Born to be Wireless

Opera have just announced the first release of their upcoming developer tools suite. Dragonfly looks to be similar in form and functionality to the popular Firebug debugger on Firefox, with the added bonus of mobile integration, allowing you to remotely debug mobile devices. There’s a detailed overview and screenshots at Dev.Opera.

It’s only an alpha release at the moment, but it looks like a promising start — whether it will be enough to unseat Firefox as most developers’ browser of choice remains to be seen.

Labels: Opera

Opera has decided to switch allegiances, making Google the default search engine on Opera Mobile and Opera Mini and ending the browser maker’s previous relationship with Yahoo. Google will make its appearance on Opera from the start of next month.

The announcement is not the first time the pair have worked together: Google has been the default search option on Opera’s desktop browser for seven years. According to Opera, the new union will cover all global territories except Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, and includes all of Opera’s standard mobile web browsers.

The deal is good news for Google’s mobile ambitions: Opera users are a browsing-hungry bunch: Opera Mini users browse more than 1.7 billion pages. What’s more, Opera has shipped on 100 million mobiles and Opera mini has been downloaded by another 35 million.

Labels: Opera

Read the changelog on the Opera Mini team blog, but some of the more noticeable additions include better RSS feed management and new support for the T-Mobile Dash and the Motorola i275, i850, i860, i870 (iDEN). Installing Opera Mini on these iDEN phones can be a bit tricky; the Opera Mini team will post instructions on their blog soon.

The only new feature with this release is the ability to better manage the RSS feeds on your phone. Other than that it’s all bug fixes.

Additional links:
Download Opera Mini
Opera Mini 3.1 changelog
Opera Mini forums

Labels: 3.1, Mini, Opera