this is a repost from hilton tiam lee aka monkeyking of www.mapalad.org (palm users of the philippines) ...

here's the reference site...
http://home.mapalad.org/viewthread.php?tid=15809

Opera mini 4.1 beta review



When Opera mini 4.1 first came out, I immediately downloaded it and tried it, it worked pretty well for about 2 days before things turned ugly, I experienced hangs, resets and white screens of death. I reluctantly removed it and went back to Blazer and Netfront. But somehow, I missed the speed and the way Opera renders webpages, so I decided to give it another shot. After a few days of tweaking and trawling the various Palm forums, I finally got it to function reliably. Netfront has now been removed from my TX and Blazer is now in my hidden unused category of zlauncher. :D

The good:

1. Fast! Nuff said!

2. Web page rendering is pretty nice, very easy to read and navigate through complicated websites not made for mobile devices.

3. Unlike Blazer, tapping on "back" immediately brings you back to the last page.

4. Can open image intensive websites ones like multiply.

5. Can playback mobile youtube links with SOUND provided you have kinoma installed. Blazer can also do this but you will encounter the "unsupported AMR codec" error, vids play back without sound.

The Bad:

1. Needs a lot of installation space, because it needs IBM java to run.

2. Java is flaky and poorly implemented on Palm and will cause resets from time to time, although after a few tweaks, resets are a rare occurence, but it still happens.

3. No copy paste function on the TX, but there's a workaround. (more on this later.)

4. Poor one hand navigation, using the 4th hardbutton to navigate around will cause it to crash. (More on this later.)

Ok first things first, to install Opera mini, you'll need the latest version of IBM java which is 5.72, it isn't available from Palm's website anymore but a user on 1src has kindly uploaded a current version with all the things that you need.

Download Opera mini 4.1 beta here.
http://www.operamini.com/download/wap/


Download IBM java here. http://www.wegzumselbst.de/dat/Java_572+hack_install.prc and http://www.wegzumselbst.de/dat/Java_572+hack_install.prc

Hotsync both files and tap on them to install them into your unit.

IBM java



To properly run Opera, your java settings have to be configured correctly, to do that, when changing the settings, your palm will sometimes reset spontanously, just keep at it till you have changed the settings, java is really flaky on palm. :)

1. Go to Prefs.

2. Scroll down till you find an entry called ibm java, tap on it.

3. Check "use double buffering" and "use high resoltuino coordinates".

4. On the "Set memory maximum" option, I found out that the available memory differs from device to device, becacuse not everybody has the same free ram available, setting it to the highest is not advisable as that will leave the device no more ram to play with. Setting it too low will result in very poor performance. As a rule, it should be higher than 1mb, but leave a bit of free ram for your device. My maximum allowed ram is 32mb, I set it to 8mb.

5. On the "Maximum Java thread stack size" I set it to the maximum allowed, which is 32kb for me.

6. Tap on Global preferences to see a drop down menu, select IBM java, then check "use global preferences".

7. Tap on it again then select Opera mini, also check "use global preferences".

That's all the configuration you need for IBM java.

Opera Mini

When you first launch Opera you will be greeted with a screen that asks for permission to use airtime to connect to the net, just tap on OK. This will be displayed whether you are using wifi or gprs.

When opening a site, it will open an overview screen, enabling you to see the whole page layout, much like the iphone's web browser, there is a square which you can move around, tapping on that are will zoom in the screen.

Ok I know it's blasphemous to compare Opera mini to Iphone's browser and you are correct!:D Because Opera mini while in overview mode cannot display any text, unlike the iphone which can! Opera just displays some lines to represent the text. Zooming in on a part of the screen however will display that part as you see it on your PC's browser, it's pretty cool looking but not really functional, as you have to scroll left and right just to read properly. (I have this full page view disabled.)

I pretty much prefer using the mobile view instead, because in my opinion, this is where opera shines, it renders webpages intelligently into a single column, everything is easy to read and navigate, unlike blazer which renders pages in a haphazard way when displaying pages in mobile view.

Opera is really a joy to browse mapalad with. The only other browser to beat opera when it comes to rendering mapalad is netfront, it's ability to retain the columns in a forum and fit it into a narrow 320 resolution screen is unbeatable. But Netfront can't display a lot of other sites properly and will often choke on image intensive sites , quickly displaying the "page too large" warning. So overall, I would say Opera is by far the best yet!

Here are my settings under Opera's tools/settings menu:

1. Check Load images.

2. Image quality = Low. (You could probably set it to medium if you have enough ram.)

3. Font size = Medium.

4. Check Mobile view. ( Disables full page viewing.)

5. Uncheck Visual effects. ( It just slows down the unit.)

6. Uncheck show overview. (Disables the iphone wannabe overview. :D )

7. Uncheck 24 hour clock. ( Depends on your preference.)

Crashes galore

Opera has support for the TX's hardbuttons, I'm not sure how they work on the Treo cause I haven't tried it on a Treo yet. The 5 way will allow you to navigate the page and links, up and down will go through the links, and left and right will scroll the page up and down.

The 1st button (home button) will launch the menu, the second (calendar button) will scroll the screen up, the third (Contacts button) will scroll the screen down.

The 4th (Blazer button) supposedly will allow you to go back to your previous page, or stop the currect site from loading. I say supposedly because it doesn't work! Not only that, this button is the most problematic and has caused me to almost give up on opera, it will cause your palm to crash like there is no tomorrow! Remember when I said that opera kept on resetting and crashing on me? It was because of this button! I even tried a hard reset and installed opera only, the problem still persisted! Since this is a beta, I hope they get it fixed in the final release, because as of now, there is no way to go back to the previous page without tapping on the screen, I just happen to be one of those persons who likes browsing on my palm using one hand, Blazer can do this without a hitch.

My advice? Use the stylus, use the other buttons, they work flawlessly, but stay away from that 4th button. If you do happen to push that button, and Opera starts to reset again and again, I just let it reset for a few cycles until it settles down. :D I now have that 4th button remapped again using audodo to function as a power button.

Tips and tricks

Tapping and holding on the screen for about 3 seconds will pop up a menu, where you can switch between mobile view and full page view on the fly.

Opera's default font, even when set to the smallest size which is medium is quite a bit large for my tastes, when browsing I want to see as much info as I can see without having to scroll around too much, so I use fontsmoother to assign a size 8 font to Opera, it makes my browsing experience that much better.

Going to yahoo's mobile email page caused an error, I had to use this address http://www.ph.m.yahoo.com) instead even though my account is in yahoo US and not in yahoo philippines.

Copy Paste

The biggest complaint is that Opera has no copy paste functionality. Actually it has, I just don't know why they made it so difficult. When entering a website address, tapping on the address bar will bring you to a memopad type of page where you can type in your address. If you have something copied into your clipboard, you can't seem to paste it because the menu has no paste command.

On a Treo, other users have found out that pressing the alt button will pop up the onscreen keyboard, once that keyboard is up, the copy paste command will magically appear on the menu. :)

But the TX has no "alt" key, so I had to resort to a 3rd party app, it's called Hi-launcher, it creates a windows-like start menu where you can put shortcuts in to quickly launch your apps. It also has an option to put a shortcut to the onscreen keyboard on the start menu.

So if I needed to paste something on Opera, I just copy the web address like normal, launch Opera, tap on the address bar, wait for the memopad type page to appear, hold and press the 1st hardbutton which is configured to pop up the hi-launcher start menu, tap on onscreen keyboard which will pop up the onscreen keyboard, from there just tapping on menu will bring up the paste command.

Quite a long runabout way of doing something as simple as pasting a web address, but at least it works.:D I really hope they fix this in the next version along with the 4th hardbutton issue.

All in all, the thing that led me to use opera as my main browser is the way it renders pages, because in the end, that's what really matters.