Opera Mini 4 beta out
Well, wouldn’t you know it, the Opera Mini 4 beta is out. This is, no doubt, the single most exciting thing to happen in the J2ME space ever.
Why? Because it brings full web page layouts to any phone capable of running it. Yes. The full shebang. Your nicely laid out CSS pages. All while still saving your bandwith (and hence, costs) by translating and compressing the pages.
Just how good is the Opera 4 Mini beta? Well. Repeating a cliché, a picture is worth a thousand words, or more. A screnshot of the Acid 2 test is quite telling:
(If you want to check for yourself, the Simulator is now live)
So, how does browsing with the new layout work? You get a virtual mouse pointer, and can move around a zoomed-out overview mode, which neatly zooms in to allow you to read when you click a button. The cursor works one of two ways, either as a regular cursor, using the joystick, or if you use 2,4,6,8 on the keypad, some Magic™ is applied, and it moves from block to block, neatly aligning on them so you zoom in on what most likely is where you wanted to be.
To download it to your phone, just go to operamini.com/beta with your phone.
More reading and stuff you probably want to check out:
Comments
Comment from freexe on 2007-06-19 14:10
My little face looks alittle different, but it impressive none the less.
Opera 4 Mini is simple amazing, good work from all those that have help it happen.
Comment from Arve on 2007-06-19 14:36
freexe: It may vary, because the screenshot I posted is from some internal version — and I’ve seen it vary in different ways throughout the development. It never ceases to amaze me, though.
Comment from deadHarlequin on 2007-06-20 09:11
Nice. Opera seems to have paid to mobile platform its highest attention, highest priority.( this maybe pretty obvious last year, just this is the time I realized it)
btw half an opinion,
When you zoom in and you are in FTW state, you should ought to move directly to the links/text boxes and not just move the mouse IMHO. There should be a mouse simulator but how often do you use it?
Comment from Arve on 2007-06-20 09:35
deadHarlequin: I’d suggest trying navigating with 2,4,6,8 in the zoomed in mode, as it navigates between the boxes.
Comment from deadHarlequin on 2007-06-20 14:52
At the OM4 online simulator I m speaking of, buttons 2,4,6,8 just scroll the page.
Comment from Øyvind Ø on 2007-06-22 01:06
Quick Q:
Will Opera Mini ever pass? If I have understood it right, a browser is only supposed to pass the test with standard setup. If you scroll, resize, or change font size and so on, it will break. But what about a minimum screen resolution? Would it not automatically break if the resolution becomes too small too? Under these conditions, I can’t see how the browser can pass with todays small screens on cellphones, because the small screen would break the test for it. Though it could pass it theoretically, if you get what I mean.
- ØØ -
Comment from Arve on 2007-06-22 09:37
Øyvind: Mobile browsers can pass, see this screenshot of Opera Mobile on a Series 60 phone. It passes.
With Mini, the major hurdle for actually passing is lacking support for
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