Opera Dragonfly updated for Opera 10.60

July 1, 2010 · by David Storey

Those of you who love traveling by trains or planes will enjoy the latest update to Opera Dragonfly. To sync up with the Opera 10.60 release, we have added offline support to Opera Dragonfly. We now take advantage of the Application Cache feature (commonly known as AppCache) of HTML5, which has just landed in the desktop browser. This is not the first time we have taken advantage of a feature from the HTML5 family of specifications; we recently used Web Storage (introduced in Opera 10.50) to save user preferences, such as colours used in the element highlight. The added power of HTML5 JavaScript APIs allow us to get closer to the capabilities of native applications.

We recently launched a survey of developers to find out their needs and wants for a tool such as Opera Dragonfly. The ability to work offline was close to the top of this list, so we are pleased to be able to offer this feature right now. Many of the top requests are already in the pipeline or under active development. Examples of the top requests include:

Enable/Disable CSS rules (Close to completion)
Improve icons and UI intuitiveness (Design work ongoing)
Offline support (Implemented)
Right-click (context menu) support (Planned)
Firebug Console API (Supported in Scope. Under development in Opera Dragonfly)
Requests around inspecting bodies of HTTP requests and page resources (Under development)

There were of course many more requests and suggestions, and we’ll release a more in depth summary at a latter date. The feature closest to release in the above list is the ability to be able to temporarily disable and enable individual CSS style rules. This was heavily requested, and we hope to get it out on the cutting edge path in the near future.

One big improvement you will see in this release is the speed of the application. This speed increase is achieved two fold. Using AppCache really speeds up the start up time of the application, as well as allowing it to work offline. This will be even more clear in areas with slow network connections. The overall responsiveness has also improved, and there we didn’t have to do so much extra work in the Opera Dragonfly team. Opera Presto, the engine behind the Opera browser is speeding up dramatically in each release, which has a big knock on effect for complex web applications such as Opera Dragonfly. Opera 10.50 concentrated on JavaScript and graphics speed with the introduction of Carakan and Vega. Opera 10.60 improves JavaScript performance even further (up to 50% in some cases), but also concentrates on DOM and selector matching improvements. When inspecting a page with a deep DOM, Opera Dragonfly really has to do a lot of heavy DOM lifting, so those improvements are very welcome. We are not stopping there of course; Opera’s rendering engine will continue to get faster (which Opera Dragonfly will automatically take advantage of) and we plan to optimise the CSS used in Opera Dragonfly while we are developing the upcoming redesign.

As always, let us know what you think, and we hope you enjoy the latest update to Opera Dragonfly.

Readers' comments 21

Left under the original article, as archived.

metudeThursday, July 1, 2010 2:10:28 PM
Will we see more "utilities" on DF?
Charles SchlossThursday, July 1, 2010 2:32:27 PM
Dustin WilsonThursday, July 1, 2010 2:34:49 PM
I noticed a really good speed increase. Can't wait to see the redesign.
sirnh1Thursday, July 1, 2010 2:48:36 PM
Originally posted by David Storey:

Offline support (Implemented)

Woohoo
Question: But, if I click 'delete entire cache' (under delete private data) does opera also delete the appcache? Anyway to prevent this?
AnuaR ShThursday, July 1, 2010 3:10:49 PM
Originally posted by sirnh1:

Woohoo
Question: But, if I click
'delete entire
cache' (under delete
private data) does
opera also delete the
appcache? Anyway to
prevent this?
Adding dragonfly.opera.com to

Never Flush Trusted Servers will help you...
Kyle BakerThursday, July 1, 2010 4:45:32 PM
Wow! The speed improvements alone are amazing! No more slow loading!
David StoreyThursday, July 1, 2010 8:42:58 PM
@metude: Eventually yes.

@sirnh1: I think Opera Dragonfly is included by default in the list of trusted sites that are not flushed on clearing cache.
Daniel HendrycksThursday, July 1, 2010 9:17:39 PM
RafalFriday, July 2, 2010 12:46:19 AM
AnuaR Sh: Dragonfly now uses app cache so "Never Flush Trusted Servers" is not relevant anymore.
AnuaR ShFriday, July 2, 2010 7:06:49 AM
http://s46.radikal.ru/i112/1007/64/6e75d6b81e32.png -
sirnh1Friday, July 2, 2010 10:48:11 AM
Originally posted by InDigazzZ:

Adding dragonfly.opera.com to

Never Flush Trusted Servers will help you...

Originally posted by dstorey:

I think Opera Dragonfly is included by default in the list of trusted sites that are not flushed on clearing cache.

Thanks. Opera dragonfly was already in that list of trusted sites. (Though, dragonfly was not available offline after clearing my cache through the the 'delete private data' display. But maybe I just got bad luck?)
Charles SchlossFriday, July 2, 2010 1:50:13 PM
Do you have to set the site preferences for https://dragonfly.opera.com/app/ to allow offline content
sirnh1Friday, July 2, 2010 2:11:49 PM
Originally posted by Chas4:

Do you have to set the site preferences for https://dragonfly.opera.com/app/ to allow offline content

The option 'use application cache' is on 'yes'.
I guess I'll have to be careful with my delete cache option
Witold BarylukFriday, July 2, 2010 3:18:07 PM
Nice. It indeed opens now practically instantly! Very big thanks for hard work. Now I can really work it easly. (ometimes I was just switching to other IDE, and debuged by hand, beacuase I do not wanted to wait 15 seconds to open and then find needed info. Now there is no need for this.

I am using Opera Dragonfly exclusivly for my debugging and development. Sometimes a Firebug commes handy but it was maybe once a month.

But today a opened Chrome console. What I can say... It is beautifull, simple, intuitive, fast, nice, wonderful features (timeline, profiler, audit). Perfect. Please take look at it for very good design.I was just shoceked. Maybe something can be improved in Dragonfly based on their UI expirience?
MyOpera team, please fix this!Friday, July 2, 2010 3:55:34 PM
Originally posted by dstorey:

One big improvement you will see in this release is the speed of the application
hallelujah

Offline support (Implemented)
phantasmal!

Thanks for the update. I'm glad to see dragonfly is still being developed.

Originally posted by movax:

wonderful features (timeline, profiler, audit)
These features have been requested: profiler. For future reference, i believe dragonfly feature requests should be made in the forums... i think.

I haven't checked the source, but have the images been converted to data uris or did appcache remove the need?
FataLFriday, July 2, 2010 5:07:17 PM
In Firebug and WebKit Web Inspector DOM selection preserves after page reload, in Opera Dragonfly and IE Developer Tools it is not. Would be very handy...
LeoTuesday, July 6, 2010 2:00:02 PM
There is an option to reload script tab when changing window.

I wish there was an option to switch context automatically as we switch window/tab as well...

Is this planned ?
beholder-againTuesday, July 6, 2010 3:03:25 PM
Dragonfly with latest gives me trouble on some website: DOM browser shows weird CSS when clicking page content (elements). Switching Dragonfly off and then on cures this but usually only until I reload the damn page while Dragonfly is on. Then it gets borked again.
Daniel HendrycksTuesday, July 6, 2010 5:10:22 PM
Can't wait for GUI changes.
Witold BarylukMonday, July 19, 2010 3:26:10 PM
Originally posted by fearphage:

Originally posted by movax:

wonderful features (timeline, profiler, audit)
These features have been requested: profiler. For future reference, i believe dragonfly feature requests should be made in the forums... i think.
As of profiling. I today discovered that any JavaScript code with Dragonfly opened is about 10 times slower (15ms -> 150ms, for few simple pure JS array processing). It would be good to have small overhead when doing profiling, both for accuracy and to not make a profiling a pain by being extensivly slow.
AnuaR ShWednesday, August 25, 2010 6:04:40 AM
Originally posted by d.i.z.:

AnuaR Sh: Dragonfly now uses app cache so "Never Flush Trusted Servers" is not relevant anymore.

So, what should i do to prevent re-downloading Dragonfly after clearing the cache?