Submitted by The release focuses on bug fixes, better connectivity and support for additional devices. Changelog is here. You can dowload the client here. Please note that the server-side was upgraded too and has introduced a small rendering bug with the mobile OSNews menu; hopefully it will be resolved soon.
Opera Mini 3.1 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
When I used Opera a few years ago it had an ad banner at the top and the all of the toolbar options took up so much real estate that there was barely room to see the web site I was on.
I was a little disappointed with the IE7 and FF2 upgrades, am I am not sure what motivated me, but I decided to give Opera a second chance.
I have to say that so far the results seem pretty good. Competition from Firefox seems to have motivated the Opera team to de-crapify the UI, and the features and speed are easily as good or better than FF.
Neither FF or IE seem able to pass the Web Standards Acid 2 test, but Opera renders it perfectly.
The Opera people have actually done a pretty good job.
I did use Opera for sometime for my “mails and research window”… All the other browsing was done by Firefox, which I like a lot, but have all kinds of problems constantly… but now, I’m just using Opera for almost anything… My computer is a lot happier (other programs doesn’t suffer from “interference”) and so I’m.
The biggest advantage of Opera over Firefox, IMHO, is the biggest UI sin… lack of responsiveness. When you hit ctrl+t and start tipping just to discovery over a second latter that the program just ‘eated’ most of the characters you typed… almost all the time… well, it gets boring. Also, When you click a tab to switch and it take 5-6 seconds to the program respond again… there’s serious problems there. I was patience with Firefox for over 2 years, but since Opera 9.0, there’s no way to ignore these long standing problems. Since them I’m happily using only Opera… There are some small flaws here and there, but these ones I have hope someone will fix… =]
I didn’t use the mobile (mini) version yet. I don’t have the habit of using cellphone for browsing (not so good experience and too [much] expensive)… If I don’t really need to I won’t use until the situation chances… but from my experience with Opera over the years, I would like to try Opera’s mobile browsers (mini and the real Opera browser software).
I agree with you that the opera interface is much better now than it was (even though you could modify it before to match the current interface). Now i only remove the ‘new tab’ button as i always middle-click or press ctrl-t anyways.
Browser: Opera/8.01 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/3.1.7139/1630; en; U; ssr)
I must say I absolutely adore Opera Mini…
My Blackberry Pearl simply was not complete until I stumbled onto this gem. The Blackberry browser seemed to take FOREVER with most pages, and choked on several I frequent.
After installing Opera (needed a quick workaround in the network settings for it to work – this was supposedly fixed in this release), I use my phone to surf and read news almost as frequently as my desktop. I’ve yet to encounter a page it can’t render – and I’m shocked at how well it handles full pages on a small screen…
Now to go continue my Pearl Evangelism…
Well i use opera every day for most of my browsing , it’s just too good. Hope they could do well on desktop too.
——
http://linuxondesktop.blogspot.com
Darn, still no support for my phone. I swear the day someone makes a browser for the BREW platform I’ll be the happiest pig in the pit. I’d love to try opera mini or minimo on my phone over that forsaken openwave. For the love of all things please make the opera browser to run on BREW.
Does Opera mobile have support for userjs scripts? (e.g. Greasemonkey). This is a deal maker/breaker for me.
Keep in mind that mini and mobile are different.
I believe Mobile is more for Smart Phones (Windows/Treo) wheras Mini is more for cell phones.
Afaik
Next time, do a Google search first. Opera supports User JavaScript and also supplies several special functions which exceed Greasemonkey’s capabilities.
http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/userjs/
http://userjs.org/
[Edit] Ah, shucks. Should have read your message better, sorry; you were asking about Opera Mobile. No, as far as I know, only Opera desktop versions support User JavaScript. Also understand that Opera Mini and Opera Mobile are two very different things!
Edited 2007-02-22 23:30
Opera Desktop and Opera Mobile SUPPORT javascript. It’s Opera Mini that doesn’t. These are THREE different apps.
I have been using opera Mini 3 in the past on my BB8700 for Google news reading and msn messengeras it renders the pages better than the BB browser.
but I have just found out that even though 3.1 feels quicker and renders pages even better, they ve replaced google by Yahoo search.
2 questions:
1/ Why???
2/ how to change it back to Google?
Cheers
I don’t like it either. I don’t trust Yahoo not to give away records like I do Google. I think they switched to them because they get money from the search and bookmark links they bundle with it, and they got a better deal with yahoo. you can’t change it.
Browser: Opera/8.01 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/3.1.7139/1630; en; U; ssr)