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Opera Mini Approved for Inclusion in App Store

Good News, Bad News

The good news is that Apple is allowing other devs to jump aboard....the bad news is that this app should have stayed in the water. It has some nice little quirks but overall it lacks the beauty of Safari. Just go to GMail for example, I felt like I was still using a Blackberry and looking for my scroll wheel (old school)!
 
I think it'll be good for when I'm on edge. Otherwise I'll stick with safari. Having the pages compressed and done on the server aide will be good for edge connections. Otherwise I like the overall browsing experience better on safari.
 
In our tests...

The renderings do not look very impressive. Coupling that with the inherent binding of Safari into the OS's framework, it's not a huge competitor to Safari.
 
Dmac77 said:
I'd really like to see Chrome come to the iPhone; it's a great browser IMO, and I honestly think an iPhone version would kick mobile safari's butt. As for Opera Mini, it is fast, but that's the only good thing that it has going for it. Zooming is really poorly implemented, and scrolling is very weird.

I'll be satisfied when a usable browser allows me to turn off auto-rotate.

@ fox777 - there is a problem with your theory, Apple needs to aprove all updates.

Don
Click to expand...

You want a browser that allows you to turn off auto-rotate and lock the orientation? No problem - just get iCab mobile browser from the app store. In addition to this it has built-in ad blockers, a download manager and a ton of other stuff Safari and other browsers on the store don't have. To say it's feature-rich is an understatement. I've been using it for the last 3 months and don't use Safari at all. It also has GREAT tab options and allows you to save sites in tabs for offline reading, tabs load in background, etc.

I'm REALLY surprised that nobody else seems to have mentioned it in this thread. Do a search on the web and you will see it's very well rated.

Mind you, I was looking forward to Opera Mini and will be downloading it as soon as I get home from work tonight (no iTunes access from here thanks to our IT N*zi's) but it doesn't sound too amazing going by most of the user comments on here. :rolleyes:
 
Now that Opera Mini was approved it would be nice if Skyfire would submit an application. Skyfire does Flash and works pretty fine on Windows Mobile.
 
its fast..that's it

This browser is really fast, BUT other than that it sucks balls compared to safari. especially zooming is horrible. Rendering is terrible too. Also the bookmarks do not seem to work right, am I the only one?
I will keep it for times when i really need some crucial information from the web and I am in a edge/low bandwidth kind of situation.
Alot of updates needed on operas part to just get on the same level as safari.

Just shows that apple is right to keep bad software/imitating software out. The only reason this was approved is due to its server compressing technology. Without that there would have been no reason to.
 
chowmein said:
http://gizmodo.com/5515600/unbelievably-opera-mini-for-iphone-approved-by-apple
Click to expand...

Tried it (3Gs). Its slow, took an eternity to load a page it just had loaded. I can't figure out how to add bookmarks or to delete on. If you hold tab a little menu pops open which is hidden by your finger and when you want to move onto one of the choices it disappears and it opens the webpage. I want to get rid of all the social networking crab and get good bookmarks on there (only NYT is on there and valuable for me) - I'll go back to Safari...
 
So I tried it. Didn't seem much faster to load anything, though the pages looked a little weird. Zooming and panning sucks. Why would anyone bother with this?
 
Fast Shadow said:
All of this hype for this? It renders very poorly and zooming in and out sucks compared to Safari.

I'll wait for mobile Firefox.
Click to expand...

GLWT.


I've tried it now for long enough to come to the conclusion that it may not be replacing Safari anytime soon. Perhaps Apple knew this as well so they were ok letting it in.

Zooming is not as bad as people are making it out to be. How hard is it to double tap? The rendering of the pages is silly. I don't get it at all. My biggest issue here is that I typed a reply to a thread here on MR, hit the DONE button, assuming the keyboard would go away and I could hit submit. Yes, it did that but it reloaded the page and my post was gone. It was snarky, it was probably fate. Right there the browser was about to be deleted from my phone.

The red menu bar should go as well or move with the page. We have enough issue with a smaller screen, why confiscate more?

Finally, landscape orientation of the forums in safari shows the entire layout, albeit small. In Opera it seems to zoom in automatically causing you to have to sort of navigate through the page as though it's floating (someone can word this better than me). It's annoying tbh.

I want this to work, I love the tabs part, but if it's going to clear my form when I hit "done" then it's gotta go.
IMG_0360.jpg IMG_0361.jpg
 
jessica. said:
GLWT.

Zooming is not as bad as people are making it out to be. How hard is it to double tap?
Click to expand...

Double-tap zooming seems not to zoom the proper amount on many of the pages I tried (it cuts off text). Pinch-zooming only seems to have a couple of zoom levels - I could never get it to stop where I wanted, and pinching in sometimes zoomed the wrong direction. I couldn't quite figure out how it wa supposed to work.
 
I popped this on my iPhone as soon as I heard about it this morning (UK). Tried it out - first impression, it is quite fast. But I'm not entirely sure about the security - with everything going through Operas servers. However I have noticed some really bad page renders.. and HTML5 - forget it.

After giving it a chance.. the bad rendering, no HTML5 support, possible dodgy security, lack of familiar multi-touch UI and operations, plus a few other niggles I don't like - like too many clicks to get back to your home page etc.. This evening I've uninistalled it and gone back to Safari.

More time in the oven needed lads. I'll give it another try when they have sorted the above issues out.

-Keeval-
 
cmaier said:
Double-tap zooming seems not to zoom the proper amount on many of the pages I tried (it cuts off text). Pinch-zooming only seems to have a couple of zoom levels - I could never get it to stop where I wanted, and pinching in sometimes zoomed the wrong direction. I couldn't quite figure out how it wa supposed to work.
Click to expand...
I see your point now. For me it didn't feel odd or buggy. Now clearing a ****ing form when I hit done! That's a reason not to use the browser. WTF were you thinking Opera?

I just wonder if Apple knew this crap and laughed it off thinking choice is fine if the second choice is ridiculous.

Keeval said:
... But I'm not entirely sure about the security - with everything going through Operas servers.
...
Click to expand...

I'd like to hear more about the security features or lack thereof you're speaking of.
 
jessica. said:
I'd like to hear more about the security features or lack thereof you're speaking of.
Click to expand...

Have a read of this..

http://mobile.engadget.com/2009/02/...s-its-server-side-web-compression-with-opera/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mini#Standards_support

Opera Mini has received some criticism because it does not offer true, end-to-end security when visiting encrypted sites such as paypal.com.[52] When visiting an encrypted web page, the Opera Software company's servers decrypt the page, then re-encrypt it themselves, breaking end-to-end security.
Click to expand...

Some more info here.. they basically say - don't use it if you are putting in sensitive data.
http://www.opera.com/mobile/help/faq/#security
 
Keeval said:
Have a read of this..

http://mobile.engadget.com/2009/02/...s-its-server-side-web-compression-with-opera/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mini#Standards_support



Some more info here.. they basically say - don't use it if you are putting in sensitive data.
http://www.opera.com/mobile/help/faq/#security
Click to expand...

Thank you. The browser has been deleted. Good going Opera.

Now I have to ask Apple, honestly, besides being twunts about it all ... how can you allow a browser in your store that doesn't uphold the same security measures you claim to uphold? :rolleyes:
 
jessica. said:
Thank you. The browser has been deleted. Good going Opera.
Click to expand...
It's a good thing you think these things all the way through. Opera is no more dangerous than Gmail, or having comcast as your ISP.

Now I have to ask Apple, honestly, besides being twunts about it all ... how can you allow a browser in your store that doesn't uphold the same security measures you claim to uphold? :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Really? Opera is based out of Norway, a country known for its privacy laws.
 
The security thing is a documented part about the way the Mini browser works.

It's not meant as a total replacement for Safari really. Safari is what you would use if you had Wifi or a good 3G connection.

If you're on the go and don't want to bother with Safari, you can use Opera Mini. I have mine set to Small image sizes so that I can use it to really quickly load web pages. I think this is great!

If I'm trying to access a secure site, I'll use Safari. Or I would if my Bank and Paypal didn't already have Native Apps. :)
 
Didn't like how pages were rendered, and the fact that you can't read jack unless you zoom in. Pictures are rendered with lower quality than Safari, probably due to the compression that happens on Opera's servers.

...deleted
 
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