Face the future

Eight years ago, Mouse Gestures was introduced as a way to speed up your interaction with the browser, and focus on what's important: Content. In 2005, Voice Navigation was introduced, and more recently we've worked with Nintendo to create a browser that takes full advantage of the "Wiimote" and later, the touchscreen in the DSi.

Looking ahead, we recognize the future importance of touch interfaces, but we believe that there is another input device that is already present in most new computers and it's ready to enable a whole new way of user-interaction: The Webcam.

Today we introduce Face Gestures, a revolutionary technology designed to make interacting with Opera easier on computers with cameras. Face Gestures lets you perform frequent browsing operations with natural and easy to make face gestures. By using an internal technology dubbed Face Observation Opera Language, we are able to recognize pre-determined facial expressions and match them to commands on the Opera browser.

Face Gestures in Motion:

Setting up Face Gestures:

To enable Face Gestures, close your eyes and press F8. You will hear a beeping sound as soon as Opera finishes calibrating your passive facial expression. Please don't open your eyes, move your head or make any facial expressions while Face Gestures is calibrating.

The following gestures are currently included:

• Back - Left Wink
• Forward - Right Wink
• New Tab - Double Wink
• Reload - Shake Head
• Go to Home Page - Roll Eyes / Fake Smile
• Scroll Up - Raise Eyebrows
• Scroll Down - Frown Eyebrows
• Zoom Out - Puff Cheeks
• Zoom In - Suck Cheeks
• Bookmark Page - Lick up
• Open Speed Dial - Waggle tongue

As always, we encourage you to give us feedback and throw any suggestions you may have at us. Please upload your gestures suggestions as a response to the above video on YouTube.

Security Considerations:

No personal information or images are sent back to Opera when Face Gestures is enabled, so don't worry about how you look. Although please be aware that lack of clothing combined with body hair could affect recognition (read Known Issues below).

Known Issues:

As with any beta release there are some known issues with the current version of Face Gestures. Please read below before reporting a bug:

• Beards and hair styles: Face Gestures is compatible with most types of facial hair and haircuts. If your face is covered by more than 25% with facial hair, recognition errors may occur: Handlebars and Goatees are compatible independently but if combined recognition will decrease. At the moment soul-patches crashes the browser and it would refuse to relaunch, we are looking into this problem. Bushmen beards and emo haircuts are not supported.

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• Adult Web sites: Users visiting Web sites that contain adult content sometimes make unconscious facial expressions. If Opera keeps opening Speed Dial and Zooming In and Out, please be aware that this not a bug. It may be useful to disable Face Gestures for a better experience. Also remember that wiping your cache is recommend after visiting untrusted websites.

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• Financial Web sites: For compatibility reasons Face Gestures auto-detects financial news services and disables itself. The current version of the recognition software is unable to calibrate fast enough the change in the users expression map. As soon as the new version is available you will be prompted to install stimulus_package.patch.

For more information about Opera Face Gestures, please read the release notes on Opera Labs. You can also download the build with Face Gestures support. Enjoy!