Opera Software has announced that the “Smartphones and PDAs” edition of its Opera 7 browser, which has now started to appear in commercial products, shares extensive code with the desktop edition, including support for Dynamic HTML (DHTML), in order to better support both standard-compliant and non-compliant Web content.

Kyocera was first to ship the new Opera browser on a mobile phone, on an ITRON-based device released in Asia last week. Sharp released its Zaurus SL-6000 with the browser in January. Additional mobile phone deployments on Linux and on Symbian are expected to follow soon.

The PDA and Smartphone edition of Opera 7 shares the desktop edition's “Presto” core, according to Opera, which is “fully capable of supporting W3C's Document Object Model (DOM).” The W3C describes DOM as “a platform- and language-neutral interface that allows programs and scripts to dynamically access and update the content, structure. and style of documents.”

Opera says the new browser also supports “Street HTML,” described as “non-standard code authored by developers with unintended and intended bugs to look good in the non-standard-compliant Microsoft Internet Explorer desktop browser.”

Additional features include improved Javascript support, bidirectional text (as for Arabic and Hebrew), and more.

Hakon Lie, CTO, Opera Software ASA, said, “Opera Platform is built upon support for open standards like DOM and ECMAScript. Having DOM support in a mobile browser secures that these devices can now display the same dynamic Webpages that have been available on desktop PCs.”

 
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