{"id":5145,"date":"2009-09-16T13:56:19","date_gmt":"2009-09-16T20:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wapreview.com\/?p=5145"},"modified":"2009-09-16T13:56:19","modified_gmt":"2009-09-16T20:56:19","slug":"opera-mini-5-beta-first-impressions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/5145\/","title":{"rendered":"Opera Mini 5 Beta &#8211; First Impressions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/images\/OM5Menu.jpg\" alt=\"Opera Mini Menus\" width=\"483\" height=\"322\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Early this morning Opera Software released the long awaited\u00a0 first Beta of Opera Mini 5.\u00a0 You can get it by pointing your phone&#8217;s built in browser at <a title=\"mobile site\" href=\"http:\/\/mini.opera.com\/next\">mini.opera.com\/next<\/a>.\u00a0 Or download the .jad and .jar fles or the Blackberry .alx and .cod to your PC for side loading from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.opera.com\/mini\/next\/download\/\">opera.com\/mini\/next\/download\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Opera Mini 5 is bigger at 221 KB than its 125 KB predecessor and uses more phone resources.\u00a0 Given the new features this is to be expected but it also means that some older or lower end phones that can run Opera Mini 4.2 will not be able to use Opera Mini 5. In particular, Palm OS devices and BlackBerries running OS 4.1 are no longer supported.\u00a0 There is also no Android version of Opera Mini 5 yet although one is promised. Opera Mini 5 is optimized for\u00a0 screen sizes of 240&#215;320 and larger.\u00a0 It will work on smaller screens but some menu options will be off screen and unreachable. You should be able to work around this using Opera Mini&#8217;s keyboard shortcuts.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/images\/OM5MenuHidden.jpg\" alt=\"Opera Mini 5 Menus Hidden\" width=\"483\" height=\"322\" \/><\/p>\n<p>New features in this release are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Completely Redesigned GUI With Enhanced Touchscreen Support<\/strong> &#8211; Previous versions of Opera Mini are not very touch friendly with tiny, hard to click menu options and\u00a0 issues with scrolling and getting touches to register. Opera Mini 5 was designed to be touch aware.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The GUI on touch screen phones is completely different than what non-touch devices get. It has a  bottom menu (image top right)that can be hidden and replaced with a couple of transparent buttons (image above right). There is also a  URL bar fixed to the the  top of the screen that can&#8217;t be hidden although it disappears when you scroll down..<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Non-touch phones have their menu and URL bars at the top.\u00a0 Both are hidden by default when a page is loaded (image above left). A press on the left soft key brings up the menu together with the URL bar (image top left).\u00a0 Pressing\u00a0 the # + 1 shortcut brings up the URL bar by itself.\u00a0 Both\u00a0 can be hidden with a press on the right soft key<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Opera Mini Tab Switcher \" src=\"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/images\/OMTabs.jpg\" alt=\"Opera Mini Tab Switcher \" width=\"483\" height=\"322\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">There are many other differences between the touch and non-touch variants as well. The images on this page show Opera Mini 5 running on the non-touch Mokia N95-3 on the left and the touch screen Microemulator on the right.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tabbed Browsing &#8211; This is something users have been requesting for years.\u00a0 It works very well. Opening tabs and switching (image above) between them is instantaneous. The number of tabs appears to be limited only by available memory. I had eight tabs open on my N95-3 with no noticeable performance degradation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Password Manager &#8211; When you log into a password protected site you are prompted if you want Opera Mini to save the user name and password.\u00a0 If you say yes, Opera will pre-populate those fields for you on subsequent visits. The saved passwords are stored on the device. A password manager should be especially useful with\u00a0 Opera Mini which\u00a0 has traditionally had serious issues with its cloud based cookie retention.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Opera Mini 5 Inline Editing \" src=\"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/images\/OM5Editing.JPG\" alt=\"Opera Mini 5 Inline Editing \" width=\"483\" height=\"322\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In-line Text Input &#8211; This optional feature lets you type directly into text fields or the URL bar instead of having to first click on a field to bring up the phone&#8217;s native editor and then having to click a couple more times to get back to the form.\u00a0 It works well on QWERTY devices and on touch screen ones where Opera pops up it&#8217;s own onscreen keyboard (image above right).\u00a0 On phones with just a numeric keypad, in line editing is more trouble than it&#8217;s worth as only triple tap is supported (image above left).\u00a0 Unlike with the limited in-line editing of URLs that is in Opera Mini 4.2 there is no way to toggle between in-line and native input while you are editing.\u00a0 The toggle is buried in a sub menu that takes 15 clicks to get to and come back!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Copy and Paste &#8211; Copy, cut and paste is now supported between all fields in web pages and in the Opera Mini GUI itself.\u00a0 It&#8217;s really easy to do things like copying a URL from a bookmark and pasting it into a forum post.\u00a0 It&#8217;s also possible to select and copy text directly from web pages.\u00a0 The one thing you can&#8217;t do is directly copy text from a web\u00a0 page to the phone&#8217;s system clipboard.\u00a0 This would be useful for copying text snippets into a text message or local document editor.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Opera Mini 5 Settings Screen \" src=\"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/images\/OM5Settings.jpg\" alt=\"Opera Mini 5 Settings Screen \" width=\"483\" height=\"322\" \/><\/p>\n<p>When trying Opera Mini 5 for the first time bear in mind that this is a first Beta of a completely redesigned browser. There are missing features and functionality. All the menus and many of the shortcuts have changed.\u00a0 Take some time to figure out how it works. If you find a bug be sure to report it using the Opera Mini <a href=\"http:\/\/mini.bugs.opera.com\/\">bug tracking wizard<\/a> and\/or the <a href=\"http:\/\/my.opera.com\/community\/forums\/topic.dml?id=291991\">&#8220;BETA: Report bugs&#8221; thread<\/a> at the My Opera Opera Mini Forum.<\/p>\n<p>This is a significant release and I plan to post more about Opera Mini 5 once I have explored it thoroughly. For now here&#8217;s a quick list of my major likes and dislikes after exploring\u00a0 the new release for about an hour.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Dislikes:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Documentation is virtually nonexistent at this point.\u00a0 All I&#8217;ve been able to find is a list of shortcuts (with at least one error) under &#8220;Help&#8221; in the menu. There is a user generated <a href=\"http:\/\/my.opera.com\/community\/forums\/topic.dml?id=292006\">&#8220;Opera Mini 5 Beta My Personal Tips&#8221; sticky thread at My Opera<\/a> with lots of good information.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>There are many missing features from 4.2 that will hopefully be restored at some point in the Beta process.\u00a0 Notable omissions that Opera acknowledges and says will be included eventually are\u00a0 <em>Opera Link<\/em> bookmark synchronization, the built in RSS feed reader and direct file downloads. Other missing features are\u00a0 the ability to edit bookmark titles and the &#8220;1&#8221; key context menu items for page and link information and toggling mobile view.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Likes<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Provided your phone is supported, I think that Opera Mini 5 is a major improvement. On my Nokia N95-3 it is fast and seems stable.\u00a0 I have had no crashes or unexpected errors during my testing.\u00a0 Page loading speed and User Interface snappiness as equal to that of Opera Mini 4.2 which is the<a href=\"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/4803\"> fastest of all mobile browsers<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;m particularly excited about the <strong>tabs, copy\/paste<\/strong> and the <strong>password manager<\/strong>.\u00a0 These are features that were really needed and will really enhance usability and my ability to get things done online with my phone<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I recommend the Opera Mini 5 Beta, give it a try.\u00a0 It installs alongside  4.2 and 3.1 rather than overwriting them so you have nothing to lose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Early this morning Opera Software released the long awaited\u00a0 first Beta of Opera Mini 5.\u00a0 You can get it by pointing your phone&#8217;s built in browser at mini.opera.com\/next.\u00a0 Or download the .jad and .jar fles or the Blackberry .alx and .cod to your PC for side loading from opera.com\/mini\/next\/download\/ Opera Mini 5 is bigger at 221 KB than its 125 KB predecessor and uses more phone resources.\u00a0 Given the new features this is to be expected but it also means &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/5145\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[59],"tags":[145,571],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5145"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5145"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5151,"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5145\/revisions\/5151"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}