Opera browser for the Pocket PC

Opera announced today that a version of the Opera browser for Windows Mobile Pocket PC is now under development.

Opera 8 for Windows Mobile Smartphone

After initially not planning on making Opera available on the Windows Mobile platform, Opera has released today for the first time a browser for the Windows Mobile 2003 Smartphone.

Probably the most important feature of this new browser is the Small-Screen Rendering technology that Opera developed last November.

To see how a particular page is displayed using this technology in the desktop browser, press SHIFT+F11 (only in Opera).

You can download Opera 8 for the Windows Mobile 2003 Smartphone here.

Opera finds backdoor into Nokia

Nokia, which currently uses the Opera browser in its mobile phones, announced a couple of weeks ago that it’s turning to the open-source community to provide a new browser.

Opera appeared to be most affected by this, since Nokia is one of Opera’s largest customers.

But Opera found a backdoor into Nokia.

Today Opera announced that it would provide the Opera browser on the Nokia 6680 for T-Mobile.

Microsoft blocks right clicking on MSN for Mozilla browsers

Microsoft has blocked the right clicking of links on the MSN web site when using the Mozilla web browsers.

Left clicking on a link, opens the page in the same tab.

It seems as though Microsoft is specifically looking out for Mozilla browsers. Take a look at the JavaScript that’s causing it.

This is an attempt by Microsoft to stop people from using alternative browsers.

This does not affect the Opera browser, yet.

www.opera.pl redirects to mirror of Mozilla Europe

The opera.pl domain name is currently hosting a mirror of the Mozilla Europe site.

This is known as cybersquatting, where one registers well-known trademarks as domain names (with the attempt to sell them back to the trademark owner).

opera.pl was initially owned by one of the Polish opera houses for several years. For some reason they have dropped this domain. A person named Adam Rangotis bought it in the middle of 2003.

For some period of time he redirected opera.pl to Opera’s main site, opera.com. People assumed that Opera had bought the domain name. In fact, some Polish magazines have even used the opera.pl address as a reference in their printed versions.

Opera’s official Polish site is located at www.opera.com/lang/pl.

In an attempt to make some money from his site, he also used to redirect opera.pl to the “Opera Buy pages” using the old affiliate program. However, Opera asked him to stop that practice, which he complied with.

Now this domain name is hosting a mirror of Mozilla Europe.

Microsoft had a similar problem with their polish domain name some time ago. Another person registered the microsoft.pl domain. He then tried to sell in an auction, but was cancelled on demand of the Polish division of Microsoft. The person tried to sell the domain directly to Microsoft. Microsoft filed a suit and won.

Some countries have specific laws against cybersquatting beyond the normal rules of trademark law. The United States, for example, has the U.S. Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA).

ICANN, which is in charge of internet domain names, created the Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policies (UDRP) with guidelines for use when disputes arise regarding the registration of internet names.

I contacted Adam Rangotis, who confirmed to me that he was the owner of the opera.pl domain name, but declined to say what affiliation he has with Mozilla (if any).

I don’t know what the trademark laws are in Poland, but it may seem that Opera will have a hard time getting this domain name from him, if they decided to pursue this. On the one hand, the word “opera” doesn’t only refer to company, it’s also a well know word in the dictionary. After all the browser was named Opera for this reason. On the other hand, using an Opera-like domain name to redirect to its competitor is clearly a shot at Opera.

It’s unclear to me if the Mozilla Foundation can do anything about this legally but this is clearly wrong. They should at least contact this guy and work something out with him.

P.S. Thanks to Andrzej Olaczek, who supplied me with some of the information for this post. And, as always, thanks to Berit Hanson, from Opera Software.

Update #1: According to Marek Stepien, Mozilla Firefox Polish Localization Maintainer, there is no “Mozilla conspiracy against Opera”; it’s just some guy trying to get some money in a not very ethical way. In addition, he will contact Mozilla Europe and ask them to reconfigure their servers not to open the site for non-official hostnames like opera.pl.

Update #2: It has been only a few hours since the original post and now opera.pl no longer redirects to Mozilla Europe.

Journalist inflates Opera's CEO's words

ZDNet ran an article earlier this week quoting Opera’s CEO, Jon S. von Tetzchner, as saying that Firefox’s market share figures are inflated.

This of course made it sound like that Opera was attacking Firefox.

It took a little time, but it appeared on Slashdot a couple days later. And though Slashdot is usually not an Opera-friendly crowd, this time at least the comments were not that critical of Opera, as they usually are.

Did the Opera CEO really say it in this context? Or is it the case of misrepresentation by a journalist?

The Opera CEO actually had a long conversation with the journalist, according to Haarvard, but it seems that they decided to only pick out certain things to make it sound like he was attacking Firefox.

Of course, it’s not in Opera’s best interest to attack Firefox. The last thing they want to do is ignite a war with Firefox. Firefox has done good to Opera by bringing more awareness for alternative browsers. We’re all trying to bring down Internet Explorer’s monopoly of the browser.

On a related note, The Register wrote a rather interesting article about this matter (good read for Opera fans).

Opera 8.01 only browser of major browsers not affected by latest vulnerability

The latest version of Opera is the only browser among the major browsers that is not affected by JavaScript pop-up vulnerability.

This flaw allows a JavaScript pop-up window to appear in front of a popular site, making it appear as though it originated from there, while really originating from a malicious site. This could trick users into potentially entering private information.

Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox, and Safari are among the browsers vulnerable to this flaw.

Opera released a fix, in Opera 8.01, for this vulnerability the very same day the vulnerability was made public. Opera now displays the origin of the pop-up dialog.

This only bolsters Opera’s claim that security is its top priority. In fact, if you take a look at Secnuia’s site for the vulnerabilities found in browsers, Opera 8 has 0 unpatched vulnerabilities. While Firefox and Internet Explorer have 6 and 20 unpatched security vulnerabilities, respectively.

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Click here to see if your browser is affected by this vulnerability.

Opera: We really won this one

After the mess up with the PC world magazine award (or non-award), here (in the photo below) is what Opera had to say about another award it “really” won.

The screenshot is from the Opera Community page.

Opera CEO: Firefox market share inflated

Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera Software, made the claim today that the Firefox market share figures are inflated due to its support for link prefetching.

Link prefetching is a mechanism that uses browser idle time to download Web pages that the user might visit in the near future.

“Sadly the statistics are undercounting Opera and over counting Firefox. Opera has a better caching mechanism so it doesn’t access Web sites as often as other browsers. Firefox has added a pre-loading feature that Google has made use of. This inflates the numbers on the statistics,” von Tetzchner said.

Distribute your own custom built Opera browser

Opera has added a new service, the Opera Composer, which allows you to build and distribute the Opera browser with your customizations.

With the Opera Composer you can make a personalized version of your browser and distribute it for free. You can upload your favorite images for buttons, backgrounds, skins, and design your own Splash (start-up) screen.

This is ideal for businesses with multiple computer users.

Hopefully this will get more businesses to use Opera.