Out of the way

October 25, The Rock Opera Link...

Opera Link is the technology that lets you synchronise things between different Opera setups, keeping your changes to Speed Dial or bookmarks in line as you move from you phone to your desktop and back...

They launched it at a party in San Francisco. I was invited, but I was on the other side of the world, busy, and didn't actually attend - a shame but the way life goes. At least a few friends got there. By all accounts the gig was great, but what I really care about is the technology (sometimes I am all Luddite, other times I am all geek..). So far, what it hooks up is bookmarked things. But the idea has a lot of legs for making it easier to move around...

November 7, Opera Mini 4

Wow. Mini is the browser that came from not existing 2 years ago to be the mobile browser par excellence - the one that gets more people on the Web than all the rest put together. And Mini 4 is a huge advance - the biggest thing since Mini came out. Som of the coolness includes

Landscape view

Most phones don't have the hardware that is inside the iPhone, but now they can have the features. Flipping views is handy on my phone since I can open it in various modes. And to be honest I appreciate it only happening when I ask for it...

A virtual mouse

Not having a mouse pointer is a pain on the websites that are designed by people who don't realise that there are different browsers available and different users behind them. So now there's a pointer that can activate things which require it, which reminds me...

Javascript

The Mini team are pretty clever guys. But technically, the thing that has impressed me more than anything is the amount of Javascript they can support - Ajax applications that work on a phone are impressive. Working on the sort of phones that support Mini, with the kind of compression and power savings that comes from Mini's design, are the kind of thing that get the geek in me all quivery...

"Desktop view" AND Mobile View

I don't know why people are so excited by desktop view and zoom on a mobile phone. Pesonally, I hate it. But the research is pretty clear that about half the people love it, so I am glad it works. I am equally glad that I can ask for an optimised mobile view and keep the efficiency that I get from making real Web content adapt nicely to whatever mode I am using. (If you are a developer, this is the mode that activates that @media handheld stylesheet you wrote, so please make sure you test it and give me a nice one ).

Text Shadow

Only joking. It works, but it is not one of the things that changes my life much. Still, if it makes the designers happy, I'm glad that they have that and don't decide that an image is somehow a better way for them to send me a couple of words...

There's a bunch of other stuff. Of course, it works with Link, and things like custom search have been added, they have re-done some of the keypad control, and so on. There are also some deep-under-the-hood changes that just make it work better. But what makes different users happy tend to be different things, so checking it out for yourself is the best idea...

November 7 - Ogg video

Big day that. We released an experimental video build (for now it is Windows, but Mac/Unix versions are coming) that implements Ogg video natively in HTML5 and SVG. The article points to a bunch of examples that you can play with, and there is more of it in places like Wikipedia. Video is still painful - there are far too many patents around it in general, which is why overall it is still such a mess and why the big guys are still holding a large advantage when it comes to doing anything interesting with video on the Web. But bit by bit I hope we can rein that back and open the field to people who have ideas, not just deep pockets.

November 15 - 3D Canvas API

OK, this wasn't actually anything new to download. But Tim Johanssen (one of the developers for video and graphics stuff in the core Team) explained the 3D canvas API that is featured in the video build, so you can go and make you own demos.

November 16 - Native MathML

A while ago we introduced some CSS magic that you could use to make the MathML for CSS profile work in Opera. But on Friday we decided to include it by default in an Opera Weekly build, after a bit of tweaking and performance enhancement. The best place to read about it is the entry in the MathML blog which includes links to all the useful information...

Next week...

Sorry. That was just teasing - I'm not allowed to just randomly announce launches in my blog But stay tuned, there's more fun coming out of the magic workshops