Opera is making plans to steal market share from Microsoft.
Although a launch date for Opera 10 hasn't yet been set, Opera is hoping that the application will lure users away from Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 by building on Opera 9's use of small Web applications called Widgets.
Opera 9 was released on 20 June, and is intended to combat IE 7's release later this year, according to the company.
"Opera 9 is the first salvo towards IE 7. We're trying to give a user-friendly experience and eliminate problems," said Thomas Ford, public relations manager for desktop Opera software.
Opera wants version 10 to work on and across any platform, a continuation of its work to make Opera 9 compatible with different platforms such as Nintendo DS games consoles, as a way of differentiating the browser from Microsoft's offering.
"We want to enable Opera 10 to work on any device — mobile, desktop, games consoles. We want to find ways to tie things in much better," Ford told ZDNet UK. "That's something we do that Microsoft fundamentally can't."
The company will also develop more Widgets — HTML and Javascript web applications that run outside of the browser. Opera is aiming for a day when people needn't use a full desktop operating system, instead using a browser and Web applications for most tasks.
There is also a big push in the company towards creating developer tools.
"We will be unleashing developer tools, which are still in the planning stages," said Ford. "We want developers to use Opera as a Web development platform, using open standards. We need to keep the Web ready for open standards," said Ford.
Opera is also hoping to take market share from IE 6, the most recent Microsoft browser, thanks to the security of the Opera architecture.
"People can wait for IE 7, or they can use Opera 9 if they want to be safe now," said Ford.
Opera 9 has already seen a significant uptake of users, with 700,000 downloads on the first day of release. Overall, Opera 9, including the mobile Mini version, has seen roughly 25 million downloads since its release in June.
Talkback
Opera really is good. Especially for testing Web sites. For one thing View > Source yields editable text, unlike Poxfire's useless display. And for another, Opera's "User mode" allows 7 different ways to view a Web page, including "Show structural elements". - And all this is built into Opera; no need to go searching for it.
And - low virus, trojan, who knows what else, risks.
Yes, I like it. I'm only sorry that it took so long to become advert-free. Otherwise I would have adopted it years ago.
I agree, Opera is easily my favourite browser, and has been for years. (I'm one of those who paid for it when the alternatives were free rubbish).
Firefox (and its Camino equivalent on the Mac) are good, but Opera is the best, and comes highly recommended.
....but my default browser is Firefox still.
Opera is good for sure, and for me personally, i generally use it mainly for testing purposes when i build websites and webpages. The Small Screen Rendering is particularly useful.
One thing i don't like as much now in the latest version compared with an earlier one (i think it could be version 8), is the zoom - i remember the zoom use to keep everything relative to each other so that the page ratio would stay the same (if you will) - so zooming in for example, it would simply increase everything together, therefore you end up getting vertical and horizontal scroll bars. Now - the latest version i have v9 - when you zoom in, it kinds of distorts the page layout so that you do not get horizontal scrollbars. Of course, this then means that page elements then get pushed down onto a new line to avoid stretching horizontally....
Having said that, the zoom option on Opera is still good - and better than the IE equivilent!