Opera users on Android have been able to download a next-generation version of the browser in beta for some time, but today the company finally introduced those changes to the "stable" version of its mobile browser.

The new Opera comes with big changes both to its user interface and its engine. We'll start with the engine: this is the first version of Opera for Android to swap Opera's old rendering engine for one based on Chromium 26, the current stable version. In case you didn't know, Chromium is the open-source project from which Google Chrome draws the majority of its code, so both Opera and Chrome for Android should enjoy substantially similar performance and page rendering. For now, this means Opera has become Webkit-based, though the browser will make the jump to Google's new Blink engine when Blink becomes a part of Chromium's stable channel later this summer.

A quick look at a couple of Javascript benchmarks confirm that the browsers now share rendering engines—in both Sunspider and Google Octane, both browsers score within the same range when run on the same hardware. Page loading times and scrolling performance seem more or less identical on my Nexus 4.

After months of hard work, the brand new Opera for Android is here. With a totally new UI - re-built from scratch - there are tons of new and updated features to discover. If you can't wait, simply head on over to Google Play or m.opera.com with your phone!

TABS. BETTER THAN EVER.
From a thumbnail view of tabs to private browsing, Tabs on Android is made for the way you surf the mobile web. It's also even easier to mark tabs as favorites, right in the address field.

SPEED DIAL. REINVENTED.
A common request has been the ability to organize your Speed Dials. In this version we introduce folders in your Speed Dial. Simply drag and drop to create a new folder.

DISCOVER. STAY ONE STEP AHEAD.
Get news, the latest cool content and other suggestions tailor-made for you with the Discover feature.

OFF-ROAD MODE. ALL-CONDITIONS BROWSING.
Enabling Off-Road mode provides you with the great speed and functionality from Opera Mini. Compressing web pages so you can stay online even when your connection slows down or you're outside your regular network . Off-Road Mode effectively saves you money by reducing your data consumption.

DOWNLOAD MANAGER. MADE BETTER.
With the ability to start, pause, resume and rename files, you can download and keep the movies, music and other media files you want at your convenience.

AUTOMATIC TEXT WRAP.
During our beta it seems text wrapping was a favorite feature in Opera. With all the amazing feedback we worked long hours to get this ready for launch.

CUSTOMIZABLE ADDRESS BAR.
So many devices. So many different versions of Android. To give you the best possible experience regardless of your phone or the size of your hands - we let you have the navigation either on top or at the bottom of the screen. Try it out in the settings!

AND THAT'S JUST THE BEGINNING.
Opera for Android supports Gingerbread and up with tablet support soon to follow. We would like to thank everyone who helped us test the beta. Text-wrapping, fullscreen mode and other great features are there thanks to your feedback - we could not have done this without you!

Discover Opera for Android on Google Play

After months of hard work, the brand new Opera for Android is here. With a totally new UI - re-built from scratch - there are tons of new and updated features to discover. If you can't wait, simply head on over to Google Play or m.opera.com with your phone!

Tabs. Better than ever.

From a thumbnail view of tabs to private browsing, Tabs on Android is made for the way you surf the mobile web. It's also even easier to mark tabs as favorites, right in the address field.

Speed Dial. Reinvented.

A common request has been the ability to organize your Speed Dials. In this version we introduce folders in your Speed Dial. Simply drag and drop to create a new folder.

Discover. Stay one step ahead.

Get news, the latest cool content and other suggestions tailor-made for you with the Discover feature.

Off-Road Mode. All-conditions browsing.

Enabling Off-Road mode provides you with the great speed and functionality from Opera Mini. Compressing web pages so you can stay online even when your connection slows down or you're outside your regular network . Off-Road Mode effectively saves you money by reducing your data consumption.

Download Manager. Made better.

With the ability to start, pause, resume and rename files, you can download and keep the movies, music and other media files you want at your convenience.

Automatic text wrap

During our beta it seems text wrapping was a favorite feature in Opera. With all the amazing feedback we worked long hours to get this ready for launch.

Customizable address bar

So many devices. So many different versions of Android. To give you the best possible experience regardless of your phone or the size of your hands - we let you have the navigation either on top or at the bottom of the screen. Try it out in the settings!

And that's just the beginning.

Opera for Android supports Gingerbread and up with tablet support soon to follow. We would like to thank everyone who helped us test the beta. Text-wrapping, fullscreen mode and other great features are there thanks to your feedback - we could not have done this without you!

Discover Opera for Android on Google Play.

Yay, and — dare I say it — w00t! Opera 14 for Android is released!

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!

A great browser for Android 2.3 and up

Currently, we support Android 2.3 and higher. That's important, as 38.5% of Android users are still on Gingerbread — now they can get top of the range features and performance, just like users on newer Android versions!

Note that we don't have an Opera 14 build ready for tablets yet: we're still working on various tablet-specific UI optimizations, and this will be released later on.

A whole new engine

Opera 14 is based on Chromium 26, which does not include Blink just yet. However, as we plan to stay closely in sync with the Chromium development cycle, doing frequent updates, you can expect it in a future release. In the meantime, we've added/enabled some extra standardsy goodness already for you to use:

• <input type=color> support: try it with this simple demo
• WebGL 3D context is enabled: you can try out our Odin demo, for instance, or why not try building something with WebGL yourself?
• CSS3 @supports, which allow you to do simple feature detection using CSS.

We've also done something cool with how we handle HTML5 audio: if you start playing e.g. this excellent song on SoundCloud, you'll see that a pause button appears in the Android notification area. You can now switch tabs, or even open other apps while the song is playing, and easily control playback from the notification area.

Note: some things we don't support in this first release include custom search providers and access to about://flags.

We've also adjusted our UA string, so as to avoid old sniffing traps: it's similar in format to the Chrome UA string, with, for this release, OPR/14.0.1074.57453 appended at the end. Of course, you shouldn't be looking at this at all, and instead do feature detection, so forget we mentioned it.

New UI and features

When opening Opera for Android, you're greeted by our overhauled Speed Dial, which now combines favorite sites with bookmarks into one view. You can group bookmarks in one level-deep sets by dragging and dropping them on top of each other. A swipe away to the left (rather than hidden away in a submenu somewhere), you find your browsing History, and towards the right, there is our new Discover page, which helps you find interesting online content to jump straight into browsing — ideal to kill those 10 minutes waiting for the bus to arrive.

You can of course also query for sites from the redesigned navigation bar on top. And we've made some adjustments here since the beta release: in the Settings menu, you find an option to move the navigation bar to the bottom. It costs you a bit of screen real estate, but makes for a more relaxed single-handed browsing experience.

The red O button has moved to the top right of the screen (unless you put the Navigation bar at the bottom), just like in other Android applications, and it toggles a menu with advanced options such as Sharing, Find in Page, Downloads, Settings, and more.

Off-Road mode

A special mention for Off-Road mode, available from the red O menu: when toggled on (also subtly indicated by a thin red line on top of the browser), pages are loaded via the Opera Mini servers, thereby reducing bandwidth and data cost. So, no more need to switch browser to get Opera Mini's data compression features: you get it all in one package.

To learn more about optimizing for Opera Mini and Off-Road mode, read our Opera Mini and JavaScript article.

Keep in mind that users can set their own preference of Off-Road-specific image quality: they can increase or decrease image quality, or even opt to receive no images at all (a good option to have, since images account for more than 50% of page size). As my colleague Bruce points out: be sure to use alternative text with images, and remember — it's not just for the visually impaired!

Automatic text wrap

By default, Opera for Android uses the same text autosizing (aka FontBoosting) mechanism that can be found in Chrome for Android. E.g. if you visit this desktop-specific Wikipedia page about artichokes, you see that some of the text is displayed bigger, making it readable without having to zoom in. However, as FontBoosting is only applied selectively and interferes with author-defined text size differences, we've made it possible to turn this off in Settings, and choose for automatic text wrap instead. Turning on text wrap instructs Opera for Android to wrap lines no matter how much you zoom into a page so there's no need for horizontal scrolling.

Remote debugging

Of course, there will be times as a developer when you'll need to debug sites running on Opera 14 for Android. This can be done from Windows, Mac and Linux desktops — see our article about remote debugging Opera for Android.

Made to discover

Of course, there are many more details to talk about — offline pages, private tabs, browser.js — but we'll leave those for you to discover. Enjoy, and let us know what you think!

If you don't know the words to a song, you can always hum. But what if you don't know the words to what you're reading on the web?

Then you need a dictionary!

The instant dictionary extension for Opera not only provides instant explanations of highlighted words in English - it also works as a translator.

This function is especially useful if you are learning another language. In the default settings, you can set your native language, as well as your "target" language (the one you are learning), so the extension will automatically translate in that direction.

You can read more about this extension's features on the developer's blog.

Helpful and fun to use, Instant Dictionary is the definition of a great addition to Opera.

:)

We have just come out with the State of the Android Mobile Web (SAMW) report that reveals mobile browsing behavior of Opera Mini's Android users in India. However, that’s still not quenched our curiosity to understand more about mobile browsing preferences & possibilities.

So here we go with the #OperaSAMW Twitter contest, where we invite you to visualize a tricky situation, where mobile internet can save the day!

About the contest:
Visualize an extremely tricky situation, where mobile internet could save the day and tweet about it. Wackier the response; better will be your chances to win!

Please note:
• All tweets need to have #OperaSAMW
• There’s no limit to the number of tweets that you could submit
• Contest begins at 10am on May 10th and closes at midnight on May 13th

Gratification
• 2 people with the top tweets will get portable solar mobile phone chargers and
• 5 people with the next best tweets to receive cool Opera t-shirts


Enclosed below is a video revealing browsing behavior of what Opera Mini users on Android do for your reference.



So get started to participate in the contest, by tweeting with #OperaSAMW (Remember, no limit to the number of tweets)

For any queries on the contest, please drop a line in the comments stream below.

All the best!

*Terms & Conditions
• Employees of Opera Software and its agencies are not eligible to win
• Contest invites people to visualize a tricky situation, where mobile internet could save the day; and tweet about it
• Winning entries will be decided by 2 judges from Opera Software India
• Opera Software to judge the Contest and the selection criteria shall include, without limitation:
o Content generated by such eligible applicants on their entries; and
o The tweets should represent an original opinion, backed by a reason
• Entries must be entirely the Eligible Applicant’s own original work and must not breach any copyright or any other third party rights. The Entry must not include any defamatory, offensive or unlawful content
• Contest starts on May 10th, 10am. The last date for receiving entries for the contest is till May 13th midnight
• Results for the Contest will be announced after 2 weeks from the day the contest

After Microsoft released Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7 in late February, the market share of the previously Windows 8-specific browser almost doubled. That strong growth has continued, with the browser share doubling again in April.

The overall split of the browser market is, however, little changed. Internet Explorer sits at 55.81 percent of the desktop market, an insignificant drop of 0.02 points. Firefox nudged up, gaining 0.09 points for a 20.30 percent share. Chrome fell slightly, losing 0.10 points for a 16.35 percent share. Safari grew 0.07 points to 5.38 percent, and Opera was all but unchanged, dropping 0.01 points to 1.73 percent.

The major desktop browsers appear to have fairly firmly cemented positions. After many years of losses since its monopolistic peak, first to Firefox and then to Chrome, Internet Explorer's share has steadied, with the mass defections to other browsers at an end. Firefox is in a solid second place, and while it once looked almost certain that Chrome would overtake it, Google's browser has lost ground.

Happy birthday World Wide Web :) Yes, 20 years ago, this day, on 30th April 1993, the web went public for everyone to use for free. This is fundamental for us at Opera, because we believe that the access to web is an universal right . Meanwhile, let us take you on a trip down the memory lane and have a look at the world's first website :

Whoa, that doesn't look bad . That's what we call a neat website ! Check out the world's first website and let us know what you think of it. Once again, cheers to the WWW.

Opera has been busy repositioning itself as a middleware player for the mobile Web recently, but that isn't stopping the company from defending its investment in browser technology. The company has filed a 20 million Kronor ($3.4 million) lawsuit against a former employee and consultant, claiming that he stole company secrets and incorporated them into a mobile browser for Mozilla.

According to a report by Norwegian IT site Digi.no, Opera has filed suit against Trond Werner Hansen, a Norwegian musician and designer who worked for Opera from 1999 to 2006 as a user interface designer and developer before leaving to pursue his music career. Hansen also worked for Opera as an outside consultant from 2009 to 2010. Last year, Hansen was involved with the development of the Mozilla prototype "Junior" browser for Apple iOS. Hansen and Alex Limi—former Firefox UI head and now manager of Mozilla's product design strategy—demonstrated the browser prototype in a video on Air Mozilla last June. Hansen said in the video, "I spent almost seven years trying to simplify Opera and didn't really succeed. Simplification of something that already exists is really hard. That's way beyond product design issues—it's company issues. I feel like we failed in making something really easy."

Limi credited Hansen with the invention of a number of Mozilla UI features, including the browser search—"the source of all our revenue," Limi said—and the "speed dial" feature that allows users to pick frequently visited pages from a new browser tab. "Pretty much everything he's invented, they're now in all browsers," Limi continued.

Our connected world is getting bigger all the time. And not just through people with phones and computers. The number of devices connected to the internet is expected to surpass the total number of humans on Earth before the end of this year. Welcome to the brave new world called the internet of things.

It's not a new concept, but there have been some new developments of late that promise to make it more of a near-term reality.

As the New York Times reported yesterday, a consortium of big companies have agreed on a new open standard for machine-to-machine communication. This is already used in everything from healthcare devices to stock trading. But having open standards will make it easier for more devices all over the world, connecting via the mobile web, to speak the same language.

But they won't only talk to each other - connected things will need to talk to us too. It's a situation that has both complex technical issues as well as political and commercial challenges.

Bringing together those theoretical questions with practical applications of the technology, there is an upcoming conference on the internet of things: it's happening in Sao Paolo this May.

(No word on whether your fridge needs a separate invitation.)

;)

Opera Mini on Android has been updated today to Opera Mini 7.5.2 and new builds are available to download from the Google Play store.

This release contains fixes for the most commonly reported issues by our users.

Change log for this update:

- Improved font calculation method
- Improved fonts for hi-res devices
- Page layout improvements
- Various stabilization fixes

Big thanks to all of you for your constant support.

We hope users love this new update, but as always, we welcome your feedback in our forum (especially about page/font layout after update), and please report any bugs in our bug report wizard.



Happy browsing,


The Opera Mini Team.

It’s April, which is one of the best times to visit Kashmir! That’s because of the Tulip festival that happens in Srinagar during this part of the year. The festival is home to Asia's largest tulip garden; hence it’s the most picturesque time to be in Kashmir. That heaven aside, flowers are making the rest of earth a beautiful place to live in, as well.

Having pioneered the concept of social expression (flowers and bouquets) throughout the country, Ferns N Petals (FNP) has become a name synonymous with love, emotions and celebrations. It started with a single store in 1994 in New Delhi, India, and ventured online as fnp.com in 2002. Today, FNP is one of the largest brands in the organized flower retail industry in Asia. For today’s India Buzz column, we are in converastion with Vikaas Gutgutia, Founder & Managing Director, Ferns N Petals (FNP).

In this interview, Gutgutia discusses how Indians have become more expressive and have warmed up to e-commerce, a college student from a small town — Phagwara (Punjab) — who once ordered a shop full of flowers for his fiancée which cost him approximately Rs.1 lakh, FNP’s customization for festive occasions and the rush during Valentine’s Day.

What is the most significant consumer trend that you have observed over the years?
The consumer mindset has definitely shifted from offline shopping to experimenting with shopping via the new media. Over the years, more and more consumers are willing to shop online. Consumers lead a fast-paced life and online shopping is a blessing in disguise for them. Our website offers variety of options for customization of gifts, keeping in mind consumer requirements and tastes that we have gathered over last 19 years.

Is there a major difference in buying behavior of consumers in tier-I markets and those in smaller cities?
While tier-I consumers are relatively informed and upbeat about online shopping, we have also seen an increase in aspirations and demand from tier-II & -III markets in the past few years. FNP is keen to tap such markets, since consumer spending and purchasing power has increased exponentially in these cities. For example, 5 years ago, a college student from Phagwara (Punjab) ordered a shop full of flowers for his fiancée that cost him around Rs. 1 lakh. There was another customer who bought flowers worth Rs 1.1 lakh in Udaipur to be used for floral jewelry. There are many such examples that we witnesses every day that are often not seen in metros.

Has the growth in mobile-internet usage helped FNP in driving sales?
Thanks to the new tech-savvy consumers, mobile internet has picked up the pace in the last few years. FNP was amongst the few brands in 2001 to adopt a functional e-commerce business model. And, we hope to become pioneers in the growing mobile ecommerce too, with strategies that focus on R&D and understanding consumer behavior.

What marketing initiatives do you run to increase online popularity of FNP?
Our e-commerce website is a one-stop shop that delivers products across cities. Apart from leveraging our product portfolio on social media platforms, we also advertise within the social media space to reach out to the new-age digital consumers. We have spread our offerings across renowned online deals websites like Snapdeal, Timesdeal, etc. Customers can pre-book their orders on such websites and get the gifts delivered to their loved ones on specific dates. We recently joined up with NGPay, a cross-platform app, to enable a comprehensive and smooth buying process for our customers. We also have Loyalty Programmes, which add to our customer’s satisfaction.

How do you capitalize on festive occasions?
We always customize our website according to the upcoming festival, which makes online shopping an interesting experience for consumers. We also come up with occasion-based gifts like Holi combos, Diwali hampers, Rakhi Thalis, Easter baskets and Christmas Gifts. All these inclusions and changes definitely increase the traffic to our website. We have close to 7,000 unique visitors that visit our e-commerce portal, and the conversion ratio is close to 7%. The average ticket value is around Rs 1,250, and, around Valentine’s Day, the number of visitors almost doubles.

What goes into the preparation for the Valentine’s Day rush?
The best thing about Valentine’s Day is that people across age groups use this festival as an opportunity to socially express themselves. FNP’s business for Valentine’s Day boosts every year. We celebrate it as a festival, and the planning starts almost three months in advance. This year, we received almost 50,000 orders, out of which 35% queries were online. Overall, the offline and online business saw a growth of 25% and 60%, respectively.

At the back end, our workforce comprised of designers, delivery boys and sales representatives work ‘round the clock to deliver on our commitments. To make the occasion special, we also offer special packages, customized gifts, musical delivery and midnight delivery options. The USP of our service lies in the transparency and flexibility offered to the end consumer, enabling a smooth buying experience.

So… now you too can make every occasion beautiful with just one click. Three cheers for flower power and Ferns N Petals for spreading happiness. :yes:

The problem with introducing a new protocol or file format on the Web is being the first mover. Browser support for a new technology is only half the story; Web sites also have to use the same technology. Making that first move can be tricky, as Facebook and Google are now discovering with the WebP image format. Attempts to use the new format are generating user complaints.

WebP is the Google-developed still image counterpart to Google's WebM video format. The underlying compression technology is broadly identical, but it has a feature set tailored to still images. Support for the format exists in Chrome and Opera, but little on the Web—aside from WebP advocacy sites.

That could change with moves by Facebook to support the format, but its early forays have met almost immediate criticism by users of the site. Facebook users discovered that while WebP may work in Chrome and Opera, it has negligible support everywhere else.