Opera Mini
| Opera's Logo | |
| File:OperaMini.png Opera Mini showing Wikipedia's splash page | |
| Developer(s) | Opera Software |
|---|---|
| Initial release | August 10, 2005 |
| Stable release | 3.1
/ February 21, 2007 |
| Platform | Java ME |
| Type | Microbrowser |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | www.operamini.com |
Opera Mini is a Java ME web browser for mobile devices, which runs on most phones that support Java Midlets. The browser is available in two versions, one for low- and one for high-memory phones (aka. MIDP1 and MIDP2).
Unlike normal web browsers, Opera Mini fetches all content through a proxy that runs the layout engine of the Opera desktop browser. The engine on the proxy server reformats webpages into a width that is suitable for small screens, using Opera's Small Screen Rendering[1]. The content is compressed, then delivered to the phone in a markup language called OBML (Opera Binary Markup Language). When the content reaches the phone it has been reduced in size by typically 70-90%.
Opera Mini has a minimal interface, and only includes the most essential features for web browsing, such as bookmarks, history and back/forward controls. The quality of images can be set to low or high resolution, where high setting approximately doubles the size of the images downloaded. It has capabilities such as smooth scrolling, skins, and dual font sizes.
History
Opera Mini was launched in Norway by Opera Software in cooperation with TV 2 the August 10, 2005. On October 20 of the same year, a beta version was made available to Nordic countries. After limited distribution releases in several European countries, the browser was made available worldwide on January 24, 2006.
On May 3, 2006 Opera Mini 2.0 was released with features such as file downloading to the phone's memory, skinning abilities, new search engines, and improved navigation.
On November 1, 2006 Opera Mini 3 beta introduced secure browsing, RSS feeds, photo uploading and content folding into its list of features and capabilities. Content folding works by folding long lists such as navigation bars into a single line that can be expanded as needed. On November 28, the final version of Opera Mini 3 was released.
On January 8, 2007 Opera Software and Yahoo! announced partnership meaning that all new versions of Opera Mini will come with Y! search preinstalled on the built in homepage, where it previously featured Google as default search engine.
Functionality illustrated
The requested page is transfered to the intermediate server and sent compressed to the mobile device.
Unsupported Functionality
- Pages cannot be saved to the device for offline viewing.
- It cannot open local html pages or images.
- It does not display CSS background images.
- Does not support AJAX based Web 2.0 functionality