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Opera Software Brings Its Browser to Mobile Phones
13Echo writes "Now this is cool! Opera Software has presented a technology today that solves the problems of web pages on small screens. They have created a small-screen HTML rendering technique that slightly reformats web pages to fit within the bounds of small displays. Some screenshots can be found here along with extra details as to how they do it. A full press release can be found here. As a result, horizontal scrollbars are not needed, and it even features zooming abilities for magnifying web pages."
without the full press release is available at the register here
If you need to get on the 'net that badly, you need a life.
IMHO, It's much more useful to use your mobile phone as an interface between your computer and the 'net. I do, and it works beautifully without any problems due to limited space. If it's a pain in the ass to set up your laptop to do this, then you really don't need to get on the 'net. Can't you wait the 15 minutes until you get home?
Porn doesn't look good on a 1X2" screen.
Come on, lynx has been doing this for years!
ok, nice!
The next thing we need is phones with slightly bigger screens.
Small is beautiful, but I like it practical as well.
Look at the first mobile phones (GSM style). They were thicker. That is not good. But they were broader than the current models without that ever being a problem.
Why not go back to the slightly larger models and put a bigger screen in them?
120 chars is not enough!
mmmmmm forced useability.
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thank god allmighty for tities and beer
True, nobody *needs* this, but it does do what is does well.
The only website I'd like to view on my phone is the yellow pages.
I am a Karma Library.
.. Opera's nice new redesigned website, using XHTML and CSS. No more tables.
:)
Now, let's see Mozilla.org do the same please
It is illegal to crack a site and deface the copyrighted pages there, but you can reformat local content on your machine with no problem...
If your reasoning was true, it would lead to not being able to write a little poem on the book you offer to your mother, for instance...
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
If the authors of the copyrighted (note spelling) work didn't want the appearance "changed" from some initial appearance, they shouldn't have used HTML in the first place.
HTML is just text and markup - there is no appearance until it's rendered in a user agent, and one of the basic rules of the web used to be that the rendering was 100% up to the user agent: ALT-attribute if you cannot render images and all that.
To complain that some content is transformed before display on a device is like complaining that you lose the colors if you use a B&W photo copier with a colored book.
By its nature, how HTML is rendered is up to the browser. An HTML document doesn't have a set "appearance". Or are you saying that opening a website in a text-only browser is some kind of copyright violation?
I don't think ad-filtering proxies have ever been found to be illegal, anyway.
Couple of programming students from Bhosphorus University (http://www.boun.edu.tr),here in Istanbul implemented WAP rendered HTML pages for Turkcell, nr1 and a giant GSM company of Turkey and Turkish populated countries (http://www.turkcell.com.tr). The stuff is working on server side. Gets HTML pages for you and re-renders (codes?) for WAP (wml)
:) but I wanted to see how idea works.
:) Its the only non wap offering big mail provider. If you have MS POCKET PC IE, you can logon!
I tried it on WAP. I know it was stupid
The error on a highly non compliant site I just typed was "Sorry, site isn't W3C compliant".
Webmasters ignoring W3C, that stuff is coming to you. Sooner or later. Code standards compliant pages and you will save from lot of headache later.
Also WAP is going great way. All standards compliant. E.g. nothing refuses you because you are a Ericsson customer other than Nokia. Mobile stuff is free from non standards... Oh wait! Hotmail.
BTW, commercial company (especially resellers) webmasters, you will block Opera from accessing to your site? I can understand all the dotcom troubles now, ignore a $2000 phone customer wanting to buy something from you... Yea,right.
High WAP charges, already slow download speeds (9.6k IIRC), and the Nokia featured in the story is by far the largest display on a mobile currently available here (most others are considerably smaller though PDAs will benefit), mean this wont be useful for me in the near future.
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that bong ba ba ba bong
In Opera 6, you can zoom pages from 20 to 1000%, switch to a custom stylesheet with one click, use mouse gestures, browse in tabs (long before Mozilla did it), highlight a piece of text and do a dozen different kinds of search on it with a single right-click...
What did IE 6 add? Cookie management. And, uh ...
Opera runs on a dozen OSs, IE has to target Windows environments only.
Are Microsoft complacent, or is IE 7 going to incorporate some of these useful new features and maybe even innovate a little?
Reqwireless WebViewer already solved these same problems almost a year ago, and with the added bonus that it works on many more mobile phones than what Opera appears to be targeting.
Opera still seems limited to Symbian OS phones like the Sony Ericsson P800 and Nokia 7650, which Reqwireless WebViewer supports. Additionally, Reqwireless WebViewer works on phones such as the Motorola i85s, i95cl, Accompli 008, T720, V60i, Samsung SPH-A500, and RIM BlackBerry 5810.
(Disclaimer: I work for Reqwireless and wrote most of WebViewer. I'm kind of annoyed that Opera is acting as though they've done something new.)
If enough people start surfing the net from small devices, web logs will show that and the web designers will have to listen.
Other than that, this is the way to go. We don't need yet one more document format for small devices. Better use HTML/XHTML and adapt the rendering to the device you are using ...
And no, I do not carry a laptop with me all the time. Did you just say someone else what in the need of a life?
I do carry a cell-phone though, and WAP might have been the solution, had it worked. My phone has WAP support, but I have yet to make it do anything remotely useful.
If you've got a Nokia 7650, you don't need to wait for Opera's next-year release. You can enjoy the real Web today, with no horizontal scrolling (unless you want it when viewing full-size images), using Reqwireless WebViewer. Also works with most other J2ME phones.
Opera in phone: Good.
Phone going off at the Opera: Bad.
Thanks for your attention.
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.