Comments on: Opera Mini 5 Beta Available, Introduces Tabbed Browsing

By: Zhafir Pontoh

Zhafir Pontoh — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 15:40:36 +0000

Do I always have to launch OM-5 on my mobile every time?

By: AJB29407Nexus One

AJB29407Nexus One — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 03:43:21 +0000

The lack of multi-touch was a dealbreaker. And I also liked the comment about how you guys post barcodes for scanning but not links. I also view your website from my mobile device!

By: Max

Max — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:39:08 +0000

Opera Mini 5 beta for android does support uploading. so it’s good to have at least for those rare occasions you need to upload a file from your mobile

By: Max

Max — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:27:09 +0000

havent tried it with 5 beta yet but one nice thing about opera mini on android is that it permits uploading files, which his disabled on the native browser and anything that uses that

By: MatthewS

MatthewS — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:41:44 +0000

The interface is very nice, and I liked the fast page loads. I liked the bookmark page, and the edit bar.

HOWEVER, the page rendering is absolutely horrible. Rather than looking like a tiny version of the real websites, opera attempts to reformat some page elements, trying unsuccessfully to fit the screen.

Zoom is also terrible. Yes, you can tap the screen to zoom, but it just goes from zoomed all the way out, to all the way in. That’s two zoom levels, compared to lots offered by the default browser.

Finally, you can’t set Opera as the default browser, meaning that you actually have to open the program before using it. I never use the browser that way, frequently visited sites are viewed through RSS, so I typically use the browser for searching, via the built in search tools.

I concede that this is a beta, but it’s deeply flawed, and it appears that the flaws are by design, rather than accident. I will continue using Dolphin.

By: Huuuh

Huuuh — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:56:27 +0000

@Brett Lewis

No, they called it “Opera Mini 5″ because it’s version 5 of Opera Mini. The previous version was 4. The one before that was 3. And so on. Get it?

By: Brett Lewis

Brett Lewis — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:58:29 +0000

they called it “mini 5″ as in the same name for dells device? what the what?

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:41:46 +0000

I really like it so far, seems pretty decent, and I’m not having any problems with page rendering :)

By: Cpt Mike Beard

Cpt Mike Beard — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:34:16 +0000

1. Wow. This thing is awesomely fast
2. I can’t open youtube vids. wtf?
3. Google mobile doesn’t recognize it as droid and gives you the simple HTML view. Seriously?

Opera Speed > Android Browser
Opera functionality < Android Browser

The end.

By: AGx-07_162

AGx-07_162 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:30:42 +0000

Yeah, I was just messing around with it on my GF’s Cliq and discovered how to zoom correctly. Given that, its now my favorite browser. After using it for a while it does feel faster than the others (I havent tried xscope). As my default PC browser, its now nice to have it as my primary mobile one too. Go Opera!

By: Aux

Aux — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:02:32 +0000

I see that many people here do not understand how Opera Mini works. First of all you should understand that OM has two rendering modes:

1. Mobile view
2. Normal view

Mobile view always fits pages to the screen width, so no horizontal scrolling occurs. This mode is the best for such sites like Slashdot and Phandroid. You just get straight to the text content! Why to zoom and mess around?

Normal view works almost like your Dolphin/Mobile Safari today. So you need to zoom to see text, bla-bla-bla. You may know that Mobile Safari allows a web-developer to lock zoom level, so pages will work without zoom. Safari does that through proprietary META tags. Opera Mini also can do this, but using open standards – HTML and CSS. So when you visit proper standards compliant and mobile phone ready page in Normal view, this page will work just like in Mobile view – without zooming and horizontal scrolling. This is NOT A BUG! This is the way SITE OWNERS INTENDED!

So leave your complaints to web-devs. But better – complain to WebKit devs not properly supporting mobile rendering modes specified by W3C.

And one more thing about multi-touch. Opera Mini is just a thin client for a rendering servers out there. Zooming is done there too. When your recieve a page you get it at some zoom level calculated at the servers specially for your device. So dynamic zoom is not very possible. At least not very likely to be made.

If you use your mobile browser to get data from internet, read news and so on, and you use mobile browser a lot, then you already know that multi-touch is a pain in the ass. But if you are a kid bragging in school then go and buy iPhone. It’s that simple.

By the way, Opera Mini is really the best mobile browser out there – I’ve tried most of them since this is a part of my job.

By: huh

huh — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:41:38 +0000

@Tom Robson

What pages doesn’t zooming work on?

By: huh

huh — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:40:54 +0000

What are all these comments about “no zoom”? Just tap the screen! It doesn’t get easier than that.

The problem with Dolphin and all the other ones is that they don’t compress data, so Opera Mini is much, much faster especially on a slower connection.

By: Tom Robson

Tom Robson — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:18:01 +0000

@johnbarry3434, even the tap to zoom in/out doesn’t work at all on some pages (that are scrolling horizontally on my Milestone).

By: johnbarry3434

johnbarry3434 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:03:07 +0000

Also, very hard to scroll straight down the middle of a page.