Opera Mini 4.0-beta was released today and this seems to be one of the best surprises of the year. It has Javascript, CSS support and zoom-in support similar to the iPhone's, but with all the processing happening to another server instead of your cellphone. Read more for screenshots and info!
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You are very wrong. No matter how you rotate, it can make things much slower. From twice slower, to 5 times slower. And given that we are J2ME-dependant here rather than native code that you can control, things will only get worse. More over, Opera Mini is designed to run on phones with 50 Mhz CPUs. Cut the speed 1-5 times, and you are left with an unusable product. Besides, J2ME implementations are too many and too buggy for such tricks.
Sorry, but if I was a product manager at Opera, I would also decide against it. I am pretty sure the subject has come up in their engineering meetings.
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Opera Mobile does rotate (as in is rotated) on my Nokia N95. Perhaps, Opera could enable the Opera Mini proxy for Opera Mobile too.
No reason why I wouldn't like to have a whooping speed on that device.
Since Opera runs natively, I wouldn't have to expect any speed bumps turning the screen.
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You are thinking very simplistically. Opera Mobile is NOT Opera Mini. Opera Mobile is a native app which can have hooks to the underlying Symbian functions. Opera Mini can't. More over, the N95 (which I also own), can do rotation itself, because Symbian supports it. Also, the N95 is over 320 Mhz and it has a kick-ass J2ME implementation (the best in the industry). You are in the minority, because most "cheap" phones are between 40 and 100 Mhz. Opera Mini must cater to them because this is where its main strength is: bringing the web on a low-ass phone.
Rotating a web page is somewhat costly, but the cost depends on 2 external factors:
-if the images aren't JPEG, or if they're JPEG but the JPEG decoder can't rotate while decoding, images are expensive to render.
-if the font engine can't rotate while drawing, text becomes expensive to render.
If images can be rotated for cheap/free, and if text-drawing is as speedy at 90 degrees is it is when straight, there's no performance difference at all.
I'd be very surprised if J2ME had such optimizations for image/text decoding. And IF there is ONE or TWO implementations of J2ME that can do that (or even worse, versions of specific implementations), the rest can't. So, the answer is "no", for at least a few more years.
Edited 2007-06-19 22:18
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Take that Apple. How about a taste of your own medicine?
http://www.operamini.com/beta/video/
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> It's too slow typing on a numpad.
Get a touchscreen phone then, or a phone with a real keyboard. How is this the browser's fault?
>even though I entered them.
Obviously you made a mistake while entering them. As you can see above, I was able to post a comment through Opera Mini just fine!
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I tried downloading it, but when I go to the download link on my phone, it says "The requested page cannot be displayed". Is there a problem with the download, or have the requirments changed? Just wondering. I've used every version since it came out, and I would really like to try v4.
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Downloading works fine here: http://mini.opera.com/beta/
This is a WAP site, so you will have to go there with your phone. Alternatively, install the WML-addon for Firefox. Please note that Nokia's WebKit S60 3.0 (as opposed to 3.1) won't be able to render WML so if that's what you are using, please use the "Services" browser instead to download the JAD/JAR file. If all fails, email me and I will send you the JAR file.
Edited 2007-06-19 20:26
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For some reason on my phone, the link
http://mini.opera.com/beta/#menu
did not work. When I examined the contents of the main page, I found the actual download links:
High-memory version:
http://mini.opera.com/beta/mini.jad?rnd=1213857193&edition=hifi
Low-memory version:
http://mini.opera.com/beta/mini.jad?rnd=1811132084&edition=lofi
Manually entering the high-memory version worked (it downloaded), but the app wouldn't run on my phone.
Manually entering the low-memory version gave me the above error. That is probably what is happening when I click their download link. It is defaulting to the low-memory version, which may be an invalid link. Just a guess.
EDIT: I noticed when I click on either link, a jad file is downloaded, so both links seem to be valid. Maybe the jad file is not valid for the low-memory version.
EDIT: Fixed the mis-typed URL.
Edited 2007-06-19 20:38
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> http://mini.oper.com/#menu
That's the wrong URL. You are missing an "a" and a "/beta" in the URL.
Regarding your other problems, what kind of phone do you have exactly? Treos are known to have a buggy J2ME btw.
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Sorry, I manually typed that URL. It was what you said. I have a Samsung A740 that is a couple years old. I can understand why the high-memeory version wouldn't work, but I don't understand why the low-memory version doesn't even download. Plus, I had to manually type the urls, since the main download link didn't work at all on my phone (that is the one to http://mini.opera.com/beta/#menu )
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so far, but the rss support is missing (just as well as it was flaky in the older ones. i recently lost all of mine).
for some reason it kinda goes overboard on the resizing of complex tables in non-fit mode (at least on the one forum i have tested it on so far). but in fit mode its all charms.
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Its fit to width feature is interesting. And I can view the overall layout of a site thanks to its zoom out feature. But I can't find out how to make the font smaller which forces me to scroll more often. I hope it'll back in next beta.
Browser: Opera/9.50 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/4.0.8462/8; U; en)
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The fact that Opera Mini completely blows away the built-in browser in my newly bought N95 with the hyped MiniMap feature... is amazing. Opera Mini is faster, smoother and more helpful with its automatic zooming and margin snapping. The built-in browser feels sluggish and cumbersome in comparison.
However, I find it very strange that Opera Mini also provides a better browsing experience than the real Opera Mobile browser, which is not even free software. How can they motivate that? For security and downloading, I just use the built-in browser. For everything else, Opera Mini is a perfect fit.
Edited 2007-06-20 09:14
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A web-based RSS reader optimized for the iPhone's interface. It works pretty nicely, though I'm guessing that the iPhone's version of the Safari web browser will have a built in RSS reader.
http://www.pspconverter.com/iphone_converter/
