In summary, Opera does proxying and caching for its mobile browser. The article does very little to tell us why that's 'valuable' or indeed a secret.
The web requests would allow Opera to do some serious data-mining to sell advertising.
Opera holds the web's most valuable secret
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Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret
#12In summary, Opera does proxying and caching for its mobile browser. The article does very little to tell us why that's 'valuable' or indeed a secret.
"Behavioural advertising". Opera could potentially collect information on mobile users' browsing habits/history. Should it decide to sell this information to third parties it would be worth a lot.
If Opera decided to act on this it could be the most valuable part of its business model. GMail etc. have shown that people are willing to pay with their privacy.
Disclaimer: I'm interning (so I don't know anything special) for Opera, but the opinions here purely my own.
Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret
#13Opera Mini on the iPhone 4 is a pretty bad experience. Hope they get time to update it soon.
Indeed: the article claimed Opera mini made mobile Safari feel painful to use, which in my experience is patently false.
It is only occasionally noticeably faster, and the rendering is far worse. Mobile Safari is great because it actually renders sites appropriately. Opera mini is great because it's faster than your built-in phone browser, but it doesn't compete with real browsers even when it's marginally faster.
Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret
#14In summary, Opera does proxying and caching for its mobile browser. The article does very little to tell us why that's 'valuable' or indeed a secret.
The web requests would allow Opera to do some serious data-mining to sell advertising.
More especially since they hijack HTTPS sessions. I always thought that playing MITM and caching secure sessions created a strong incentive to behave badly.
Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret
#15Opera Mobile will be released for Android tomorrow. I can't wait to finally have a great browser on my phone (the tab limitations of the default one make it unusable for me. All alternatives have major faults or drawbacks). http://www.opera.com/mobile/next/
I'm a big Opera fan, but xScope has been great for me on Android.
Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret
#16It sort of begs the question will opera still be relevant in a few years down the line as rendering on phones gets cheaper and faster.
Advertising expands as to fill the available computing power. Content may too. There'll always be a place for an optimized browser, even if just to save battery life.
Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret
#17Opera Mini on the iPhone 4 is a pretty bad experience. Hope they get time to update it soon.
Opera Mobile is the real mobile browser for smartphones. However, Opera can't develop O Mobile for iPhone due to App Store's TOS.
Opera Mini can't handle modern websites using AJAX etc. because it can't render anything locally. It simply parses the data sent to it by the servers, which are responsible for rendering the website and compressing it.
Also, the speed benefits are significant, only if you are on a slow connection.
Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret
#18Opera Mini on the iPhone 4 is a pretty bad experience. Hope they get time to update it soon.
Indeed: the article claimed Opera mini made mobile Safari feel painful to use, which in my experience is patently false. It is only occasionally noticeably faster, and the rendering is far worse. Mobile Safari is great because it actually renders sites appropriately. Opera mini is great because it's faster than your built-in phone browser, but it doesn't compete with real browsers even when it's marginally faster.
Opera mini tends to jumble pages in unpredictable ways. The way it works is they transform the page into an intermediary format and transmit that to the phone. I don't think Opera has ever documented in depth what kinds of changes happen in the process.
Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret
#19Opera Mobile will be released for Android tomorrow. I can't wait to finally have a great browser on my phone (the tab limitations of the default one make it unusable for me. All alternatives have major faults or drawbacks). http://www.opera.com/mobile/next/
You are right in being excited about it. It's a huge step up from the default browser and even Dolphin HD.
Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret
#20It sort of begs the question will opera still be relevant in a few years down the line as rendering on phones gets cheaper and faster.
It kinda does. With the technology they have right now, I'd take interactive-javascript-capable Opera Mobile over proxying Opera Mini any day. But if in a year, Opera Mobile can make, one way or another†, Facebook or new Twitter or Google-Wave-of-the-day or any modern website noticeably faster, I won't care much if it means my data is going through Opera's servers, just like I don't care my email is on Google's servers.
[†] super-effective image and content compression? Elimination of multiple-server DNS lookups/requests/transfers? Compiling Javascript into a device's or Opera-internal "native" code on the server? I don't believe we've seen the last yet.