Opera Mini approved for iPhone
opera.com
opera.com
1. it's very responsive. Much snappier than Safari; the difference is very noticeable.
2. pages download much quicker
3. zooming in and out is faster, but you only have two zoom levels. If you "pinch to zoom" it immediately zooms in all the way.
4. the home screen with 9 favorites works great
5. it's a little buggy (clicks don't always register)
6. killer feature #1: it automatically stores the entire app state, so you can open a few tabs, switch apps, go back and have everything the way you left it. This is a big deal, because Safari forgets your pages eventually, which is so frustrating when you have your travel plans in a safari tab and 3G is not exactly reliable.
7. killer feature #2: you can save pages
8. In full screen mode it makes for a pretty decent reader.
9. It doesn't suffer from "too small font" syndrome.
10. It has this "Snap to column" thing where your view automatically snaps to the column edges. This makes reading more like reading on Instapaper and less like safari.
11. It loads instantly, even when I have 3 tabs open. It's really that fast.
The only real downsides I know of so far are that it has trouble rendering more complex web pages, invades my privacy and doesn't do Javascript. Flash content simply doesn't appear (so you don't even know it should be there) and YouTube links don't link to the YouTube app. Still very impressive.
Couple of things I dont like
- They've implemented their own copy/paste controls. I guess this is nessesary due to the 'long click' for opening new tabs etc, but its kind of annoying.
- Not really Opera's fault but because of the new useragent, alot of sites deliver the 'normal' mobile version of their site instead of the iphone version I'm used to (usually much prettier).
Having the right tool for the job: why "duplication of functionality" is a good thing.
Are the intermediate servers being slashdotted or something, I wonder? I'll give it a shot again later on this week I guess.
Thus, being able to shake to undo the action of auto-scrolling to top of the screen would be a nice solution.
The zooming-in and out is a big downside, as I often tweak in or out from what Safari gives me as a default when I double-tap.
The scrolling deceleration brakes to a halt sooner than native apps. Again, maybe I'm just being fickle, but if the physics don't match the native feel, then it just doesn't feel right.
Don't understand why they created their own form of copy/paste.
The zoomed-out small fonts are completely illegible. I can't even make out header or subheader text, or titles of articles.
Startup time, at least for me, was about 3 seconds, compared to immediately for Safari. I just have the 3G, and I'm sure it would be much faster on the 3Gs.
When going from vertical to horizontal view, the page does not resize. I have to reload the page for it to fit to the full width.
Despite the innovations that I was very excited for, it's the little things, the details, that will keep me from using this app. To me, good execution is in the details. Some of the things above, for me, are simply musts. An example would be a car that must feel good to sit in, have sharp steering control, easy-to-reach controls and a solid-feeling gearbox. Extra-cool features without this are non-starters. These are the things Safari gives me which Opera lacks.
I've also seen a bug where all the tabs turn to grey, inactive rectangles. You have to kill the app and lose all your tabs.
I live in a city covered by 3G but when I from in my home town it's almost impossible to suft the web with Safari, while it was ok with Opera Mini on a Nokia N70 phone.
Opera Mini is surely not a drop in replacement for Safari Mobile, but it surely is a useful tool, much more useful than most of the other top-downloads in the Appstore.
For now: "un-zommed" content is unreadable, for instance, nytimes.com in Opera http://cl.ly/JIP vs Safari Mobile: http://cl.ly/J9i (which is also unreadable, but well, I can distinct letters)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mini#FunctionalityGmail just gives the normal HTML mobile version, like it did in the bad old days before iPhone.
The restriction on downloading and executing code has been in the developer agreement since the beginning. It's not a recent thing.
It's amazing how I'm happy to trade features for speed. Also the UI is so much... like Fast Tracker :) That 2D interface that is clearly primitive but reacts like a videogame, instantaneously.
Saving pages and fast access to favorites is also very cool, but speed is the real killer feature here IMHO.
http://thedailyt.com/2010/04/opera-mini-for-the-iphone-initi...
I have to agree with most posters here. It's a nice start and I think it's a very good thing there's now a competing browser engine in the App Store. It has quite a few non-native feeling elements to it, so if they iron out the kinks and give it a bit more of an iPhone feel it'll be a good contender.
The usual Opera instant back function (no reloading of pages on clicking the back button) is killer!
1. It renders pages in exactly the same way it does on my Blackberry.
2. The UI is just as awkward.
Amazing.
"Opera Mini's flagrant disregard for UI conventions would get any other app rejected."
Pretty much sums up my thoughts. It's bad on so many levels and somehow received special treatment.
My first thought is that plenty of games have UIs built from scratch. I think the conventions are just that: conventions.
Instead, over 60% of the screen is permanently covered by the toolbar at the top and the keypad at the bottom. No way to scroll either while in the Find in Page mode. No way to step backwards throught search results either - next button only. What were you guys thinking?! Find in Page could have been a killer feature for you over Safari, and it falls way short.
In addition, the app does not feel Cocoa Touch-like - UI elements look faked and the feel is different. Sorry, I had much higher expectations for days waiting for the release, and it just did not deliver iPhone-like experience. Better luck in the next version, I guess. BTW, love Opera on the desktop!
PS: almost forgot - PDF is not supported at all and is delegated to Safari instead!
The app is still somewhat crippled though, all links from other Apps can only be opened in Safari. So, not the same as switching a browser on your desktop or laptop. Nonetheless it seems like a step in the right direction.
edit: They've added a message, although the counter is still going
When do you think Opera Mini will be approved by Apple?
Although I find this hard to believe, signs point to Opera being late in updating the page. The time in Norway is 2:15 AM, but still...
But worst of all, the text area editor is custom--no autocorrection. This comment has takem far too long to edit.
In short, a really poorly executed app that should not have been approved, save for the crapstorm banning it would have caused.
Also, don't forget to add the user agents: http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/designing-with-opera-mini...
Opera mini is great on a normal phone, but silly and pointless on a platform with with a real browser like the iPhone OS and Android.
Not everybody has great broadband mobile connections.
Android has a very good browser with WiFi, but it is totally useless with my Edge connection. Opera on the other hand is amazingly fast with any connection I have tested.
YMMV
+ Does Google even want to compete there? Chrome on the desktop may have some strategic value beyond spreading the Google brand, but is there anything exceptional made 'the Google way' in the Android browser?
Firefox, on the other hand, would be a real browser, running Javascript rendering and Gecko on the phone itself, which would not be allowed.
That said, I don't understand why anyone would want Firefox anyway. The iPhone's limited memory and CPU would likely make Firefox nearly unusable, while extensions would eat away at what little free space was left. Firefox isn't optimized for the mobile space, and I can't think of any features it would provide that would make it a better choice than Safari (or, on Android, the built-in WebKit browser).
Why would someone want it instead of Safari? I'm sure lots of people use Firefox on their Macs too. Competition usually benefits us consumers.
Do I think we will see it on iPhone? Definitely not (I'm pretty sure both Apple and folks at Mozilla agree).
Is there any end-to-end security between my handset and — for example — paypal.com or my bank?
No. If you need full end-to-end encryption, you should use a full Web browser such as Opera Mobile.
Opera Mini uses a transcoder server to translate HTML/CSS/JavaScript into a more compact format. It will also shrink any images to fit the screen of your handset. This translation step makes Opera Mini fast, small, and also very cheap to use. To be able to do this translation, the Opera Mini server needs to have access to the unencrypted version of the Web page. Therefore no end-to-end encryption between the client and the remote Web server is possible.
Obviously they only do so to benefit themselves, but it's quite clear from their actions that Apple does care about developers.
Most are still staying onboard (maybe... 25 or so).
Don't forget this is the internet; like most things the disgruntled developers will be the most vocal. That doesn't necessarily make them a majority - or even a large minority.