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Norway's Opera Software started singing Windows Mobile's song last year with the official release of its first wireless browser for the Pocket PC, after proving very successful on Symbian handsets. Today, the developer unvieled a beta follow up - Opera Mobile 8.5 - for Windows Mobile 5.0.

Available for Windows Mobile 2003 devices as well, Opera Mobile 8.5 should be welcome news to the many Windows Mobile users still unhappy with Pocket Internet Explorer; never one of the wireless platform's strong points.

According to the company, Opera 8.5 for Windows Mobile Pocket PC supports all the major Web standards, including CSS2, DOM 2 and JavaScript, and offers a fast, secure and user-friendly Internet experience. Opera's latest core code dynamically reformats Web pages to fit the width of any screen size too.

Additional features include:

Open URL with auto-complete

Zoom

Download

Multiple Windows

Navigation and history

Bookmarks

Landscape/Portrait Mode

Full screen/ Fit to screen

Pop-up handler

Pad-lock icon on secure sites

User preferences

Context menu

To Opera—one of the few companies to successfully challenge Microsoft's browser hegemony on the PC (until Mozilla Firefox came along)—it's all about bringing a desktop experience to the handheld.

"We are very pleased to offer the latest version of Opera Mobile to Pocket PC owners, so they may finally have a proper Web experience on their devices," says Opera VP of engineering Christen Krogh.