I Fell from the Moon

Until now I haven't been able to browse the web properly on my Samsung Omnia HD. The built in web browser is slow and cumbersome, Opera Mini 4 or 5 beta will freeze or slow down after a while, and Opera Mini 3... Doesn't support even basic stuff from HTML.

So it was a huge surprise to see the beta version of Opera Mobile 10 be released for S60 phones. Opera Mobile 10 Beta, brings Opera's speed and standards support from Windows Mobile and UIQ to S60 phones, coupled with the new user interface innovations in Opera Mini 5 beta.

A welcome feature from the desktop version of Opera is the new opera:config editor. There's a variety of settings available, but the most welcome for Omnia HD users might be the minimum font size setting. The default minimum font size in Opera Mobile 10 Beta is 11, which is common on phones with smaller displays without touch. But on the Omnia HD's 640x360 screen, it's hard to read and links are even harder to hit with your thumbs. Setting the font size to 15 will make text more readable and links easier to touch. Here's how:

• Go to opera:config in the address bar
  
• Type in font in the search field
  
• Scroll to the bottom and look for "Minimum Font Size"
  
• Type in 15 in the text field
  
• Click "Save"
  
• Restart Opera Mobile
  

Once you start Opera Mobile again you'll notice that Opera Mobile has become a bit more Omnia HD friendly. Enjoy!

On the 1st of November 2006, Opera released the beta version of Opera Mini 3.0. I love testing new products and I downloaded the new version pretty soon. Opera Software never ceases to impress their users. And like every single release, it had exciting new features. Still they manage to keep the download size small. It's still less than 100 Kb. So now you might be wondering what these new features are.

Features

Finally Opera Mini 3.0 includes safe browsing. Opera Mini has always warned the user that their data isn't safe on https websites. This is because the data sent between Opera Mini and Opera's server isn't encrypted. But in this release your data is safer.

One of the new features is newsfeeds. If the site contains a newsfeed Opera Mini detects it and show a notification in the top of the screen. When you click it, you'll see a preview of the newsfeed and you're given the option to subscribe. Later you can check the news by going to 'Feeds' on the start page.
I tested it with my Google Reader newsfeed but it didn't work. VG.no did however.

Another new feature is photo upload. Means you can take a photo with your phone camera and upload it. But no, you can't upload files from folders on your phone. You're restricted to taking the photo when running Opera Mini. You'll click a photo button on the website and Opera Mini accesses your phone camera. It'll take the photo when you press OK. Then you'll get to see your photo before you upload it. Press OK and Submit and Opera Mini upload the photo. This really isn't the optimal approach to upload. You take your best photos when you're not using Opera Mini.
I really don't know why they can't let the user access their phone folders. If I recall correctly, most phones allow Java programs to access their folders.
But you can't even be sure that your phone camera works with Opera Mini 3.0 Beta. On my Sony Ericsson K600i, Opera Mini accessed the video call camera on the front instead of the one on the back.
Opera Software can really do this better. But I suppose that's what they expect Opera Mini 3.0 to be used for. Uploading pictures of you on <insert social networking site here>.

There's more. Content folding. This makes browsing faster since you don't have to scroll that much before you'll see the text. The links are folded into a group you can expand. Although I've heard from a few websites that it doesn't always play nice on their websites. Although you can switch it off if you don't like it.

Conclusion

The purpose of the beta release is of course letting users find those bugs so Opera Software can squish them properly before the release. But most of the functionality is already there. So you'll be able to experience the features of Opera Mini 3.0 already today.

Opera Software's questions for you are...

Originally posted by Opera Software:

• Does photo upload work on your phone?
  
• Feed (RSS) compability with your favorite feeds.
  
• Does content folding work well on the sites you regularly visit?

My answers are...

• Photo upload works. But the camera on the front is used instead of the photo camera on the back on my Sony Ericsson K600i.
  
• The only newsfeed I want, my Google Reader feed, doesn't work.
  
• Content folding works properly on most sites. But the links in the top of My.Opera blogs doesn't fold properly. More websites have complained that Opera Mini don't fold their links as expected.
  

So go ahead. Try out the next generation already today. Find your own answers to Opera Software's questions about Opera Mini 3.0. Make your experience of the final product as good as possible. Click the link and find out more and how to download your own copy of Opera Mini 3.0 beta.

Links
Limited Opera Mini™ 3.0 Beta - Opera Software's page for this beta

I recently made a post in the Opera Community forums where I provided some suggestions for improvement of the widgets in Opera 9. I'm using Opera 9 beta 2 at the moment. I suggest that those who're looking for new features upgrade to Opera 9 beta 2. You could also upgrade to the latest build but then you'll have the risk of more bugs and some unusable widgets.

Here's the post I made

Originally posted by drlaunch:

I installed the 8432 build of Opera but I downgraded to beta 2 since the build rendered a lot of my widgets unusable.
The features in Opera 9 beta 2 is almost the same as build 8432.

Now that I'm using beta 2 I've already seen some improvements. The pin function where the widgets fill up your taskbar is gone. When you right click on a widget now you'll get the options:
"Normal" makes the widget appear in the taskbar and act almost like a window. Your taskbar will get crammed if you choose this for a lot of widgets.
"Always on top" puts the widget in front of all other windows. Depending on how the author makes the widget you'll get much less screen space left with this option. However if the author makes a "collapse" function for the widget this might actually be a preferable choice.
"Always below" is probably the way you'll prefer most of your widgets. Then you'll find the widget on your desktop when you need it. But with this option you can't make the widget go in front of other windows when you click it.
You can reload the widget as well. That can be useful if there's an error in the widget or something.
If you don't want the widget on your desktop you can just right click and close it.

I have found a way to open all the widgets of my choice at once. When you save a session the widgets you have open will be saved with the session. So to open a lot of widgets at once all you have to do is to open a session with widgets.

The widgets are finally more useable. But in my opinion it's still not good enough. I still miss a lot.
I wish there was a way to let the author provide an icon for each widget in the taskbar. And the "always on top" and "always below" functions aren't good enough. The widgets need to act like windows. And they should appear in the OS window menu (alt-tab). The user should have the options to turn the taskbar button for the widget on or off and turn a tray icon on/off (the tray icon should be provided by the widget author, of course). The tray icon should bring the widget to front when you click it and display the menu for the widget when you right click. The widgets should also have an "always on top" checkbox. Please drop the always below nonsense.

The right-click menu for the widget should contain the following choices:

An "always on top" checkbox.
A "show in taskbar" checkbox.
A "show in tray" checkbox
"Reload"
The "Properties" dialog for the widget. (The same dialog as the one you get in the "Widgets" panel.)
And "close".

The widget author should also have access to the choices in the right-click menu so they can be added to the widget. The properties dialog for each widget also needs to contain these choices. The "Open" widget panel button should open the widgets you have highlighted instead of just one.

Since the panels in Opera are based on web technologies it should be easy to put them in widgets if the user chooses so. In fact I think the user should be allowed to easily add new resizable placeholder widgets for any web page. Each web page placeholder widget should act a normal widget and have normal entries in the widgets panel.

These were my ideas for the widgets. My ideas might not all be good but could you please at least consider them? Maybe you'll even get your own ideas for improvement of the widget function by reading this.

I'll use the chance to go a little off-topic. I haven't had the chance to test Opera 9 beta 2 for Linux with KDE. But the last time I checked with 8.5 I noticed that the tray icon was just some standard icon that even a normal user could put there. Since the tray in KDE is based on small program windows instead of icons you should be able to make a much much much better tray app in KDE. The only limit is your imagination.

I hope you'll consider some of my ideas. I also hope that my ideas provided you with a little bit of inspiration. I'm looking forward to the official release of Opera 9. Good luck! :-)

You'll find the complete forum thread at http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=141133