Opera Unveils AJAX Development ToolsOpera Unveils AJAX Development Tools

Browser-maker Opera Software ASA has released in beta a set of tools for building and running software on mobile phones.

The Opera Platform SDK is based on AJAX, a Web development technique growing in popularity.

AJAX is based on several Web technologies, including HTML, cascading style sheets and JavaScript. The technique is used to develop Internet services, such as Google Maps and Amazon A9 Search.

AJAX applications built with the Opera development kit are meant to run on mobile phones. Developers also can use the tools to adapt existing content and Web applications for wireless devices, officials with the Norwegian company said this week.

Opera holds a very small portion of the browser market, accounting for 0.54 percent in September, according to Web monitoring firm NetApplications. Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer dominates the browser market with an 86.52 percent share.

The beta version of Opera Platform is available for download.