A Blog From Behind the Trenches

Opera Mini had nearly 40 million users in October 2009, according to this month's State of the Mobile Web report. This means that since January, Opera Mini's user base has just about doubled.

The user base actually grew by 4 million users in October compared to the month before.

I don't know how many of these are duplicates due to Opera Mini 4 users trying out Opera Mini 5, but since Opera Mini 5 was released the month before, I'm inclined to think that it has a limited effect on the numbers.

Another interesting observation from this month's report is that page views and data transfers are increasing at a faster rate than the user growth. Each Opera Mini user is viewing more pages.

Wap Review's AT&T browser hands-on provided some details about AT&T's customized Opera Mini browser, but didn't provide any screenshots. It turns out that there were some screenshots in the Q3 2009 financial presentation from today, and indeed, it doesn't look like Opera Mini at all.

Read more...

According to Computerworld, security firm Cenzic has released a report showing that Firefox and Safari were the least secure browsers in the first half of 2009. That's the impression you get by simply skimming the article anyway. The actual report from Cenzic only counts the number of security flaws, and concludes that Firefox had 44% of all vulnerabilities, Safari had 35%, IE had 15%, and Opera a mere 6%.

Does that really mean that IE is more secure than Firefox and Safari?

I'm not sure a conclusion like that can be drawn at all. There are other aspects to security vulnerabilities that were not covered, such as the severity, and how long the vendor takes to fix them. Furthermore, security reports sometimes elevate standard crash bugs into security bugs, for example referring to them as "Denial of Service Vulnerabilities".

It's great to see that Opera has a low number of vulnerabilities, and I am confident that we would look good if severity and "time to fix" were taken into account as well. But until the report actually includes those relevant details, it isn't really that useful.

Statistics are great, though. You can make them show just about anything.

Update: Opera Mobile 10 for S60 apparently does not support plugins yet. As it is a beta, this might change in the final version.

If you are wondering whether Opera Mobile 10 for S60 supports Flash or not (and if not, if it will ever support it), the short answer is (as far as I know):

You need the Flash plugin.

No browser supports Flash natively, since Flash is a plugin. This means that as long as a browser supports plugins and a Flash plugin is available for your platform, it should be possible to use the plugin to view Flash content. Some browsers also use a remote server to handle the plugin content, and then passes it on to the browser client in a format suitable for that browser. (Opera Turbo does not transcore plugin content (such as Flash), so that will not get you Flash support either.)

As I understand it, Opera Mobile 10 does (or should) support plugins, but I'm not sure if a Flash plugin is available for S60. If it is, and it doesn't work in Opera, it's probably a bug in either the plugin, or in our plugin support (report bugs in Opera Mobile for S60 in the Symbian forum).

If anyone knows about a Flash plugin for S60, let me know.

So should Opera bundle Flash, if possible? Probably not. We did that on Desktop, and that led to all sorts of problems, such as security flaws in Flash forcing us to release updates to Opera. The Flash plugin is also a pretty large download, and that is a major reason to keep it as a separate download.

And of course, Flash is a closed, proprietary, inaccessible technology which actually puts everyone at risk because it's a single point of failure and therefore a very tempting target for virus and malware authors.

Note/update: For those too lazy to read the whole thing, this is about Microsoft's history. It shows their history of consciously anti-competitive behavior. It is aimed at those who have little knowledge of Microsoft's history. To learn more, read this document by ECIS: A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and Consumer Harm

It seems that some people are still doubting that Microsoft has consciously sought to undermine competition by abusing their position in the market. In fact, some are outright denying any wrongdoing on Microsoft's part, and if there was any wrongdoing then it was surely unintentional.

Sadly, such history revisionists are creating confusion about what actually happened, but this quote from a Bill Gates memo to the Office product group in December 1998 sums up Microsoft's attitude:

One thing we have got to change in our strategy - allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company.

We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities.

So as you can see, Microsoft has a history of anti-competitive behaviour. You can agree or disagree that it is necessary to get the Government involved to deal with antitrust cases (Microsoft itself certainly thinks so, and they have filed their own antitrust complaints, e.g., against Google), but what you cannot deny is Microsoft's attitude and behaviour through the years.

And yes, this has continued even in recent years.

Google just announced that Chrome has more than 30 million users. The latest number for Opera from a few months ago was more than 40 million users. However, both StatCounter and Net Applications list Chrome with a higher market share than Opera in October (1.88 for Opera/4.17 for Chrome, and 2.17 for Opera/3.58 for Chrome, respectively).

That's how reliable browser statistics are...

The Open Screen Project isn't new, but it seems to be part of a pattern of doublespeak from Adobe. I understand why Adobe wants everyone to use Flash, but at least they could be honest about what Flash actually is, and what it is they are promoting.

Do they really think people are this stupid?

Open Web standards are already here, and don't rely on closed, proprietary formats (even if those formats are promised to be open some time in the future). If Adobe was really trying to open up, they would have promoted open Web standards instead.

If only Adobe would stop referring to proprietary, closed, inaccessible and insecure technologies as "open"...

I'm not really sure Twitter is my thing, but a lot of people are using it, so maybe it's good for something.

I have decided to give it a chance to show its usefulness. If you want to take a look at my Twitter page (is that the right term), look up "opvard" (Opera-Haavard ). I don't know what I will be using it for yet, but I'm sure I'll think of stuff to post there eventually.

WAP Review has posted a hands-on look at the AT&T-branded and customized Opera Mini browser.

One of the first things they noticed was that the browser is branded as "att.net" rather than Opera Mini. This is not surprising, seeing as there are likely several pricing models available to operators depending on the level of customization.

It might seem like a bad idea for Opera Software to accept a contract without much Opera branding associated with the product at all, but you can be sure that other operators in the US are fully aware of what these AT&T phones are running! We are definitely getting the word out there about the AT&T contract, and it will create awareness among both other potential customers, and consumers.

In the end, we need to offer the customer what they want (or need). Only in make-believe land can we tell the customer what they are supposed to be doing

The Opera icon was updated for Opera 10, and now the company logo has received a facelift as well:


Head over to the press resources page for various other formats and colour combinations.

I'm sure that some people will hate it, but I guess you can't please everyone