Opera's first-ever press day in Oslo, Norway, dubbed Up North Web, yielded several announcements, including the beta of Opera Mobile for Android and the alpha for the desktop version of Opera 11—which will, for the first time, allow extensions.

Opera Mobile for Android Beta

Opera Mobile for Android marks the first time Android consumers can download the browser, which was previously available only to OEMs and mobile operators. The browser will be available for all versions of the Android OS. New features in this version of Opera Mobile include hardware acceleration and pinch-to-zoom. According to the company, hardware acceleration leverages the power of the mobile phone to allow for increased speed, faster navigation, and more fluid interaction with the phone. It also makes possible full pinch-to-zoom functionality for all sites.

Opera Mobile's new pinch-to-zoom featurelets you choose your own level of zoom, equivalent to the zooming offered in the desktop version of Opera. Previous versions of the mobile browser only allowed for two levels of zoom—one for full page reading, one zoomed in to read text. Text will now be rendered at a per-character level, allowing for much greater zooming flexibility.

Opera says that hardware acceleration and pinch-to-zoom will be included in the next version of the Opera Mini for iPhone proxy browser, but no new version was announced.

Opera 11 Alpha

The other big announcement of the day was the imminent release of Opera 11 Alpha, which, for the first time, will feature extensions. Opera extensions will be similar to those found in other browsers, and the company says that one of its goals is to make it easy to port them from "certain browsers." Developers will be able to create Opera extensions using open standards — HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript—and supported APIs. The first iteration of Opera 11 will support injectable Java, callouts, some UI items, and a basic tabs and windows API. Once the Opera 11 alpha is released, information for developers will be available at Dev Opera.

Opera extensions may or may not have interface elements—some will simply run in the background. They can be installed by either clicking on them and popping up a small install window or by dragging and dropping in the browser itself.

Opera offered no firm dates for the releases. The company said that Opera Mobile for Android will be available within a month from m.opera.com and the Android Market. Opera 11 Alpha for desktops is set to release "soon," at http://www.opera.com/browser/next/.