Atilla

So we've released Opera Link. Finally. It's a little bit of a beta, in various parts of the chain, but it works.

Despite posting information and explanations on various places though, I've come to realize that quite a lot of people will fail to understand what exactly is it that we're trying to give them and how they would be using it. Maybe, just maybe, if I could dedicate some careful explanation time, people would get what the point is.

Opera Link is a vision. A vision of the unified experience that Opera provides on the web. In the classic buzz-word-worthy "Anything Anywhere Anytime" sense of the word. Why would your Opera be different for you in the different places you're using it at? What good is any browser to you if what you're used to is not available to you? What tool is good for you if your style is not available to you? An experienced emacs user is extremely effective on his own setup. If you take him in front of Elicpse ... well .. sure - it's a good development environment and all that, but without his .emacs file he'll be far far away from his usual efficiency. And I'm not even talking about how uncomfortable he would feel.

So there you have it - a vision, that starts simple - bookmarks and speeddial and personal bar settings. You might argue that it's not the most brilliant things to sync, or that similar things already exists. Well yes - *similar* things do exist. But the same? Well, let's hope not exactly the same .

What Opera Link does is to dynamically and continuously synchronize the changes in your browsing environment between devices and platforms. As many as you want, as many as you would like. The web is everywhere - it's not just in your home or work desktop machine - it's on your laptop, your mobile phone, the terminal device on the airport, your TV, console device, public kiosk, at your friends' place... Why would you be denied the comfort you have created for yourself when you are moving around?

You should not be denied that comfort, you should not feel awkward, because the key bindings have moved, because your buttons and menus, that do magic for you, are simply not there. You should not be bothered and neither should I. Truth to be told, I never used bookmarks before the first internal builds with Link came out, but now I've over a hundred. And bookmarks are far away from a killer feature, excluding the fact that you have them in your Opera Mini immediately, which is just great.

One of the nice things that happen is that we're doing the changes on-the-fly, as your systems are working. There's no migration dialogs, no questions asked, the service just does exactly what you do, but on all your systems. You delete a bookmark - the damn thing will be gone from all systems. You add that important link to that guide online - it's there for you when you go home. It's there for you when you need to check the instructions while you're on the move, with your mobile. And all your convenience and experience will be there. Because no matter how much you pretend the opposite, you're bound to the environment you're slowly creating for yourself. And if you aren't - you should be. Because you can.

There's been a number of voices raised about the fact that Opera Link pokes the servers every once in a while to see that things are still the same way the browser thinks them to be. Couldn't the client be notified about what it needs to know? Well - the answer is yes, and it probably must be. Guess how your Mini gets all changes made on the desktop browser instantaneously. I'd rather have compatibility mode implemented first though. And that one will pass through everything and just work. And it does, at minimal cost.

I'm waiting for the day in which Link will give me the comfort I require, where ever I require it. And I'll work on making it happen. Because I am user number two