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Comment by cleverjake | Hacker News Reader

This seems very similar to Opera Turbo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Turbo#Opera_Turbo) - no?

I'd say closer to Opera Mini, which pretty much runs everything through their proxy service. And I have to admit, it makes for a very compelling browsing experience on a phone - faster than any other mobile browser out there, with limited loss of functionality (ajax becomes a normal page turn instead of a local dom switch).

Isn't Opera Mini just a "web" client that always connects through Opera Turbo? Opera Mobile and Desktop, on the other hand let you switch Turbo on or off.

No, Opera Mini and Opera Turbo works a bit differently. While Turbo provides compression the actual rendering is always done locally. With Mini on the other hand the rendering is done server side, and then sent to the Mini client using an Opera Mini specific markup language.

I they were the same so I just Wiresharked Opera Mobile on my phone (with Turbo enabled) and it looks like you're right. My phone sends HTTP requests to something.opera-mini.net, then that server sends back compressed HTTP.

You must have a lot of Turbo/Mini proxy servers to handle all the clients. I guess it's against your TOS but I wonder how easy it would be to proxy another browser's traffic through Opera Turbo.

Is Opera Mini's format closed or is there a spec somewhere we can see?

Thanks for creating an account to reply.

Fairly certain that there aren't any publicized spec for OBML (aka Opera Binary Markup Language, aka the Opera Mini markup language).

http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-mini-web-content-au... does contain some good info on Mini, even if it may not be what you were wondering about.

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