Opera has made two separate announcements, one for its desktop browser and one for its mobile counterpart. The former is getting extension support and the latter is heading to Android next month with some tasty new features.

Opera 11 has at least one very important confirmed feature: Opera Extensions. The company says extensions will easily add new functionality to the browser experience and developers will be able to create them using open standards such as HTML5, CSS, JavaScript and supported APIs (the alpha release supports injectable JavaScript, callouts, certain UI items, and a basic Tabs and Windows API). Extensions will be based on the W3C Widget specifications, which is being considered for an Open Standard effort, and the company is trying to make it easy to port extensions from certain browsers, but wouldn't say which ones. Some extensions will have interface elements while others will run in the background. Opera 11 Alpha is out yet, but the company says it will be "soon."

Opera Mobile is going into beta for Android phones within the next month. Opera Mobile for Android will get the long awaited pinch to zoom support in its first beta. The current versions of Opera Mobile and Opera Mini have two levels of zoom: one for the full page width and one for zooming in to read the text. Pinch to zoom allows text to redraw almost instantly at all zoom levels, without compromising speed or data compression. Hardware acceleration, which makes navigating a page, panning, and zooming faster than ever by taking full advantage of the phone's GPU power, will come in a later build. Opera also announced that Opera Mini for iPhone will receive an updated version this year featuring both pinch to zoom and hardware acceleration.