The End User

The experience I got from my day with Dimension was one of hope. Now I've been given a tantalizing glimpse of the future of mobile web browsing. It's a future I've always believed in, always known would be with us one day.

Sure, there are a couple of wrinkles that need to be ironed out, but that's the reason for the beta. When the final version arrives this browser is guaranteed to shock and impress people as much as the original Opera Mini did, over a year ago. And that's the real achievement of Opera Mini 4.

Thanks go to the Opera Mini team for all the hard work they've put in. Also I'd like to thank the many wonderful members of the Opera community who kept me entertained while we all waited for the beta.

20th June - 8:30am
I love mobile technology. Years ago, I used to spend hundreds per year on getting new phones with the latest features. Nowadays I can't afford to do that and I tend to miss out on things.

Fortunately all it takes is a little common sense to stay ahead of the game.

A friend with a phone on the UK network 3 starts boasting to me about everything they can do with that network. He hasn't quite realised that all 3g phones can do those things, not just those on that network.

You should have seen the look on his face when I whipped out my phone, and showed him the web via Dimension. And you should have seen the smile when I told him he might be able to use it too. Don't worry, I passed the address on. I'm not petty enough to withold it just because he doesn't know phones as well as I do.

Speaking of common sense, it probably would've been a good idea to upload those comic photos I promised yesterday before I deleted them, wouldn't it. Especially as I spent so long taking them.

As a consolation, I've uploaded a dozen or so extra photos into the album that I haven't used in this blog.

20th June - 7:40am
Back again. Don't know if you've noticed, but I finally caught up with myself on this page.

Looks like quite a few people are having problems with the beta. The main "problem" people are having is that it doesn't have the full functionality of Opera Mini 3.1. Sometimes I'd swear I'm the only one who reads the press releases. It hasn't got all the features of Opera Mini 3.1 because it isn't an evolution of 3.1.

When Opera Mini 2 was finished the team split and started work on two projects. One was Opera Mini 3 and the other was Dimension. Opera Mini 3 continued the basic browser and added new functionality. Dimension, on the other hand, is a whole new browser started from scratch.

By the time the full version is available, I'm sure that both projects will have been mixed together to create the ultimate mobile browsing experience. Personally I can't wait.

20th June - 6:50am
I've got two hours worth of extra testing left to do before my Day With Opera Mini 4 is over. I've visited so many sites, seen so many things that people thought would never be possible on a mobile phone. It's kind of ironic that the only site I've had problems with so far is Opera's own community site, and that seems to only be a problem for me as far as I can tell.

My favourite feature so far? That's gotta be the new navigation system. Keys 2, 4, 6 and 8 move the page up, left, right and down respectively. Key 5 is used to zoom in and out. And key 1 brings up the context menu, which contains some of the more useful options like the ability to load the next page without any images. Combined with the mouse pointer on the screen it really does feel like full web browsing.

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