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Have you tried Opera? It's also cross platform. From http://www.opera.com/browser/download/?custom=yes It supports:
Windows
Mac OS X
Linux x86 64
Linux PowerPC
Linux i386
FreeBSD i386
FreeBSD AMD64
Solaris Sparc
Solaris Intel
QNX
OS/2
BeOS

(...)
It's just the whole experience is incredibly well done.

Yes, I've used it and I agree. I was trying to get across that Opera Mini is

• free for the phone you already have,
• cheaper to use,
• quicker at loading pages,
• also quite well done given the contraints of cheaper phones

and therefore doesn't suck. Check out the demo.

Anyway, some of my friends have iPhones, which I've tried. I agree that it's very nice, but it's far from perfect and has both advantages and disadvantages compared to other phones and browsers. It's certainly not the revolution in mobile web browsing Apple make it out to be.

The reason I bought it was that it had one feature that actually worked, unlike other phones -- a web browser that didn't suck. I had been waiting for that for a LONG time.

That depends on your criteria for a non-sucky browser, I guess. Other phones (that support J2ME) have Opera Mini, which was released in a much-improved version 4 shortly after the iPhone was announced.

With Opera Mini the pages are compressed on Opera's servers before they're tranferred to the phone, which makes things a lot faster than on the iPhone. It's also much, much cheaper to use if you don't want to pay for unlimited data transfer. Safari is nicer to use, of course, but it's not unequivocally better.

Linux only attracts freeloaders and cheapskates who don't want to pay for other peoples effort. The whole "Freedom" thing is a a huge scam. The aim of all FOSS nuts (including your god stallman) is to drive developers out of business by making all software a commodity and essentially free. Whats that? Pay for maintenance? Isnt OSS software supposed to be bug free? Many Eyes and all that hand waving is supposed to mean something , AMIRITE? Although I guess "employed in my moms basement" does count for something... Can I put it on my resume??

I think FOSS is good at whoring themselves out. MS throwing cash at apache, Mozilla whoring out their search bar and front page to google so they can monitor every firefox user's activity on google.com. Is that the new thing?

The bigger point is that Linux fags cant agree on anything.. The OSS world is fucking chaos. Which is why nobody wants to ship software for you cunts. (Other than the fact that most of you wont pay for shit and basically steal music and movies right now anyway) Just look at what poor opera has to do.. http://www.opera.com/browser/download/?os=linux-i386&ver=9.63&local=y

200 downloads just to ship software for Linux? LOL... Microsoft doesn't have to do anything. You morons still cant figure it out. Linux is a horrible platform to ship any commercial software on.

YEAR OF THE LINUX ! It started with a crash http://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/612/

HAHAHAHAHHAAHHA...

I love how this "topic" is a whipping boy for Linux zealots. Ubuntu alone has Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Xubuntu, and probably more that I don't even know about. If you want to see real madness though, go over to Opera's linux download page here.

It's amusingly ironic that the same folks who evangelize linux on the desktop are the same people who would claim that 6 versions of Windows is confusing to end users. Maybe if ya'll stopped worrying so much about what Microsoft did and actually started pointing out the flaws in your own platform, you'd make some progress.

Is a comparison between a relatively old beta build of IE 8 and the most recent nightly build of WebKit / Opera really fair?

1. Beta 1 got a 17/100. The RC1 released TODAY got a 20/100.

2. Opera/Safari nightlies did it in March. You can download a pre-release of the Opera version here and test it for yourself.

3. The ACID tests focus on features that are useful in the marketplace, but have not been fully implemented. In result, attaining ACID compliance is a GOOD thing.

4. IE8 is BROKEN. Any web developer will hit a wall with its standards support in minutes. It is an indefensible piece of garbage considering where the market is today.

No? What's that? Microsoft closed out the bugs as "works as intended?" Fail.

Something to credit Microsoft for

In case it's not clear, I have a firey hatred for IE8. Not so much the product itself, but what it represents. What it represents is a flagpole in the ground stating, "We're going to stand in the way of progress for our own selfish reasons".

While I can understand that Microsoft feels that the market is slipping from their grasp, I cannot support their methods of attempting to compete. Which is to say that they are using their power to prevent competition rather than building a superior product. As Joel pointed out in his excellent article on the Windows API being lost:

Which means, suddenly, Microsoft's [Windows] API doesn't matter so much. Web applications don't require Windows.

It's not that Microsoft didn't notice this was happening. Of course they did, and when the implications became clear, they slammed on the brakes. Promising new technologies like HTAs and DHTML were stopped in their tracks. The Internet Explorer team seems to have disappeared; they have been completely missing in action for several years. There's no way Microsoft is going to allow DHTML to get any better than it already is: it's just too dangerous to their core business, the rich client. The big meme at Microsoft these days is: "Microsoft is betting the company on the rich client." You'll see that somewhere in every slide presentation about Longhorn. Joe Beda, from the Avalon team, says that "Avalon, and Longhorn in general, is Microsoft's stake in the ground, saying that we believe power on your desktop, locally sitting there doing cool stuff, is here to stay. We're investing on the desktop, we think it's a good place to be, and we hope we're going to start a wave of excitement..."

If you truly want to understand what is wrong with this browser, take some time and go through these examples:

http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/wrongWithIE/

Those only scratch the surface of what is really wrong with IE and Microsoft's stance on improving their web browser. For further reference, RC1 of IE8 gets a 20/100 on ACID3. This compares poorly to FireFox3's 56-59/100, Webkit nightly's 100/100, and Opera dev version's 100/100(!).

Developers need to band together and stop hacking our sites for IE. Users who wish to use IE should either be directed toward download links for one of the many alternatives, or forced to deal with a degraded view of the site with a polite comment to upgrade. And by degraded, I mean "it works, but looks awful". If that right there doesn't sell users on getting an alternative browser, I don't know what will.

(Yes, I am aware that many businesses can't take the hit. But we have to start somewhere. And that somewhere can easily be everything from your personal site to your new venture that's betting on early adopters of advanced web technology. IE's market share is already plummeting. If we can get enough momentum, we can near-eliminate this unsightly browser from the web. Remember Netscape 4's inability to keep up? This is the exact same situation all over again, except this time the solution is not a total mono-culture.)

IE to be standards compliant by default

That was because Opera forced them to, not because they wanted to look like nice guys. They just didn't want more fines.

There's an evil or a forced hand in every one of those. Here's your reference for "Microsoft assist SAMBA team with interop" out of the back of the EU Antitrust ruling;

Samba Team Receives Microsoft Protocol Documentation

We were certainly pleased that there was an option for a flat-fee agreement which would give us access to the protocol documentation, but the terms of that agreement as they were posted in late October included a number of sections which made the agreement very hard for us to accept. After so many years, we wondered if the effort had been wasted, and we would not be able to get access to the protocol documentation that we wanted.

Then a remarkable thing happened. Responding to an article on Groklaw where the agreement was being discussed, the trustee Neil Barrett posted a suggestion that I get in touch with him. Neil directed me to Craig Shank, who heads up Microsoft's protocol licensing team. Neil thought that Craig would be the right person to talk to to try and fix some of the problematic parts of the agreement.

This in turn resulted in several weeks of intensive discussions, during which we found that Microsoft was indeed very willing to make modifications to the agreement to make it more suitable for use by the free software community. Microsoft was keen to ensure that it complied with the court ruling, Neil Barrett was happy to help facilitate those discussions, and of course we were more than willing to point out the parts of the agreement that were problematic for free software projects.

IE to be standards compliant by default

That was because Opera forced them to, not because they wanted to look like nice guys. They just didn't want more fines.

But aren't you missing the point, Opera wants Opera browsers to be the platform of web 2.0. They already claim inroads in the mobile and embedded hardware but they want the desktop market too.

But aren't you missing the point, Opera wants Opera browsers to be the platform of web 2.0. They already claim inroads in the mobile and embedded hardware but they want the desktop market too.

Surely this decision is about 10 years too late and such a change would no longer be relevant to the industry.

No, the antitrust complaint was just in time, forcing Microsoft to do the right thing with IE8. You really think Microsoft has stopped breaking the law? No. Remember ECMAScript 4 and the way Microsoft undermined it all the way?

But with the rise of Web 2.0 and hand helds like Blackberry and iPhone, Windows is no longer the dominant application platform

And yet the web is held back by Microsoft's illegal tactics. What do you think the web would have been with actual competition? With actual progress instead of Microsoft stalling all the way, including ECMAScript 4?

Opera [antitrust complaint] forced Microsoft to reconsider its position on standards in IE8

They want Opera installed on windows by default.

First, it requests the Commission to obligate Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop.

http://www.opera.com/press/releases/2007/12/13/

They're trying to force the EU to put their browser on windows by default..

Opera requests the Commission to implement two remedies to Microsoftâ(TM)s abusive actions. First, it requests the Commission to obligate Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop. Second, it asks the European Commission to require Microsoft to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities.

http://www.opera.com/press/releases/2007/12/13/

1. Ok, take a deep breath there friend, and do a Google for "Opera" and "December 13" and "lawsuit".
Although Opera's press release does not use the word "lawsuit," plenty of other third-partymedia do. It's a legal action, whether the Oxford dictionary would consider this a "lawsuit" seems like splitting hairs.

2. Opera only released their browser to be completely free (no ads or licensing fee) in September 2005. See their press release

3. Opera, like any other company, does things to make money, including initializing legal action. If Opera would truly "not make a dime" from this action, I'm sure their board would have never approved bringing this complaint.

Finally, I'm not sure where you get the idea that I approve of anything that Microsoft does or doesn't do. I simply glad I am not a stakeholder in Opera.

And yeah, I was trolling a bit, but at least I am somewhat better informed than you. Go have a coffee and relax a bit.

1. Ok, take a deep breath there friend, and do a Google for "Opera" and "December 13" and "lawsuit".
Although Opera's press release does not use the word "lawsuit," plenty of other third-partymedia do. It's a legal action, whether the Oxford dictionary would consider this a "lawsuit" seems like splitting hairs.

2. Opera only released their browser to be completely free (no ads or licensing fee) in September 2005. See their press release

3. Opera, like any other company, does things to make money, including initializing legal action. If Opera would truly "not make a dime" from this action, I'm sure their board would have never approved bringing this complaint.

Finally, I'm not sure where you get the idea that I approve of anything that Microsoft does or doesn't do. I simply glad I am not a stakeholder in Opera.

And yeah, I was trolling a bit, but at least I am somewhat better informed than you. Go have a coffee and relax a bit.

It's actually not an Opera issue. It's an Adobe issue. They have not released a version of embedded Flash beyond flash 7.

http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2007/04/13/wii-browser-out-but-why-flash-7-and-not-8-or-9

A major part of Opera's complaint was explicitly the "Embrace, Extend and Extinguish" strategy in conjunction with bundling. It seems this argument is now often forgotten in news and discussions.

The problem is more complex than "Oh, don't be anal, what's so terrible about bundling, you gotta have bundling." Can't you remember our discussions? How a monopolist breaking standards hurts us all?

That doesn't prevent there from being a rather significant pool of classic media. Take the old Superman cartoons as an example. They all fell into public domain long before they could be grandfathered back into existence. Thus just about anyone who wants to host them, edit them, use them in a new work, or otherwise make use of those old films is able to do so. Also, some of those films are likely to be new works that are gifted into the Creative Commons in the same way the Wikipedia article text is. Think of a shark in its natural environment, a tour of a famous building, or even a re-enactment of a historical battle.

There's even work that's been done to show how Wikipedia might use the HTML5 tag if and when it becomes widely deployed. (See this page for a dev version of Opera and 2 example Wikipedia pages that support & fallback content.) Despite the seeming incongruity of allowing videos inside Wikipedia pages, the demos shown is actually quite natural.

As usual, Opera has done it before and done it better: Quick Find paragraph.

Maybe this explains a thing or two. Low market share? Maybe. But Net Applications is the wrong place to go for browser statistics anyway, so you'll never really know.

If needed, Opera 9.50 and newer versions can automatically disable rogue root certificates.

http://my.opera.com/yngve/blog/2008/04/08/new-in-kestrel-faster-root-certificate-updates

MS IE Patched
Firefox 2.0 and 3.0 patched
and Opera 9.63 released earlier this week

Let browsing begin again!

This new version only scores a dismal 12/100 on the Acid 3 test, though the score improves significantly if one leaves the [browser] window open for at least a minute.

It's true, it improves to 100/100! The reason you need to leave the browser open for at least a minute is because that's how long it takes to download this extension, install it, run the extension and put the acid 3 URL into the extension's address bar.

I recommend anyone who loves IE to do this!

I'm sick of people spouting off this FUD.

You seem to be confusing the instruction set with the underlying implementation. Core 2 is awesome. The instruction set is not. So much so that it must be translated into a decent set of instructions by microcode before the processor can pass it through the decoder and ALU.

What is "archaic" about modern x86?

Oh, I don't know. Instructions for 64-bit programming piled upon instructions for 32-bit programming piled upon instructions for 16-bit programming piled upon instructions for 8-bit programming, all with a half-dozen memory modes to choose from, four different register access methods, special use of particular registers in certain modes, complex instructions added willy-nilly only to be deprecated into slow microcode later on, four different SIMD schemes, a few different floating point modes, a variety of segmentation schemes (none of which are used), support for context switching (that no one uses), variable length instructions, etc, etc, etc.

x86 is about the worst instruction set known to man. (Which is kind of amusing when you consider that it became the most used instruction set ever.) Even if we assume that the system will only allow a small subset of x86 code, there is still the very real possibility that it will be impossible to protect against the full ISA when executing code natively. Just off the top of my head, I'm already thinking of carefully crafting instructions so that they seem correct when the verifier passes over them in sequence, but actually execute as different instructions when the jump is executed into what appears to be the middle of an instruction. Oops.

Have you looked at a modern x86 microprocessor's implementation of the x86 ISA?

Yeah, I have. I could kill my cat by accidentally dropping heavy reference manuals sitting on my shelf. The x86 instruction set is far too large, overly complex, redundant, antiquated, and poorly suited as a replacement for VM-targeted instruction sets like Java bytecode.

The only reason to do any of this is speed. You're right, JS is fine for lots of things, but even the best JavaScript JIT won't be as fast as native x86.

"We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil." --Donald Knuth

"Speed" is a terrible excuse for attempting a platform like this. Especially when APIs can cover the 3% performance gap that Knuth referred to. I don't need to write a GL renderer in Javascript. I can simply call the necessary APIs to manipulate the native GL instance for me. That's more than fast enough for compute-intensive graphics.

Which brings up why I love the way things are today: choice. I remember the bad old days when it was either IE or if you wanted to suffer the really crappy Netscape edition(4 IIRC) and now we all have so many more choices. In my family alone we have Seamonkey for my mom(who refuses to surf without her "blue bird"), we have Kmeleon for my sister(who loves its layout and speed), we have Opera for my oldest boy (who says anything after version 5 sucks and refuses to update) and we have Flock for the youngest(who loves social sites) and finally Firefox for me,because of Adblock+ and Noscript,along with FEBE and iMacros.

So IMHO it doesn't really matter who is the "best" as long as we have plenty of others to choose from. Because I can tell you that the way it was before really sucked the big wet titty. But thanks to free software and plenty of choices my family can each have their own browser that suits their personality and can stay the hell out of mine, which is always a good thing. That and the fact that I can have IE removed from the program list and blocked at the firewall and nobody in my family seems to care. So if any of the designers of the above browsers read this: Thank you. You have made my family very happy and made it easier for me to keep the peace. So thanks.

Tell me when Mozilla offers this:
http://www.opera.com/link/

Great! What could possibly go wrong with uploading one's complete bookmarks, history and search queries to some corporate entity?

This may be off-topic; if so....sorry.

I've liked Opera each time I tried it although the interface is different it's a damn good browser. The reason it never grabbed me was the lack of any useful (Chuck Norris trivia anyone???....I'm serious, they have one so I guess at least one person on the planet has a use for it) plugins, specially for blocking adverts. In the settings you can disable JavaScript etc but there's no way to block adverts. Well I found one....and it works.

http://my.opera.com/Tamil/blog/index.dml/tag/urlfilter.ini

The above link explains how to create a blank urlfilter.ini file in your Opera profile directory, copy and paste some urls to filter out and restart Opera. Every site I tried before and after, it was like surfing in Firefox with AdBlock.....bliss. I don't think it's perfect, it depends on the site and the type of advert but it's a damn good start. It's also easy to add a new line to the text file if you come across an adserver not on the list.

Having said all that, I'm still blown away by how fast Opera is, even WITH adverts. Being able to block them helps speed that up further. I've been a Firefox user for so long that I don't think I could switch but Opera is a damn good second browser for site testing.

I recently tried Epiphany with Webkit, it may be one to watch for the future but it's a bit early yet.

Linux 64-bit builds were added a bit later.
Get them here: http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/10.0-Alpha-1/x86_64-linux/

(Firebug and Web Developer, plus Venkman, etc.).

1. Get the Opera Debug menu
2. Run Opera Dragonfly by going to Debug -> Open Opera Dragonfly
3. Learn more about Opera Dragonfly from the introduction, the documentation and their blog.

That should give you a pretty good alternative to Firebug while using Opera, and you'll finally be able to remotely debug websites rendered on your mobile devices too (or another computer for that sake).

(Firebug and Web Developer, plus Venkman, etc.).

1. Get the Opera Debug menu
2. Run Opera Dragonfly by going to Debug -> Open Opera Dragonfly
3. Learn more about Opera Dragonfly from the introduction, the documentation and their blog.

That should give you a pretty good alternative to Firebug while using Opera, and you'll finally be able to remotely debug websites rendered on your mobile devices too (or another computer for that sake).

(Firebug and Web Developer, plus Venkman, etc.).

1. Get the Opera Debug menu
2. Run Opera Dragonfly by going to Debug -> Open Opera Dragonfly
3. Learn more about Opera Dragonfly from the introduction, the documentation and their blog.

That should give you a pretty good alternative to Firebug while using Opera, and you'll finally be able to remotely debug websites rendered on your mobile devices too (or another computer for that sake).

(Firebug and Web Developer, plus Venkman, etc.).

1. Get the Opera Debug menu
2. Run Opera Dragonfly by going to Debug -> Open Opera Dragonfly
3. Learn more about Opera Dragonfly from the introduction, the documentation and their blog.

That should give you a pretty good alternative to Firebug while using Opera, and you'll finally be able to remotely debug websites rendered on your mobile devices too (or another computer for that sake).

doesn't what? and what's a rework? be more specific. i know opera 9.27 and up works fine on windows. upgrade if ur old version doesnt work. might be your computer too.

This.

No. If you have Opera 9.x and Aspell installed right click on any text area and you'll see "Check Spelling" as an option.

http://www.opera.com/browser/tutorials/spellcheck/index.dml

Just tried it out, and of course it passes ACID3 as advertised. I still can't recommend this browser on the grounds that it can't correctly render absolutely positioned CSS elements, as demonstrated by the following code:

<!DOCTYPE html
          PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
          "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
  <head>
    <title>Resize your browser with the vertical handle!</title>
  </head>
  <body>
  <div style="position:absolute;left:20px;right:20px;top:20px;bottom:20px;background-color:lime;">
  <div style="position:absolute;left:20px;right:20px;top:20px;bottom:20px;background-color:red;">
  </div>
  </div>
  </body>
</html>

Hosted version of the above:
http://echo.nextapp.com/content/test/operacss/

Opera 9.50, 9.60, and now 10.0alpha will not render the above properly if the browser is resized vertically. (9.27 and prior work perfectly) On the initial render, 9.5/9.6 and 10 do fine, but the moment one resizes the browser vertically (and NOT horizontally as well), things go awry. I reported this to their bug tracker six months ago, and posted a thread on their forums 2.5 months ago: http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=250572 Have also mentioned it in their 9.6-about-to-be-released-post-non-working-sites thread.

This bug has additional consequences for AJAX applications that make use of on-screen measuring using offsetWidth/offsetHeight information. In such cases, even the initial rendering can be seriously flawed as offsetHeight returns incorrect values. (Note: offsetXXX properties are not part of a proper W3c standard, but are universally supported).

Apologize for the quasi-rant, but I just don't want to see another bug report about how our applications don't look right in a supposedly ACID3 compliant browser, thus indicating that the problem "MUST" be our fault. Please realize that passing ACID3, while a neat accomplishment and generally good thing, is far from a guarantee of standards compliance.

I requested pretty much that almost exactly five years ago. Most comments then showed that people really didn't get it. Maybe they're more mature now. Maybe I'm just bad at communicating my ideas.

I love Opera more than any other browser out there and use it all the time, but wake me up when it starts to support nested tabs. There was a post by a Firefox user not so long ago who mentioned such an addon. People are rightfully raving about this time saving feature (and similar addons).

Tabs are grouped hierarchially according to where they are opened from in the form of a tree, but they can be expanded if need be. Tab names can be fully seen (instead of just graphical icons), and a whole branch may be closed (e.g. a site + its sub pages). A massive space saver when you are working with loads of sites.

I posted a message on the Opera forum. One can but hope:
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=257296

This is kind of a concern, Mac OS X 10.3 is still alive and well out there.
[...]
And FF has been he only alternative for an up to date browser.

Actually, iCab and Opera are still supporting 10.3.9.

I use Linux on most of my computers at this point and when my Mom comes over and wants to check her email this silly bit of FUD always gets her until I point to the screen where the link is to continue on any way...

You'd think after the whole Opera vs Oprah fiasco Microsoft would have learned better...

More information on these previous games here:

http://slashdot.org/articles/03/02/06/1645229.shtml?tid=109
http://people.opera.com/howcome/2003/2/msn/

Why anyone would trust any thing Microsoft does after repeatedly pulling this crap in their corporate history is beyond me!

--bornagainpenguin

My eyes started hurting almost halfway through so i had my borwser read the text to me. Shampoo was even funnier being read in a in a creepy monotone-like voice. I use the Opera web browser

Agreed then. Your definition of "mature" (aka. Anything I dont like is not mature) is shared by the miniscule number of GNU zealots and other FOSS zombies. You have been brain damaged far too much for any chance of recovery (like my ext3 partition). At this stage I can only offer you medication.

Linux on the desktop is a complete joke. *EVERYONE* I know has rejected various flavours of linux after they realized seeing spinning cubes != productivity. Very few real 'industry' grade desktop applications (compared to the millions of windows apps), except a whole host of unfinished buggy bloated crap a.k.a Repositories. Photoshop? LOL. Games ? LOL. (Not crippled by WINE crapware and bugs)

Crappy platform. Actually wait , I take that back. Absolutely NO Platform. You have to write software for 200 different versions. Just ask opera how much fun it is : http://www.opera.com/download/index.dml?platform=linux If it really worked, why would they ship it in 200 different forms? LSB? hahahahahahaahhaahahah. FUCK too funny...

But its also kinda sad that in your tiny mind you really do believe linux is even relevant on the desktop (aka 1+ billion dollars investment & 0.91% marketshare after 15 years.. EPIC FAIL ). Its like watching a retarded kid trying to swim, after being amputated (aka Linux on the desktop)

You have the research skills of John Gruber. Opera confirmed days ago that Apple rejected them.

If you aren't into Mac scene, Gruber is kind of Apple apologist blogger.

A person who doesn't know about Opera Mini at first place shouldn't be a tech blogger after all.

There are 19 million people using (note:using) Opera Mini daily in a month. http://www.opera.com/mobile_report/2008/09/

I also want to believe that entire thing is a misunderstanding, Opera has job to do on real smartphones (WinMO, Symbian, J2ME) rather than trying to port their stuff to a locked device.

Opera Mini was ported to C/C++ more than a year ago.

If what they've done for the iPhone is [to get] a Java ME runtime running on the iPhone

Opera Mini has already been ported to non-Java version(s), stated by haavard here, referring to a Opera press release from as far back as 2007. Gruber speculates that it's because a JavaScript intepreter would clearly break with the SDK Agreement, however as seen in this interview, Opera Mini doesn't have to interpret JavaScript at all, nor render web pages - this can all be done on the servers.

If what they've done for the iPhone is [to get] a Java ME runtime running on the iPhone

Opera Mini has already been ported to non-Java version(s), stated by haavard here, referring to a Opera press release from as far back as 2007. Gruber speculates that it's because a JavaScript intepreter would clearly break with the SDK Agreement, however as seen in this interview, Opera Mini doesn't have to interpret JavaScript at all, nor render web pages - this can all be done on the servers.

The Flash 7 SDK is the Flash 7 SDK. That's what was available when Opera first developed the Internet Channel. Flash Lite 3 SDK is a completely different SDK based on the Flash 9 codebase. It's a stripped down plugin intended for mobile devices. (For some reason Adobe thinks that cell phone developers REALLY want to target a subset of the Flash APIs.) Opera wisely decided that Flash Lite was not what they wanted.

Since then there has been non-stop demand for Flash 8 or Flash 9. Opera's response has always been that Adobe won't license it. Now that the PS3 has Flash 9, there's a big WTF going on in the Wii community.

The Flash 7 SDK is the Flash 7 SDK. That's what was available when Opera first developed the Internet Channel. Flash Lite 3 SDK is a completely different SDK based on the Flash 9 codebase. It's a stripped down plugin intended for mobile devices. (For some reason Adobe thinks that cell phone developers REALLY want to target a subset of the Flash APIs.) Opera wisely decided that Flash Lite was not what they wanted.

Since then there has been non-stop demand for Flash 8 or Flash 9. Opera's response has always been that Adobe won't license it. Now that the PS3 has Flash 9, there's a big WTF going on in the Wii community.