Opera Talks: A New Dev.Opera

Last week, an all-new Dev.Opera debuted on opera.com, with lots of goodies for developers and others interested in the latest Opera technology. To find out more about what went into the change, we sat down for a chat with head of Developer Relations Andreas Bovens.

Andreas shows off Dev.Opera on a Motorola Xoom

Andreas, what was the main purpose behind relaunching Dev.Opera?

Apart from creating a central repository of relevant information and articles for developers who want to know more about Web standards, including the latest developments like HTML 5 and CSS3, or Opera technology like extensions, it's also a place where they can try out new technologies Opera is pioneering, like the camera API or the Opera reader. The other big improvement is that the new Dev.Opera works across all devices – the design adapts automatically to different screen sizes.

Dev.Opera in landscape mode - and a tiny bit of screen glare.

Can you give us some highlights of the new design?

We cut down the number of categories to five: Web, TV, Add-Ons, Mobile and Labs. These are now at the top of the page with a header bar and proper navigation that allows for a structured collection of articles, along with a featured selection of the latest relevant content. These are all better ways to discover content, including good stuff from before that was hard to find. We also added the ability to comment directly on articles instead of creating forum threads.

Esteban Manchado Velázquez, project manager on the redesign, attempts to divert our attention from his unusual keyboard.

What's next for Dev.Opera?

Looking ahead, we are planning to have more articles on WebGL, which will ship in Opera 12. This will continue the previous series of articles we had on building applications in WebGL. Then over the course of December and into the first quarter of 2012, we are going to be adding more developer resources to Dev.Opera, primarily documentation and tools for developers that were under opera.com/developer previously.

Ushering in a new era of peace and constructive dialogue through Web standards.

Source: COMMUNICATIONS HOLDINGS