Opera takes a little swing at Google here, making fun of their browser video with a Norwegian sense of humor.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Opera has announced that their Opera browser is now in the hands of 100 million users, and over half of those are on the very capable mobile version of Opera. What’s interesting, is that not a single of the 100 million users has both the mobile and desktop browser.

With the Windows 7 browser ballot in Europe, Opera’s browser demand was increased by 200%. Competing browsers such as Google Chrome and Firefox.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Since Microsoft introduced the browser ballot screen for European users of Windows 7, the downloads of the Opera browser have increased substantially, and we suspect it’s the same with the other browsers as well.

Opera revealed that the amount of downloads doubled since Win 7 debuted in Europe, and from some countries, it even tripled. We’d love to see how the rest of the browsers compare, with Chrome, Safari and Firefox, which each should have seen quite an increase in downloads as well.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Norwegian browser maker Opera has released version 10.5 of their Opera browser, the company claims that it’s the “fastest browser in the world”. The browser can be downloaded here for free.

We’ve given it a try, and for sure, it’s quick, but it also depends on what kind of page you’re loading, and honestly, we could see much of a speed difference between Opera and other browsers.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Norwegian-made browser Opera has been struggling behind virtually every other browser on the desktop for years, has operated quite well on the mobile market, where Opera Mini has shown itself as one of the more stable and fastest browsers available.

Opera has announced that there are now over 50 million active users of its Opera Mini mobile browser, which was launched in 2006. In order to use it, your phone needs to support Java ME — which most newer phone do.

Popularity: 4% [?]

So I caught a look at Opera’s blogging policy from a couple years back and it makes a lot of sense, especially if you’re a business thinking about starting a blog, or facing the difficulties of how to react to your employees’ blogging.

We all know about how people are getting fired over their blogs, where they describe in painful detail the idiocy of their middle managers (you’d figure they’d just fire the idiots the blogs talk about instead of the blogger him / herself, but that would require logic, and corporations often don’t have that), so some places are developing blogger policies.  Some are fairly laissez faire, and some are downright draconian.  But Opera has one worth looking at, which I quote here:

1. Share your thoughts
2. Be active
3. We’re not your mama
4. Don’t give away the farm
5. Check your sources
6. Our friends are your friends

Being fairly kind is a good thing, and they don’t plan to do a whole lot of policing. But it’s not a good idea to cross your current vendors, customers or other corporate allies.  Also, keep the trade secrets quiet.   It’s a fairly simple policy that should keep a lot of trouble away from the door.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Your blog is looking great with that new theme that you have adopted. Your traffic is just going to soar now that you have that killer content lined up ready to go.  You have your SEO plugins up and running. Check, yep thats everything you need, right?

Well actually not quite. Whilst you maybe a convert to Firefox or maybe you have even gone the whole hog and have become an avid Chrome user the majority of web users are still using Internet Explorer and what about those die hards that are using Opera or any one of the other browsers out there?

Have you check that your blog is compatible with them?  What!, you exclaim, I’m not downloading all of those just to check how my blog looks. No need. Use Browsershots.com

As you can see from the screenshot there are a bewildering number of browsers to choose from. The system defaults to 66 but you can choose more, or less.

It returns a series of screenshots of your blog as viewed in various browsers:

Which you can then click on to view in more detail.  Overall this is an excellent tool for really testing both Browser and cross platform compatibility for your blog. After all you want to make sure its readable by as many people as possible right?

Popularity: 3% [?]