|
|
Opera announces new Mobile browser
Author: Gareth HalfacreePublished: 6th February 2008
The new Opera Mobile features an auto-hiding interface to maximise screen usage.
Available for phones and handhelds running Symbian OS, Windows Mobile or Linux, the new version of the browser – 9.5 – improves on the zooming and panning functionality of its predecessors and introduces an enhanced version of the Presto rendering engine designed to speed up page loading on bandwidth- and CPU-limited platforms.
The latest version ticks all the 'Web 2.0' checkboxes too; support for the usual raft of scripting languages is built-in, as well as Flash Lite 3 for rich media streaming – including YouTube, if the mobile version of the site doesn't do it for you.
Opera Mobile 9.5 also introduces Opera Widgets, which are add-in applications that can sit on the desktop of your handset and provide web content without the need to launch your browser.
The user interface has also had a tweaking, with the buttons and taskbars fading away if you haven't tapped anything for a while and leaving the full screen area for web browsing. While it won't make your QVGA screen suddenly as good for browsing as a 19” desktop display, it certainly makes mobile browsing less painful when combined with the zooming and panning functionality.
If you're hoping to get your hands on the new build right away, you'll be sadly disappointed. Although we'll certainly see the new build before Firefox Mobile, the company has yet to announce any officially launch dates. The only information the company was willing to give is that the public beta will be “announced separately.”
To whet our apptetites just that little bit more, though, the company has sneaked out a video demo.
Looking forward to the new release, or are you still pinning your hopes on newcomer Firefox Mobile? Give us your views over in the forums.
Related articles on bit-tech.net
Comments (9)
Stats: 0.138 seconds
Also there is no Blackberry or Palm version of Opera Mobile. Not sure why. I would consider buying it since I have a Blackberry.
My bad. I was more referring to that fact that it is not a free browser. With most (all?) desktop browsers being free, many people don't think that a mobile browser would cost money.
It's going to be released with opera desktop 9.5 too. According to rumour, set for identical release dates for PR and all that. The desktop version is pretty much finished as far as I'm aware? http://www.opera.com/products/desktop/next/ beta out
Mind you, I think it's sensible for them to go for a niche market where they can beat the opponents. Opera is the 'best' operating system in that it has the most features and best performance. However, I still use firefox because mainstream devs give me little things. I like the way it's straightforward to organise my bookmarks just with favicons at the top, the way google saves every setting in my browser so if I need to reinstall I don't lose anything and so on.
But on a mobile device these embellishments aren't attractive and so a small, fast, effective browser with good zoom capabilities (something opera has always been good at - you can zoom in in youtube and it will make the video fill the screen, vs firefox or ie that can only increase text size) will be a killer and with the mobile market getting bigger I think Opera have seen their niche and are going for it.
Can't really blame them - afterall there are several good desktop browsers out there to choose from already, so as a consumer you're not really losing out.
Edit: should read the whole thread first, that is what he meant :p
But at least javascript is working again compared to the IE WM6. Yes thats true, almost all javascript is not working with IE WM6. They stripped almost all javascript out of it in the WM6 version. Its very frustrating.