DJYSRV

One of the issues that gets a lot of attention is how web sites recognize Opera and then serve the full suite of capabilities for that site to users of the browser. As Opera's installed base of users grows, now that desktop piece is free, there could be a way to promote web site services aimed at Opera users by pursuing relationships with publishers of web site development tools. This move could really get things moving for Opera in terms of making the desktop a more important product platform for Opera rather than just as a test bed for applications targeted at mobile devices.

As Opera subscribes to well-understood web site standards, and related webs site performance issues, this isn't a technical issue. It is a marketing issue. For instance, most web site development tools offer a "preview mode" for your default browser. It should be simple enough to specify Opera as the default browser. Could things be taken to the next step?

Could Opera align via a marketing agreement with publishers of web site development tools? The goal would be to offer added value features which become available if the developer specifically targets Opera as the browser of choice for the web site user?

One opportunity would be a testing procedure in the desktop development tool to see how the HTML code complies with specific well understood industry standards. Another opportunity is related to Opera's small screen rendering technologies. See more on this below. A third is for web site services on mobile devices I'm only mentioning three for examples. What else can you think of?

My point is that if Opera wants more web sites to offer the full range of services to Opera users, it needs to address the developer side of the issue and get tools out there that make it more productive to serve to Opera.

The equation now is that web developers don't necessarily think about Opera. They think about Internet Explorer or Firefox. What if Opera offered web site development software publishers a toolkit to add to their products, either in the next release cycle or as an add-on, that gave them some kind of competitive edge? The value proposition is that it would need to help the publisher sell more software licenses and the developer make better web sites.

Opera is already doing this to some extent in its deal with Adobe announced in April 2005. The Opera browser is integrated in Adobe Creative Suite 2. This design and publishing environment uses Opera as the engine for the majority of content manipulation, powering Adobe GoLive CS 2, Adobe Photoshop CS 2, and other components of Adobe Creative Suite 2.

Opera said in its press release it has, "leveraged its cross-platform performance to join Adobe in helping developers create optimal Web pages for both desktop computers and mobile devices."

Perhaps the most interesting part of the deal is that using the Adobe Creative Suite 2 with Opera, Web designers have the ability to view how Web page content will look on a small screen. Opera's Small-Screen Rendering (SSR) technology reformats Web pages to fit the screen of mobile phones, eliminating horizontal scrolling. Web developers can now design their sites to be optimally viewed on any device, regardless of the screen size.

This idea goes beyond publishing APIs or being a rendering engine or viewer. It tries to get at being a valued added partner in the published tool with the end result in mind that web sites that use the tool will be much more likely to deliver the full suite of services to people using the Opera browser.

Web sites like Yahoo or some music sites actively discriminate against people who use ANY browser other than Internet Explorer. What I see as the goal of this idea is that the partnership with web development tool makers is that their products now make it easy to offer the same services to Opera as they do to Internet Explorer and without loss of programmer productivity.

Of course this is a goal, but if Opera wants more page views, and more search results on Google that produce revenue, it needs more web sites that are friendly to Opera. Rather than going through the back end and approach web sites that suck, this is a front end approach that knocks off the problem before it occurs.

Coupled with the release this month of the Opera mini, which potentially puts the web on hundreds of millions of cell phones, and the firm could really get the train moving, just as I said :-)