Tag Archives | Opera

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…

Norwegian browser stalwart Opera released the first beta today of Unite, its technology which puts a Web server inside the browser, letting Opera run apps that serve content up to the Web as well as download it. (You need to run Opera to use Unite, but the information the apps deliver–such as access to your music and photos–can be gotten to with any desktop browser.)

Unite first showed up last June as an alpha that was accompanied by some of the most excessive hype ever attached to a product that didn’t hail from Cupertino–the company said it “would forever change the fundamental fabric of the Web.”  I understand that changing the fundamental fabric of anything takes more than a few months, but Unite got off to a rocky start, suffering issues related to both reliability and privacy.

The new version of Unite has tighter security (including features to prevent  Unite apps from getting indexed by search engines unless that’s what you want, and more rigorous password features). The initial group of apps–such as a music server, a photo-sharing tool, and a virtual refrigerator that friends can tack notes onto–have been joined by some additional ones from Opera and other companies, including an instant messenger and a Twitter client:

Opera has also ratcheted down the hoopla, at least a little: The new release is accompanied by a quote from CEO Jon von Tetzchner talking about “moving closer to our goal of reinventing the Web.”

I still think Unite is an interesting idea, but it’s not a fully-realized one, nor one whose advantages are immediately obvious. (Some of its downsides, on other hand, are easy to grasp–such as the fact that Unite apps only work as long as your PC is turned on and connected to the Internet).

There are only a few Unite apps so far, and none of them feels anything like a killer app. Most of them, in fact, might leave you saying “Explain to me again why this is better than using a traditional Web service that doesn’t run on my computer?” (For instance, the Twitter client is extremely rudimentary, as you can see from the image above.)

Anyhow, if nothing else, Unite serves as a good excuse to give Opera a try. It’s a really good browser overall, and at the moment, it’s my primary one–I’ve been having trouble with both Firefox and Opera under Snow Leopard, and so I’m living with Opera and seeing if it suits me better…

Opera 10, the newest version of the browser that’s arguably the most venerable one going, is now available in its final version. It’s very much the product I reviewed in beta version back in June. The most striking new feature is Turbo mode, which uses the same technology as the company’s Opera Mini phone browser to compress Web pages and thereby speed up browsing on dial-up and other sluggish connections. It’s noticeably zippier than standard mode, although its crunched-down images are pretty darn grainy. The tradeoff isn’t worth it if you’re completely gruntled with the speed of your Net connection, but I think I’ll keep it on hand for the next time I’m on an unbearably slow public Wi-Fi network.

Other major new stuff includes tweaks to Tabs (they can incorporate thumbnail previews) and Opera’s speed-dial screen, which provides one-click access to your favorite sites. As usual, one of the most notable things about Opera is its sheer volume of features–it incorporates an e-mail app and a BitTorrent client, as well as its own widget engine. Oh, and the browser has a nicely minimalist new look that’s an improvement on its formerly busy-looking self.

This “final” version of Opera 10 isn’t complete: It lacks Unite, the interesting-but-controversial new feature that embeds a Web server in the browser.  Unite’s still a separate Opera Labs feature; if it catches on with developers, it’ll be a bigger deal than any of Opera 10’s other new features.

I’ve been using and enjoying Opera 10 over the past few hours; the OS X version is running smoothly on Snow Leopard, but the browser’s also available for Windows and Linux. (I’ve encountered one odd, minor bump: When I try to edit a Google Docs document, I get a view-only version–but it includes a link to a fully-editable one.)

As much as I’m enjoying the current Browser Wars 2.0, I think that switching browsers is an act best done by folks who are basically dissatisfied with the browser they’ve currently got. Every browser is capable of handling typical browsing tasks, and they all do them in basically similar fashion. But if you’re in the mood to try something new, give Opera 10 a whirl–especially if you’re still on dial-up. (According to Google Analytics, only slightly under two percent of you are currently running Opera, which leaves an awful lot of you who might like it if you tried it.)