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Workarounds for Opera Mini

wtfoperamini.com

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Re: Workarounds for Opera Mini

#41

Post by dccoolgai »

jnbiche wrote: post #7
wtbob wrote: post #2

It's not the browser which is breaking the site; it's the site's developers who are using features which are not universally available. Guess what? If you use simple, clean HTML and progressively enhance with JavaScript, CSS and HTML5 features then everyone can browse your site. Or you can use the absolute bleeding edge of everything, requiring every user to give your code a full VM on his machine (a JavaScript VM, g…

I strongly disagree. If 1 single browser out of 8-9 in common use doesn't support web standards, and represents a fraction of a percent of my target audience, then I'm not going to spend time crafting workarounds to target that browser. I already make compact web sites compared to my peers -- no jQuery, optimized images, mostly text-driven. No JS is required to navigate and view the site. A hair over 100 kb for most…

Agreed - and in my day job, too, where my boss needs to present an experience that will have the highest chance of converting customers with a limited resource (my time) it doesn't make sense to spend 4x as long to make it play on IE6 when the return on that investment simply won't materialize.

Re: Workarounds for Opera Mini

#42

Post by kps »

StavrosK wrote: post #34
snarfy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The users don't want a site. They want an app. It's like expecting the developers of the latest, greatest PC game to write a progressively enhanced game that the same executable will run on DOS 1.0 all the way to the latest Windows version. They will spend time and resources on making sure it works with DOS 1.0, even though there are next to zero users for it, making it completely uneconomical, basically working for…

No, sorry, when I visit the Next Web, for example, I don't want 600 kilobytes of CSS and JS just to look at what's basically a list of photos and some text. That is insane by any measure, and I'm not even counting the photos (as they're necessary and there's not much to do about those). It seems to all be there so the site can be a wonder of mystery meat navigation, with clicks randomly bringing elements in and out o…

   > TNW's next iteration … loading instantly
e.g. https://www.ampproject.org/

Re: Workarounds for Opera Mini

#43

Post by kps »

coldtea wrote: post #21

> When you’re building websites, front end developers spend countless hours ensuring they gracefully degrade for older browsers, but what about those in developing nations, where every bit and byte counts? Well, what about them? Are they realistically going to be your customers?

Not everyone on the web is selling something.

Re: Workarounds for Opera Mini

#44

Post by petra »

pmx wrote: post #4

For many many sites it really doesn't matter if they don't support 3rd world countries - what value do we gain from working hard to support people with no money to spend? Advertisers aren't interested in them, we can't sell anything to them. It sounds selfish but society is based on exactly that way of thinking.

Opera Mini is also relatively unique in having great text-reflow which is an important feature for people with bad eyesight, even in rich countries.

Re: Workarounds for Opera Mini

#46

Post by johansch »

petra wrote: post #44
pmx wrote: post #4

For many many sites it really doesn't matter if they don't support 3rd world countries - what value do we gain from working hard to support people with no money to spend? Advertisers aren't interested in them, we can't sell anything to them. It sounds selfish but society is based on exactly that way of thinking.

Opera Mini is also relatively unique in having great text-reflow which is an important feature for people with bad eyesight, even in rich countries.

Thanks. :) I obsessed quite a bit about this about 10 years ago. Yes, it's been 10 years since the important things in Opera Mini transcoding/system design happened. At first it enabled web browsing on new expensive Nokia, Sony Ericsson, etc phones primarily in Europe/Russia, then the focus shifted to Africa and Asia/India.

Back then I figured: when when you are architecturally forced to throw out compliance with lots of fancy newfangled dynamic stuff, why not focus on readability and page navigation usability instead?

(I led the Opera Mini team at Opera until last year.)

Re: Workarounds for Opera Mini

#48

Post by coldtea »

kps wrote: post #43
coldtea wrote: post #21

> When you’re building websites, front end developers spend countless hours ensuring they gracefully degrade for older browsers, but what about those in developing nations, where every bit and byte counts? Well, what about them? Are they realistically going to be your customers?

Not everyone on the web is selling something.

Those that don't usually don't have "front end developers spend[ing] countless hours ensuring [the websites] gracefully degrade for older browsers".

Re: Workarounds for Opera Mini

#49

Post by digi_owl »

oelmekki wrote: post #29

I remember a time when opera was supposed to be the browser that implemented web standards the most accurately and completely. What happened? Are they now lagging, or is it just they chose not to support some standards in opera mini for those perfs goals?

Others seems to have explained what makes Mini special in the browser world, thought it may help to know that it started out as a J2ME feature phone "app".

Yep, it will provide web access over a crappy EDGE connection using a feature phone.

As for the larger Opera, what happened was Google Chrome. There was no way a small for profit like Opera could keep up. So they caved, and now their desktop and non-mini mobile offerings are Chromium based.

Re: Workarounds for Opera Mini

#50

Post by digi_owl »

systoll wrote: post #38
oelmekki wrote: post #29

I remember a time when opera was supposed to be the browser that implemented web standards the most accurately and completely. What happened? Are they now lagging, or is it just they chose not to support some standards in opera mini for those perfs goals?

'Mini' a totally different beast to a normal browser, in order to minimise data usage. When you request a page in opera mini, that request is sent to Opera's servers. The webpage is rendered on their server [using their rendering engine], and a totally different (OBML) file is sent to your browser, to represent the end result. 'Mini' never sees HTML, Javascript or CSS -- those are handled on the server. This allows t…

> When you request a page in opera mini, that request is sent to Opera's servers. The webpage is rendered on their server [using their rendering engine], and a totally different (OBML) file is sent to your browser, to represent the end result.

I Think they either have plans to, or have already transitioned to using webkit/blink as the backend for Mini.

Never mind that they seem to be doing their level best to kill of the presto-era browsers. This December they shut down their bookmark sync service (Opera Link) after having introduced a new one for their webkit/blink based browsers.

It sometimes seems like the web is heading for yet another monoculture. Marginally better than the IE era as this time the engine is open source, but a monoculture non the less.

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