Among the announcements made by browser-maker Opera at the Up North Web, the company’s first-ever press day in Oslo, Norway, were the release of the beta of Opera Mobile for Android and the alpha for the desktop version of Opera 11. With the release of the Opera Mobile for Android, the users of the Android handsets will be able to download the browser for the first time.

Thus far, the Opera download advantage was available only to OEMs and mobile operators. The Opera Mobile for Android, which will feature hardware acceleration and pinch-to-zoom capability, will be available for all versions of the Android OS. Going by the details forwarded by Opera, hardware acceleration will enable Android users to leverage the power of the mobile handsets to allow for increased speed, faster navigation, an increased interaction with the phone, and full pinch-to-zoom functionality for all sites.

Meanwhile, the impending release of Opera 11 Alpha, which was the other big announcement from Opera, marks the availability of extensions for the first time. Noting that these extensions will be fairly akin to those provided in other browsers, Opera said that the key aim of the new feature is to make it easy to port the extensions from “certain browsers.”

Opera revealed that developers will be able to create Opera extensions using open standards - HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS – as well as supported APIs. Subsequent to the Opera 11 Alpha release, information for developers will be available at Dev Opera.