Opera’s new Android beta is out, and it includes some pretty big changes | Hacker News Reader

Opera’s new Android beta is out, and it includes some pretty big changes

gigaom.com

55 pointsiProject34 comments

It will be interesting to see how many (if any) HTML features they've dropped by switching to WebKit/Chromium. CanIUse [0] shows the latest Presto-based Opera having the following features that Chrome on Android doesn't:

    getUserMedia/Stream API
    Shared Web Workers
    CSS3 object-fit/object-position
    Color input type
    Drag and Drop
    Datalist element
    WebGL - 3D Canvas graphics (partial support)

[0] http://caniuse.com/#compare=op_mob+12.1,and_chr+0

According to the official blog post at http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/ Opera 14 for Android is based on AppleWebKit/537.22 and Chrome/25.0.1364.123 but with added support for:

    input type=color
    Microdata
    WebGL 3D context
    CSS3 @supports

Opera's html5test.com score went up by 44 points with the switch to WebKit.

https://plus.google.com/114233674199568482864/posts/fE1jaycp...

Heh, first icon in Speed Dial is to Google+. Even though the browser is nearly identical to Chrome for Android under the hood, Google is still serving the basic html version to Opera.

Waiting for them to wake up and fix. :)

I can't believe they moved the tab selector to the top. Who can easily reach the top of a screen with a finger in single-hand use? I cannot. Placing buttons up there makes using these apps incredibly annoying. Even worse would be on the top left, since that is the place farthest from my finger.

Apart from UI changes there does not seem much new. I am still hoping they will make site preferences easily accessible so one can protect his privacy and security easily even on mobile devices. And of course extensions (they had a beta once).

> Who can easily reach the top of a screen with a finger in single-hand use

Every iPhone owner. Just joking. But this is an issue with big screens in smartphones that we as developers have to consider when making apps.

Chrome for Android lets you move between tabs easily by swiping from the left and right corners of the screen (and swiping in general is used for tab navigation in Android). Maybe Opera could rip that off.

I hope they go for the quick toggles (touching the sides of the phone/tablet if enabled) like the stock browser has, but either option is better than none.

I hope they go for gestures. Hold finger on position then move left right top bottom for their respected options.

For me, the killer feature of Opera has always been the ability to reflow text to fit any size and zoom. Can anyone confirm this is still in?

To a degree. It works much better in the old version using Presto.

I just downloaded it and tested that, it's not present, zooming is now as bad as in other android browsers (but some of the HN comments are in bigger size than others so there is no need to zoom, it's quite a strange behavior though)

Also as another user pointed it, tabs on the top is not practical and unreachable (especially on big devices like samsung GS3)

How about the "scrolling guides" when you're zoomed? Not sure if there's a proper name for that, but with Opera when I zoomed and the text reflowed, it would lock me to vertical scrolling only as long as I don't wiggle too far horizontally. Easily my favourite thing about it.

also not in as far as I can see. I hope that gets added again in the future, together with the reflow.

Zooming is very "Chrome-like" if you used it before on Android. I'm not a fan of Chrome zoom though. I prefer the stock browser's or Opera Mobile's.

For what it's worth, the latest Firefox for Android has an option in Preferences called "Reflow text on zoom". It may be what you look for (but I don't use Opera enough to be sure).

Android's Browser, at least on my 2.3.6 Samsung phone, has this feature. Bizarrely this beta does not.

Here's the trick for me, using a Galaxy S2, with Android 4.1.2 (JB, but it worked with ICS)

It works with Dolphin and the Stock browser.

1-Open the stock browser

2-Go to Settings->Advanced

3-Check Auto-fit pages

Now, using the stock browser or Dolphin, you can zoom in a page and then, if you double-tap the page, the browser will reflow the text to adjust to the new size.

Note that if you double tap again, it will zoom out. So, to reflow, first adjust the zoom, then double-tap.

Sadly, it doesn't work with Chrome.

Have been using it for the past 10 minutes. It's considerably slower than the stock browser in 2.3.7.

Also, using 36MB is kind of unacceptable - I only have less than 100MB internal storage on my Galaxy Ace.

Normal size for all browsers that have to bundle the entire rendering engine. Chrome is 50Mish, Firefox 30Mish, last time I checked.

Only the built-in-browser-skins are smaller.

I have Opera installed on my Ace for two reasons:

1. Speed 2. Size

If it's slower than stock and takes up a similar amount of space to Firefox... then there's no reason for me not to use Firefox.

Can you install Firefox in the Ace? I have the same phone and I can't.

How do you install Firefox (or Chrome) in Ace?

Download it directly from the Mozilla site: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mobile/aurora/

The Ace has very little available memory, so Mozilla still blocks it for Beta & Release because they think it doesn't work well enough. But your mileage may vary (greatly).

This is the Aurora build (Firefox 21) which has some more optimizations.

Chrome can't run on a phone that doesn't have at least Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0+) AFAIK.

A question to anyone who knows/remembers this. I remember seeing a video that showed off a new experimental and highly different mobile UI that either Firefox or Opera created.

In it, there was a much smaller distinction between closed tabs and browsing history - they appeared the same.

Whatever happened to that prototype? I thought it was a good idea, but I never got a chance to see it in action. Is the project dead or does it exist somewhere. If the latter, is any good?

In this press release, somewhat buried, is this message:

http://business.opera.com/press/releases/general/opera-gears...

“Opera is also experimenting with WebKit in several research and development projects, and many of you got a peek of one of them, codenamed ‘ICE’, last month. As a leading innovator in browsers, we are very excited that ICE received such great buzz. We will provide more information about ICE and other exciting R&D projects in the future, but as we are also really proud of our new browser on Android and our Opera Web Pass operator offering, those products will be the main focus at MWC,” says Wium Lie."

Any comments on "Features such as the combined URL/search bar may be unoriginal, but they were worth copying."?

On iOS with its split URL/search, I like it that the keyboard layout and autocorrect adjust to what you are doing. Is that less of an or no issue on Android, with its different way to do autocorrection?

Interestingly, the Off Road mode is still using Presto version of Opera Mini:

Opera/9.80 (Android; Opera Mini/14.0.1025/28.4079; U; en) Presto/2.8.119 Version/11.10

Is Opera popular in other countries?

Other than what?

The USA. Looking at stats I see in Jan of this year they've got 1.9% market share (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp). But I just saw that they're based in Norway so I'm sure it' popular there.

Stats are kind of misleading, since Opera's larger base is mostly Mobile browsing and other embedded devices (Wii, Nintendo DS, etc).

Mobile stats show it has ~16% of the market share[1][2]

[1] http://imageshack.us/scaled/landing/189/statcountermobilebro... (flash alternative)

[2] http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-monthly-201202-... (flash)

Yes.

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