Opera Wednesday: Opera Widgets On all Mobile Phones

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 24 Mar 2010

We continue our Opera Wednesday coverage by shifting focus onto widgets, the web applications you can run inside the browser, and outside the browser as a separate process. Running widgets as separate processes is always a possibility if you’re running Opera 10.50, the version that introduced this option.

Opera Software, the Norwegian company behind the Opera web browser, announced in a press release that it rebuilt the Opera Mobile Widgets experience for the mass market. By using the same technology in Opera Mini (Opera Mini 5 recently graduated out of Beta, alongside Opera Mobile 10), the company can make Opera Widgets available to pretty much any mobile phone out there.

Opera Software came up with an Opera Mini-based widgets platform that offers the same UI and feature set as the Opera Mobile Widgets Manager. Thanks to the new widgets platform, which uses Opera’s cross-platform UI framework, handset manufacturers and operators can provide customers with exciting, web-based content and services – this applies to all the mobile phones they have to offer.

Opera’s cross-platform UI framework allows manufacturers and operators to provide a single browser UI across all their devices. The new widget platform allows them to easily and quickly develop and roll out Opera Widgets for pretty much any mobile phone out there. According to Opera Software, this is good news for operators as widgets “drive end-user data consumption and encourage the uptake of content and services throughout their network.”

“Our new Widgets platform releases operators and manufacturers from the native application box and gives them the tools needed to develop Web-based content that is fun, useful and available to everyone,” said Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software. “By rebuilding our Opera Mobile Widgets Manager with our cross-platform UI framework, we are able to help our customers deliver a better, more unified user experience on nearly any mobile phone.”

Other articles from our Opera Wednesday coverage:
Browser Downloads in Europe Have Doubled this Month
Opera 5.1 Available for Download
Opera Mini for iPhone Submitted to App Store



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