Database Users

Web Browsing with Opera on the Athena

I received my new x7501 a couple of days ago. I am disappointed with the web browsing experience using Opera Mobile.
I've been using Opera on my Kaiser and it works differently. On the Kaiser, I use both Opera Mobile 8.65, and Opera Mini 4. If I could copy text and if it were tabbed for multiple pages, I would only use Opera Mini 4.
On the QVGA screen of the Kaiser, Opera Mini does a great job of taking a web page that has multiple columns of text, and rendering the columns in a width that fits the screen width of the Kaiser. The worst thing, in my opinion, is having to scroll horizontally to read text.
On the Kaiser, in Opera Mobile, sometimes horizontal scrolling is necessary. On the Athena, in Opera Mobile, it seems like horizontal scrolling is always necessary. I've tried different settings and different orientations. I've tried RealVGA with different DPI resolutions. The text always seems to be too wide.
When I use the Opera Mobile setting of Display in One Column, it only uses half of the width of the screen. It is as if Opera Mobile is unaware of the larger, wider screen of the Athena, and thinks it only has QVGA to render the column.
On my Athena, using Opera Mobile, the font sizes are wierd, sometimes extremely big while other text is very small. It doesn't do this on the Kaiser. It depends on the web site, and how the page is designed, but on the Kaiser in Mini and Mobile, the fonts and the text columns seem to render better than on the Athena.
I like the large fonts and large icons of the standard display, running without RealVGA or similar utilities, because it enables me to use the touch screen without a stylus. I've tried RealVGA 1.1 and MvRTrueVAG, and there are several rendering defects that I don't like.
I realise that with time and effort, I may be able to play with the settings and find a combination that works for me. I'm hoping that I'll get feedback to this posting that will help me find better settings. I'm wondering if I should just install the Black Dual PK 3.0 ROM and see how well things render in it.
Having a good web browsing experience is my main objective.
Thanks, Bren

You can try new NetFront 3.5 concept or Opera 9.xx on the athena - they are best for now

Thanks for the suggestion. I had found the earlier post about browsers, and found the link to NetFront.
I'm still getting familiar with it. I like that I can toggle between scrolling or selecting text to copy.
I'm trying to figure out how to choose a different font. It wants to display everything in Courier monotype.
Anyway, so far, I'm encouraged that I've found a browser that is improving my browsing experience with my new machine.

xdafile said:
Thanks for the suggestion. I had found the earlier post about browsers, and found the link to NetFront.
I'm still getting familiar with it. I like that I can toggle between scrolling or selecting text to copy.
I'm trying to figure out how to choose a different font. It wants to display everything in Courier monotype.
Anyway, so far, I'm encouraged that I've found a browser that is improving my browsing experience with my new machine.
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Netfront 3.5 is the best at this moment, IMHO. To change font,just do to menu/tools/browser setting and press the font button. Also,while you're there, you might want to blank out the Use Visual Bookmark option to use the classical bookmark.
One other very nice feature is you can define a few view setting (controls the browsing mode and display mode) that you could tie to each website so that you have complete control over how you want a specific website to be displayed.

This thread contains lots of comparison between Opera 9.33 versus Netfront 3.5.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=368881. I suggest that we move over to that thread for future discussion.

Thanks for the how to and the link to the comparison. NetForge is very good. I'm resolving some of the cognitive dissonance and buyers remorse that comes for me in this phase of new technology purchases.
NetForge is still in development, and it does have a few missing pieces and rough edges. I encounterd a bug cutting and pasting. When I cut, tt puts more text on the clipboard than is selected. Not a big deal, but I do a lot of cutting and pasting. I cut from a French newspaper, and paste into Google Translate.
There's a lot of development going on NetForge is in Beta, Opera is in development, WM7 is on it's way. I wonder how PIE will be in WM7.

xdafile said:
Thanks for the how to and the link to the comparison. NetForge is very good. I'm resolving some of the cognitive dissonance and buyers remorse that comes for me in this phase of new technology purchases.
NetForge is still in development, and it does have a few missing pieces and rough edges. I encounterd a bug cutting and pasting. When I cut, tt puts more text on the clipboard than is selected. Not a big deal, but I do a lot of cutting and pasting. I cut from a French newspaper, and paste into Google Translate.
There's a lot of development going on NetForge is in Beta, Opera is in development, WM7 is on it's way. I wonder how PIE will be in WM7.
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NetForge? You mean NetFront?
Strange, I could cut and paste in Netfront without problem.
Yes, there is lots of things on the way, thanks for the open SDK on Win CE. As for PIE, I'm not optimistic that it will be as good, if PIE 6.1 is any indication to go by. I hope Safari will one day be avaialable on the Win Mobile platform like it is on the window desktop now. On the desktop Safari seems even faster than Opera 9.5.

eaglesteve said:
On the desktop Safari seems even faster than Opera 9.5.
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I would have to disagree there:
http://nontroppo.org/timer/kestrel_tests/

New version of Skyfire 0.8.5 released - No registration

New version 0.8.5 of skyfire is released now.. you don't need any registration to download this.. Just go to get.skyfire.com from your PC or from your device. It's very cool browser with support to youtube and other flash objects.. I am attaching a downloaded copy here for quick download.. Enjoy

Someone has already posted it on this forum......

Sorry! tried searching but couldn't locate initially, now got it.. How can I get this post deleted..

Thx... It is better then Opera Mobile?

McLin said:
Thx... It is better then Opera Mobile?
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tons better i must say! Watch youtube or any flash content...or anything at all right off the website!

McLin said:
Thx... It is better then Opera Mobile?
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It doesn't seem to wrap text correctly for me, so it's harder to read things. But if you need quick, desktop-quality browsing, it is better than Opera Mobile.

derekwilkinson said:
It doesn't seem to wrap text correctly for me, so it's harder to read things. But if you need quick, desktop-quality browsing, it is better than Opera Mobile.
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by the full desktop quality browsing you are correct, but i disagree with the quick browsing. Sure it displays the page faster than opera but the navigation is terrible. Just like using a gps application (googlemaps for example) you dont really have entire the page loaded, just the part you are seeing on your screen, it constantly renders as you scroll and pan making it terrible to quickly pan and scroll through websites expecially forums where you read, pan, read, pan and so on. the constant rendering and reloading makes the page blurry and displays those god awful checkers by not being able to keep up thust slowing you down way more than the slightly slower page loading of opera. At least when opera is done with the page you can read everything in it quickly and easily
Im not bashing skyfire cuz i love it also but that is the main gripe i have with it, that and the unreliable downloads that fail on me 99% of the time

mike21pr said:
Just like using a gps application (googlemaps for example) you dont really have entire the page loaded, just the part you are seeing on your screen, it constantly renders as you scroll and pan making it terrible to quickly pan and scroll through websites expecially forums where you read, pan, read, pan and so on. the constant rendering and reloading makes the page blurry and displays those god awful checkers by not being able to keep up thust slowing you down way more than the slightly slower page loading of opera.
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You are true.. It won't load the full webpage and it's realy slow when you scroll and pan.. But only advantage we have is it plays youtube videos and flash. Which is lacking in opera mobile.. But in this version there is no audio.. Some problem.. Looking for a solution..

Downloaded. Will find install it in a little bit.

Does it work Wvga?

mike21pr said:
by the full desktop quality browsing you are correct, but i disagree with the quick browsing. Sure it displays the page faster than opera but the navigation is terrible. Just like using a gps application (googlemaps for example) you dont really have entire the page loaded, just the part you are seeing on your screen, it constantly renders as you scroll and pan making it terrible to quickly pan and scroll through websites expecially forums where you read, pan, read, pan and so on. the constant rendering and reloading makes the page blurry and displays those god awful checkers by not being able to keep up thust slowing you down way more than the slightly slower page loading of opera. At least when opera is done with the page you can read everything in it quickly and easily
Im not bashing skyfire cuz i love it also but that is the main gripe i have with it, that and the unreliable downloads that fail on me 99% of the time
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this is the main problem I have with it and netfront also. the truth is when it comes to browsing even IE mobile 6 has the upper hand, it might be slower at rendering the page but trust me I have found it's CSS engine better than even opera. I can give the links if anyone wants to check. however, opera has the upper hand when it comes to browsing the page. and opera does support flash videos on certain builds.
this is how I break it down in no order:
aesthetics: opera9
page load speed: skyfire
scroll/pan: opera9
rendering engine quality: IE mobile 6
rendering engine speed: opera9/skyfire
download file reliability: IE mobile 6
flash: skyfire
ease of use: opera9
javascript: IE mobile 6/opera9
therefore opera is the best pick for default browser and everyday use. IE mobile 6 comes in second for quality and reliability. skyfire only has flash and page load speed going for it (1st of which isn't a need, thus they only have speed), netfront couldn't even make it on there.

Ya skyfires really nice for streaming videos but thats about it.
My favorite day to day browser is hands down Opera Mini 4.2. For just basic browsing and skimming forums,etc,etc... its just plain awesome and by far the fastest one iv used

Opera 10 and multitouch

Hey everyone!
Is there any way to enable multitouch in Opera 10? The HD2 comes with Opera 9.7 and it has multitouch (zooming). The newer Opera is much nicer looking and the browsing experience is smoother, but with no multitouch it's not half as useful as 9.7....

I agree. I'd much rather have 10, but not without multi-touch.
I did try Zooomer, but it didn't work. Besides, it's not the same kind of zooming that Opera 9.7 has.
I'm interested in this too.

Opera 10 doesn't support smooth zooming in the way that 9.5 and 9.7 did. It has only has two levels of zoom: zoomed in and zoomed out. There is nothing in between. So what would you expect pinch-to-zoom to do? I guess you could make it switch between zoomed in and zoomed out states, but a single tap already does that, and is much simpler.

There are multiple zoom levels in Opera 10, in the setting you define the "zoomed" in level.
I would imagine a true or "native" pinch to zoom, would toggle between that level of zoom, from 60-140%...or whatever the levels provided are.

I could use pinch zoom too. Yes, clicking is fine. But some sites have just too big fonts, and some sites just too small.

zoomer works quite well in opera 10...now if we could just get flash working in there i would be happy!

No text reflow, no pinch to zoom, no flash...
I'll keep my 9.7.

on my case i want vibration notifications and the ability to use back button on it

HtcMeo said:
No text reflow, no pinch to zoom, no flash...
I'll keep my 9.7.
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Hmmm, I got text reflow and pinch to zoom (As well as tapping)...but no flash. Try out zoomer, after a practise run...its alright!
Can you share the cab(s) you used in 9.7...everytime I use one it messes up my browsing and I need to reflash...also...if the flash is seperate, can you upload that too? I liked the one I got with my hd2 before I flashed it haha

the single touch zoom is a better zooming device imho, its quicker and easier.
for me the text reflow works fine in opera 10, and flash works ok on alot of sites, just tried speedtest.net and it worked fine (albeit a little slow)

fracmo2000 said:
Hmmm, I got text reflow and pinch to zoom (As well as tapping)...but no flash. Try out zoomer, after a practise run...its alright!
Can you share the cab(s) you used in 9.7...everytime I use one it messes up my browsing and I need to reflash...also...if the flash is seperate, can you upload that too? I liked the one I got with my hd2 before I flashed it haha
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there is no text reflow on OM10 like the one in Opera 9.7....it's been a major complaint of everyone since the first beta.
Unless one counts the predefined text width length done by OM10 for every web page as text reflow - That's not true text reflow. Text reflow should be dynamic and changed depending on the variable screen width.

fracmo2000 said:
Hmmm, I got text reflow and pinch to zoom (As well as tapping)...but no flash. Try out zoomer, after a practise run...its alright!
Can you share the cab(s) you used in 9.7...everytime I use one it messes up my browsing and I need to reflash...also...if the flash is seperate, can you upload that too? I liked the one I got with my hd2 before I flashed it haha
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I am using the stock ROM (1.66) with Opera 9.7 build 35267.
I have also no flash. For that i use skyfire.
I've read somewhere in their forums someone claim this Opera version was made strictly for hd2.. thus, Opera10 is not an upgrade from 9.7
Different products.

Opera 9.7 gives me the best experience on hd2.
Used Opera 10 with Zoomer but i dont like the little screen at bottom.
It is just NOT p2z if u use zoomer.
I stick to 9.7.

I prefer IE to Opera 9.7 on the HD2!!!

Ok here goes,
I prefer IE to Opera because,
1. It plays flash video natively, not only does it play flash video (even two at a time!!! Now thats how to show off to your iphone buddies down the pub ) but panning around a page that contains flash works smoothly as well, as I've enabled flash in Opera too and to be honest disabled it again as it was pants! I couldn't scroll around without weird glitches all over the place.
2.) It's way smoother, scrolling and zooming, I dont think Opera is using any kind of GPU acelleration but IE does.
Now here's the big Con,
No pinch to zoom! serriously I've searched the forum and cant find any way of re-eanbling pinch to zoom in IE as it was in the pre release ROM's. Surely theres a hack to bring pinch to zoom back to IE, have I missed it??

Opera Mobile 10 Beta 3 on HD2

I've just installed and tried this.
http://www.opera.com/mobile/download/
As with the previous Beta, the menus look great, are very finger friendly and the start page is fantastic and customisable.
However I am now unable to turn to landscape. I can't find a setting for this but I'm sure in the previous beta I was able to do this without tweaking.
The graphics look great and it now supposedly supports Flash. Youtube was ok, though I still feel the resolution is far from good enough. But I was unable to play music in myspace flashplayers or view videos on Kontraband.
The final major downside for me is that they still haven't sorted pinch to zoom on this browser.
it's getting better but still more work to be done. I think I'm going to roll back to the earlier version.

Until pinch zoom is implemented Opera 10 on the HD2 is irrelevent without a stylus. There are some things you need to zoom close into to finger press or use the fine tip of a stylus for. The currently limited zoom of 10 makes this impossible on some pages for people with large fingers.

Yes .. some pages just need a bit of zoom in, some just a bit of zoom out. It seems however free zoom is not part of Opera 10 at all.

But majority of the sites do work well. The text is fit properly into the window without any need for horizontal scrolling. And flash support is a definite plus. Even I would like to use pinch to zoom, but still feel that the new opera is a good all purpose browser which doesn't makes me shift to my iphone for web browsing. And lastly, if you don't already know, you can apply Pinch to Zoom tweak in BsB for Opera!. It works well for me.

gags9999 said:
But majority of the sites do work well. The text is fit properly into the window without any need for horizontal scrolling. And flash support is a definite plus. Even I would like to use pinch to zoom, but still feel that the new opera is a good all purpose browser which doesn't makes me shift to my iphone for web browsing. And lastly, if you don't already know, you can apply Pinch to Zoom tweak in BsB for Opera!. It works well for me.
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Yeah, I even use BsB Tweaks to enable pinch to zoom for Opera Mini 5 Beta 2... It does work, BUT it is not NATIVE pinch to zoom: It will enlarge the whole app (including Menus etc) and not just the page. But for those situations where you need to tap a check box that is far too small to hit without zooming in, even the non native pinch to zoom works great!

Yes, the tweak does take care of some zoom tuning necessary for the tasks not adequately covered by the tap zoom. I myself use tap zoom and use pinch zoom only for fine adjustments. Best of both world's with flash thrown in the bargain!

I actually want to go back to the previous beta. I'm using the bsb tweak to zoom but I don't find it works that well to be honest. very fiddly and double-tap zooming seems better.

craigpyro said:
I've just installed and tried this.
http://www.opera.com/mobile/download/
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uhm, in this thread you can find a comfortably repacked version of opera mobile 10b3 with promptless cab and included flash lite... and I'm using it instead dof the bundled 9.7 since a week or so

ephestione said:
uhm, in this thread you can find a comfortably repacked version of opera mobile 10b3 with promptless cab and included flash lite... and I'm using it instead dof the bundled 9.7 since a week or so
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does the Beta 3 repackaged with flash, support pinch and zoom?

Am I missing something?
I have the same standard Opera installed from day one (i.e preinstalled)
and can pinch zoom the webpage, very well in fact.
and no, i havent installed any tweaks cab's or modded the registry.

MidnightDraven said:
Am I missing something?
I have the same standard Opera installed from day one (i.e preinstalled)
and can pinch zoom the webpage, very well in fact.
and no, i havent installed any tweaks cab's or modded the registry.
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that is opera 9.7, not opera 10

jigners said:
does the Beta 3 repackaged with flash, support pinch and zoom?
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no it does not

MidnightDraven said:
Am I missing something?
I have the same standard Opera installed from day one (i.e preinstalled)
and can pinch zoom the webpage, very well in fact.
and no, i havent installed any tweaks cab's or modded the registry.
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That's Opera 9.7. We're talking about Opera 10 beta 3, a new release in development from Opera. HTC will need to take Opera 10 (when it is released) and add their pinch-zooming functionality to it before (and if they choose to) update the HD2 with it.

Ah ok.
My mistake.