Opera Going Apple WebKit With Their Browser
Opera has ditched their in-house browser engine for Apple’s WebKit to create ‘Ice’ browser for iOS and Android devices. The browser is set to launch in February with full touch and tablet-focused features.
“Opera mini is great, but it is not a fully-fledged offering like Chrome or Safari. There are too many sites it doesn’t work with,” Lars Boilesen, CEO of Opera, was quoted as saying.
Facebook Rumoured To Buy Failing Opera Browser
Mark Zuckerberg has been really busy lately with buying of Instagram, releasing Facebook Camera app, the IPO and getting married to Presilla Chan. Now it is rumoured that that Mark wanted to buy the failing browser Opera. Why?
Facebook is said to plan an outright acquisition of the Norwegian Opera company to accelerate a move onto the browser battlefields with Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Apple and Yahoo.
It is reported that Opera is currently in the midst of a hiring freeze, and its management is talking to potential buyers. Go figure but it will not be a good buy for Facebook with Chrome, IE, Firefox and Safari leading the game here.
Opera 10 Released
Opera 10 is now released for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows and Linux. This version comes with Opera Turbo, a compression engine to speed up slow web connections. It is supposed to speed up 8 times on slow connections. The updated browser also comes with Opera Dragonfly which is an online development tool.
Press release: Turbocharge your Web experience with Opera 10
Opera 10 Comes With Visual Tabs
Opera 10 browser beta has a new interface that closely resembles Safari. The visual tabs holds the thumbnail of the website. Other new features are customisable speed dial that keeps 4 to 25 favourite Web sites for easy access, Opera Turbo delivers 3x to 4x the speed of slower connections and can offer broadband-like speeds on dial-up and more.
Source: Opera 10 Beta
Firefox Climbs Above 21% Market Share
The latest data on browser market share indicates Internet Explorer has fallen below 69% market share, and Firefox has gained 21%. Safari has gained 7% while Opera remained badly at 0.7%. New comer Google Chrome managed to secure 1%.
Opera Mini 4.2 Beta Colourful Skins
Opera has released Opera Mini 4.2 Beta which allow users to personalise the browser with new colourful skins. This freely available beta download has improved YouTube support and syncing your notes from the Opera Desktop Web browser to your phone.
Source: Opera Mini 4.2 beta
Opera Goes For Google Android
Norway based Opera Software has unveiled the first major third-party browser for the Google Android mobile phone operating system. Opera mini will appear on Android as a technical preview release.
Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner said, “Today we’re glad to deliver our mass-market mobile browser to the Android development groups. Opera Mini will be able to empower users of Android-based handsets with access to all of their favorite Web sites with popular features for smooth effects and scalable, tailored viewing.”.
Source: Opera Previews Browser for Android
