Blog

Opera’s work to reduce Chromium’s memory use

by Bruce Lawson in Blog

It’s important that the Blink engine be made more memory-efficient so it can run on the lower-specced devices that most of the world uses. Using our experience of our Presto rendering engine, Opera has been improving Blink’s performance.

Introducing a Massage API

by Andreas Bovens in Blog

Tomomi recently wrote about building a simple messaging service. We really liked the idea of being able to send and receive messages through a simple API, and decided to take it a step further: why not build on this API to allow people to send massages to each other.

Opera goes to BlinkOn 3

by Bruce Lawson in Blog

Operatives attended BlinkOn, the twice-yearly conference for Blink contributors. Here are a few notes and observations from our team.

W3C20 Anniversary Symposium

by Andreas Bovens in Blog

Twenty years ago, Tim Berners-Lee founded the W3C, an international community that develops open standards. To mark this anniversary, W3C invites the web community to W3C20, a 3-hour symposium on the future of the web.

A New Dev.Opera

by Andreas Bovens in Blog

We’re happy to release a new, totally refactored version of Dev.Opera today. Under the hood, you’ll find Jekyll, Sass, Grunt, and more, and submitting articles is as simple as doing a pull request.

Happy first birthday to Blink

by Bruce Lawson in Blog

Twelve months ago today, I stayed up past my bedtime to blog about the new rendering engine, Blink, being forked from WebKit. As it’s Blink’s first birthday, let’s take a brief look at where we’ve got to.

Change of Blogging Platform

by Bruce Lawson in Blog

As announced on the Choose Opera blog, we’re closing the my.Opera blogging platform in five months’ time. This change also affects the ODIN blog. (If you use my.Opera to host any personal blogs or photos, be sure to read the post on how to export your data.)

Introducing Rollercoaster.io

by Andreas Bovens in Blog

Coast by Opera has been out for 2 weeks now. During that time, we’ve been browsing a lot on our iPads and we’ve noticed that there are still relatively few sites that are really optimized for tablet browsing: Coast by Opera gives you a good experience on non-optimized sites as well, but still, things can always be better. So, we started working on a simple site that highlights pretty, tablet-optimized sites and best design practices: the result is Rollercoaster.io.

It’s Not the Power of the Phone, It’s the Network That Counts

by Bruce Lawson in Blog

The death of the feature phone is widely reported and greatly exaggerated. “Although we see a huge market ‘hype’ around smartphones, the fact remains that the India mobile handset market is still dominated by shipments of feature phones. On the other hand, smartphone shipments are growing fast” analyst Faisal Kawoosa said in a Times of India article reporting that smartphones comprise just 7% of the overall Indian handset market.

Opera 18 Developer and Opera 16 Beta for Android

by Andreas Bovens in Blog

On Wednesday, we’ve announced our first Opera 18 build in the Developer Stream — it comes with a lot of bug fixes, and showcases some of the features we’re working on: themes support, quick access bar, improved tab handling (you can now drag tabs between browser windows), and under the hood you’ll find Chromium 31. If you have Opera Developer installed, the update will be applied automatically: check opera:about if you want to double check.

A First Peek at Opera 15 for Computers

by Bruce Lawson in Blog

Hurrah! Hot on the heels of the release of Opera 14 for Android (based on Chromium 26), here’s a first peek at our all new Opera for Computers. It’s called Opera Next 15 and it’s based on Chromium 28 — which means that it comes with Blink on board — but as it’s an evergreen browser with a fast release cycle, we don’t recommend reading too much into the digits — it’s what’s in it that counts!

Opera 14 for Android Is Out!

by Andreas Bovens in Blog

Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!

Opera’s WebKit Patches

by Bruce Lawson in Blog

About five weeks ago, we announced that Opera’s products would transition to using WebKit. We said “Opera will contribute to the WebKit and Chromium projects. Our work on web standards to advance the web continues.”

Opera 14 Beta for Android Is Out

by Andreas Bovens in Blog

Yes, that’s right: 14. We think that the engine switch from Presto to WebKit that we announced a few weeks ago is such a big step that we decided to skip the 13 number altogether, and go straight to 14! But there’s more than just the engine to talk about: you’ll also notice a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the beta from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!

More Fun Using the Web, With getUserMedia and Native Pages

by Thomas Ford in Blog

This time we are making available a very exciting build indeed, with support for both the getUserMedia method, enabling us to make use of video input from a user’s web cam, and native pages — codenamed Opera Reader — an innovative new set of CSS constructs that allow you to split pages up into paged media.

100% Ragnarök’n’roll

by Bruce Lawson in Blog

In February, we released a first Labs build of Ragnarök, Opera’s HTML5 parser. This is a second build, with reduced memory usage, enhanced performance and lots of bug fixes.

Opera Mobile 11 for Maemo, MeeGo and Windows

by Fredrik Öhrn in Blog

Today we are launching final versions of Opera Mobile 11 for Android and Symbian/S60 as well as Mini 6 for various platforms. We are also making available builds of Opera Mobile 11 for Maemo, MeeGo and Windows here on labs.opera.com. The MeeGo and Windows builds come with our new tablet optimized UI.

WebGL and Hardware Acceleration

by Tim Johansson in Blog

A long time ago, in an office far far away… Opera released a custom build showing an implementation of a 3D canvas context. Now, more than 3 years later, we are releasing the first public build with a standards-based 3D canvas implementation using WebGL for Windows…

HTML5 Compliance: The Next Step

by Bruce Lawson in Blog

Making its debut in a Labs build this week is Ragnarök, our implementation of the HTML5 parsing algorithm. We’d love you to try to break this and give us feedback, so please grab a copy to install on your machine…

Widget Runtime: WAC-1.0-Compliant Golden for Android

by Pavel Fokin in Blog

It’s been a long trip, but we’ve finally arrived — today our lasting intensive work on a WAC-1.0-compliant runtime is finished, and we are proudly presenting the final Golden build that we are also demonstrating at the Mobile World Congress event!

Opera 11 Alpha: Adding Another Piece to the Puzzle

by Chris Mills in Blog

Today we’re proud to announce the first Opera 11 alpha, an early snapshot of our upcoming Opera 11 release. In Opera 11 alpha our attention is first and foremost on one of the most anticipated features of Opera 11: extensions. More exciting functionality will be announced as we get closer the our final release of Opera 11.

Opera Dragonfly Visual Refresh

by David Storey in Blog

The Opera Dragonfly team is hard at work on the first stable release. Just as dragonflies metamorphose from ugly larvae into beautiful dragonflies, we are in the process of redefining our user interface.

Opera Mobile 10.1 Labs Release for Maemo

by Anders Höckersten in Blog

Last week, we released the first beta of Opera Mobile 10.1 for S60. Those with Maemo devices don’t need to feel left out though: we have been working hard at keeping the Maemo code in step with the other Opera Mobile releases, and we are proud to present another labs release for the Nokia N900 and N810/N800 – Opera Mobile 10.1 beta.

Welcome, WebM <video>!

by Håkon Wium Lie in Blog

The big news today is that WebM will join the list of open and freely usable Web formats, and video will finally become a first-class citizen of the Web. We’re proud to add support for WebM into a Labs build.

Opera Widgets Go Mobile

by Andreas Bovens in Blog

Over the last couple of months, we’ve been working hard to improve our Mobile Widgets Manager — we basically rebuilt it from scratch, using the cross-platform UI framework that is also used in Opera Mobile and Opera Mini.

Opera 10.5 Pre-Alpha for Labs

by Roberto Mateu in Blog

We are excited to release Opera 10.5 pre-alpha for Windows and Mac. In this release you can test-drive Carakan, our new ECMAScript/JavaScript engine, as well as Presto 2.5 and Vega. Also, check out the more polished platform integration and a couple of new features.

Introducing Opera Face Gestures

by Roberto Mateu in Blog

Today we introduce Face Gestures, a revolutionary technology designed to make interacting with your browser easier and simpler on computers with cameras. Face Gestures lets you perform frequent browsing operations with natural and easy-to-make face gestures.

Find Me! Geolocation-Enabled Opera Build

by Chris Mills in Blog

Another great Opera technology release is with us! We are delighted to release the first build of Opera with Geolocation API support. You can use this to expose the browser’s geographical position, and make use of it in your applications.

Opera Turbo

by Roberto Mateu in Blog

We are launching our time-limited test phase for Opera Turbo, a server-side optimization and compression technology that provides significant improvements in browsing speeds over slow connections by compressing network traffic.

Introducing Opera Fingertouch

by Chris Mills in Blog

Today we introduce Fingertouch, a technology designed to make interacting with the Web easier and simpler on touchscreen devices. Opera Fingertouch provides visual feedback when you hit a Web link, and assists you when you come across multiple links or other selectable elements in close proximity to one another.

Technology Preview: Gears-Enabled Opera Mobile 9.5

by Andreas Bovens in Blog

We’re happy to announce our Opera Mobile 9.5 technology preview with support for Gears, a Google open source project that enables more powerful web applications. Besides this Opera Mobile 9.5 technology preview, Gears is currently available for Firefox 1.5+, IE 6.0+, Internet Explorer Mobile 4.01+, Safari 3.1.1, and Android.

Video, 3D Canvas and File I/O: Repeat!

by Chris Mills in Blog

We’ve done it again! This article gives you the low down on our all new Opera desktop build with support for the HTML5 <video> element, 3D canvas, and the File I/O API. Find out what it contains, and download builds for Windows, Mac and UNIX!

All Together Now: Video, 3D, File Access

by Charles McCathieNevile in Blog

It’s here, the newest singing, dancing labs build (so far…). This time we basically have the latest desktop build plus video, 3D canvas, and File I/O. And this time we have Windows, Linux and Mac builds — so all you Mac fans, you can now have an Opera of your own in Ogg Theora.

Origin of Opera Mini for Android

by Chris Mills in Blog

This article takes a look at one of Opera’s latest and greatest projects - the creation of an Opera Mini version that will run on Google’s Android open mobile development platform. Over the course of the article, we’ll explain why we created it, how, challenges we faced, and how you can try it out for yourself. We’d like to encourage you to try it out, and give us as much feedback as you possibly can. Enjoy!

Public Acid3 Build

by Lars Erik Bolstad in Blog

Two days ago Opera reached a 100/100 pass rate on the Acid3 test for the first time and we published a screenshot on the Desktop team blog to back up the claim. I am pleased to announce the first public build with a 100/100 pass rate and pixel-perfect rendering!

Can Kestrels Do Math? MathML Support in Opera Kestrel

by Charles McCathieNevile in Blog

Traditionally, Mathematical formulas have been hard to represent using good old fashioned CSS and HTML, but a solution does exist. First, MathML, a specialised Markup language tailored specially for dealing with Math on web pages, has been around for a while. Second, the W3C has recently created a working draft called the MathML for CSS profile which deals with displaying MathML using CSS. In this article, Charles McCathieNevile shows you how you can test drive this technology early using Opera Kestrel.

A Call for Video on the Web

by Håkon Wium Lie in Blog

To really make a splash on the Web, video needs an open solution that can easily be integrated into web pages without the need for proprietary plugins. The HTML5 <video> element and Ogg Theora can provide this, and Opera is proud to announce an experimental build that suppports it. So read this article, and download and play with it today.

Making the Future Based on HTML

by Anne van Kesteren in Blog

The W3C recently renewed its HTML activity. Opera joined the new HTML Working Group to help shape the future of the web and so can you. The HTML Working Group allows virtually everyone to participate.

Opera 9.20 Beta

by Johan Borg in Blog

Here’s your first look at Speed Dial, a brand new way to get to your favorite sites. Speed Dial opens in any blank tab to give you immediate access to your favorite sites. Once you’ve tried Speed Dial in the Beta of Opera 9.2, visit the Desktop Team blog to let us know what’s on your Speed Dial.

Limited Opera Mini 3.0 Beta

by Thomas Ford in Blog

This is your chance to make Opera Mini even better and try out brand new features. During a limited time, on a first-come-first-served basis, we offer you the chance of trying out a preview of Opera Mini 3.0.

Event Streaming to Web Browsers

by Arve Bersvendsen in Blog

One cool feature we added to Opera 9 is Server-Sent Events from the WHATWG Web Applications 1.0 specification. Using SSE you can push DOM events continously from your web server to the visitor’s browser. This creates a lot of exciting opportunities for web application authors.

What’s a Browser Security Issue, Anyway?

by Yngve Nysæter Pettersen in Blog

A large number of people are looking for security problems and vulnerabilities in Opera and other applications. Some people don’t like this, but I think it is actually fine. When done responsibly this can increase security for the application and is thus of great benefit to the users. However, when done irresponsibly, the activity can cause needless alarm and waste the time of the application vendors AND the end users.

Opera 9 Beta 2

by Thomas Ford in Blog

We released the second – and final – beta of Opera 9 today. This will be the last major milestone release before the final launch of Opera 9. The most notable change is to the widget UI. You’ll notice that we’ve included widgets separately in the menu bar. If you click to manage widgets, your widgets open in a separate tab, similar to our transfer manager. From this tab, you can add new widgets, open downloaded widgets and remove widgets you don’t want.

Beautiful, Scalable Web Documents

by Håkon Wium Lie in Blog

Opera 9 is built on a new version of Opera’s rendering engine, featuring the some of the latest open Web standards. One of the most interesting new formats is SVG, or Scalable Vector Graphics. In Opera 9, you can not only create animated vector graphics but also let those interact with your Ajax applications. To learn more about the SVG implementation in Opera 9, visit our specification page.

Opera 9 Beta

by Thomas Ford in Blog

After a lucky 13 weekly builds on the Desktop Team blog, we are extremely proud to present the first Beta release of Opera 9.

Developers Gone Wild: Opera Web Applications Team Starts Blog

by Thomas Ford in Blog

Opera has been hard at work creating a browser that acts as a platform for Web applications. Our first step in realizing this new world was taken with the launch of Opera Platform, the first mobile Ajax framework. Then we turned our attention to the desktop browser. In Opera 9 Technology Preview 2, we added support for Opera Widgets. Opera Widgets extend and expand the browser’s functionality in dramatic ways.

Introduction to Web Applications

by Håkon Wium Lie in Blog

The Web is transforming from static content to dynamic applications. In this video we show how Web Applications can live outside the browser as Widgets running across your desktop, mobile phones and other devices. At the same time this video is an invitation to you, the developers, to join us in shaping the Web’s future.