For your daily dose of Opera news head on over to Choose Opera. We still have our Facebook groups up and running: Opera browser and Opera Mini. For more information check out Choose Opera!

We're happy to announce our upcoming release: Opera Mobile 9.7 Beta for Windows Mobile touchscreen devices.

The Opera Mobile 9.7 Beta will include many new great features. Read more in the Opera Mobile 9.7 blog.

Betavine, a Vodafone Group R&D lab, is offering developers a chance to win £20,000* in a mobile widget competition.

Developers are invited to create widgets for the Opera for Mobile 9.5 platform, which is included on Nokia 6210, Nokia N78, Nokia N95 8gb and Nokia N96 devices.

Recources to get started

Have a look and use the following recources:

• Widgets SDK


• Opera Widgets forum


• Articles on mobile and cross-device development


• Widgets SDK tools


• Opera Dragonfly & Widget Emulator combo for debugging

Also check out Betavine's own "Get Started" page and the extensive Mobile Widgets User Experience Guidelines PDF document by Vodafone.

If this competition sounds like something for you, sign up at Betavine!

Lifehacker has a nomination what's the best browser. We already have a good amount of Opera votes, but it's about time to get this show on the road!

Rally up and head over to Lifehacker and vote by commenting like this:

Click, click for voty: http://lifehacker.com/5175858/best-web-browser

When did we release your favorite feature? Check out the Opera Version History!

Opera loves speed, we all know that. We work hard to make the browser faster with features that speeds you up, but your connection also has a saying how fast you can go.

That’s why we’ve been working on Opera Turbo, a server-side optimization and compression technology that provides significant improvements in browsing speeds over limited-bandwidth connections by compressing network traffic. This does not only make you surf faster, but also lowers the cost of browsing when you are on a pay per usage plan.

Please not that Turbo is not for everyone. If you're on a 10Mbit fiber connection, you will most likely have no result of enabling Turbo mode. However, imagine you're stuck on an airport with a slow Wi-Fi connection... Well, fire up Turbo and experience improved browsing speed. :cool:

Turbo Speed

Today we start our time limited test phase for Opera Turbo. Please read the labs release to learn more about Turbo and download it. You can also see it in action in the following video:

Download Opera Turbo

• Windows build


• Mac build

If you like this, and think more people should know about Opera Turbo, please help Digg it!

Opera has a wide selection of useful features. Some are hidden (link), others are visible. Let me demonstrate how CSS and Opera Dragonfly can be used to get rid of unwanted content (a.k.a. ads) on a website! This example is from LiveJournal, but you can do this on any site you like.

First, let's have a look on what we want to get rid off. The large banner on top marked in yellow:

Fire up Opera Dragonfly from "Tools" > "Advanced" > "Developer Tools"

Find the correct page in the list of open tabs. Select "DOM" in the top- and bottom tab. We are now ready to track down the element we want to hide. Make sure selected "Find element by clicking" is enabled (small icon with a pointer):

Opera Dragonfly will also mark the selection you are hovering. Click the content you want to hide. The content "id" is vital to what we're about to do:

• Open a notepad or another text editor.
  
• Type in the following:
  

• #ad-leaderboard { display: none; }



• Save the file as "livejournal.css"


• Close Opera Dragonfly

Since Opera allows you to add a CSS file to a specfic page, this style sheet is applied after all other styles are rendered. To do this, press F12 in Windows (or go through "Tools" > "Preferences" > "Advanced" > "Manage site preferences") and select "Edit site preferences":

Change the "site" box to livejournal.com. Go to the "Display" tab and change "My style sheet" to your saved "livejournal.css" we created earlier. ("C:\Program Files\Opera\usercss\livejournal.css" for me). Click OK and reload the page:

Enjoy! This approach is similar for removing other content on any page. Simply use Opera Dragonly to find the element

id

We want to see how many on-topic comments one blog post can generate. To help a bit with the motivation we also get some sweet hardware gear if you wish to help us reach that goal.

All you have to do is comment in this post what you love about Opera. It's that simple. Everyone who comments will be entered in a random drawing to win epic hardware gear from Steelseries, who has been so kind to provide us with the goodies.

Remember, this is about mass participation. We've never received so many comments in a single blog post before, so please help promote this on your blog and other Web sites.

You can win this:

• SteelSeries 5Hv2: One of the most popular gaming headsets on the planet.


• SteelSeries QcK Heavy: The mouse pads are made of high quality cloth material, providing a precise and consistent glide.


• SteelSeries Ikari Laser: The result of 15 months extensive research of ergonomics, technology, shape, motion, hand grip and play styles by gamers.


• SteelSeries 7G: Sets new industry standards for gaming keyboards by allowing users to perform the most detailed and advanced key combinations to date.


• SteelSeries iron.lady Siberia (Pink!): Developed in co-operation with professional gamers to ensure that the soundscape, specifications and comfort is suitable for long gaming sessions.


• SteelSeries iron.lady bundle (Also pink!): A really cool pink version of the Ikari Laser mouse with a matching surface pad.


• SteelSeries Siberia Full-size Headset (red): Red version of the pink Iron Lady Siberia headset.


• SteelSeries Siberia Neckband Headset: The first professional headset to fully cover the users' ears, adding new levels of comfort to audio products.


• SteelSeries Experience I-2 (white): Quite possibly the classiest mouse pad in the world and was designed for gamers, graphics artists and others who use a mouse a lot


• SteelSeries S&S: SteelSeries S&S is a mouse pad researched and developed in co-operation with SK Gaming, one of the biggest organisations in eSport.

Rules:

To participate you have to post your comment in the competition post over at My Opera!

There are not many other rules to follow, except that you have to comment what you love about Opera. We will remove double posting, spam, trolling or flaming. We think you get the picture.

This contest will run for at least one week. If we haven't reached 1001 comments by next Monday (Feb. 16th) the prizes will get burned. Well, not burned, but we need to see 1001 comments in order to activate the hardware prize giveaway galore!

Ok, comment on!

Today we introduce Opera Fingertouch, a technology designed to make interacting with the Web easier and simpler on touch-based devices. Opera Fingertouch provides visual feedback when you hit a Web link, and assists you when you come across multiple links or other selectable elements in close proximity to one another.

To see Opera Fingertouch in action today, download the new beta version of Opera Mobile for Symbian UiQ, check out the video demo below, or read the labs article.

Good news, everyone!

We released 9.64 today. This release is a recommended security upgrade for all those running the latest stable releases.

Changelogs are available:

• Windows


• Mac


• Linux/UNIX

Go download it! Don't forget about Opera 10 coming to a computer near you soon..

One of the most inspiring things about the Opera browser is the fact that our users care as much about our product as we do. The recent days have been a awesome example of that. With fearpage and Dustin Wilson leading the way everyone has done an amazing job pointing out that Opera delivers innovation to the Web, but also that you care strongly for Opera.

We promise to deliver new innovations you can not only enjoy, but also like us be proud of!

For fun we want to share a unofficial Opera browser creed (inspired by the US Marine "My Rifle").

This is my browser.
There are many like it, but this one is MINE.

My browser is my best friend. It is my life.
I must master it as I must master my life.

My browser without me is useless. Without my browser, I am useless.
I must run my browser true.
It must run faster than other browsers trying to beat it.
It must invent new features before others copy it. And it will...

My browser and I know that what counts in war is speed and features,
not the pages we load, nor the optimisations we do.
We know it is one browser for all devices.

My browser makes me social, even as I browse alone.
Thus, I will learn to love it.
I will learn its weaknesses, its speed, its security, its widgets,
its customization, and its features.
I will ever guard it against the ravages of foxes on safari.
I will keep my browser clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready.
We will become part of each other. We will...

Before von Tetzchner I swear this creed.
My browser and I are the defenders of open standards.
We are the masters of searches.
We are the saviors of sites.

So be it, until there is only one true browser for the one true web..

Feel free to share your love for Opera with your friends and us!

Yet another contest has come to an end and we are excited to present three lucky winners of our Dead Snow contest who had to answer three correct answers from the movie:

• What's the tagline of Dead Snow?
• 
  
• Correct answer: Ein! Zwei! Die!


• Who's the director of Dead Snow?


• Correct answer: Tommy Wirkola


• In a video clip, one of the actors is bitten by a zombie and is forced to amputate his:


• Correct answer: Arm

And our three lucky winners are:

1. Konya: Winner of Dead Snow headset + official poster from the movie!


2. Ace Jon: Winner of Opera swag + official poster from the movie!


3. missevilat: Winner of official movie poster!

Congratulations everyone! We hope you enjoyed our little contest!

An article by Dustin Wilson looks at how features implemented in Opera has been implemented in other browsers over the years — claiming to be first:

What's your take on it? Do you follow or care with who's first, or is it more a matter of proper implementation?

Endorse this on Digg!

A genre-bending Norwegian horror comedy

"Dead Snow" is the first Norwegian Nazi-Zombie horror comedy which tells the story of a group of friends who set out on a winter vacation in the isolated and snowy mountains of Oksfjord, Norway. Once there, they receive a visit from a shady hiker, who tells them a story about Nazi occupation of the area during World War II.

After doing their fair share of pillaging, the dreaded battalion faced a brutal and vengeful uprising by the citizens of the town. The soldiers who managed to survive the onslaught, including their dreaded leader Colonel Herzog, were driven into the hills by the angry mob, where they supposedly froze to death, never to be seen again...

But if the horror genre has taught us anything, it's that the raucous behavior and promiscuity of the younger generation always have a way of bringing evil spirits back to life...

Win cool prizes!

We've teamed up with the Norwegian movie distributor Euforia to give you a chance to walk away with a rocking Skullcandy headset and some sweet movie posters! Yeay! All you have to do in order to enter a raffle to win cool Dead Snow effects is answer three questions about the movie. Winners will be annouced on My Opera Friday February 27th.

You will get a chance to win the DVD once it has been internationally released.

Please note that some scenes from the movie may be seen as offensive. Viewer discretion is advised.