Scandinavian web browser provider Opera will be announcing today a new feature that allows users to access their bookmarks and favorite websites list (called “speed dial”) wherever they go.
Out of Opera’s three consumer offerings - Opera for Desktop, Opera Mini, and Opera Mobile - the first two will be able to natively load the bookmarks that you have saved to your Opera account. Your bookmarks will therefore show up as the same no matter which instances of these browsers you use, as long as you’ve signed in with your account and chosen to synchronize. With Opera Mobile, or any non-Opera browser for that matter, you will be able to access your bookmarks via a web interface at my.opera.com.
For those unfamiliar with Opera’s product lineup, Opera provides versions of its browser for an array of devices including the Nintendo Wii. There is only one standard version for the desktop but two for mobile devices. Opera Mini is a lightweight browser intended for cell phones that can’t normally support a full-featured browser. It supports a good deal of JavaScript but no Ajax, and it also depends on an Opera server to send compressed versions of webpages. Opera Mobile, on the other hand, is a more fully-featured mobile browser for smart phones that looks more like Safari for the iPhone.
Opera Link introduces competition for Delicious, which provides a useful plugin for Firefox that makes it possible to sync your bookmarks across browser instances. Soon, users will also be able to share their bookmarks with one another using Opera Link, thereby competing even more directly with social bookmarking sites.
This feature also represents one aspect of Opera’s attempt to turn the browser into a more sophisticated platform. Developers can already create widgets for Opera, and the company suggests that it may add more synchronization capabilities in the future, such as the ability to sync sessions, passwords, and notes.
Opera - which consists of about 430 employees - is based in Oslo, Norway but has offices around the world in places like Japan, China, and India. They just opened their first Silicon Valley office in Mountain View.
It is mundane features as most of the mobile device have limited user interface which make it practically difficult to manage all bookmarks locally and loading time is longer too.
I missed such a feature within Opera.
This is a great feature, good thing they implemented it.
IEPro (from http://iepro.com/) does bookmark sync for IE as well.
Opera is a fantastic browser, but why would they need 430 employees? How can they support that? I thought their only revenue stream was from selling their mobile browser.
gmarks for Firefox does this, and I think Flock does as well.
No body like opera browser. They keep messing with CSS style sheet, javascript, and HTML format.
The (opensource) project oSync (http://osync.sourceforge.net) is offering this service for a few years now. The advantage of oSync is that you can run your own server so your bookmarks are save!
I dont get why more people don’t use Opera. Its faster and more stable than IE and firefox, and has a ton of features.
I don’t think they represent a competition for Delicious, they are too small and being big is what makes social good.
Such features can make my day, pal.
http://tekno-world.blogspot.com
—->> bob cobb
I sooo agree with you …. More people prefer FF over Opera is because FF is open source .
Most people go with the hype… and there is a looooot of hype surrounding FF .
If the same hype was created around Opera , its user base would Zoom … but I guess Opera is such a good browser that , it can manage without any Hype….
—>>Duncan Riley
All CPU Intensive and Memory heavy Plugins. Opera has these as built in , fast and Very Efficient Features.
Josh –Opera is a fantastic browser—->
Yes , it is an amazing peice of software.
Hey Josh , you know the GOOGLE Search input field on the upper left field of the Opera Window , OR Just type in “g how to draw” in the address bar(Performs a google search)… When you use any of these ways to search (Using any search engine , not just google) , then Opera Foundation earns something from The search Engine. This is one way I know they Earn
—>>
I consider FF to be a “CHEAP” Imitation of Opera features …..
Features present in FF are all worthless imitations of Opera’s inbuilt features , and FF implements it through Plugins.
Even if this is the case , Opera is faster at startup and renders pages at an amazing speed …..
Long live Opera …. The best Browser Ever
I have over the last week been checking out pretty much every available browser for the Mac platform and for me at least Opera has some really excellent features and is frankly screamingly fast in direct comparison to ANYTHING i have tested
Still no macro tool for Opera!
When will they open up their browser for extensions?
A browser without “Web Developer” and “iMacros” is useless to me
We are in a social networking world and Flock has come up early on the stage with solutions
http://blogkatt.blogspot.com/2.....escue.html
If Delicious is anything like Simpy in terms of user profile, and it likely is, this offer from Opera won’t really make a difference for Social Bookmarking services. For example, Simpy is a social bookmarking service with a pretty high percentage of non-U.S. (Euro, to be more specific) users, and guess how many use Opera?
…checking Google Analytics….
2.01 % Opera world-wide
Even Safari, which is limited to Mac users, has more users of Simpy.
Out of 2.01% Opera users, 1.57% run Opera on Winblows.
Let’s look at Opera in different regions now:
Opera in Europe: 2.44% (Safari: 1.87%)
Opera in N. America: 2.71% (Safari: 2.12%)
Those few who use Opera (I used to run it a few years ago and loved it) will not really make a difference, but it’s nice they now have bookmarks built-in and synchronized. Simpy users get the same functionality (and a lot more, actually), via a Firefox add-on called Smarky:
https://addons.mozilla.org/ja/firefox/addon/4702
Smarky keeps track of your bookmark usage, so you get super-quick access to frequently used sites/bookmarks.
“A browser without “Web Developer” and “iMacros” is useless to me ”
We (Opera) have Web developer tools over at http://dev.opera.com/tools In addition to those tools, we’re currently developing more serious applications for developers.
Developers tools is something that’s very important to Opera, which is why we’re putting in a lot of effort to bring you guys the best possible tools.
Daniel Goldman
Opera Software
Just M Today—->>>
Corrosponding to the ‘Extensions’ of Fire Fox ,I think Opera has ‘Widgets’ (I have very little knowledge of both) , and as Mr.Daniel Goldman has stated , Opera is trying to get more n more ‘Open’
Couldn’t do it.
I used to use Opera back in the day when Mozilla sucked the big one, but then came FireFox and its plethora of plugins. I tried to switch back to Opera once it became free (not advertising-supported, straight-free) and I just couldn’t do it.
I call it feature lock-in. There are just so many things I can make FireFox do with its plugins that I’m just locked in. I go to use Opera, doesn’t support a feature I use for every day browsing — what am I supposed to do?
Go back to FireFox, of course.
Opera doesn’t have AdBlock (they have some cancerous hosts file or something you can jimmy-up), no Viamatic FoxPose / Firefox Showcase equivalent — they’ve got some thing where you hover over a tab and a thumbnail comes up, but that’s not convenient), no identity selector (yes, I actually have to _use_ that), DownThemAll for porn, FireBug, etc, etc…
On the other hand, FireFox has, as plugins, most of the features that come out of the box with Opera. One of my favorite features, Opera’s “trashcan” for closed tabs, is available as the “Undo closed tab” extension for example.
When Opera announced their widget support, I was like “finally!”
Except their widget support is just… widgets, really. They’re nothing like FireFox extensions, and I never really found a use for them: I already had Google Desktop installed on Windows XP, and Vista’s got them built-in. I guess they’re kind of neat if you’re running on *nix, but it doesn’t exactly fill the void of my favorite extensions…
At the end of the day, I just couldn’t switch browsers. I’m locked in, and I love every minute of it.
Opera blows donkey nuts.
What saves my life with bookmarks synch is Foxmarks http://www.foxmarks.com/ - an amazingly simple plugin to use for FF. Does it very un-intrusively. Cannot imagine life without Foxmarks!
I would rather save my links on a website provider like del.ic.ious
http://www.meetingflex.com
Video +Social Networking
What people here dont understand is that this syc service is the link between the mobile and the desktop world, it’s not something only about keeping your bookmarks.
This feature will probably come up in every product opera powers and that makes the differences as it’s nearlyavailable in every platform you can imagine.
Thumbs up Opera!
Opera! lol
Isn’t that where the fat lady screams and breaks out the windows?
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com