Opera Mini 6 now available for iPhone and iPad

[hugh]

The Opera Mini 6 browser for iOS is now available to download for free from the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad.

Promo Video

[Hilman]

Seems nice and quick but really needs a bookmarks bar to easily navigate to your favorite web pages.

[stampeder]

I still use Firefox and Chrome on Mac and Linux machines as some cases might require, but for mobile devices I go with Opera Mobile all the way.

Originally Posted by Hilman

really needs a bookmarks bar

To me the Opera Mobile bookmarks are not a hard thing to find after short period of use - you just tap on the big red "O" and there they are under a heart-shaped logo. Now it is second nature. The "tabs" interface is likewise different than on a toolbar, but it also is easy to figure out. The philosophy is to keep smaller screens from being cluttered by the browser itself, so it is nice when visiting a site to have the browser almost disappear.

I use the Opera Link service to keep the browsers on a Nokia N900 smartphone, an iPad, a MacBook, and several Linux boxes completely in sync.

[hugh]

Four posts removed about Android Browsers removed.

The topic of the thread is " Opera Mini 6 now available for iPhone and iPad"

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[Hilman]

The Opera iPad version is pretty weak. I shouldn't have to click 3 things to open a fav website, the bookmarks bar is a must have on a tablet browser. Also, even though the mobile settings is off, I still get some of my pages in the mobile view with no way of seeing the full site. This needs to be addressed with a user agent setting that can be set to desktop/FireFox/Windows, etc.

[cavu]

Does it handle flash?

[hugh]

Opera Mini nor any iOS device does flash.

Opera Mini's speed comes thanks to something called server side rendering. Simply speaking the way it works is when you request a web page in the Opera Mini application, the page is actually sent first to Opera servers where it is compressed and then sent on to your iOS device.

So Opera Mini would not handle Flash even on a Flash enabled device.

[NeilN]

It was a fair question as some iOS browsers convert Flash to HTML5 video on the fly. Opera Mini does not.

[cavu]

Originally Posted by hugh

[No] iOS device does flash.

The Skyfire browser does flash on my iPad but it costs $5.

[hugh]

No the Skyfire browser does not "do" Flash. You can't load a Flash site or Flash game onto the screen and have interactivity.

If I recall correctly, SKyFire converts Flash Video on their servers and then delivers it to the Skyfire App in HTML 5. The concept is the same as Opera Mini in that its doing some server side processing then delivering.

[stampeder]

Originally Posted by hugh

Opera Mini's speed comes thanks to something called server side rendering.

Opera Mini gives you the choice of whether or not to use the Opera Turbo service. For me the difference shows up best on slow mobile network connections so for iPad owners with 3G it is a good option, but for those with just WiFi it probably isn't necessary.



http://www.youtube.com/v/CZfFU7R75Wo

[Wayne]

Originally Posted by hugh

Opera Mini's speed comes thanks to something called server side rendering. Simply speaking the way it works is when you request a web page in the Opera Mini application, the page is actually sent first to Opera servers where it is compressed and then sent on to your iOS device.

Theoretically couldn't this allow you to view Flash on an iPad if the Opera servers could catch the Flash file and then reencode it to an Apple friendly format, just like AirVideo (and other iPad apps) can reencode pretty much any format to stream to your iDevice?

The issue would be that real-time reencoding of video uses lots of CPU and then lots of badwidth to stream.

[hugh]

Which as I noted in post #10 is what SkyFire does with Flash Video.

Again though, the ability to watch a converted Flash Video does not mean the Skyfire browser makes the iPad Flash capable.

[hugh]

For me the difference shows up best on slow mobile network connections so for iPad owners with 3G it is a good option, but for those with just WiFi it probably isn't necessary.

The major benefit of Opera Mini really is on 3G and slower networks. By compressing webpages upwards of 90%, it makes it a lot less likely that you will exceed your data cap.