Opera Mini (not Mobile) for HPC

Opera Mini uses server side processing to compress web pages for faster browsing on mobile phones. The only caveat is if you don't want your data transferred through Opera's translating proxy servers. The last post I saw about using Opera Mini on the HPC talked about using Opera Mini 3 with a Java runtime of questionable legality.

I'm happy to report that Opera Mini 4.2 runs very well on the official 900C ROM, using the free and open source phoneME project. Other J2ME mobile phone apps likely work, as well. Opera Mini 4.2 is much better than previous versions, as the appearance of the pages is just like a desktop browser.

I'm currently investigating rebuilding phoneME to work on HPC2000, and also to enable the GX/GAPI acceleration, which is for some reason disabled in the current builds. In any case, I hope to report back here with instructions on installation in a few days when I have more time.

Very cool...though I've never used Opera Mini. So my question is this: How is it better than...say...Opera 8.65 on the Mobilepro?

Is it faster, display more like the desktop, or does it handle Java better or what?

Maybe the nicest difference from Opera 8.65 is that there's no registration fee. And, if I am albe to recompile for HPC2000, it will work without RedGear, and hopefully will work on MIPS platforms too.

You can try Opera Mini online, if your desktop has Java enabled. The basic benefit is that all rendering is done on the server, relieving your device's CPU and RAM from that job. The amount of data transferred is also much lower, since it compresses images and rewrites the HTML into a compact binary language. It's a lot like using the skweezer or Google Mobile that many people here have used, but it's much faster and more powerful in my opinion.

For example, loading a site like Yahoo Finance in Opera 8.65 on the 900C takes more than 1 minute over wifi (most of the slowness is in the page rendering). But Opera Mini can fully load the same page over my very slow 14.4kbps link in about 15 seconds. And it's usable after about 5 seconds; since they process the page server-side, I think they send the structure and text along the link first, and only send the images after that.

By the way, there is a puzzling rumor that Opera Mini 5 may be unveiled soon. Who knows what interesting new features it might offer...

Nice stuff, isotherm. Looking forward to the possibilities. As always, we appreciate your help.

Huh , very nice!
I use Opera in my Windows PC, but i can't use it in my HPC because i don't have an Wi-Fi card.

Regards...

It would help HPC's survive longer. If you could compile it for HPC2000, then Jornada 7xx would remain very useful.

I started looking into phoneME a few weeks ago or so, after I saw someone had made available source patches to get it to work on (eVT 3.0 and) PocketPC 2002. However, with all the stuff going on here, I just never got around to messing around with it. Glad to hear you're having success with it so far.

wow that's great news! i'm looking forward to this project.

Wow... Opera Mini 5 Beta is here. It looks just like Opera Mobile 9.x with tabs and inline editing. The graphics are a bit large, so I think it would work best on something like Netbook Pro. (Currently posting from Opera Mini 5 on Jornada.) It will take some more work to get it working on CE 3.0 devices, without RedGear.

Edited by isotherm 2009-09-16 11:55 AM

I tried Opera Mini 4.2, but the thing I found cumbersome was text entry. It switches to a full screen text box and after you finish typing, you then have to tap Menu and then OK (I couldn't even find out how to activate the left and/or right menus without typing characters into the text box).

I'll give Opera Mini 5 Beta a go on my NBP and see how it fares...

EDIT: Well, at least there's no full screen text box anymore, but like you said isotherm, the graphics are huge (especially the onscreen keyboard). However, enabling full screen and disabling "navbar always visible" helps some. Now if there was just a way to disable the onscreen keyboard....

EDIT 2: The other thing that's annoying (only because we're using non-phone devices here) is that when you press a number on the hardware keyboard, it doesn't give you the number. Instead, it gives you an inline popup with a list of symbols, with the actual number at the end of the list.

Edited by mscdex 2009-09-16 11:58 AM

Yes, the on-screen keyboard (and the phone-like function of the number keys) is rather annoying. Without that, it would be a rather viable option. Oh, and I set the text size to Very Small. Otherwise phoneME uses some monospaced font...

EDIT: Note that Opera Mini 4 had the problem with numerical input too. This is probably a matter of the J2ME host (phoneME, MicroEmulator, etc.) emulating the standard rigidly, more than anything else. The workaround was to type in a separate text editor, copy, and then paste into the text box.

Also, the new beta seems to transfer more data than Opera Mini 4 as well. And consequently it takes longer before the page is first usable. Too bad, but perhaps a later beta will improve on these issues. Still, it's quite an improvement in many ways.

Edited by isotherm 2009-09-16 12:40 PM

neat project, hope it works out!

hello
will you do any instruction for install opera mini on CE3.0 or CE4.2?

please


thank

Edited by propi 2009-09-23 8:17 AM

Great project. FWIW I actually bought a CUOL book (CE 5), but IE leaves much to be desired for modern websites. Opera Mini 5 works great on my phone, and would be perfect on the CUOL book. Do let us know how you get on!

CE 4.2 and 5.0 users can try it out by downloading the "phone ME Feature - MIDP" version from here. Once you install it and run phoneME, you can install Opera (or any other MIDP application/game) either by having it automatically download and install from Opera's site (you have to know the full URL to the .jar file) or you can manually download the Opera Mini 5 Beta .jar onto your storage card and then tell phoneME to install from storage (give the absolute path to the .jar).

Edited by mscdex 2009-09-23 11:16 AM