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There's been a lot of activity this week in the world of mobile browsers. On Friday, Mozilla introduced an alpha build for Fennec, the very-much-in-development mobile browser that will grow up to become Firefox for Mobile. Monday's news brings Opera Software's release of its most recent beta for the Opera Mobile browser. It'll be the second beta for Windows Mobile phones, and the first beta compatible with the Symbian UIQ platform. (Hear that, Sony Ericsson and Motorola UIQ owners? Go crazy.)
We hear that Opera has also released a developer (alpha) version for Symbian Series 60 phones that is available with the updated Opera Widgets SDK. The fact that it's packaged for developers hints that it's still riddled with bugs.
The changes found in Opera Mobile 9.5 beta 2 are few, but distinct--the addition of Opera Widgets, speedier page loading, and a package of developer tools that includes the Opera Dragonfly debugger.
Of the three additions, Opera Widgets is the one that most directly affects the mobile browsing crowd. The new beta installs five widgets on Windows Mobile and UIQ phones. There's Twitter, AccuWeather, a clock, Shopping List, and Bubbles, a colorful Tetris-like game. If you have a Series 60 phone, you get all the above except Twitter.
In order to download widgets onto the phone, Opera has added a shortcut button that takes you to the Widgets Web page and presents a list of widgets compatible with your platform. Selecting the widget will download it over the air.
Although Opera is the first out of the gate implementing its version of extensions, add-ons will also be at the core of Mozilla Fennec, the mobile build of Firefox that's in development for Windows Mobile and Symbian phones. The importance of add-ons, overall speed, Flash support, and general navigability cannot be overstated in the simmering contest among Opera, Firefox, and newcomer Skyfire (which is based off Firefox.)
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