Today Opera 42 browser was released based on Chrome/Blink 55. We just deployed Opera 42 to our online browser testing cloud. You can already cross-browser test your websites in Opera 42!

Online browser testing in Opera 42

Try Opera 42 in Browserling now!

What's new in Opera 42?

Improved startup - it's now smarter and faster.

Opera now has an improved, faster startup mechanism. Opera now takes into account which tabs were most recently used before you quit Opera, instead of relying on the order of tabs to determine which ones to load on startup.

CSS automatic hyphenation.

The hyphens CSS property is now supported (on Mac), which can be used to enable automatic hyphenation when text is broken across multiple lines. Possible values are none, manual (initial value) and auto.

Persistent storage.

Persistent storage is now on by default. It can be accessed via navigator.storage and navigator.storage.persist.

New constructors.

AudioNode and MediaStreamTrackEvent have new constructors that have the following prototypes - new MediaStreamTrackEvent(type, options) and new AudioNode(context, options).

Network installer for Opera 64-bit.

The new version comes with the network installer for 64-bit builds, which installs the best option for you. In other words, it detects the architecture it's run on and installs either Opera 64-bit or Opera 32-bit.

Newsreader shortcut in URL address bar.

Opera's personal newsreader has been given a fresh, new look and now offers an easier way to discover feeds. If a page publishes a web feed, a little newspaper icon will appear in the address bar. Simply click it and then select one to open. If you find it interesting, you can always add it to your existing sources. We want to keep the address bar as clean as possible, so this feature is disabled by default.

JavaScript async and await.

The async and await keywords are now supported, which allows writing Promise-based JavaScript with a neater syntax, and enables use of try/catch to catch rejected promises.

Once event listener option.

The once event listener option is now supported, for a convenient way to only invoke an event listener once and then remove the listener.

Document.write() intervention.

Cross-origin and parser-blocking scripts injected using document.write() will no longer load over 2G connections.

TLS Cryptography Improvements.

The TLS stack now implements GREASE, a mechanism to help prevent problems with buggy TLS servers. RSA-PSS signature algorithms have been added to TLS to prepare for TLS 1.3.

Built-in currency converter.

Opera is now the first of the major browsers to add a built-in currency converter. The user select the price they want to convert on the page and Opera will automatically show it in their local currency. Opera 42 supports conversion in 32 currencies based on daily values from the European Central Bank.

Input handling improvements.

The PointerEvent standard is now supported. It gives developers a unified API for handling "pointer" user input, whether that is mouse, touch, pen, etc. PointerEvent also does not block scrolling, which should reduce jank during scrolling. The auxclick event is now fired for non-primary mouse buttons, instead of click.

What was deprecated and removed in Opera 42?

  • <textarea maxlength=""> and <textarea minlength=""> have been updated to count each line break as one character, instead of two.
  • CSS Clipping Path properties no longer require the webkit prefix.
  • The MediaStream constructor is now available without prefix alongside the existing webkitMediaStream.
  • Non-script MIME types for external scripts (e.g., <script src="foo" type="something/something">) is deprecated and will from M56 (Opera 43) no longer be pre-fetched. This typically results in less wasted fetches. <script data-src="foo" type="something/something"> is recommended instead.
  • The click event is no longer fired for non-primary mouse buttons. In most cases this is desirable; click event handlers are most often intended to handle primary clicks. But if you need to handle non-primary clicks (e.g., middle mouse button), the auxclick event can be used. The contextmenu event can also be used to handle clicks that would open a context menu (typically right-click).
  • BaseAudioContext will replace AudioContext in the Web Audio API.
  • The webkit prefix has been removed from the imageSmoothingEnabled property of CanvasRenderingContext2D.

Happy cross-browser testing in Opera 42!