I've been using the Opera Mini 5 Beta on my Nokia N95-3 for 24 hours now and I continue to be impressed. I've been loading huge pages on multiple tabs and the Beta has performed very well indeed. One thing I especially like about Opera Mini 5 compared with 4.2 is that it loads all the images on monster pages like the 1.5 MB Wikipedia USA entry which has 84 images. Even with mobile view on and low image quality, 4.2 would just show ugly grey placeholders for half the images on that page, but 5 displays them all even in zoomed in desktop view with image quality set to high. I've only had one crash. The browser just spontaneously vanished while loading a page in a new tab. Other than that the Beta's been rock solid. Comparability with various web sites seems good. The only one I'm having a problem with is delicious.com where I can't seem to log in. Clicking the username or password fields just reloads the page.
I've learned a few tricks for making the most of Opera Mini. Some I discovered on my own and others I found on the web.
- On non-touch devices you probably want to turn off inline editing. It's triple-tap only and on the N95 that means a dozen or more presses of the "1" key to enter common symbols like "@"," !", "=" or "; ". Others, including "<" and ">" aren't available at all. To toggle in-line editing go to Menu > Settings > Advanced > Inline Editing > Off . This will enable Opera Mini 4.2 style text entry using the phone's native text editor with full symbol and T9 support.
- On touch devices there is no menu option to go to the Start Page where the speed dials are. I'm sure this will be fixed eventually but for now the only way to get to the Start Page on touch only phones is by opening a new tab.
- Opera Mini has an equivalent to the Windows right-click . It's accomplished by a long press on the screen on touch phones. On non touch phones either press the "1" key or do a long press on the center Dpad button. The result is a "context" menu (image below right) with options specific to the screen object that has focus. Here are some examples of what you can do with the context menu.
On a Speed Dial button choose "Assign" or "Edit" from the context menu to edit the button's URL.
Anywhere on the screen to select text for copying
On a link or Speed Dial to open it in a new tab
On an image to zoom it or open it for saving with the phone's OS browser
- Here's a great tip from Opera's Haavard . You CAN copy web page text to other applications if your phone supports cutting and pasting from text edit fields (all Nokia Symbian phones and most Sony Ericssons do) Here's how:
- Disable inline editing from the Setting menu
- Copy some text using the context menu
- Press the left soft key (labeled "Use") and choose "Search With" from the menu (image above).
- Press the center button and " Edit" the search field
- Copy the text into the system clipboard using the phone OS's copy function. On the N95 you hold the "pencil" key, select the text using the Dpad and then press the right softkey (labeled "Copy" (image below).
- Opera Mini 4.2's built-in RSS reader isn't officially supported yet in Opera Mini 5 yet but you can still get to it by entering the URL, feed:list
- Get familiar with Opera Mini's Settings menu . That's where you can toggle images and change image qualit y, enable fit to width Mobile View , toggle full screen and landscape modes, change the font size or clear saved passwords, cookies and history . Click on Advanced in Settings to toggle inline editing, hide the navigation bar on touch devices and change the saved pages folde r.
- Non-touch users, don't forget Opera Mini's one and two-key shortcuts . I've listed them below and there's also an incomplete list of them in the Help Menu.
1 – Context Menu
2 – Scroll Up
4 – Scroll Left
5 – Zoom
6 – Scroll Right
8 – Scroll Down
# then 1 Enter URL
# then 2 - Search the Web
# then 3 - Find in Page
# then 4 - Start Page
# then 5 - Bookmarks
# then 6 - History
# then 8 - Settings
# then 9 - Saved Pages
# then # - Forward
* then 1-9 - Launch Speed Dial URLs 1-9
* then 0 - Reload Page
* then # - Toggle Landscape
* then * - Toggle Full Screen
* then Up - Open a new tab
* then Down - Close current tab
* then Right - Next tab
* then Left - Previous tab
As I mentioned, I found many of these tips on the web. Thanks especailly to Haavard , Gerry Moth and juliankreuz for finding and sharing their tips.
posted by Dennis Bournique
September 17, 2009 @ 11:12 am
7 View Comments
