RSSOpera opens its Mobile 9.5 beta for PocketPC
By Tim Conneally | Published July 17, 2008, 2:03 PM
The first beta of Opera Mobile 9.5, initially only available for touchscreen Windows Pocket PCs running Windows Mobile 5 or WM6, is still missing about a third of Opera Mobile 9.5's expected features.
Though it's still in the early stages of its lifespan, this first beta of Opera Mobile 9.5 maintains Opera's traditional focus on providing a fast browsing experience, while making it more similar to the popular Opera Mini.
It offers a redesigned interface with navigation icons stationed in a bar along the bottom of the screen. When you click on one of these icons, a contextual menus pops up. By default, pages load in full-screen view with only a transparent "menu" icon in the lower right hand corner. This leaves open more screen real estate while you're browsing.
Dragonfly, Opera's open source developer toolkit, is also included in this build, officially offering cross-platform support for the first time. Only in its second alpha release, Dragonfly lets developers debug JavaScript, inspect CSS and the DOM (Document Object Model), and view any errors through their phone, exactly the same as they can with the desktop version.
Opera has said that "all major platforms" (including Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Linux) will be getting Opera Mobile 9.5 as both a standalone browser and SDK, but has not issued a date when its public beta releases will take place. They will, however, be announced separately.
I'm really excited to hear this. I have used Opera on my mobiles for a while now and I have pretty high expectations to this new version.
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|Why do they have to make the default skin (the skin above is not the default one) look so much like iPhone's Safari browser?
Sure, iPhone's browser is the coolest thing on a mobile device, but still...
About the app itself, it's too slow and for some reason, I got "out of memory" error when loading a webpage.
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|I really enjoy seeing the development of Opera Mobile. I use it on my Blackberry Pearl, and it does operate at a decent speed.
I'm looking forward to hearing about speed increases more than UI improvements as honestly, the UI is already fantastic and I don't realistically think that any of the Opera Mini users are looking forward to Dragonfly or Tabbed Browsing... I use my 'Previous History' list to 'switch' between 'tabs' on my phone - which I say in quotes because on such a small screen, the idea of switching tabs seems rather ridiculous. On a PC, it makes all of the sense in the world.
I would like Opera to improve speed and improve how sites render. For instance, Opera Mini renders text areas to the width of the phone's viewable area, which is neat, and I can understand the use - however, I would prefer correct rendering over text fitting differently. Web Developers have the ability to make phone versions of their websites if they would like to, and bank sites and search engines seem to understand this and take advantage of it.
As it stands, I love Opera Mini. As far as the price tag goes - it's free and operates on phones that cost much less than the iPhone + Contract, so I cannot complain and support it fully. However, providing a viable alternative to Safari "Mini" is something I'd like to see Opera do - and they are so close, yet so far.
Mozilla Mini anyone?
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|"which I say in quotes because on such a small screen, the idea of switching tabs seems rather ridiculous."
You typically don't see the tabbed interface but call it through the menus. It's more like multiple instances of a browser. Saves loading times etc...
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|Crashed on first use on Treo 700W. Dog slow otherwise.
Admittedly, my phone is a POS, but previous versions of Opera mobile and WMIE were fairly stable.
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|Works great on my HTC Touch, love the full web page view and zoom in and out function like iPhone with Opera browser.
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|Doesn't work on my Treo, either.
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