Opera Mobile For Android Nears Release

Opera Software has revealed that Opera 11 will support browser extensions. And in other news Opera Mobile for Android is on the way, with new features such as hardware acceleration and Pinch to Zoom.

At an 14 October company press event in Oslo, known as “Up North Web,” Opera officials discussed the future of the web and shed light on where they hope to see Opera in that future.

Opera officials who spoke at the event included: Lars Boilesen, Opera CEO; Jon von Tetzchner, Opera co-founder and former CEO; Christen Krogh, chief development officer at Opera; and Hakon Wium Lie, Opera’s chief technology officer.

“Opera has always believed that the web will advance through open standards and that it should be available everywhere, irrespective of platform, device and geography,” said Boilesen in a statement.

Extension Support

Meanwhile, in an 14 October blog post about the extensions support coming in Opera, Espen Andre Overdahl, community manager at Opera Software, said:

“Extensions in Opera is a way for you to easily add new functionality to your Opera browser experience. Developers can easily create extensions using open standards (HTML5, CSS, JavaScript) and supported APIs.

“Extensions will be based on the W3C [World Wide Web Consortium] Widget specifications and this is being considered for an Open Standard effort.”

Overdahl said Opera Extensions will be similar to extensions in other browsers, “and we have tried to make it easy to port extensions from certain browsers. We are committed to open web standards and this is an important part of our strategy, so if you find us deviating from other solutions out there, this might be why.”

Moreover, Overdahl said for the first iteration of Opera Extensions the company is focusing on open web standards and “getting it right.” The alpha release will support injectable JavaScript, callouts, certain UI items and a basic Tabs and Windows API, he said.

However, the Opera Extensions feature is not yet available, though it is coming “soon,” Overdahl said. “Opera 11 Alpha will be made available soon at http://www.opera.com/browser/next/,” he said.

Opera Mobile

Opera officials also discussed and demonstrated technologies and features being introduced in the next versions of Opera Mini and Opera Mobile, including hardware acceleration and pinch to zoom. Demos included Opera Mini on iPhone and Opera Mobile on Android.

In an 14 October blog post, Aleksander Aas, an online community rep at Opera, said Opera Mobile for Android will include new features including hardware acceleration and Pinch to Zoom. “This is without a doubt the next generation of mobile browsing,” Aas said.

“Hardware Acceleration allows Opera Mobile to run at lightning speed,” Aas said in the post. “Navigating a page will be faster than ever, and the improvements to the UI will be momentous. All this is made possible by taking full advantage of the power available on your phone. Hardware Acceleration allows us to do amazing things like full pinch to zoom for all sites. It also allows us to have a more fluid interaction with the phone…”

In addition, regarding Pinch to Zoom, Aas said:

“The current versions of Opera Mobile and Opera Mini have two levels of zoom. One for the full page width and one for zooming in to read the text. With Pinch to Zoom you will be able to choose your own level of zoom just like in Opera Desktop. Text will now be rendered at a per character level and zooming in will be a fluid zoom from page-width down to the text you want to focus on.”

Aas said Opera Mobile for Android will be available from http://m.opera.com and Android Market within a month.