Web Devout tidings

Opera 9 has now been released. Some of the new features include a selective content blocker which can be used to remove banner ads and other unwanted content from webpages, support for BitTorrent distributed downloads, desktop widgets, and improved standards support. See the official changelog for more information.

I will begin testing and updating my standards support resource shortly. It appears as though many positioning bugs have been fixed. Although Opera 9 passes the Acid2 test, note that the test only covers a relatively small selection of features from the standards, and like other browsers, there are still known inconsistencies with the standards in Opera 9. I will post updates on my progress as I test its support.

The latest alpha version of Firefox has been labeled “feature complete,” meaning no significant changes are planned for the webpage layout engine. In response, I have added the Firefox 2.0 information to the Web browser standards support resource. According to my information so far, there have been no significant changes to the areas currently covered in the standards support resource. However, since there were changes to SVG support and I hope to add SVG information to the tables eventually, I have decided to list Firefox 2.0 separately from Firefox 1.5.

Opera 9 information will be added when the public builds are labeled “feature complete” or an equivalent. Opera is known to make significant changes even in the final beta versions, so it’s possible that I will be unable to begin thorough testing until the final version of Opera 9 is released.

Following the Firefox Myths and Opera Myths articles, an article on Internet Explorer myths is now available. This article addresses some common misconceptions regarding the Internet Explorer web browser and attempts to put the situation into perspective. These myths articles are expected to evolve as time goes on.

Web Devout has a new article entitled Opera myths, to compliment the Firefox myths article. It is designed to clarify some misconceptions about various aspects of the Opera web browser. This article is expected to evolve over time.

Information about public exploits has been added to the Web browser security summary resource. The information so far comes exclusively from Secunia.