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Simon Willison’s Weblog

Opera Mini 2.0

Just as I was getting thoroughly sick of the whole X-2.0 trend along comes a product I can really get excited about. Opera Mini 2.0 is a truly lovely piece of software. It’s a free web browser for your phone, accompanied by a free proxy:

When surfing with Opera Mini, Web pages are optimized and compressed before being sent to your phone. This means that even though your mobile provider may charge you for the data which is transferred to your phone, the amount of data transferred is significantly less than it would normally be, making mobile surfing cheaper.

Most UK mobile data plans are pretty extortionate. I was quoted over £500 a month for an unlimited plan recently; compare that to Leonard Lin who pays $15 a month in the US. Having a compressing proxy is essential.

In stark contrast to the desktop edition the user interface is beautifully simple, relying mostly on the joypad to navigate with a full-screen editor for entering URLs and filling in forms. Opera’s small screen rendering technology is used to linearise the page content while keeping background colours and images intact.

The one feature I’d love to see added is a “reload page with images” menu option. I generally browse with images turned off, and viewing a page with its images requires me to navigate to the settings screen, toggle images on, reload the page and then remember to turn images back off again afterwards.

Opera Mini doesn’t appear to support JavaScript, but despite that nearly all the sites I’ve visited have been perfectly usable. Even Gmail works, thanks to an automatic fallback to their plain-old-HTML interface. With any luck it will become part of the accepted accessibility benchmark—I know I’ll be testing sites with it in the future.

Posted 11th May 2006 at 10:12 pm

This is Opera Mini 2.0 by Simon Willison, posted on 11th May 2006.

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23 comments

  1. I just used Opera Mini 2.0 for the first time yesterday on a BlackBerry 7250. I am also quite impressed. I have an unlimited data plan supplied by employer, so data costs aren't an issue, but I'm sure that the compression helps with the speed of the service. Also worth noting, since Opera 7 on the desktop, you can select View -> Small Screen to test what your sites will look like in Opera Mini.

    Brian Sweeting - 11th May 2006 22:47 - #

  2. Openwave has had compressing proxy technology since the HDML browser. I used it for a pager language I developed called SAL when I was working with two way pager manufacturers around ten years ago. It's a good way to go, just not new.

    Tanny O'Haley - 12th May 2006 04:55 - #

  3. Just tried Opera Mini and it's damn good I have to say. On the JavaScript point it seems to support some. I just looked at the Vivabit blog and the javascript code highlighting is working which is quite impressive.

    Dan Webb - 12th May 2006 08:36 - #

  4. "In stark contrast to the desktop edition the user interface is beautifully simple"

    What's so complicated about the UI in the desktop version? It has one more button than Firefox, while Firefox has one more top level menu than Opera.

    Have you tried Opera 8.5?

    Usah - 12th May 2006 09:57 - #

  5. Usah: you're absolutely right, the desktop UI has improved dramatically over the past few releases. I guess that was a cheap shot.

    Simon Willison - 12th May 2006 13:18 - #

  6. Does it pass the Acid Test?

    Chris Hester - 12th May 2006 13:30 - #

  7. Have a look at Virgin for gprs. I use virgin and they recently sent me an email saying that gprs costs a max fee of 35p a day. If used every day that works out at £10.85/month for unlimited access. I also use Virgin for (mac/bluetooth/gprs) which works quite well. Will

    Will Macdonald - 12th May 2006 15:59 - #

  8. Chris Hester: Haven't tried in Opera mini 2, but Opera mini (sur)passed Acid2 :)

    Mathieu 'P01' HENRI - 13th May 2006 18:01 - #

  9. Simon, check out this page with Opera Mini 2.0:

    http://ilyabirman.ru/misc/bgjs/

    The "Click here" link does the following:

    onclick="document.getElementsByTagName ('body')[0].style.background='#f00'; return false;"

    Notice that it actually does work, but after some "Processing...", so it looks like Opera Mini processes JavaScript on server.

    P.S. For what reason on Earth "New lines are not converted to breaks"?

    Ilya Birman - 15th May 2006 13:35 - #

  10. I downloaded and tested Opera Mini on my Palm TX, and it worked like a charm. Takes up more screen real estate than the built-in Blazer browser, but tolerable. Opera Mini 2.0 crashes my Palm every time I run it. Hopefully Opera Mini 2.1/3.0 will be better.

    Ryan Parman - 15th May 2006 22:00 - #

  11. A word of warning, Opera Mini doesn't support file uploads. If that was the case you could upload your taken camera phone pictures through a website instead of some obscure email or MMS.

    Peter Bengtsson - 16th May 2006 01:11 - #

  12. Currently the T-mobile packages while stunted are looking mildly shiny. Their 2 options are 1. Phone with web'n'walk (7.50 last time I checked), trouble is one thing you are not allowed to do is use it as a modem for your computer (although with a non windows phone I imagine you wouldn't need to exactly tell them (the ammount of hastle I've had trying to use my spv from orange as a modem on my mac is ridiculous). 2. Data card (20/month), trouble is one thing you are not allowed to do is IMing, which I find intollerable since its part of the main reason I use the internet. (also they stop you using voip as well but thats more understandable). I'm not sure about how the software they use works with macs, but I know that the vodaphone card works (as well as it can) on macs and I imagine its a similar piece of hardware. Both have limits of 1-2gig fair usage stuff.... but its not a bad ammount of data. (also last time I was looking they are giving away a voucher for 12 months of hotspot usage with the package). I'm very tempted to sign up with them, except for the im restriction. If they are going to drop it then they have might have a customer, until then I plan to protest by not signing up. (Also I have yet to run out of my orange contract) Anyway end of chaotic ramblings

    Tom Hentsch - 16th May 2006 12:49 - #

  13. I have the same crash problems with my Opera Mini 2.0 at my Palm. After upgrade to Opera Mini 2.1 it seems to be better.

    Nina Krause - 16th May 2006 23:21 - #

  14. How good is Opera Mini at dealing with Web 2.0 and Ajax enabled sites? If it is anyway decent , it could see Javascript replacing java as the programming medium of choice on the mobile.

    Paul Browne - Technology in Plain English - 25th May 2006 14:59 - #

  15. One thing to note about JavaScript on the Opera-mini browser. You must have had a different config. Perhaps it's not on by default, but it does support JavaScript. What Gmail problably did was just sniffed your OS and didn't recognize it so they gave you the fallback version. However a simple test on the YUI Drag and Drop, you indeed can whip out your stylus and move the little boxes around in the examples :) It's awesome!

    Dustin Diaz - 27th May 2006 05:24 - #

  16. I am looking at this on opera mini over telecom new zealand at a large rate of us 5 cents per kb. Compression is great and it seems to work well. We dont have any flat rate or bulk wap plans here though. Would be good to have a save image or save target file as like internet explorer so i can download tones and images. I dont know the xml code command to invoke a download and save file.

    Ray taylor - 27th May 2006 11:24 - #

  17. I love Opera mini!

    I had problems with the old version on my Nokia 6060 so I was really glad when they released Opera mini 2.0! I just downloaded the new version and Opera worked again.

    Sadly it caused me to loose all my bookmarks, but I survived. :P

    Daniel Aleksandersen - 8th June 2006 14:10 - #

  18. "Openwave has had compressing proxy technology since the HDML browser."

    I am not an expert on Openwave, so please exuse me if I am wrong. But I think that the difference is that Opera Mini actually renders the page on the server, then sends the rendering information to Opera Mini. Openwave actually renders the page on the device, using the compressed source (or WML converted source?) sent by the proxy. Meaning that Openwave needs more phone power.

    "How good is Opera Mini at dealing with Web 2.0 and Ajax enabled sites?"
    "it looks like Opera Mini processes JavaScript on server."

    Exactly right. The Opera Mini server runs the scripts, and passes the resulting page to the phone client. To run scripts after the page has loaded, the user has to do something like clicking a link or using a form input. If the page uses JavaScript events like these, then the client passes the event back to the server, and the server processes the script.

    What this means is that scripts that rely on links or forms (etc) to activate them usually work just fine, but AJAX (which requires ongoing script processing) will not work. DHTML is of course limited (due to the lack of CSS positioning and related styling), but the DOM engine itself is as capable as the underlying Opera engine. Even things like stylesheet switchers can work. If you want AJAX, you will need Opera Mobile.

    "Does it pass the Acid Test?"

    Opera mini uses Small Screen Rendering to reformat the page. After all, it has to work on screens as small as 100px wide. The Acid 2 test is not designed to work on small screens (you need VGA to see it properly). Even if it was, the Small Screen Rendering would reformat it. So no, it cannot pass the Acid 2 test, even though the underlying engine may or may not be capable of passing.

    TarquinWJ - 10th June 2006 14:20 - #

  19. I can't believe the data plan situation in the UK. Seems like J2ME apps that are used for communicating small bits of data (not browsers) should be using SMS for transport in the UK. Conversely messaging apps in the US should use data rather than SMS. With data rates so high in the UK, how are you suppossed to watch your slingbox from the phone?

    Edward Ho - 15th June 2006 00:12 - #

  20. "Takes up more screen real estate than the built-in Blazer browser"

    Press asterisk (*) on your phone, that will switch between different interface modes, including fullscreen.

    - y

    yitzhq - 21st June 2006 18:12 - #

  21. I can't download anything , it says if you download it can exit from browser so exits and normal phone browser come to screen, -I used in D600- how can I download pics,tones etc. in mini browser

    RaMu - 18th September 2006 10:33 - #

  22. opera mini shows wap up4the waste of time it is.The largest inhibiting factor of using the opera mini browser is my data costs on mobiles-its like the networks dont want us to use data services so price them as such.This is the future,wap dead. I only got a gprs fone so things a bit slow but ive seen it workin on mates 3g fone its quick. Lookin fwd to being able to steam radio-shud be possible!

    Alastair dunn - 1st October 2006 07:47 - #

  23. sdfdghhhgffdh

    rade - 10th November 2006 11:52 - #

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