Opera for Devices: Features
The Opera TV Emulator is based on the Opera for Devices SDK, which forms the foundation of what Opera provides in the varied connected-devices arena. This document outlines some of the most important features of Opera for Devices and briefly explains Opera's common and additional feature sets. Opera features can be divided into 2 groups:
- Common Opera features — features that are supported in all Opera products (Desktop, Mobile and Devices). Note; some features may be disabled by default, but can be enabled using the Opera configuration file (opera.ini) or the UI.
- Additional capabilities — functionalities that may not be
available in all Opera products. Possible reasons for this
are:
- The feature is not available in all Opera products and/or platforms
- The feature is available, but the customer integrating Opera in their device/s decided not to enable it
Further detail with links to additional information are provided, where possible, below. If you would like to know more about Opera for connected devices visit www.opera.com/business/solutions/devices/
Feature matrix
Common Opera features - Web standards | |
Common Opera features | |
Common Opera features that can be enabled | |
Common Opera features that can be configured | |
Additional capabilities | |
Plug-ins and extensions |
Common Opera features
The Opera browser is based on the same core browser engine for all platforms and products - Desktop, Mobile and Devices. The features below are provided to our customers without the need for any integration effort. However, some features can be configured to suit individual needs. It is important to note that apart from web standards support, some features may be disabled in some products by our customers.
Web standards support
Web standards make the Web available to anyone, on any device, anywhere in the world. Opera is widely recognized as the most standards-compliant Web browser, and we constantly strive to maintain this status. As a company we are dedicated to promoting web standards around the world; Opera is an active contributor to W3C and regularly participates in the development of standards for the Internet.
For detailed specifications of Opera's standards support, please see Opera web specifications online support for Presto 2.8.
- Class-leading support for W3C and industry standards
- HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.1, XHTML Mobile Profile, WML 1.3 and 2.0, CSS 2.1, CSS Mobile Profile, DOM 2.0, DOM 3.0 XPath, Dom 3.0 Load and Save, Canvas, XSLT, XPath, JavaScript 1.5
- Performance-optimized networking
- HTTP 1.1, SSL 3.0, TLS 1.0, FTP, HTTP Authentication
- Internationalization
- Unicode support, Proprietary Character Encodings, Bi-Directional Script
- Optimized support for Web graphics
- GIF89a, JPEG, BMP, ICO, WBMP, PNG with full Alpha channel and Gamma
- SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)
- Opera supports a superset of SVG 1.1 Basic and SVG 1.1 Tiny with some exceptions. For more details, please see the section for graphics support in the Opera web specifications online support for Presto 2.8.
- Optional Features
- XHTML+Voice, JVM Integration
Common Opera features
The following features are usually available on all devices.
Server-sent events
Server-sent events allow web developers to trigger DOM events from a server-side application without any polling from the client.
Site patching
Opera creates and maintains Browser JavaScript and site preference patches to solve site-specific issues on important Web sites. The site-patching functionality makes these patches available to the browser easily, if needed.
User JavaScript
User JavaScript allows the execution of a JavaScript file each time a page is loaded, before the scripts on the page are run. User JavaScript can be used for several purposes, such as adding functionality, changing content on Web pages, preventing undesired scripts from running, and fixing broken scripts.
Web Fonts
Web Fonts is a CSS 3 module that allows you to specify where to download a specified font if it is not available on a site visitor's computer. To test Web Fonts, please visit the Web Fonts example, which uses the Forgotten Futurist and Minya Nouvelle fonts.
Common Opera features that can be enabled
These features are disabled by default and require a simple change to the opera.ini file to be enabled.

Extensible Rendering Architecture
ERA is the architecture that unites Opera's rendering technology. Opera developed ERA to make the Internet fully available to mobile phones and devices of different sizes, eliminating horizontal scrolling. You can enable this feature by changing the opera.ini file.
ERA automatically chooses the best rendering for the current window dimensions of the device, removing the need to scroll horizontally. It is the same as the Fit to Width function in Opera for Desktop. To see how this works in the desktop browser, enable Fit to Width on the status bar on the bottom-right of the browser window, and then change the window width.
ERA chooses from the following rendering modes that are supported in Opera for Devices:
- Small Screen Rendering (SSR) — Opera pioneered this mode, which dynamically reformats Web pages to eliminate horizontal scrolling on small screens. To see this in action, press Shift+F11 in Opera for Desktop.
- Medium Screen Rendering (MSR) — This mode adopts many rendering strategies to eliminate horizontal scrolling and present the Internet on screens that have a lower resolution than normal computers, such as CRT televisions or media players, whilst attempting to maintain the Web author's original page design.
- Normal Rendering — Normal rendering is the mode used in Opera for Desktop, where the screen size is normally more than 800 pixels wide.
For more information, please read the Extensible Rendering Architecture (ERA) Technology white paper.
Fraud Protection
Fraud Protection warns users about suspicious Web pages by checking the page requested against a database of known "phishing" and "malware" Web sites.
Mouse gestures
The mouse gestures feature makes it possible to use mouse movements to perform frequently used browsing operations. Mouse gestures are enabled in the opera.ini file and configured in the input.ini file.
For more information, see the Mouse gestures section.
Opera Dragonfly (beta)
Opera Dragonfly is a set of developer tools designed to allow debugging directly on a desktop computer as well as on other devices.
For more information, see the Opera Dragonfly (beta) section.
Single-window browsing
On some devices, tabs are not implemented in order to reduce the complexity of the UI. Single-window browsing can be used in such cases to force all Web pages to open in one window.
Common Opera features that can be configured
The features below can be configured using Opera configuration files.
Page zoom
Integrators can configure Opera's powerful page-zooming features to display the best presentation of a Web page. To see page zoom in action, try the +/- keys in Opera for Desktop.
Feeds
Opera provides the ability to manage Web feeds either by using the feed browser integrated in Opera, or making use of the API functions and notifications to create an external-feed browser.
Skin Web and browser components
With the Opera skinning system, it is possible to skin Web and browser components, such as text input fields and buttons.
Speed Dial
Speed Dial allows users to access their favorite Web pages with just one click. To view the Speed Dial functionality, open the opera:speeddial URL.
URL filtering
This functionality makes it possible to restrict local file access to a few selected directories.
Additional Capabilities
There are several other features designed to improve user experience that are available to our customers when integrating Opera on their devices. Note that depending on the platform and use case, some of these features may not be available on all products running an Opera Browser. These functionalities are available in the CDK as well.
Bookmarks
Opera for Devices provides functionality for handling Web page bookmarks. Bookmarks can be organized into folders and sub-folders and can be associated with favicons and thumbnails.
Certificate management
Opera for Devices allows the user to check installed personal and authority certificates. The certificate details can be viewed, and individual certificates can be deleted or imported.
Control browser preferences
There are many settings that allow you to configure and customize the behavior of Opera for Devices. They include, among many others, the following:
- Proxy settings
- Pop-up blocking
- RAM cache sizes
- Cookie handling
- Minimum font size
- Scrollbar visibility
Customize the UA String
To track server requests from the browser in closed networks or for other use cases related to UA extensions defined by some IPTV Standards, it is possible to customize the UA String adding an extension to the default Opera for Devices UA String. This is not recommended for surfing the Internet.
Extended Validation
Extended Validation is a new way to indicate, in a Web site certificate, that the identity of the company behind the Web site has been verified according to a rigorous standard.
Input method support
Opera for Devices supports input methods for Web pages. This enables the user to input, for example, Asian or Arabic text into Web forms. It can also be used to provide a virtual keyboard for a device without a full keyboard.
Opera Turbo (beta)
In addition to loading pages directly from the Internet, Opera for Devices also supports loading pages using Opera Turbo, which compresses Web pages to provide faster access on limited-bandwidth connections.
Out of Memory handling
The Out of Memory feature provides powerful mechanisms to strictly limit the heap usage of the Opera browser engine.
For more information, see the Out of Memory handling section.
Support for saving sessions
This functionality makes it possible to save sessions (sets of saved windows, open windows or tabs), and restore these the next time the user logs into the browser. Zoom level, image display mode, rendering mode, ECMAScript enabling, and back history is also retained.
Transparency
Transparency through Opera can be used to create effects where a browser window overlays another graphics layer.
For more information, please see the Transparency section.
Wand
The Wand functionality allows users to store usernames and passwords for quick access on future visits to password protected Web sites.
Widgets
Widgets are cross-platform Web applications. They can use the full range of web standards that the rest of the Opera engine can use. Many applications can be comfortably implemented with web standards, and the development process is generally much easier than developing a native application in C++ or Java. To see some interesting widgets, visit the Opera Widget repository. Opera Widgets that are designed for Opera for Desktop are generally compatible with Opera for Devices.
Spatial navigation
The spatial navigation feature allows users to navigate between
all links
without a traditional pointing device, such as a mouse.
This is ideal for use with TV remote controls, keypads, and so
on.
It can also be extended to allow navigation to any custom
widgets in the UI.
The key actions are configurable through the input.ini file.
Plug-ins and extensions
Opera for Devices can be integrated with plug-ins using a so-called GOGI plug-in API based on Netscape plug-in API (NPAPI). Note that due to differences in the products' architecture, is not possible to use a plugin for Opera Desktop with Opera for Devices. Currently no plugin is provided with the CDK.