Russell Beattie Notebook

Opera Platform: Mobile AJAX Widgets

Posted on Tuesday, November 15th, 2005 10:21 PM

Well this is pretty cool, a year and a week after I ask for a mobile version of Konfabulator, it turns out that Opera launches their new mobile AJAX Platform product, which is essentially that. Yeah!

From their site:

Creating advanced applications using open standards Web technologies is significantly easier and more-cost-efficient than using traditional technologies. Because Opera Platform™ is based on Web technologies, any Web developer can quickly and affordably create new and advanced mobile applications with a remarkably short time-to-market. Existing Web applications can easily be adapted to fit the mobile phone. ...

Very cool. There is also a new 8.5 version of the S60 Opera Browser as well, but this is a completely different product. The Opera Platform is an extended version of the browser, in three parts: The Application Player (the browser engine with extensions to access native functionality like contacts, messaging, etc.), Application Framework (UI elements) and the actual web-standards based Application (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.).

The cool thing is they've synced their releases, so you can download their regular browser to do your widget development on your desktop (even on my Mac!). This is pretty damn neat if you ask me. I'm definitely going to mess with this thing and see what I can come up with.

-Russ