Opera's browser finds its voice
By
Matt Loney
and
Paul Festa
CNET News.com
March 23, 2004, 2:08 PM PT
URL:http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5178061.html

Opera is adding voice control to its browser, enabling users to browse
the web and fill in voice-enabled Web forms by talking to their PC. They
can also have the contents of Web sites read back to them.

The next version of the browser is due in "a couple of months,"
according to Opera Chief Executive Jan Tetzchner, which means that it's
likely to debut at about the same time as Microsoft's Speech Server
software, which is designed to improve the way that servers handle
spoken commands.

Opera's browser, which will incorporate IBM's Embedded ViaVoice speech
technology, will be available as a free download with advertisements, as
well as in a for-sale version without advertising, Tetzchner said.

Aside from the obvious accessibility benefits, Tetzcher said, there are
aplications for in-car computing: "In a car, you would like a
combination of screen and voice, but you don't want to be watching a
screen while riving. Being able to perform tasks by voice and get voice
feedback will be very useful."

Opera also rolled out the time-honored slideshow as an example of a
possible application for the voice function. By combining Opera Show wit
hvoice, said the company, users will be able to give presentations and
tell Opera via voice commands to turn to the next slide without having
to approach the computer and press the "page down" key.

"This new offering can allow us to interact with the content on the Web
in a more natural way, combining speech with other forms of input and
output--first on PCs, and in the near future, in devices such as cell
phones and PDAs," said Igor Jablokov, director of embedded speech at IBM
and chairman of the VoiceXML Forum,
an industry organization formed to create and promote the Voice
Extensible Markup Language.

Developers can also start to build multimodal content with the open
standards-based X+V markup language, Jablokov said, "using development
skills a large population of programmers already have today."

"One part of this is about being able to control a browser by voice, but
it is also about using pages with XHTML+Voice (X+V) coded into them,"
Tetzcher said. X+V is a voice specification that Opera, IBM and Motorola
submitted to Web standards body the World Wide Web Consortium
in 2001.

X+V combines two markup languages, both based on XML. XHTML is a version
of the Hypertext Markup Language expressed in XML, and VoiceXML is an
XML framework for developers of voice applications.

X+V competes with a
Microsoft-backed technology, also based on XML, known as
Speech Application Language Tags.

Opera, which has a confrontational history
with Microsoft, said X+V is the wave of the future.

"X+V provides a better relationship to XHTML and a more standardized
transition to be able to integrate voice capabilities," said Christen
Krogh, Opera's vice president of engineering.

Opera isn't the first to work on adding IBM's X+V technology. Access
Systems, the Tokyo-based maker of the NetFront browser
for mobile devices, announced in September a similar effort to add the
voice capabilities.

Opera will make the IBM integrated-voice browser available in English
for Windows, and the browser will initially be targeted at enterprise
customers and developers.

Matt Loney of ZDNet UK
reported from London. CNET News.com's Paul Festa reported from San
Francisco.


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