Technologizer » Web browsers

Opera Mini 5 Beta for Android

Harry McCracken — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:26:33 +0000

Opera has released a beta of its Opera Mini 5 browser for Google’s Android OS. Mini’s signature feature is the way it caches and compresses Web pages on the server side so they’re relatively snappy on a phone even via a sluggish wireless connection. As its name suggests, Mini started out as a pretty basic browser, but version 5 is full-featured for a phone browsser: It’s got tabs, a password manager, and Opera’s Speed Dial feature that provides one-click access to favorite sites.

In my brief time with Mini 5 so far on a Verizon Droid, it felt fast but not strikingly faster than the standard Android browser (an experience which PCMag.com’s Sean Ludwig also encountered). Formatting is never as faithful as in the stock browser, and some of the sites I visited with the beta looked just plain wonky. But on the plus side, Mini let me get into one Web site–the back-end part of WordPress.com I use to update Technologizer–which I haven’t been able to access with the bundled Android browser.

Worth a look if you’re a browser buff with an Android phone (and I’m glad that Android users have the option of choosing Mini–here’s hoping that iPhone owners get to choose, too).

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Opera 10.50 Beta Comes to the Mac

Harry McCracken — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:27:25 +0000

Opera has released a Mac version of Opera 10.50, whose Windows version impressed me when it came out a couple of weeks ago. Like that version, it uses Opera’s new JavaScript engine, which Opera says is eight times faster than its predecessor.

How does it perform? Well, Seth Weintraub of Computerworld and 9 to 5 Mac used the SunSpider test to put it through its paces, and found that it beat Safari and Chrome, the fastest OS X browsers in terms of JavaScript.

Zippy JavaScript performance doesn’t automatically translate into a browser that feels zippy. Judging from the time I’ve spent with Opera 10.50 today, though, it does indeed feel like an unusually fast browser in ways that earlier versions of Opera didn’t. (It also feels like a beta–it crashed on me while I was posting this articles–and so I’d suggest trying it as a complement to your main browser rather than a substitute.)

One of the things I like about the the Windows version is its Chromelike minimalist interface, which compresses all of Opera’s options into a single menu. Like Chrome, Opera isn’t so sleek on OS X–it’s got eight menus, plus the Apple menu and the Opera one. That’s at least in part because one of the most fundamental differences between the Windows and Mac interfaces is that OS X has a fixed menu bar at the top. If you start to remove menus from it, it doesn’t conserve space and leaves the bar looking a little naked.

Google Analytics tells me that 98.5 percent of Technologizer community members aren’t using Opera. On both OS X and Windows, I’m excited about 10.50’s potential to be the first version of Opera in a long while that tempts users of other browsers to switch allegiences.

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5Words: IE 6, Technology’s Freddy Krueger

Harry McCracken — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:30:49 +0000

Why IE 6 won’t die.

Microsoft’s Windows 7 challenge: developers.

Coming: Sony consumer 3D cameras.

5Words: The European Browser Ballot, Revealed

Harry McCracken — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:59:29 +0000

Here’s Europe’s Windows browser ballot.

Great phones you can’t buy.

Sprint WiMax phone: this summer.

Apple: no smutty iPhone apps?

School district denies spying, apologizes.

Grand unified theory of n00bs.

Sneak peek at Dell’s tablet.

Google’s shopping app for Android.

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Opera on iPhone: Here But Not Here

Harry McCracken — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:51:15 +0000

Engadget’s Thomas Ricker is in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress. He got a preview of Opera’s Opera Mini browser for the iPhone and was impressed by its speed. He was also confused by Opera’s unwillingness to let him share any images of it in action. And of course, there’s no guarantee that it’ll ever be available in Apple’s iPhone App Store. (Actually, the odds seem against it.)

Please, Apple, surprise us by promptly approving this app so we don’t need to waste any time or brain cells squawking about it…

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Firefox on Android: Coming Soonish?

Harry McCracken — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:22:06 +0000

The browser wars have been one of the best things that ever happened to computer users–but so far, they haven’t spilled over from the desktop onto phones. (Yes, there are multiple browsers available for many phone OSes, but there tends to be one 800-pound gorilla and a bunch of obscure alternatives.) So I’m glad to hear that Mozilla says it hopes to have Firefox up and running on Android by the end of the year…

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Decent Browser Coming to BlackBerries

Harry McCracken — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:05:53 +0000

More news from Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress: At a keynote by RIM’s Mike Lazaridis, he says that BlackBerries will get an all-new Web browser based on the same WebKit rendering engine used by the iPhone, Android phones, and Palm’s Web OS. It’s due later this year.

This demo shows both that the new browser looks like giant leap over RIM’s current, rudimentary one–and that the fact that most BlackBerries have small, non-touch screens still impacts the usability of browsing.

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Opera 10.5: Better and Chrome-ier

Harry McCracken — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 01:56:28 +0000

Norwegian browser company Opera has released a Windows beta of version 10.50–a follow up to 10.0, which shipped back in September. It’s definitely a beta–it’s not available at all for the Mac or Linux yet, and quirky enough that I couldn’t post this article using it–but it’s a promising one. And all the changes make Opera feel more like its much younger rival Google Chrome.

Opera’s makers are calling version 10.50 “the fastest browser on earth,” apparently based on the performance of its new JavaScript engine, which the company says is eight times faster than the old one. (The previous engine performed poorly compared to other browsers in the SunSpider benchmark test.) Judging browser speed based largely on JavaScript doesn’t make a lot of sense, but all of Opera’s competitors except Microsoft do it, too. (It may not be a complete coincidence that IE is the other browser besides Opera that lags in the SunSpider test.)

I’ve only used Opera 10.5 a little bit so far–and some of that has been via iffy EVDO (I’m at Macworld 2010 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center…which is one enormous basement.) So far, it feels snappy. WebMonkey seems to agree.

If you want still more speed, you can turn on the Turbo mode, which compresses graphics on the server side so they download more quickly. Opera recommends it only for use when you have low-quality bandwidth–such as in the basement of a big convention center, for instance–but it could come in handy in such circumstances.

Opera 10.50’s emphasis on zippy JavaScript is at least partially a response to Google Chome–and there are a few other new features that are also distinctly Chrome-esque. Versions of Opera prior to 10.0 had a busy, crowded interface that 10.0 went a long way towards cleaning up. And 10.50 introduces a much sleeker default look that opens up more room for the Web site you’re on by doing away with standard menus:

Okay, it hasn’t done away entirely with menus–it’s really collapsed everything onto one button in the upper left-hand corner. It’s reminiscent of Microsoft’s Office 2010 interface, except there’s no “Ribbon” to take up space. So far, I like it. (You can opt to go back to standard menus if you choose.)

Opera 10.50 also finally introduces a private browsing mode, much like Google’s Incongnito (and the similar features in IE, Firefox, and Safari):

And like Chrome and Firefox, Opera has rolled the functionality of its search bar into the address bar itself, so you can enter either URLs or search terms–which leaves me wondering why it’s also retained the now-redundant search bar.

Opera still has a bunch of unique features, including applike widgets, a neat tab view that shows thumbnails of pages, and the controversial-but-interesting built-in Unite Web server. In terms of market share, it’s the smallest of the major browser players by far: only about 1.35 percent of Technologizer visitors run it. But 10.50 looks like a strong upgrade–there’s more that I like in it than there was in 10.0, come to think of it. If you check it out, I’d love to know your thoughts.

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5Words: New Stuff for Mac Chrome

Harry McCracken — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:59:27 +0000

Mac Chrome: extensions, bookmark sync.

Windows 8: supposedly mindblowing.

Rumor: Google just bought Aardvark.

Bill Gates critiques the iPad.

Office for Mac gets Ribbon.

What’s TiVo announcing next month?

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Opera Mini on the iPhone? Good Luck (and I Mean That Sincerely)

Harry McCracken — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:30:59 +0000

Norwegian browser company Opera, which has been talking about an iPhone version since 2008, is no longer just talking. It says that it will demonstrate an iPhone edition of its Opera Mini phone browser next week at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona. And that’s all it’s said so far.

Opera seems to be following the increasingly common strategy of publicly announcing it’s working on something interesting for the iPhone in hopes of making of more difficult for Apple to reject the program once it’s submitted. But if Apple did approve an alternative browser such as Opera Mini, it would be startling–it presumably incorporates a JavaScript interpreter, and that interpreter presumably violates a clause in the iPhone developer agreement that prohibits apps from including interpreters of any sort.

I hope, however, that Opera does submit Opera Mini, and that Apple startles us all by accepting it. The single most disturbing thing about the restrictions that Apple puts on iPhone developers is their tendency to eliminate applications that compete with Apple’s own software–it’s bad for iPhone owners. And ultimately it might be bad for Apple, if it tends to leave the company more complacent than if Safari and other programs faced competition on the iPhone itself.

Does the world need Opera Mini for the iPhone? Maybe: Mini is a fine basic browser on other phones, and it compresses Web pages on the server side in order to deliver the fastest possible rendering on the phone. Which might make it particularly useful when the best speed you can get out of AT&T’s network is pokey EDGE. Whatever Mini is, it isn’t a boring, pointless knockoff of Safari…

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