７月１４日には同市清田区美しが丘４に２号店も開く。

ps: The font works fine in my Opera 8.50 browser. Firefox 1.0.7 is rendering the text a bit smaller making some of the characters look weird. Internet Explorer 6 is displaying bigger text size, but the Ancient Greek part is partially gibberish. In other words, Opera still rules ! ^^

Opera 9.0 beta 2 is now available for download and testing. Areas like widgets, support of scripts, messaging and newsfeeds are major changes since beta 1.

View the changelog
Download Opera 9.0 beta 2
Torrent file for Opera 9.0 beta 2