Well it looks like the infinate wisdom of the people resposible for the Firefox 3.0 Download Manager has infected the developers of Opera. Opera 9.50 with all of its speed, rendering and UI improvements has managed to infuriate me. Why? Because I'm a web developer responsible (at the moment) for 20 something major websites, all of which need to be tested locally before we publish them into the wilds of the intertubes.
For those of you who don't know, the HOSTS file on Windows can be used to point website domains at IP Addresses of your choosing. For most of our websites, when we're developing, we use the HOSTS file to point websites to 127.0.0.1 which is the address representing your local machine. Opera 9.50 has a new 'security feature' which effectively blocks navigation to domains/addresses pointed to 127.0.0.1. So I suppose that I should just turn that feature off - oh. wait. There isn't an option to do that. So ok, the localhost ip address doesnt work. What about your local network address you say? Oh, well that won't work either. You get a lovely 'Network not available' message instead of a blank page.
From a 'senior Opera Developer':
If you are using your hosts file to redirect to 127.0.0.1 (localhost) then you are encountering a new security feature that blocks public servers from loading content private servers as part of their documents.
FYI: Blocks of 127.0.0.1 will now (in upcoming versions) be handled the same as Connection Refused from a 127.0.0.1 host with a non-"localhost" name. They will then be handled as if the content-length is 0, for example resulting in blank frames.
Way to go Opera! You've just effectively limited my debugging ability.
Now, I'm not just ranting wildly. I've done my research and troubleshooting. This problem can be evidenced by looking at the threads posted here http://my.opera.com/community/forums/search.dml?term=127.0.0.1&id=&x=26&y=5
What this means is that I cannot effectively debug our websites for Opera using the latest version. What this means for our users who use Opera is that we cannot make sure that their experience is accurate. I have no choice at this point but to downgrade to Opera 9.27 for testing our websites.