Opera Software released Opera 9.63 today, which addresses several security issues. This release is a recommended security update for all those running the previous stable releases.

See the changelog for more information.

Download Opera 9.63 from FTP

Earlier today Opera Software released an alpha build of the long-awaited version 10 of their desktop browser. Opera 10 alpha promises to be faster at rendering, more standards compliant, and even sports a brand new in-line spell check.

Here’s a short list of things we should expect in this alpha:

• Presto 2.2 Engine
• Performance boost
• 100/100 and pixel-perfect on the Acid3 test
• Auto-update
• Inline spelling checker
• Opera Mail improvements, including rich text composition and delete after X days
• Widget Improvements on Linux

For a more detailed list and downloads for Windows, Linux, and Mac please visit the developer blog.

When I first ran the Acid3 test, it only scored 97/100. I mentioned this to a few people, and Kyle Baker reminded me that UserJS can interfere with the test. I disabled UserJS for the Acid3 test, and my score was much better.

My old buddy Phillip Gronvold, who works at the Opera office in the US, demonstrated Opera Mini on the new Google Android phone to digi.no.

Watch the video (only the very beginning is in Norwegian, the rest is in English)

(Via ChooseOpera)

Related: The story behind Opera Mini on Google Android

In its third quarter financial results Opera revealed that it now has 30 million users of its desktop Opera browser. Nice.

For those of you keeping score at home, the usage is up by 40% since the end of 2007 and 55% in the past 12 months.

Some other desktop stats for you: Usage of the desktop browser in Russia, where Opera apparently has a 25% market share, has grown by 112% in the past 12 months, while Indonesia has grown by 115%.

Opera Mini, on the other hand, had 21 million users in October.

Opera Software today released Opera Mini 4.2, the newest version of Java based mobile web browser that works on almost all mobile phones.

New features in Opera Mini 4.2:

• Skins.
• 24 new languages.
• Synchronize, edit and delete notes via Opera Link.
• Better handling of RTSP, enabling more users to watch video.
• Opera Mini users in the US can now experience 30% speed improvements due to the addition of an Opera Mini server park in the US.

Opera Mini is now official availability on the latest version of the Android mobile platform. Opera Mini is the first alternative browser on Android. Users of Android-powered mobile phones can now download a beta version of Opera Mini 4.2

Feel visual power demonstration of Opera Mini on YouTube. Opera Mini Cartoons demonstrates a few “real life” scenarios where Opera Mini comes in handy.

Download Opera Mini 4.2 and Digg!

Opera released a new version of Opera Community site on Tuesday (November 18, 2008) and Opera site on yesterday (November 20, 2008).

New and improved My Opera features

• New fresh My Opera look.
• Now available in 5 languages.
• 1 GB of free storage space.
• Friends activity feed on home page.
• Now you can help moderate too.
• New blog themes.
• Mobile optimized site.
• Slideshow for photo albums.
• Redesigned messages interface.
• Massive code improvements.
• Easy access to Opera Link.
• Member of the weeks.
• HTML tweaks.
• Bug fixes.

More details is available here.

What do you think of the new designs?

New My Opera site (Click image to enlarge)

New Opera site (Click image to enlarge)

Opera Software released the first beta of Opera Mini 4.2.

New features:

• Synchronize, edit and delete notes via Opera Link.
• 24 new languages.
• Better handling of RTSP, enabling more users to watch video.
• Skins are back (along with new skins).
• “Accept” link at the end of the EULA (for BlackBerry users).

Opera Mini users in the US and Asia-Pacific region can now experience faster speed, due to the addition of an Opera Mini server park in the US.

Known issues:

• Some of the new languages are not fully translated for the beta, but will be fully supported for the final version.
• There are several issues with notes in Opera Link. Your device may not support viewing or editing of very large notes. Backup your notes before trying.

Download Opera Mini 4.2 beta

Jon Hicks recently joined Opera Software as Senior Designer. He wants your opinions on native look and feel of Opera UI.

Submit your thoughts via survey form.

[via Desktop Team blog]

From The New York Times BITS blog,

Mr. von Tetzchner said that Opera’s engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won’t let the company release it because it competes with Apple’s own Safari browser.

There is a hot discussion going on about this in OSNews site.

[via Choose Opera]

Opera Software released Opera 9.62 today, which addresses a few security issues. This release is a recommended security update for all those running the previous stable releases.

See the changelog for more information.

Download Opera 9.62

New My Opera site will be released soon with new design.

New features:

• Mobile view button to show how site looks when you surf with mobile.
• Site language can be changed to Simplified Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Norwegian & Spanish.
• ‘Opera Link’ drop down menu at top of the page.
• 1 GB of space for photos and files instead of current 300 MB.
• ‘Editor’s picks’ in photos section.
• ‘Slide show’ in photo albums.
• Uploading of a ZIP file containing several images to photo album.
• ‘Report image’ button in photo to report offensive content.
• ‘Member of the week’ in members section shows previous ‘member of the week’ members.
• A new smiley. (Can you guess?)
• and more …

More screenshots

Opera Software released Opera 9.61 today, which addresses a few security and stability issues. This release is a recommended security update for all those running the previous stable releases.

See the changelog for more information.

Download Opera 9.61

Opera today released a new version of its desktop browser, Opera 9.60.

Highlights include:

• Feed preview
• Speed enhancement
• Opera Link synchronizes more data (Custom search engines and typed history)
• Mail improvements (Low bandwidth mode, Follow/Ignore threads & contacts and Go to Thread)

This release is a recommended security and stability upgrade.

Opera 9.60 Changelog
Download Opera 9.60

Opera also launched a new site today: Discover Opera. It shows in simple steps how to use many of the powerfull Opera features.

Note: You may have to use Opera Standard skin to view scroll marker after enabling it. (Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Browsing > Show scroll marker)

Digg!

This tip will help you to resume a download (especially large size) in the following cases.

• Accidentally removed transfer from the transfers tab.
• Closed Opera with an intention to resume download next day but transfer is missing when Opera is started.
• Resuming download with an another high speed mirror.

The following will work when server allows resuming of broken downloads.

• Start download again and save with another name.
• Stop transfer after few seconds.
• Delete new download file.
• Rename old download file with new name.
• Resume transfer.

[gun via Opera Desktop Team blog]

I saw this funny comparison of typical browser users on Choose Opera.

You can change default hotclick dictionary site & encyclopedia site with preferred site.

Hotclick menu

If you don’t know how to edit menu setup, see this.

To change dictionary site, under [Hotclick Popup Menu] replace

with

To change encyclopedia site, under [Hotclick Popup Menu] replace

with

Go to your preferred dictionary/encyclopedia site → Right click on search box → Create Search… → Details >> → Copy address → Cancel. Replace Search URL in above code with copied address and change %s to %t.

The Opera desktop team today released the first beta of the Opera 9.6 browser.

Major new features include a nicer preview of RSS feeds and a ‘Low bandwidth mode’ for the Opera Mail client. In addition, the typed url history can now also be synchronized between various Opera browsers using Opera Link.

The new RSS feed preview allows you to preview the feed before giving you the option to subscribe to it with Opera’s built-in feed reader. This is certainly an upgrade from the previously unstyled feeds, though I hope Opera will also include some links to subscribe using other feed readers, such as Google Reader and Bloglines (FeedBurner already does this).

Read the changelog
Download Opera 9.6 beta

The Marriott is now recommending visitors to its mobile website to download and use the Opera Mini browser. Nice!

(Via: WapReview.com)

Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner doesn’t seem to concerned with the newly launched Google Chrome browser. In fact he finds it kind of flattering that Google is copying many of Opera’s innovative features, such as Speed Dial.

The media rounds
Opera boss: Imitation is flattering - The Register
Google Chrome ‘borrows’ from Opera browser - PC Advisor

Opera’s founder and CEO Jon von Tetzchner posted his thoughts on the Choose Opera blog about new Google Chrome browser, which was released yesterday.

Read: Choice in the browser industry - By Jon von Tetzchner

Google shook up the Internet earlier today with an announcement of their own browser to be called Google Chrome (announced via a cartoon). While the browser is not yet available for download, there has been some basic information released:

• The rendering engine will be WebKit, which is the same engine as Apple’s Safari and originally descended from the Linux KDE Project’s Konqueror browser. It is interested to note that Google is snubbing Mozilla’s Gecko considering their historical support for Mozilla.
• The Javascript engine will be a new faster engine from Denmark-based team called V8 (contrast with Safari’s upcoming SquirrelFish and Firefox’s planned TraceMonkey that focus on the same goal)
• Each tab will run in its own process, insulating the other tabs from crashes (somewhat like IE’s “Launch browser windows in a new process”)
• Open source but no word on what type of license (interestingly enough there is a Google code project called “chrome” which is currently forbidden for access). Mozilla and Konqueror are open source, but Safari, IE and Opera are not (while Safari’s rendering engine, WebKit, is open source, there are many parts of the browser that aren’t).
• Includes a list of malware sites which will auto-synchronize from Google (probably the safe browsing API that Firefox uses and similar to Opera’s feature)
• Lots of nifty visual tricks

Two additional very important points:

• Bundled with Google Gears which lets web application take data offline
• Lets web application launch in their own window (similar to Mozilla’s Prism and Opera’s Widgets)

The overall impression seems to be that Google wants a browser that is faster, specifically on Javascript performance which is important for today’s AJAX heavy web apps like Google’s own, more stable (especially with tendency of the same web apps to crash browsers more often), desktop/offline integration features for web apps and security. Of course one cannot miss the promotion of Google’s own Gears and Safe Browsing API.

This of course happens while Microsoft is working on IE8, Mozilla is making plans for its next version of the browser with faster Javascript, Apple’s is preping Safari 4, and Opera is working on version 10). There is also talk of HTML 5 support before official approval by the W3C, in browsers. So the browser wars are heating up again.

The offline/online intergration is particulary interesting in the light of the fact that Adobe is beginning to push its Flash and AIR technologies for richer offline/online web app intergration, while Microsoft’s Silverlight is pushing in the same direction as well. Google Gears seems to be pushing in the same direction while staying within the conventional HTML / Javascript standards used today.

Of course the basic question with Google is that of motivation. Google is not a software company like Microsoft, Apple, Opera or Adobe which sells auxiliary software, hardware and services around their free browser or plugins. Nor is it a non profit like Mozilla which has an inherent mission to develop a better browser.

When it boils down to it, Google derives virtually all of its revenue from advertising within its search engine and other applications like the free version of Gmail. But, majority of its revenue is delivered via a channel that it cannot control - the browser. Microsoft’s IE currently controls majority of the browser market with Mozilla’s Firefox second largest. The next version of IE, IE8, has some planned features that may block advertising including a possibility of blocking Google’s own ads. Firefox has a famous AdBlock extensions which blocks ads as well.

Perhaps Google simply wants to secure a beach head in the browser market that will allow an unencumbered way to deliver its advertising as well as auxiliary web applications that draw people back to its search engine. Only time will tell.