Opera Software today released the much awaited beta version of its next browser for the Windows platform. Opera has yet to reveal the name of their newest browser version, but have named this release Opera 8.0 Beta 1.

This comes after the User Agent for this browser has been seen on various Newsgroups, not long ago.

“We were preparing for the 7.60 release, but as work progressed and we kept adding improvements and functionality, it became very evident that we now have a browser that is so powerful, secure, and easy to use that it exceeds the next logical version number and warrants a major release,” says Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software.

The new version comes with an easier to install process and simplified UI to introduce users to Opera’s rich features. The RSS newsfeeds client has been given a more prominent place and increased usability, setting it apart as an advanced and easy-to-use RSS tool. A clickable RSS icon will appear in the address bar on sites that offer RSS feeds so you don’t have to look around for the link.

The new version of Opera also features voice technology. You can browse the Web using spoken commands, such as “Opera next link”, “Opera back”, or “Opera speak”. The latter command will make Opera read Web page content and e-mail messages to you aloud, adding usability as either a screen reader or advanced dictionary.

Another feature is the Fit-to-Window-Width technology that will adapt Web page content to fit the width of your window, which means you can have multiple windows open with no horizontal scrolling. In combination with Opera’s Zoom feature, you can dramatically magnify Web pages and still view them without having to scroll sideways — a compelling accessibility tool for visually impaired users. This technology may also be applied to printing Web pages with Fit-to-Page-Width.

In addition, the new Opera browser comes with an update check function to ensure that you will always have the latest version for maximum protection and performance.

With all these new features, in addition to the old ones, Opera is still under 4 MB to save system resources.

The beta version of Opera’s newest browser is available as a free download. The final version of the browser is scheduled for release with its full name in early 2005. Users who have licensed versions of Opera 7 will receive free upgrades to the new version.

Opera has released a technical preview (TP) of the Opera browser for Windows Mobile Smartphone 2003.

This is the first official technical preview for the Smartphone. A silent one was released on October 14, 2004. Though it was not officially announced, users responded enthusiastically with more than 43,000 downloads.

Opera 7.60 for Windows Mobile TP is based on Opera’s latest core technology, keeping Opera’s embedded deliveries in synch with desktop browser developments.

The preview includes Opera’s renowned SSR (Small-Screen Rendering) technology. SSR eliminates the need for horizontal scrolling to view a page.

The build has been tested on the following hardware: Orange SPV-E200, Qtek 8080, I-Mate SP2, Orange SPV-C500, T-Mobile SDA, Audiovox SMT-5600, Qtek 8010, and the I-mate SP3.

This release is only for the Smartphone 2003, it won’t work with the Smartphone 2002 or Pocket PC devices.

One user on Opera Forums has posted about the interesting user agent found in an email that was sent by Rijk, a senior Opera Software Employee.

It had the following user agent:

User-Agent: Opera M2(BETA1)/8.00 (Win32, build 7384)

Note the user agent is 8.0 and not 7.6, the purported next release. Does this mean Opera wont be upgrading to Version 7.6 but rather to 8.0? After all the hype of firefox, releasing Opera 8.0 would definitely be a better PR plan. However, this would also mean that if you have a paid version of 7.X you would have to pay to get 8.X.

After a little research, I found that Rijk has posted a reply in response to a proposal to upgrade to Opera 8.0. Here is his reply:

But if such features are planned in June 2005 or December 2006 or whenever, does it really matter what the name is we give to major releases that contain important added features? It has been two years now since 7.0 was released.

The developers just keep working, sometimes on things especially for the desktop (customizable UI), sometimes spinoff from mobile/tv (ERA, resize your window after enabling Fit to width, or use print preview) or external contracts (Voice) or core browsing develoment (important parts of DOM3, which means Gmail can work). Technically speaking, the basic browsing core changed drastically in these ‘versions’: 2.0, 4.0, and 7.0. The UI changed drastically in 4.0, 6.0, 7.0 and 7.5. Support for major webtechnologies (Scripting, CSS, Unicode, DOM) reached new heights in 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 6.0, 7.0 and what you now test as 7.6 previews.

At a certain point, it is time to change the number before the dot. But if you look at supported features, you can’t distill a clear line on when a ‘major’ upgrade should be declared. The use of numbers gives a false sense of logic here, and I can appreciate that for example Microsoft has stopped using them to market Windows versions ten years ago.

One user on the forum pointed out that the build # in the user agent is 20 builds higher then the latest public build. Opera 7.60 Preview 4 is build # 7364.

UPDATE: Opera Watch has contacted Rijk for a comment, but declined, saying “I’m not an official spokesman for Opera Software ASA. We have a marketing and sales department for such things. I just test the browser :)”

(Thanks to Exclipy for the tip.)

The new beta version of Google Suggest seems to work fine with Opera 7.5 and above. However, if you have you entered anything in the “Personal Information” (auto-complete) fields in Tools > Preferences, the up-down arrows will not select the Google Suggestions, rather it will look up the auto-complete fields.

One way around this problem is to hold down the ‘Shift’ key while using the arrow keys. This will override Opera’s auto-complete.

The issue with this solution is, the first selected suggestion will alternate between the 10 suggestions.

AOL is creating its own standalone browser aimed at employees who cannot install AOL software at their workstations.

The browser will be based on Internet Explorer. Though AOL financed an organization behind a competing browser Firefox, Kerry Pearce-Parkins, director of AOL Product Management, said the company stuck with IE so users won’t have to make “a leap of faith.”

The browser will include AOL extensions such as tabbed browsing and AOL’s Media Player to access AOL’s premium content. Unlike tabbed browsing in the Opera and Firefox browsers, AOL’s will display a mini-version of the Web page, or thumbnail, as users scroll over a tab.

The Mozilla Foundation is working on a “Mini-Mozilla” browser for consumer devices, such as phones, PDAs and television set-top boxes. They have named it “MiniMo“, short for “Mini-Mozilla”.

Mozilla has just released their first technical preview, V0.1, which is based on a slimmed-down 1.7a Mozilla codebase.

Minimo’s main competitor in the mobile phone browsing market is Opera Mobile, which produces versions of its browser for various mobile phones including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Panasonic and Siemens handsets. It has recently recorded its one millionth download of Opera Mobile from its corporate Web site. This number is in addition to the many more copies that are downloaded from partner and other download sites.

A spokeswoman for Opera said that Mozilla doesn’t have as much experience of developing for mobile platforms. “We have been working on mobile browsers for six years.”

There are currently two mobile phone manufacturers, according to Doug Turner, the project leader of Minimo, which they are working with. They are also in the process of creating a partnership with a TV manufacturer.

Opera has released yet another preview of their browser for Windows and Unix/Linux.

Among the changes, they have added “Check for new release” to Help menu. In addition, the Windows release has been packaged in a rewritten installer. Please be on the lookout for problems with it. One problem with Opera Mail message display has already been identified. See this thread for information about fixing it.

In this preview, you can use an INI setting to change the default rendering mode to one of the ERA modes. See Junyor’s journal for instructions on these settings. For more details on the various modes you can use, read here.

Be sure to download it, test it, and write about it.

The early inventers and backers of the Web (not internet) gathered to recount the early days of the web and the events leading up to the creation of the Web and the W3C. They also looked forward to future developments backed by the W3C, including the Semantic Web, which will allow **all** users to access and connect more types and sources of data online. Read here for a closer look back.

Opera Watch previously reported on the interview with Gary Schare, Director of Windows Product Management at Microsoft, about how browser innovation hurts backwards compatibility.

In response to the question of whether Microsoft is going to enhance IE’s support to Web standards and more advanced CSS support? Gary Schare responded, “We could change the CSS support and many other standards elements within the browser rendering platform. But in doing so, we would also potentially break a lot of things.”

For a rebuttal and for more insight on this issue read “How Microsoft can support CSS2 without breaking the Web” by Tristan Nitot and “Working for Accessibility using CSS” by Leslie Salazar-Bushell.

It’s not rare when a flaw disables Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE), but it is rare when the same flaw affects alternative browsers as well.

A new flaw was just disclosed on security mailing lists. The bug causes the browser to crash and could potentially form the basis of an exploit that would affect virtually all major browsers.

The bug has been called the Infinite Array Sort Denial Of Service Vulnerability and causes the affected browsers to execute an infinite JavaScript array sort. That operation in turn effectively causes a DoS on the browser in question and causes it to crash by exhausting stack memory.

The following example will cause the browser to crash:

< html >
< script > a = new Array(); while (1) { (a = new Array(a)).sort(); } </ script >
< script > a = new Array(); while (1) { (a = new Array(a)).sort(); } </ script >
</ html >

Opera has not released any patches as of the time of this posting.

Update: After posting the example flaw, my browser kept on crashing when I would login to my Blogger account, I couldn’t even edit the post. I had to disable Java Script, and then add spaces to the html tags so that the browser doesn’t think they are Java Script tags (I used the &gt; for the “>”).

Opera has added to its desktop browser a new rendering technology said to eliminate horizontal scrolling, regardless of screen size.

Opera Software today announced that they have solved the problem of rendering and printing Web pages effectively regardless of screen or paper size. Opera’s new Extensible Rendering Architecture (ERA) means no more horizontal scrolling or cutting off the edges on print-outs. In combination with Opera’s Zoom function, ERA also presents a compelling accessibility feature with which users can magnify Web pages dramatically and still view them without having to scroll sideways.

The rendering challenge has been that most Web pages are designed with desktop or laptop users in mind, and are usually set to a fixed width of 800 pixels or more. Consequently, if your screen or window size is smaller than the minimum width of the Web page, you have to resort to horizontal scrolling. Furthermore, printing Web pages will often leave out parts because the Web page is wider than the paper. Opera’s ERA technology enables dynamic resizing to adapt Web page content to fit any paper size, browser window, or screen — from projectors to mobile phones, and everything in between.

Opera 7.60 is due to be released at the end of 2004.

It appears that after the news about alternative browsers gaining on Internet Explorer, that Microsoft has finally noticed that not everyone uses Internet Explorer. Microsoft is starting to get serious about interoperability and open standards.

A senior developer working on the MSDN Subscriber Downloads site (codenamed Xena) wants to make it more compatible with Firefox and Opera. Here is a quote from his blog:

“As we started work on Xena 3.0 about a year ago, one of my priority 1 requirements was to make the site fully cross-browser compatible. Funnily enough, the operations team (who tend to be pretty focused) told me that losing Deeptree wasn’t required, because 99.5% of our client browsers were IE. I was able, however, to make the point that this could possibly be the case because we only support IE (after explaining that “support” is different from “can be accessed”) and so that might possibly be a factor. The net-net of this is that cross-browser compatibility for Firefox, Opera, and IE will be included in the update for all major site functions.”

That is a start for Microsoft. When will the Internet Explorer development team adopt this policy?

Opera and Qualcomm announced a deal that would put Qualcomm’s BREW platform on the Opera mobile browser. This will add contextual shopping capabilities to mobile users.

BREW is an application development platform created by Qualcomm for phones. Standing for Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless, it is software that can download and run small programs for playing games, sending messages, sharing photos, etc.

Opera’s contextual shopping capabilities allow operators to enhance their subscribers’ wireless Internet experience by providing them with a feature-rich shopping experience, via BREW-enabled handsets. This advanced shopping experience gives users the opportunity to purchase and download contextually relevant content such as applications, ring tones, wallpapers and skins. For example, if using the Opera mobile Web browser to search for an update on the latest basketball scores, a BREW-based contextual shopping experience would enable the user to click on a link and purchase a basketball game, or other basketball related mobile applications or features such as wallpaper, all directly from the browsing experience.

By Håvard K. Moen

With the release of Firefox 1.0 (congratulations on that one!), the Internet is buzzing with talk about the new browser, and people are hoping that it will topple Microsoft’s browser monopoly. It receives a lot of press, both from the geek media, and from mainstream publications. But concerned voices from within the Opera community are asking where Opera is in all of this. Why isn’t Opera being mentioned? Why isn’t Opera Software out there with a major marketing push to let people know about Opera, too? Why is Opera left on the sideline?

The bad news is that Opera 7 is nearly two years old by now. What is the media supposed to report on?

"And in other news, the Opera browser is still at version 7…"

Not exactly enough to make a smashing headline. ("Opera seeing record losses" seems to be popular right now, though.)

The bottom line is that the release of Firefox 1.0 is a major milestone, and it came at the best possible time. US-CERT’s recommendation to use non-IE browsers got major press coverage, and people started looking for alternatives. Firefox 1.0 is introduced, and with a major PR campaign to spread the word, "everyone" is talking about it. The major milestone, combined with increasing awareness around Internet Explorer’s security problems, means that the timing is just perfect.

The good news is that this benefits Opera!

More people than ever before are made aware of the problems with Internet Explorer, and start looking for other browsers. When you see an article about the release of Firefox 1.0, you will often, if not usually, see that other alternatives are mentioned as well. It is obvious that different people have different needs, and while Firefox is a great browser in its own right, it is not necessarily the answer to everyone’s needs. Firefox offers a basic browser which can then be added to with extensions. Opera, on the other hand, offers a complete Internet package. Rather than having to "build your own browser", so to speak, Opera offers the convenience of an integrated package, full of useful features.

The fact is that people now know that they have a choice, and many actually choose Opera. If they try Firefox and find that it doesn’t really work for them, they may remember hearing about Opera too, and will try it out. In fact, in a Norwegian IT publication a while ago, a spokesperson for Opera explained that we saw increasing download numbers from opera.com.

What people also seem to forget is that Opera has already been in major publications around the world, such as BBC and CNN. It is not like Firefox is the first to be mentioned there. Just because Opera 7 isn’t the latest news, and just because Firefox is getting coverage today, that doesn’t mean that Opera hasn’t had coverage before. And as I mentioned, when they mention Firefox, they usually mention Opera and Safari as well.

There’s more good news. While Opera 7 is not exactly new, Opera 7.60 is on the way with many significant improvements, such as voice browsing, and a new "fit to width" feature which is useful for people with lower resolution screens. There are also plans for something which might have a serious impact in parts of the market, but the details on that will have to remain a secret for now.

Opera’s user base is growing, and the fact that Firefox is now available as a stable release does not mean that Opera is going to disappear. Opera has been around for nearly a decade, and free alternatives have existed for all these years. While Firefox is what’s hot today, we shouldn’t forget that Opera has been around the world already, and there hasn’t really been much to report lately. Still, Opera gets a "free ride" because of the timing of the Firefox 1.0 release.

The fox is everywhere, and so is Opera.

Håvard K. Moen is a Senior Technical Service Consultant for Opera Software. The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of my employer. (This article was originally published on Håvard’s Journal)

Opera Software ranked 14th on the Norwegian Deloitte Technology Fast 50 annual list. It had a growth rate of 993% between 1999 and 2003. The Deloitte - Technology Fast50 annually recognizes the fifty fastest growing technology companies in Norway, based on percentage revenue growth between the years 1999 and 2003. Winners of this award vary from size to sector; they include large and small, public and private companies, from all technology industry segments including software, hardware, communications, wireless, and life sciences.

The winners of the Norwegian Deloitte Fast 50 will go on to compete in the Deloitte European Fast 500.

BetaNews has an interview with Gary Schare, Director of Windows Product Management at Microsoft, discussing Internet Explorer and how it has been affected by the recent release of firefox.

“We could change the CSS support and many other standards elements within the browser rendering platform. But in doing so, we would also potentially break a lot of things. The challenge there, as we have been kind of public on our blogs when discussing with Web developers, is backward compatibility. And that is actually an interesting discussion in and of itself, with respect to some of the other browser competitors, who haven’t had enough browser share in the past to have to worry about those things. Once you start to get enough browsers out there, and people start to build sites that work with them, then you’re kind of restricted and hamstrung in terms of how you make changes.”

Why didn’t Microsoft use this approach when it rolled out Windows XP? So many applications had to be trashed with XP. If Microsoft were to truly only follow Internet/HTML/Java Script standards it would solve a lot of the backward compatibility issues.

“For architectural reasons, it turns out you can’t just add tabs via an add-on into the IE app itself. We’ve looked at whether you can add tabs through a browser helper object or some other way of extending IE, and it turns out you can’t.”

Why? All other major and non-major browsers are able to add tabbed browsing to their browsers. Is it because Internet Explorer is so tied in with the Windows operating system?

“Frankly a lot of work we do will probably help the Mozilla guys too.”

How? What kind of leadership role is Microsoft taking with browser technology. It hasn’t made any major feature changes in years.

“We think [at] the end of the day IE is the better choice, from the topics we’ve talked about around security and around innovation.”

What an outrages comment to make in light of all the security issues IE has faced recently. It is sad that the Microsoft people just don’t see the light when it’s shining right in their faces.