The latest version of Opera supports radial gradients in CSS3, which allows front-end developers to define the color and placement of circular gradients using only CSS code, rather than relying on images to create this visual effect. It also uses the newest version of the JavaScript standard, ECMAScript 5.1, and supports HTML5 microdata for search engines. Using microdata, developers can add semantic context to certain content, which allows Google and others to present it accordingly in search results.

Indeed, Lawson used the new features to build a radial double rainbow on this page, although it will only load in Opera currently.

Opera says it's the first browser to support HTML5 microdata, which is a standard adopted by most major browsers for more visually distinctive search results. For example, Google uses "rich snippets" for results that include information about, say, a person or audio content, displaying search results for those pages differently than it would for a standard Web page. The feature also furthers the goal of a semantic Web by adding machine-readable context to pages.

Not a Top Browser, But a Standards Champion

Opera is by no means a heavyweight in the Web browser market, but it is important nonetheless. It has about 200 million users across the globe and in some countries it even enjoys a majority of the browser market. There are mobile versions of Opera for every major smartphone platform, Windows 7 and Blackberry included. It's also built into some gaming consoles like the Nintendo Wii.

Despite being a minor player in the U.S. browser market, Opera has always been an early adopter of Web standards. It was one of the first browsers to utilize CSS for styling and laying out pages, something that is very central to the way the Web looks today. Since then, it has generally done quite well on Web standards compliance tests.

Next week, Amazon will ship its Kindle Fire tablet with a new "cloud-accelerated" browser called Silk. It uses cloud-based infrastructure to make pages load faster, something Opera is already doing.

Opera will show you exactly how much data you have used and how much you have saved with a dedicated page in the browser. The goal is to help users save money on pay-as-you-go data plans. It can also be helpful to the millions of users who face data caps and throttling coming from the carriers. Check out the video of Opera's new Android browser below.

Opera Mini works with 3,000 devices. The new versions also bring updates to Opera Turbo, the browser's feature to speed up sites while browsing on a data plan or a slow connection. Opera Mobile also now supports inline video for Android Honeycomb tablets. The rendering engine, Opera Presto, has been updated to improve network performance especially when viewing content from Javascript and HTML5 sites.

Opera's focus on data is unique in the mobile browser world. The discussion is still open on what the company does with its data but Opera is a good example of how the extended Android community is pushing the bounds of what mobile browsers can do. The most data efficient mobile browsers have historically belonged to Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices. The only problem with RIM is that the browsing experience on its smartphones is second-rate in comparison to the iPhone and Android devices.

What is your favorite third-party Android browser?

Check out the video and let us know in the comments if what Opera has cooked up is what users need from a mobile browser.

Opera has reconfigured its "Speed Dial" extension. Instead of static thumbnails of frequently-visited sites, now, when you open a new tab, you can embed websites that will update automatically, such as for weather or stock quotes. Opera has also partnered with several startup applications that give the browser a unique flavor in comparison to the competition.

"We're excited about the work that has gone into Opera 11.50," said Jan Standal, VP of desktop products, in a press release. "Before we challenge Lady Gaga though, we've got to surpass the Tom Selleck moustache fan page on Facebook and the number of forum posts Opera fan Tamil has written. We think Speed Dial extensions are amazing enough to do the trick, but we didn't stop there."

Opera claims to have 185 million users. In terms of browser market share, the company is a distant fifth to Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari (in that order). Hence, the company likes to have a little fun. The Opera company homepage has a live counter of how many times version 11.5 has been downloaded with interesting milestones revealed when it reaches a new point. The first was 1,908 downloads, correlated to the most people on stilts at one time. It took Opera almost five hours to pass the working population of the Death Star at 1.2 million and is closing in on its next milestone.

Opera says that it has fixed ""thousands of bugs and upgraded to our newest core rendering engine." It also tweaked the "software graphics engine with faster CSS and SCG rendering" which the company promises makes this version of Opera as stable as it has ever been.

For developers, Opera has new core HTML5 support including Session History and Navigation and the W3C File API.

In a strictly empirical observation, Opera 11.5 is the fastest browser currently running on my computer. Opening new tabs and windows does not have a lag, Speed Dial loads and updates almost automatically and Gmail is seamless (which I could not say was the case with Firefox 4 or 5). Scrolling with my MacBook trackpad is almost too fast, I have found myself zooming past things I want to read and having to track back. It will take a couple weeks of use, but Opera might have finally pushed its way into my cycle of browsers.

With Opera Mini 6, iPad users have what feels like a "real" Web browser on their tablet computers, thanks to features like the customizable start page which you fill with your own favorite websites, for example.

It also introduces improved tabbed browsing without Safari's 8-page (iPhone) or 9-page (iPad) limit.

In the new Opera Mini 6, you press the "tabs" button at the top of the screen to show your open tabs in a scrollable interface. The tabs lay on top of each other just slightly, allowing you to see enough of the page to identify it, while still conserving space on the smaller screen. To add a new tab, you simply tap the plus (+) button.

So how many tabs can you load? It may depend on the websites you open and how much memory they require, but let's just say this - I got tired of testing this after loading up around 20 or so tabs. I can't imagine needing more than that open at any given time in everyday use, especially on a mobile device. But even if I did, Opera Mini was ready to load more.

The secret to Opera's multi-tabbed experience comes from the way Opera compresses data on the backend. Opera Mini 6 offers up to 90% compression, the company says. This is useful not only when you're on a slower network connection, but it can also help when you're trying to conserve data to avoid paying overage fees for going over your data cap with your mobile operator.

Share to Twitter, Facebook with a Tap (& More)

Social sharing buttons are another new feature in Mini 6, allowing you to quickly and easily share a link on Facebook and Twitter, plus the company's online community at "My Opera" or on vKontakte, a popular Russian social network.

The updated browser also includes a password-saving feature, an alt menu (accessible via long press) for actions like opening links in new tabs, copy and paste, editing a Speed Dial and more. And for Opera desktop users, the browser will sync bookmarks, Speed Dial settings and search engines between your PC and your mobile.

Meanwhile, under the hood, the company promises faster and smoother panning and zooming adjustments, a faster and more fluid experience and faster scrolling.

Like its predecessor, the updated Opera Mini 6 is available as a free download from iTunes here.

Opera made a big deal about getting its mobile browser accepted into the iTunes App Store last year, having assumed that Apple would reject it for competing with iPhone's Safari. But as of today, a search for "browser" in iTunes yields 506 iPad apps and 771 apps for iPhone. While not all of those are actually full Web browsers, of course, many are, and many include the same features Opera touts today, like tabbed browsing or password saving, for instance.

With Mini 6, Opera can no longer count on media hype around Apple's "will they or won't they" app rejection plans, but will instead need to compete on merit. Will Opera Mini 6 deserve a spot on your homescreen? Let us know what you think in the comments.

If you're an early adopter type, you want to get things first. You don't want to wait for the first "unboxing" of a gadget on the Web, you want to be the unboxer, right? You don't want to wait for all the kinks to be ironed out, you want to see them in their first, raw nature. Reading reviews? Who does that anyway?

Opera announced today its own version for the early adopters, Opera Next, the potentially unstable and bug-ridden version of Opera for you early adopter types out there who want to know what's next.

If you're also a Chrome user, then this is like jumping onto the Dev Channel, which gives you a sneak peek of the next somewhat stable and tested version of Chrome. Unlike the Chrome Dev Channel, however, Opera Next provides the experience in a separate browser installation entirely, so you don't have to choose between a stable browsing experience and seeing what's next.

By downloading Opera Next right now, you can see (appropriately) what's coming next with our favorite data-crunching, speed-centric browser - live, interactive speed dials. Speed dials are the buttons that appear when you open a new browser tab in Opera and let you quickly choose among a number of common pages. Now, they have gone interactive:

Interactive speed dials bring in a number of features. For example, the "dial" itself can be automatically updated and live, such as a weather dial that shows up-to-date weather information. Or it can pull in an RSS feed preview, as shown above. It can even collect user specified content, such as images collected and tagged from around the Web within Opera.

Opera Next is available for download today.

Opera Software, the Norway-based browser maker, announced the opening of its Mobile App Store today. The store, which the company launched in conjunction with Appia, the "largest open application marketplace in the world," will provide apps to Opera's mobile browser users across a number of platforms.

According to the company, the store has already been a hit and its placement in its popular mobile browsers should ensure that it continues with this success.

The store is available in more than 200 countries and during its pre-launch phase it was accessed by 15 million users, hitting 700,000 downloads per day.

Opera uses data compression to increase performance on slower phones and mobile networks, so much of its use is seen on feature phones. According to one recent report, the mobile phone market's nearly 20% growth in the fourth quarter of 2010 was not solely a result of smartphone sales. Both Opera, and its Mobile App Store, could benefit from the continued growth in lower-cost feature phones in emerging markets.

In fact, most 18-27 year-olds surveyed in the report user their mobile phones to browse the Web more often than a desktop or laptop. The report offers a number of telling statistics on where the world is headed and it all boils down to one word - mobile.

• Almost 90% of respondents in the United States aged 18-27 have used their phones to share pictures. Of the profiled countries, Vietnam -- at 67% -- had the lowest use of mobile phones to share pictures.
• Respondents in the United States are least likely to have asked someone out on a date via SMS (44%). Respondents in China (84%), Germany (84%) and Vietnam (83%) are most likely to have used SMS texts to ask someone out on a date.
• Generation Y in both China and the United States share a disdain for printed newspapers. 53% of respondents in the United States and 57% of respondents in China rarely or never read physical newspapers.
• Watch your privacy policies. Respondents in South Africa (49%) and the United States (44%) were somewhat to very uncomfortable sharing their personal information online.

"We have often said that the next generation will grow up knowing the Web mostly through their mobile phones," said Opera co-founder Jon von Tetzchner of the results. "We see this trend already emerging in different regions around the world. The mobile Web will bring a profound change in how we connect with one another. I think the results from this survey already show that change taking place."

Interestingly, the report also found that countries with the highest percentage of users using desktops and laptops were also those with the highest percent of smartphones. That is, smartphones are not replacing laptops and desktops, but rather going hand-in-hand. "This result," states the report, "presents a challenge to the long-standing belief that smartphone uptake will be the major driver of mobile web usage globally."

If you have any doubts, just wait until the family gathers for the holidays and see for yourself - Generation Y certainly has chosen the mobile Web.

The result isn't as messy as it may sound - in fact, it could become a must-have for tabaholics who typically keep a dozen or more tabs open at any time. But is it useful enough to get you to switch?

To stack tabs in the new Opera 11 beta, you simply drag and drop. Tabs can be stacked any way you like - by site, by group, by theme, by favorites, etc. Then, when you hover your mouse over a tab, the stack expands in a visual preview. You can then click an arrow icon to expand the stack across the tab bar.

Here's a video demonstrating the feature in action (at the 0:50 mark):

In practice, I have to admit, there were a lot of drag-and-misses going on at first. Tabs weren't immediately stacking as easily as they should, they were just changing positions with each other. I realized that I was only able to stack tabs when dragging them from left-to-right, not right-to-left. In watching the demo video, that appears to be by design. That's an odd choice, in my opinion. It's not how I'd imagine this feature to work. When you click links on a Web page, tabs shoot out to the right of the tab you're currently on. It would only make sense to then drag those newly opened tabs back on top of the source tab. But that's not the case.

That being said, when I figured out how Opera wanted its tab stacking feature to work, it was easy to see the usefulness of stacks. It could definitely streamline your workflow...or even better, hide your non-work related Web surfing from the boss. (Not that we bloggers have that problem - Web surfing is always work-related!)

As a self-confessed tabaholic myself, this is one of the first features that has really grabbed my attention from Opera (even despite the initial bugginess) as I could immediately grasp the potential impact on my day-to-day Web research and browsing behavior. Returning to Chrome with its 20 or so open tabs all of a sudden felt busy, cluttered and disorganized. Maybe there's a Chrome extension to fix that?

Other New Features

Tab stacking isn't the only new feature in Opera 11. The updated beta also introduces the following:

• The address field now hides unnecessary information and puts the security status of each page front and center. Now, badges explain the security state of the site, giving consumers clear information about the sites they visit.
• Plug-ins can be set to load on-demand. This can give as much as 30 percent performance improvement.
• Extensions and Opera Unite applications are updated automatically through Opera's update mechanism.
• Even more work has been done to boost browsing speed, particularly for Linux. Opera 11 for Linux is 15 to 20 percent faster on common benchmarks than Opera 10.63.
• Bookmarks are just a click away thanks to a new bookmarks bar that replaces Opera's personal bar.
• Opera 11 is 30 percent smaller than Opera 10.63, despite including new features.

You can download Opera 11 beta from here.

And in a side-by-side comparison of Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, Google Chrome 7, Firefox 4 beta 6, Opera 10.6, and Safari 5.0, the tests found that the most compliant browser currently available is IE9.

The numbers show that IE9 doesn't score perfectly in these areas. But all told, it gives a better showing than Chrome, trouncing the latter in the "xhtml5" spec.

Being at the forefront of comformance with the not-yet-official HTML5 standards challenges the IE9's reputation as the bane of web development. As The Register notes, "we can still marvel at just how much Microsoft's browser philosophy has changed in recent months." Whether the new philosophy and better compliance in these tests will help IE9 win back developers remains to be seen.

The upcoming Opera Mobile for Android will offer two notable features: hardware acceleration and pinch-to-zoom. The former is a technology which speeds up software performance, by offloading some of the processing from the CPU to other hardware components, usually the GPU. The latest version of Internet Explorer, IE9, for example, uses hardware acceleration to speed up text and video rendering and the performance of web applications.

In Opera, the technology is enabling the second of its two main Android browser features, pinch-to-zoom. In Opera's two other mobile browsers, Opera Mobile and Opera Mini, there are only two levels of zoom - on for the full page width and one zoomed in for reading text.

With pinch-to-zoom, however, Opera Mobile for Android users will be able to choose their own zoom level just as in the Opera desktop browser. Using the now-standard "pinching" gesture on the phone's touchscreen, zooming will be a more fluid experience, says Opera on its company blog today.

This hardware-accelerated zooming will also later arrive to other Opera browsers, including the iPhone version of Opera and its newest desktop browser, Opera 11.

Opera Mobile for Android will be available from both m.opera.com and Android Market within a month.

Opera 11

No exact launch date was available for Opera 11 - the company just says that the alpha version will be available "soon" from here: opera.com/browser/next.

The biggest news regarding this update is the support for extensions, a long-requested feature among Opera's core legion of fans. Like competitors Chrome, Firefox and Safari, the new extensions will be built using standard Web technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. This will make it easy for developers to port their extensions from other browsers to Opera.

In the first release, the extensions API (application programming interface) will support injectable JavaScript, callouts, certain UI items and a basic Tabs and Windows API.

At a press conference in Oslo, Norway, Opera demonstrated a couple of the first extensions - one for searching Wikipedia and another for use with user-generated news site Reddit.

As you can see from the video (and the title of this article), the newest version of Opera is pretty quick. When placed side-by-side with an iPhone 4, an HTC Desire running the latest Opera browser has no trouble outpacing Safari. In some cases the difference is minor, but with full pages, Opera loads several seconds faster. Opera has also improved on the browser's ability to zoom and scroll - both of which happen much faster and more smoothly.

Opera 5.0 on the iPhone looks broken and choppy when placed next to its 5.1 counterpart on the Android. Tabbed browsing is much more enjoyable on 5.1 and the ability to let pages load in a new tab in the background - something Safari won't do - is a nice way to be more efficient.

One of the downsides to Opera Mini is that is doesn't support Flash the way the default Android browser does. When I tested a few Flash features that work in the default browser, Opera was unable to play them. The lack of Flash could be a deal-breaker for some Android users, but regular browsing is much faster than the default browser, which could bridge some of that gap.

As an iPhone user, the future of Opera on the platform seems exciting if the company can bring the speed and snappiness over from Android. The only problem is Apple won't allow users to change the default browser, so clicking links in emails or apps won't automatically launch Opera - a feature Android, on the other hand, does provide.

Integrated AVG Web Threat Data Feed offers 10.60 following security functions.

• Exploit signatures detect Web pages serving drive‐by downloads
• AVG Online shield detects viruses delivered via social engineering scams
• Reputation lists identify consistently malicious domains and URLs
• Contextual analysis exposes attempts to trick users into installing malware via social engineering scams

"The browser scores more than 50% faster than its predecessor - which was the fastest browser on Earth - in key benchmark tests."

Additional time-savers include Opera's Turbo technology, which compresses the data going over your connection, and shortcuts that purport to save navigational time.

Other improvements in this version of the browser include the following.

• Integrated geolocation with the WC3 API
• Appcache allows use of in-browser applications such as word processors and spreadsheets even without an Internet connection by storing the necessary files locally.
• Bing search engine now offered, in addition to the Google
• Instant search suggestions
• New design features, including menu button and icon tabs; "Speed Dial" allows one-click navigation to favorites

"Firefox Home for iPhone is part of a broader Mozilla effort to provide a more personal Web experience with more user control," the company said in a blog post Wednesday night. "For devices or platforms where we're unable to provide the 'full' Firefox browser (either technically or due to policy), we aim to provide users with 'on the go' instant access to their personal Firefox history, bookmarks and open tabs on their iPhones, giving them another reason to keep loving Firefox on their desktops."

Fans of Firefox with iPhones may be disappointed they aren't getting a full browser on their device like Android, Windows Mobile and Maemo users, but this app is still pretty useful due to the over-the-air syncing. The inability to browse at will may turn some off, and it remains to be seen how well the Firefox Sync technology works, but this could be an interesting spin on mobile browsing from Mozilla.

What's more interesting about Chrome is the activity it's enjoying from early adopters and geeks. Our own browser statistics at ReadWriteWeb show that Chrome was used by 17.89% of our readers in April, putting it behind only Firefox (38.95%) and IE (24.76%). Further, our figures show a very clear movement from Firefox to Chrome over the past year. Chrome has gained nearly 11% over the past year, whereas Firefox has lost over 15%.

Source: ReadWriteWeb

I can also tell you that many of ReadWriteWeb's staff now use Chrome. I myself made the switch as soon as a (relatively) stable Mac version became available in 2009, primarily because I had been experiencing slowness and crashes in Firefox for months prior. I've never looked back - sorry Mozilla. Chrome is fast, hardly ever crashes and can handle multiple tabs with ease. It does the job. The only thing I still use Firefox for is, ironically, offline Gmail! That's because on a Mac, Google Gears is only available on Firefox and Safari - not Chrome.

Before I get assailed by Firefox fans in the comments, granted the much larger NetMarketShare stats show a couple of percentage points of growth for Firefox over the past year. They also show IE losing over 8% share and Chrome gaining over 4%.

Source: NetMarketShare

However, even NetMarketShare's stats show that Firefox's real battle is not with Microsoft's IE anymore (whose downward slide is inevitable and long overdue), but with Google's Chrome.

It's not just on the statistics and performance fronts either. Google is now directly attacking Firefox's main strength from a developer point of view: its ecosystem of add-ons. At the Google I/O event earlier this month, Google announced an application store to help with discovery and sales of Web applications. Some startups have already moved focus from the add-on model to a web site or app (e.g. GetGlue), so Google's App Store will only accelerate this.

Yesterday we reported that the beta tag for Google's Chrome browser has been removed for the Mac and Linux versions. Is that also a sign that the gloves are now off too? Chrome is now a 'serious' browser, no beta tags and all OS's covered with stable versions.

Overall I can't help but think that Chrome is really hitting at the heart of Firefox nowadays. The early adopter and geeky readership of ReadWriteWeb - bless you all - is often a forerunner of future mainstream trends. And our stats clearly show our readers are moving away from Firefox and largely onto Chrome. How long before the mainstream follows?

According to the Director of Firefox Development, Johnathan Nightingale, plugin safety is an issue across the web. "Outdated plugins are a major source of security and stability risk for web users," he wrote in a recent company blog post.

Nightingale says that some studies have shown that the number of users running outdated plugins in their web browser is as high as 80%. However, the plugin checking mechanism built into the latest builds of the Firefox web browser keeps its users better secured as it will prompt you to update your plugins when new ones become available. He notes that over 60% of Firefox users visiting the plugin checker page were running the most recent version of the Adobe Flash plugin, a plugin that's a popular target for attackers looking to exploit security vulnerabilities in the browser. When including users with either the latest version of the Flash plugin or the second most recent, the number was 75%, much higher than the rest of the web as a whole.

Beyond Firefox: Plugin Safety for All Browsers

But plugin safety isn't just an issue for Firefox users. All web surfers who use plugins can be affected by security issues. And most do have plugins, even if they don't realize it.

Mainstream users may not understand that clicking "install Flash" to watch a web video means they've installed a browser plugin, but that's exactly what they just did. And now in Google Chrome, the new web browser from the Internet Search giant, the Adobe Flash plugin will come pre-installed with the browser itself.

To help address the issues of plugin safety outside the Firefox ecosystem, Mozilla has updated their plugin safety page to work with a number of other web browsers, including Safari 4, Chrome 4 and Opera 10.5. It also checks the safety levels of the most popular plugins for Internet Explorer 7 and 8.

If you're using a non-Firefox browser such as those listed above, you can visit this Mozilla webpage and have your plugins checked for you. If any of the plugins are old, just click the "Update Now" button to remedy the situation. If the plugin checker can't determine the status of the plugin, a "Research" button will appear instead. Plugins that are current will show a green "Up to Date" button.

Reminder Badges

Web site owners who want to remind their visitors to check their plugins can add one of these quirky banners to their site. "Groom parrot, Polish trophies, Check plugins," the banner reads.

Although the plugin checker page is a handy tool for web surfers concerned about security, it's better when the browser does it for you. Our online lives are busy enough, we don't need to add another to-do item to our list.