Posts Tagged ‘Opera’

Opera Mini 5.1 comes to Android

by David Gilson

July 14th, 2010 | Posted in Mobile | Comments3 Comments

The Norwegian Browser company, Opera, has announced the release of Opera Mini 5.1 for Android phones today.

Opera Mini provides a “lightning fast” browser experience by virtue of its proxy service. Servers over at Opera receive page requests from the Opera Mini browser, and download the page. By reflowing text and compressing images, this allows pages to be downloaded faster than a browser loading the original page. The disadvantage here is a lack of privacy, and indeed the proxy service will break some sites that require a login, and internet banking is a definite no-no for any proxy-based browser.

Opera Mini also provides functionality to synchronise bookmarks with other Opera Mini installations on other phones and with the desktop Opera browser. There are other handy features like “speed dial” which provide quick links to favourite sites. Opera Mini also supports full copy and paste for grabbing and using text from web pages.

Continue reading »

Opera wants to put Internet widgets on the TV too

by Steve O'Hear

September 8th, 2009 | Posted in Net TV | Comments3 Comments

Opera-TVOpera, the Norwegian company behind the desktop and mobile web browser of the same name, wants to be a major player in the nascent Internet-connected TV space.

Like Yahoo’s ‘Widget Channel’ or the boutique gadget maker Chumby’s own platform, Opera’s newly released Opera Devices SDK 10 is touting the ability for TV and set-top box manufacturers to add Internet widgets to their feature set, along with full web-browsing if required.

Continue reading »

Video: Could the Nintendo DSi become the second mainstream WiFi tablet?

by Steve O'Hear

February 24th, 2009 | Posted in Mobile | Comments1 Comment

Following Apple’s iPod touch, could Nintendo’s revamped handheld games console – the DSi – become the second “mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform”? That’s a claim that the company’s first attempt – the DS Lite – could have made if it wasn’t for the crippling speed of its otherwise innovative dual screen web browser.

On Nintendo’s original device, web pages simply render far too slowly, and as I noted at the time, the company didn’t even bother to offer the Opera web browser on-board the console itself. Instead, the software came stored on a separate memory card so that you have to keep swapping it out when you want to actually play a game, and then change cards again every time you want to browse the web. Both these issues, however, have been addressed in the updated DSi model, as the following video demonstrates…

Continue reading »

iPhone who? Opera Mini gets speedy update

by Steve O'Hear

May 13th, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | Comments1 Comment

Opera Mini keeps getting betterAs we’ve noted before, Apple isn’t the only company putting the full Web in your pocket. When Opera released version 4 of its Java-based Opera Mini browser last June, we suggested that features such as ‘desktop view’, tiled zooming, and the use of a proxy server to speed up browsing, meant that it went a long way to addressing any iPhone-envy.

With the release of version 4.1, Opera isn’t resting on its laurels. New features include the ability to search for text within a Web page, auto-complete of URLs as you type based on your bookmarks and browsing history, and — as long as your phone supports the higher spec JSR-75 version of Java — you can now upload files and save Web pages for offline browsing. The ability to handle uploads means that Opera Mini can, for example, be used to share photos with sites such as Flickr, Facebook or a personal blog, all within the browser. Additionally, Opera claims that improvements to its proxy servers means that Web page requests are now up to 50% faster, resulting in “desktop-like speeds”.

Check out the company’s own video tour of Opera Mini after the jump…

Continue reading »