All posts tagged ‘Opera’

File Under: Browsers, Mobile
Apr
30
2012

Opera: Over Half of Mobile Users Are Mobile-Only

By

Can you hear me now? Photo by Aramolara/Flickr.

Opera has released a new “state of the mobile web” report that shows 56 percent of Opera’s mobile users access the web only via their mobile device. Some 43 percent of non-Opera mobile users also call mobile their sole browser.

Opera’s numbers were gathered in conjunction with mobile research firm On Device Research and are pulled from some 34,000 users in 22 different countries across four continents over the course of one year (Nov. 2010 to Nov. 2011).

There are two lessons for web developers in this report. First, globally, mobile is not the future of the web — it’s the now of the web. And second, hiding content on the mobile version of a website means a significant number of users will never see that content at all since they only access sites via a mobile device. Consider your hidden-from-mobile content non-existent content.

Naturally every website’s audience and needs are different. If your site is U.S.-centric then Opera’s report may have very little bearing on your users, but for those who’d like to expand to, or are already serving a global market, clearly making sure your site works well on mobile devices is key.

Delving into the Opera-centric portion of data offers some insights for developers as well, namely that building WebKit-only sites is not a good idea.

It’s one thing to know that building sites that only support the -webkit browser prefix is bad form, it’s another thing to realize it may be costing you money.

Not only are Opera Mobile and Mini the most widely used mobile browsers worldwide — which means not supporting them excludes the majority of mobile users from your site — according to Opera’s white paper, 55 percent of Opera users make purchases on their mobile devices. Only 43 percent of people without Opera installed do the same. In other words, websites that don’t support Opera on mobile may well be losing money.

Unfortunately, Opera is going forward with its plan to support -webkit, so possibly WebKit-only websites may work in Opera Mobile at some point in the future. But if you want to support Opera (and other browsers) today be sure to use all the various browser prefixes when writing your CSS. You can even take advantage of automated prefixing solutions to do all the hard work for you.

For more info on Opera’s data be sure to check out the actual white paper (.pdf) which also provides some more country-by-country data for those interested in what mobile trends look like in specific parts of the world.

Tags: ,
File Under: CSS, Web Standards
Apr
27
2012

Opera Forges Ahead With Plan to Support WebKit Prefixes

By

Even the mobile web is more than just WebKit. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired.com

Opera software will make good on its plan to implement the -webkit- prefix in the Opera web browser. To give developers a taste of what that will entail the company has released an update for its mobile emulator with support for the -webkit- prefix.

CSS vendor prefixes were designed to help web developers by giving them a way to target CSS to specific browsers and use proposed standards before they were finalized. The idea was to move the web forward without rushing the CSS standards process. Unfortunately, it hasn’t always worked out that way. In fact, web developers fell in love with the -webkit- prefix and often forget that there are other prefixes as well: -o- for Opera, -moz- for Firefox and -ms- for Internet Explorer.

Now Opera says that to remain competitive it plans to support -webkit- in addition to its normal -o- prefix.

The problem, in Opera’s view, is that instead of writing code that will work in any web browser, some of even the largest sites on the web are coding exclusively for WebKit (the rendering engine that powers web browsers on the iPhone, iPad and Android phones). Web developers have, the argument goes, created the same sort of monoculture that used to exist around Internet Explorer, with websites proudly proclaiming they “work best in WebKit.”

In most cases Opera, Firefox and Internet Explorer support the same CSS features found in WebKit. The problem is that developers are only using the -webkit prefix, so only WebKit browsers render the effects. As a result, Opera, Firefox and IE look like less capable browsers even when they aren’t.

Opera web evangelist Bruce Lawson writes on the Opera development blog, “this leads to a reduced user experience on Opera and Firefox, which don’t receive the same shiny effects such as transitions, gradients and the like, even if the browser supported those effects” (emphasis in original).

Non-WebKit browser vendors first started talking about implementing the -webkit prefix earlier this year during a CSS Working Group meeting. Microsoft, Mozilla and Opera all said they felt the need to support -webkit, lest their users be relegated to an inferior browsing experience (because so many sites are using only the -webkit prefix).

While it’s not hard to understand Opera’s position, we’re disappointed to see Opera moving forward with this plan.

The very real danger is that if other browsers implement -webkit prefixes then the entire CSS standards effort will be broken.

Instead of coding against a single CSS specification developers will need to code against changing vendor prefixes. As CSS Working Group co-chair, Daniel Glazman, wrote when Opera first floated the idea, “I don’t think this is the right way. And this is the first time in this WG that we are proposing to do things that are not the right way.”

We at Webmonkey hope it’s obvious that building WebKit-only sites is a mistake. If you’re only interested in iOS users then take a tip from Instagram and build a native app. As Peter Linss, Hewlett-Packard’s CSS WG representative and co-chair of the working group, said at the earlier CSS WG meeting, “there’s no advantage to the web to have someone write a platform-specific website.” There’s no real advantage for the developer either, especially when an automated CSS prefixer can do all the work for you. So, if you’re using prefixes, we encourage you to take the time to add them all, test your site in as many browsers as possible and make sure your site works for everyone.

Tags: , ,
File Under: Browsers
Apr
26
2012

Speed, Web Standards Make Latest Opera Beta Sing

By

Opera 12 beta

Opera Software has release a beta preview of Opera 12, a coming update for the company’s flagship desktop web browser.

To give it a try, head over to the Opera Next page and download the beta. Existing Opera users should note that this is an Opera Next release so it won’t touch any of your regular Opera settings.

The new beta preview packs in dozens of new features that show Opera 12 well on its way to being the fastest, stablest Opera yet. Part of that speed comes from Opera 12′s 64-bit support on Windows and Mac. Startup and shutdown times have been reduced as well with what Opera describes as “smarter tab loading.”

Another potential speed boost will come from the experimental WebGL hardware acceleration in Opera 12 beta. Opera’s plan for hardware acceleration is to use your graphics processor to boost rendering speeds not just for webpages, but the browser’s user interface as well. Of all the new features in Opera 12 this the most experimental and will require you to enable it by hand. Check out this post on the Opera blog for how to turn on hardware acceleration and some fair warning on why you might want to wait.

This release also adds support for out-of-process plugins, which means that Flash and other plugins now run in separate processes. That means if Flash crashes, it won’t cause the entire browser to crash with it. Like Chrome and Firefox before it, Opera 12′s isolated processes feature applies to plugins like Flash, Silverlight and Java, among others.

Opera has long been a pioneer of web standards and this release continues that tradition, bringing support for a wide variety of emerging web standards like CSS 3 Animations and Transitions, and HTML5 Drag-and-Drop. The latter means that the Flickr uploader we looked at yesterday works just fine in Opera 12. (Sadly, Flickr appears to be doing some user agent sniffing so you’ll need to switch Opera’s user agent to Firefox for it to actually work.)

Drag-and-drop file uploads in Opera 12

Other new features in the Opera 12 beta include support for the Web Real Time Communication (WebRTC) standard. Opera has set up some demos to show off the new WebRTC features, including a series of apps that pull images (with your permission) from your webcam. Be sure to visit Photo Booth, Polaroid, Color Picker and Explode to see WebRTC in action.

Opera 12 adds support for the Do Not Track header, which now enjoys support in every major desktop browser save Google Chrome. Opera has also made some improvements to Opera Reader, which is now known as the proposed CSS 3 standard, Generated Content for Paged Media. Paged Media was first proposed by Håkon Wium Lie, Opera Software’s CTO and creator of cascading stylesheets. The idea is to make it easy for web developers to transform longer pages into a more book-like experience, where the reader flips from page to page instead of scrolling down one long screen.

Opera 12: Reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, no scrolling necessary.

Paged Media really makes the most sense on tablets, but the preliminary support in Opera 12 makes it easier for developers to experiment with the new features. To go along with the updated support in Opera 12, Lie has updated the demos on his site.

This release is also notable for something it doesn’t include, namely Opera Unite. Unite, which allowed you to host a simple website directly on your own computer, is no longer available by default.

Opera is not the most widely used browser on the web by any means, but it is responsible for much of the innovation we’ve seen in web browsers over the years. If you’ve never used Opera, this beta makes a good introduction, though bear in mind that it is a beta release and may have some bugs here and there. For more details on everything that’s new in this release, check out Opera’s release notes.

Tags:
File Under: Browsers, HTML5, Mobile
Feb
27
2012

Opera Updates Opera Mini for iPhone, Opera Mobile for Android

By

Opera Mini 7 on the iPhone

Opera Software has announced a slew of updates for its various mobile web browsers, including a new Opera Mini for the iPhone and Opera Mobile 12 for Android phones.

Contrary to what many may think, the real race in mobile web browsers is not between Mobile Safari and Android’s web browser, but between Mobile Safari and Opera Mobile/Mini. As we’ve mentioned before, actual mobile traffic data puts Opera just a touch ahead of Mobile Safari in the race for most-used mobile web browser.

To get the latest version of Opera Mini for the iPhone, head to the Apple App Store. The Android version of Opera Mobile 12 is available in the Android Market Place. If you’re using another platform, or have a feature phone, head to m.opera.com to download the latest release for your phone.

The latest release of the iPhone variant of Opera Mini adds several useful new features, including support for more than nine items on the Speed Dial page, support for the iPhone’s native dictionary and improved traffic compression on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. Other changes include fixing a bug that prevented session restore from working properly when your battery died. For full details on everything that’s new in Opera Mini 7 for iOS, check out the release notes.

There’s also a new preview version of Opera Mini available, with support for what Opera calls “Smart Page.” Smart Page takes the idea of Opera’s Speed Dial — the “new tab” screen with your favorite sites just a click away, which has since made its way into all the major desktop browsers — and applies it to the social web. Smart Page gives feature phone users one-click access to social networks and news sites like Twitter and Facebook. For now Smart Page is only available on the feature phone version of Opera Mini Next, though the company plans to eventually include it on other phones as well.

If you’d like to take Opera Mini Next for a spin on older feature phones, point your phone to m.opera.com/next. Keep in mind that this a preview release and there may be bugs.

In addition to Opera Mini and Opera Mini Next, Opera has also released Opera Mobile 12 for Android, Symbian and other mobile platforms. This release brings WebGL support to Opera Mobile 12 on Android, which means better support for 3D and other complex web graphics. Opera’s new HTML5 parser — which we looked at in our review of Opera 11.60 for the desktop — is also included in Opera Mobile 12.

Other new features include support for the Media Capture API, which means websites can access your phone’s camera, and more options for customizing the Speed Dial (including the same increased number of Speed Dial items found in the other releases).

Tags: , ,
File Under: Browsers
Jan
13
2012

The Curious Case of Web Browser Names

By

Chances are your web browser is open all day, every day. Whether it’s Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Chrome or Safari, the browser is the single most important piece of software most of us use. Given its central place in our lives, some history seems in order. If you’ve ever stopped browsing long enough to wonder why Safari is named Safari or where in the world the word “Mozilla” comes from, we have some answers for you.

Martin Beeby, a developer evangelist at Microsoft, has put together a nice little history of web browser names. Some are obvious — Internet Explorer came about because it was “a name that gave people a clear idea of what the product did” — some are less so, like Opera, which was apparently chosen because, among other things, “the Opera is fun.”

With the exception of Opera and IE, none of Beeby’s name origin stories come directly from the companies behind the browsers, so take all of these with a grain of salt. For instance, no one seems to know the exact origins of “Safari”, though the Beach Boys’ album seems like a reasonable guess — surfing the web, Surfin’ Safari… get it? The WebKit blog is named Surfin’ Safari, which might lend some credence to that story, but the name also nicely ties in with the notion of exploring the wild and connotes some of the same images as “explorer” and “navigator”.

Perhaps the least obvious name in the bunch is Firefox’s parent company Mozilla. Beeby cites a well-known story that the name that was derived by combining the words that were its original goal — “Mosaic Killer.” Webmonkey has heard another version of that story that claims the word “Godzilla” was the inspiration for “Mozilla,” a Godzilla-like force that would destroy Mosaic.

Beeby doesn’t offer any stories for less well-known browsers, like Konqueror, which, as the story goes, was going to “conquer” what IE and Netscape had “explored” and “navigated” respectively. The allusion didn’t really pan out, but, when Apple came along and ported KHTML to form WebKit, the developers did name their early efforts after a famous conqueror — Alexander.

For more details, and to learn where the names Firefox and Chrome come from, be sure to read through Beeby’s post.

Tags: , , , ,
« OLDER POSTS