Expert: Werner "Menneisyys" Ruotsalainen

The final version of Opera Mini 4.1, one of the best Web browsers available, has just been released; see THIS for more info. I’ll post a detailed multiplatform review in some days, after having used it for some time on all my three mobile operating systems.

Finnish computer mag Tietokone has just published a summary of their desktop browser speed test published in their (offline) papermag. Currently, I only have access to the online summary (while I'm a paying subscriber to their mag, it hasn't arrived yet). I'll let you know when there's anything else of interest in the article as soon as I receive the offline version - it's promised to be pblished tomorrow (which means subscribers living in abroad receive it shoon thereafter).

They state the current desktop Opera 9.5 b2 is considerably faster than both Internet Explorer 8 b2 and Mozilla Firefox 2. It's only Apple's Safari and Mozilla Firefox 3 beta 5 that turned out to be faster. It has also turned out to be faster with both normal- and Flash-based contents.

I've always preferred using Opera to IE on my 15" UXGA (1600*1200) Thinkpad because, even as of IE8b2, Opera 9.5 has far better zoom-in capabilities (which is essential on an UXGA or WUXGA 15" notebook), particularly when zooming into forum pages; not to mention its standards compliance (see my latest reports HERE).

In my last (and, now, heavily outdated) article on making Opera Mini 4 be invoked on by just clicking a URL, I’ve already elaborated on the advantages of doing this (and, actually, the advantages of Opera Mini 4 itself). Please do read it if you want to know why making use of direct invocation can be really advantageous.

Because there’s a lot of news worth reporting on (and I’ve been asked by Serola to join the Opera Mini Fan Blog as the first blogger, because of which I've decided to update this really important tutorial) and the original article didn’t elaborate on other mobile platforms like Symbian and BlackBerry, I’ve decided to devote an entirely new article to this question.

1.1 badbob101’s StartOperaMini
(the download is at the bottom of the first post; as of 05/12/2008, 09b is the latest version, which you'll want to go for.)

I recommend this solution the most because it’s really-really easy to install and maintain and it’s much more flexible than, say, superdave’s, otherwise, in some respects cleaner and faster solution.

All you need to do is, in order to set it up, downloading and installing the free MortScript (just copy the MortScript-4.1-PPC.cab file from the cab subdirectory of the ZIP file to your handset and tap it there) and, then, just copying StartOperaMini.mscr anywhere (including a storage card) on your handset and, as with MortScript, clicking it from File Explorer. It’ll automatically find the current location of Jbed, the index of Opera Mini and set up everything just fine. Unlike with the early solution, absolutely no manual setup is needed.

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In several of my articles, Bibles, W3C presentations etc., I’ve explained what HTTP User-Agents are, what they can be used for if you’re a webmaster etc. As my previous articles (see THIS, THIS and THIS, in addition to the W3C presentation and the two Web Browsing Bibles HERE and HERE) on the subject got a bit outdated with the latest browsers and firmware versions out there, I’ve re-checked the User-Agents. This time, I also provide you with all the other headers, should you want to correctly identify the mobile browser even if it’s User-Agent spoofed (that is, it’s trying to hide its identity). Note that I don’t explain what this info is used for – I’ve already done this several times in the above-linked articles, read them first if you need more info on the usage of all this info.

Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM)

WM6.0 Classic (HP iPAQ 210, official ROM):

Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en-us
UA-OS: Windows CE (Pocket PC) - Version 5.2
UA-color: color16
UA-Voice: FALSE
UA-pixels: 480x640
UA-CPU: ARM
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.7)
Connection: Keep-Alive

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As has been announced some weeks ago, I had a W3C speech a week ago devoted to Web browsing on mobile devices. You can find the (English) slides HERE. (Sorry, some of the example screenshots are in Finnish. This, however, doesn’t have a detrimental effect on the overall understandability of the material.) In order to understand the slides, I’ve also decided to comment on all of them so that the entire Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry mobile community can benefit from my speech – in written form. Finally, note that, albeit this article is over 80kchars long, it in no way can provide a FULL, absolutely thorough overview of the Web browsing scene on these platforms. That is, if you don’t understand something, don’t despair: in my referenced, previous articles, you can, in most cases, find a very thorough dissemination of the subject. Just an example: in this article, I only devote some 2kchars to the subject of downloading files while my original, devoted article, along with its (recent) updates, amount to over 100 kchars.

I also provide in-line screenshots in this article so that you know what I'm speaking about without constantly switching to PowerPoint; however, to see the original document at its full (and copy/pasteable) glory and resolution, you'll need the PPT file.

(Sorry for the comparatively bad quality – captured from the 1024*768 M-JPEG video(!) recording of my Canon 960IS camera.)

(no comments needed)

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