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Opera 10 will be based on a cross-platform experience which will allow the user to begin reading a web page on the desktop, then continue on a mobile phone or PDA. Opera 10 will also include tools that will provide a platform for developers based on open standards. The future of Opera is lying on three different code bases, named “Merlin”, “Kestrel”, and “Peregrine”.
Merlin
Merlin is the current code base used for version 9.0x, 9.1 and 9.2. It will see only minor feature improvements and mostly bugfixes. After 9.2 Merlin will no longer be used. Major improvements such as rendering improvements are not planned for the Merlin code base. A Merlin beta build with the new Speed Dial Browsing feature was released on February 28, 2007. In that same build Opera introduced support for animated GIFs in skins.
Kestrel
Kestrel will be the code base closing the gap between Merlin and Peregrine, to be released as Opera 9.5. It will see some of the rendering improvements due to be made in Peregrine, and will also head to connect the Opera versions on different systems. It is neither clear right now if new functionality will be added with Kestrel, which are likely to be released soon. As Peregrine builds are to be released in 2007, the first alpha Kestrel build was released on September 4, 2007. Kestrel will support many more CSS3 selectors, the text-shadow property, and bug fixes to standards support. The interface will undergo a few minor alterations, one of which is adding back in screen reader support. Opera's mail client, M2, will be updated, sporting brand new backend and indexing, and also fixing some outstanding bugs. Kestrel will also have the ability of online syncronisation of bookmarks, personal bar and Speed Dial settings using my.opera.
Peregrine
Peregrine is the code base which will see the most improvements. It will have new features, new rendering improvements, bug fixes and perhaps a new GUI. First builds are to be released in 2007. Peregrine will likely be named Opera 10.
CSS3 support
David Storey, the chief Web opener at Opera Software, has announced that there will be improved CSS3 support in upcoming releases. A major focus will be on CSS3 selectors; this will allow authors to select HTML and XML elements more easily than they could using selectors from previous versions of CSS. For example, the last element in an element will be selectable via the CSS3 pseudo‐class last-child, empty elements will be selectable via the CSS3 pseudo‐class empty, and so forth. Additionally, there will be a new pseudo‐class called nth-child, which will, for example, allow an author to dynamically define alternating background colors for HTML/XHTML list or table elements without having to resort to the use of scripting languages. Support for the CSS2/3 text-shadow property is also planned for Opera 9.5.
Features
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