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Opera Mini approved for iPhone

opera.com

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Re: Opera Mini approved for iPhone

#81
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlikely. Opera Mini works by doing all the rendering on the server-side, and then sending the pre-rendered website to the client. It's not actually a browser, so much as an app that gets screenshots from a server-side 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…

what about encrypted/secured pages?

The connection is only encrypted between the web site and Opera's servers, and Opera's servers and your phone. Opera's servers see all the data in its unencrypted form. From their FAQ[1]:

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.

[1]http://www.opera.com/mobile/help/faq/#security

Re: Opera Mini approved for iPhone

#82
post #80

First impressions: 1. It renders pages in exactly the same way it does on my Blackberry. 2. The UI is just as awkward. Amazing.

Friend of mine: "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.

Maybe it's fine to duplicate existing functionality on the iPhone if you do it so badly that there's no danger of anyone actually using it.

Re: Opera Mini approved for iPhone

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. The section on JavaScript support is not encouraging actually. Can anyone report on attempting to use a js-heavy web-app through Opera Mini, e.g. Gmail?

It's not great at AJAX. My brother has a Blackberry and mainly uses Opera, and the fact that Sporcle(.com) worked on my iPhone shocked him. Apparently Opera can't do onchange. Gmail just gives the normal HTML mobile version, like it did in the bad old days before iPhone.

I just tested, and sporcle.com works well on Symbian. Does blackberry have it's own version of opera too?

Re: Opera Mini approved for iPhone

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why would they invest millions, if not billions, in creating, enhancing, and supporting developer tools? Obviously they only do so to benefit themselves, but it's quite clear from their actions that Apple does care about developers.

Put it this way: they don't care about what the developers have to say about their platform or their policies and they assume that whatever minority of developers has left their platform will be replaced by an army of new ones. I mean, how many people have actually dropped their development for the iPhone/iPad? Have you noticed it?

out of my friends (who develop for the iPhone)? One or two.

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.

Re: Opera Mini approved for iPhone

#85
post #82
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friend of mine: "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.

Maybe it's fine to duplicate existing functionality on the iPhone if you do it so badly that there's no danger of anyone actually using it.

That's the overruling statement right there for most of this App store shenanigans.., if something sucks people won't use it, and it won't be a threat.

Re: Opera Mini approved for iPhone

#87
post #50
post #35

First impressions: 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 ent…

If you double-tap in Safari on iPhone, it will snap to columns which is useful when you want to read an article on a site and avoid the sidebar ads and navigation.

[deleted]

Re: Opera Mini approved for iPhone

#88
post #35

First impressions: 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 ent…

For me, Opera seemed to forget tab contents after opening just 2-3 of them. It also displays a "please refresh" message instead of automatically reloading the contents.

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.

Re: Opera Mini approved for iPhone

#89
post #88
post #35

First impressions: 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 ent…

For me, Opera seemed to forget tab contents after opening just 2-3 of them. It also displays a "please refresh" message instead of automatically reloading the contents. 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.

For an app where one of the main selling points is to cut down on the number of bytes sent, not auto reloading pages should be seen as a feature. If I need the page reloaded I can do so when I need it, and if I don't then doing so is just a waste.

Re: Opera Mini approved for iPhone

#90
Just did a 20 minutes test: I'm loving it.

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.

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