Opera Dragonfly alpha 3, update 1

November 28, 2008 · by virtuelvis

We have a little Friday surprise for you, in the form of an update to Opera Dragonfly. Right after publishing Alpha 3, we pushed an update to the cutting-edge path that we are now pushing to the default path.

The update only contains two changes of note, so we will not provide a full changelog this time:

We've added support for the commands clear() and dir( to the command line. The clear() command clears the command line output, and dir() allows you to inspect an object. For instance, dir( window ) inspects the window.object

The second change is the main reason for pushing this update, and it should vastly improve the Opera Dragonfly experience. By encoding all image resources as data:-URIs, loading of Opera Dragonfly should be much faster. This is especially noticeable for first-time users, and for users on slow networks.

If you are wondering how much faster, let us present a purely anecdotal indication: This release announcement is written on a bus trip to rural Norway. The bus company is kind enough to offer an affordable wifi connection. The connection is fairly slow, and has high latency. Yet, first loading of the new Opera Dragonfly in a clean Opera profile is faster on this bus, than loading the old version from within Opera's own network.

We hope you will enjoy this little Friday update of Opera Dragonfly, and the much-improved loading experience. Please let us know what you think of this minor update.

Readers' comments 8

Left under the original article, as archived.

shadowk28. November 2008, 15:52:28
cool
fearphage28. November 2008, 16:11:34
Thanks gents. Nice to know things are still going on. Since it will be an unknown amount of time before alpha 4 (blocked by core 2.2/pergrine/etc), can you please give us some insight as to what to expect or what you are working on in alpha 5+? I see the http logger in alpha 4. Maybe screenshots of it working? Anything really... it has been relatively silent (dead) around here... with the normal pace being a blog post per month.
FataL28. November 2008, 17:23:15
I have a couple of questions regadring Dragonfly:
- How to remotely debug widgets that run on Opera Mobile?
- Will Dragonfly be faster and more responsive in a future? For now sometimes it's even hard to close it, because of some script that is cycling.
mrmass28. November 2008, 17:31:43
This really *is* fast! I didn't even see the loading gif with the new release. Nice work folks!
aleto28. November 2008, 17:32:42
How to remotely debug widgets that run on Opera Mobile?

There is not really a difference for Dragonfly between a widget and a normal document. Do have encountered some problems with widgets?
Will Dragonfly be faster and more responsive in a future?

We are trying.
FataL28. November 2008, 17:45:34
There is not really a difference for Dragonfly between a widget and a normal document. Do have encountered some problems with widgets?
I can't get connected my widget and desktop version of Opera...
After I enetered "opera:debug" in Opera Mobile, and entered my desktop IP address. After that I actually can see only web pages that I open through Mobile browser. I can't run a widget inside mobile browser (can I?). When I open my widget it simply not appears in dropdown list of remote opened pages...
larskl28. November 2008, 20:02:37
as using data-uris adds some overhead due to base64 decoding, how about using 1 big image that has all the stuff an positioning that one instead? that should decrease both traffic and loading times even more
fearphage30. November 2008, 12:55:37
I did notice that pages stopped auto-reloading on selection of the tab and you don't have to reload pages for some things to work (like dom inspector). Thanks (ladies? and) gentlemen.