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Opera Browser Beta Adds Voice, More

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the got-a-new-attitude dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to an article at DesktopLinux.com, the first public beta of Opera 8 is available for free download. It adds voice input/output and a host of other niceties. Key new features include improved RSS handling, fit to window or paper width, a start-bar for easy access to the most commonly used functions, and automatic update checks. The beta release supports Windows only, but a general release is scheduled for early 2005. Opera and IBM have partnered on XHTML+Voice (X+V) technology for several years, co-announcing a Multimodal Browser and Toolkit early in 2003."

3 of 369 comments (clear)

  1. Link says Opera 7.54u1 by Alien+Venom · · Score: 5, Informative

    Linked page says Opera 7.54u1.

    Opera 8.00 Beta 1 - ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/800b1/en/std/ow3 2enen800b1.exe
    Opera 8.00 Beta 1 w/o Java - ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/800b1/en/std/ow3 2enen800b1.exe

  2. Gmail Support by vikramrn · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the Changelog

    Support for XMLHttpRequest; Gmail Web mail is fully supported.

    Now that should get the attention of slashdotters :)

  3. Your feedback welcome! by ijablokov · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hi all,

    I'm the IBM program director over this product, working in partnership w/ Opera. Some quick comments: The X+V spec unifies HTML & VoiceXML and is currently undergoing the W3C process for standardization. We wrote it together w/ Motorola & Opera and have made it open. We also have an Eclipse-based SDK available at http://www.ibm.com/pvc/multimodal and a prototype one at http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/mmtplus that allows you to visually build these multimodal apps.

    Some of you may wonder why you should voice enable your Web content. First of all, one of my lead researchers is blind, and it's quite amazing to see how much he can accomplish today. Given that, in the future, I'm hoping a lot more content will be open to people with various disabilities.

    Secondly, how useful is your cellphone for accessing the Web? It has a small screen & limited input. Now imagine just speaking into a multimodal portal: "weather forecast", "my portfolio", "eBay bids", "any high priority mail?", "am I free tomorrow at noon?", etc. The portal understands your input & fetches relevant info, which may also be tied into location based services. 50% of you will use multimodal services by 2010; this is intended as the replacement to WAP.

    Warm regards!

    Igor Jablokov