Database Users

Opera 8.5 ppc beta2 is out

Take a look here:
info: http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=127518
Dload: http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/products/winmobileppc/
New features in this build
- tabs
- support for http upload
- keyboard shortcuts:
tab (next form element)
space (scroll down one page)
Have fun
MaX

A review:
Even the first beta version of Opera was a real relevation for the Pocket PC community. Much as it had several bugs (particularly on pre-Windows Mobile 5 devices), it has quickly become the browser of choice for many Pocket PC users (including me), at least on Windows Mobile 5.
The new version is, speed-wise, clearly the best browser I've ever seen for the Pocket PC. It's much-much faster than the alternatives. You'll certainly love it!
The good
* The WM2003(SE) version seems to be working great: I haven't encountered the infamous Opera-is-stalled bug under pre-WM5 operating system any more. I've tested the new version of Opera with all the test pages (the search facility at http://www.europe.com/en/ - screenshot here; RedHotPawn) that make the previous version stall at once. No problems encountered so far.
This may be related to the fact that now Opera senses some Web servers' not answering – see this and this message.
A iPAQ 2210 screenshot can be seen here and here (the latter taken at 25% zoom level so that the entire chessboard is visible) – as can be seen, as opposed to b1, I could log in and play on my iPAQ 2210 as well.
* It feels much faster than beta1, which is a feat in itself because beta 1 was already much faster than any alternative browser.
* There's tab support! (See the screenshots provided for examples.)
* The bug related to not being able to display loooooong pages is fixed. It worked great with all the pages I've thrown it at; an example screenshot of Tero Lehto's blog is here.
* Much as the new version is still using custom (non-native) GUI components, one of the biggest problems, that is, the text areas hiding the last characters in each row behind the scrollbar, is fixed as can be seen in here.
* The "You have XX days left of your trial period" dialog is no longer displayed at startup.
(There must be tons of other bugfixes, as far as previous beta1 bugs are concerned; these were the ones I've explicitly tested and compared to beta1.)
The bad
* After scrolling a page with any amount (or going to a new page), you will not be able to directly tap-and-hold a link to bring up the context menu (so that you can open the link in a new tab) without the need for at least partially highlight it (or the text that contains it). Fortunately, this is a minor annoyance and you'll quickly learn how to highlight (part) the link without clicking it.
* The new version is still using custom GUI components, which makes it impossible to use any kind of common Windows keyboard shortcuts. This is a mayor annoyance to anybody using an external keyboard to enter a lot of texts and wanting to use the traditional Windows shortcuts to quickly navigate through / highlight / copy/cut/paste text in the text input components.
* On some Pocket PC's (for example, the Pocket Loox 720) the new version still uses non-proportional Courier New fonts in the address bar / in the tab titles. This is a minor annoyance, though.
* Unfortunately, the settings dialogs (screenshot 1 and 2) are as simple as in beta1. The latter, however, now has a new checkbox, " Set Opera as default browser", which makes it unnecessary to manually import a registry file (please see the articles in the Recommended links section for the registry import file I've created for beta1 to revert the default browser assignments) in order to revert back to using Pocket Internet Explorer (if you make Opera the default Web browser on your Pocket PC).
Nevertheless, the lack of detailed settings dialogs are not a problem – with manually editing (or, downloading my sample configuration files) the main configuration files of Opera, you can fine-tune it (scrollbar visibility, proxy usage, scroll behaviour etc).
* Under WM2003, Menu/Display/Landscape still doesn't rotate the viewport. Again, this would be pretty easy to implement because Opera, unlike for example the Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) plug-ins or almost all ( uBook and Mobipocket Reader being the most important exceptions) e-book readers, doesn't need to rely on the Portrait-only, underlying PIE engine. This is a minor problem though and "only" affecting WM2003 users – screen rotation works great in post-WM2003 operating systems.
* Still no advanced context menus (copy link, save image), no in-page searching etc. These are, however, only minor annoyances, which don't have a negative effect on the browsing experience itself.
* Still no " One Column" view mode like that of PIE starting with WM2003SE or the PIE plug-in PIEPlus (see this review on the latest version of latter, including a detailed comparison of the "one column" modes offered by PIE and PIEPlus). This would be very useful to maximize the usage of the available screen estate on many pages; for example, the XDA-Dev forums (example screenshot of Opera 8.5b2 rendering the latter here – as can be seen, the useful contents of the page only occupies about 65-70% of the available horizontal screen estate. With a real "One Column" mode, it'd be close to 100%).
* Still no support for system-level favourites. This would also be really easy to implement as there's nothing particular about the .url files in \Windows\Favorites – they're really-really easy to process. (I'd say a hour's work for an average C++ programmer.)
Verdict
I can only use superlatives when speaking of this application. Despite its (still) missing functionalities, its speed and compatibility is just phenomenal.
Recommended links
The following articles/tips all discuss/are all related to the previous, beta 1 version. Note that some of their contents is now that they are fixed are outdated. They may still be worth checking out - particularly the ones on manually editing the Opera configuration files. You'll find a lot of information in these articles never published by anyone else.
ESSENTIAL (NEW, UNIQUE BUGFIXES!!!) to know about the great Web browser, Opera beta! - I haven't run into the same problem with the new Opera version – yet. This doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't exist any more – therefore, if the address bar auto-completion crashes your Pocket PC with beta2 too, make sure you read this article.
Modify the default scrolling behaviour of Pocket PC Web browsers. Note that even the beta 2 of Opera uses jump-by-link by default (on all operating systems, not just WM5), as far as its D-pad navigation is concerned; you will most probably want to override this and switch to the 'scroll a page at a time' behaviour. Note that the new scroll a page feature (invokable via the Space key) only works on devices with a built-in keyboard; for example, on the HTC Wizard (screenshot of Opera running on my HTC Wizard here).
Opera 8.5 beta on WM5 - it is certainly different from the WM2003(SE) version and is working GREAT!
WM5 compliance report: the bandwidth reduction service OnSpeed works pretty good; additional Toonel information – this article will be useful for everyone that wants to configure his or her Opera to access the Web sites through a HTTP proxy.
Pocket PC version of Famous Web Browser, Opera 8.5 beta Officially Released!

link is broken. Could you upload it. Thanks

Do you mean this one? http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/products/winmobileppc/
It's working OK with me.

Opera 8.5 beta 2 is out!

Even the first beta version of Opera was a real relevation for the Pocket PC community. Much as it had several bugs (particularly on pre-Windows Mobile 5 devices), it has quickly become the browser of choice for many Pocket PC users (including me), at least on Windows Mobile 5.
The new version is, speed-wise, clearly the best browser I've ever seen for the Pocket PC. It's much-much faster than the alternatives. You'll certainly love it!
The good
* The WM2003(SE) version seems to be working great: I haven't encountered the infamous Opera-is-stalled bug under pre-WM5 operating system any more. I've tested the new version of Opera with all the test pages (the search facility at http://www.europe.com/en/ - screenshot here; RedHotPawn) that make the previous version stall at once. No problems encountered so far.
This may be related to the fact that now Opera senses some Web servers' not answering – see this and this message.
A iPAQ 2210 screenshot can be seen here and here (the latter taken at 25% zoom level so that the entire chessboard is visible) – as can be seen, as opposed to b1, I could log in and play on my iPAQ 2210 as well.
* It feels much faster than beta1, which is a feat in itself because beta 1 was already much faster than any alternative browser.
* There's tab support! (See the screenshots provided for examples.)
* The bug related to not being able to display loooooong pages is fixed. It worked great with all the pages I've thrown it at; an example screenshot of Tero Lehto's blog is here.
* Much as the new version is still using custom (non-native) GUI components, one of the biggest problems, that is, the text areas hiding the last characters in each row behind the scrollbar, is fixed as can be seen in here.
* The "You have XX days left of your trial period" dialog is no longer displayed at startup.
(There must be tons of other bugfixes, as far as previous beta1 bugs are concerned; these were the ones I've explicitly tested and compared to beta1.)
The bad
* After scrolling a page with any amount (or going to a new page), you will not be able to directly tap-and-hold a link to bring up the context menu (so that you can open the link in a new tab) without the need for at least partially highlight it (or the text that contains it). Fortunately, this is a minor annoyance and you'll quickly learn how to highlight (part) the link without clicking it.
* The new version is still using custom GUI components, which makes it impossible to use any kind of common Windows keyboard shortcuts. This is a mayor annoyance to anybody using an external keyboard to enter a lot of texts and wanting to use the traditional Windows shortcuts to quickly navigate through / highlight / copy/cut/paste text in the text input components.
* On some Pocket PC's (for example, the Pocket Loox 720) the new version still uses non-proportional Courier New fonts in the address bar / in the tab titles. This is a minor annoyance, though.
* Unfortunately, the settings dialogs (screenshot 1 and 2) are as simple as in beta1. The latter, however, now has a new checkbox, " Set Opera as default browser", which makes it unnecessary to manually import a registry file (please see the articles in the Recommended links section for the registry import file I've created for beta1 to revert the default browser assignments) in order to revert back to using Pocket Internet Explorer (if you make Opera the default Web browser on your Pocket PC).
Nevertheless, the lack of detailed settings dialogs are not a problem – with manually editing (or, downloading my sample configuration files) the main configuration files of Opera, you can fine-tune it (scrollbar visibility, proxy usage, scroll behaviour etc).
* Under WM2003, Menu/Display/Landscape still doesn't rotate the viewport. Again, this would be pretty easy to implement because Opera, unlike for example the Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) plug-ins or almost all ( uBook and Mobipocket Reader being the most important exceptions) e-book readers, doesn't need to rely on the Portrait-only, underlying PIE engine. This is a minor problem though and "only" affecting WM2003 users – screen rotation works great in post-WM2003 operating systems.
* Still no advanced context menus (copy link, save image), no in-page searching etc. These are, however, only minor annoyances, which don't have a negative effect on the browsing experience itself.
* Still no " One Column" view mode like that of PIE starting with WM2003SE or the PIE plug-in PIEPlus (see this review on the latest version of latter, including a detailed comparison of the "one column" modes offered by PIE and PIEPlus). This would be very useful to maximize the usage of the available screen estate on many pages; for example, the XDA-Dev forums (example screenshot of Opera 8.5b2 rendering the latter here – as can be seen, the useful contents of the page only occupies about 65-70% of the available horizontal screen estate. With a real "One Column" mode, it'd be close to 100%).
* Still no support for system-level favourites. This would also be really easy to implement as there's nothing particular about the .url files in \Windows\Favorites – they're really-really easy to process. (I'd say a hour's work for an average C++ programmer.)
Verdict
I can only use superlatives when speaking of this application. Despite its (still) missing functionalities, its speed and compatibility is just phenomenal.
Recommended links
The following articles/tips all discuss/are all related to the previous, beta 1 version. Note that some of their contents is now that they are fixed are outdated. They may still be worth checking out - particularly the ones on manually editing the Opera configuration files. You'll find a lot of information in these articles never published by anyone else.
ESSENTIAL (NEW, UNIQUE BUGFIXES!!!) to know about the great Web browser, Opera beta! - I haven't run into the same problem with the new Opera version – yet. This doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't exist any more – therefore, if the address bar auto-completion crashes your Pocket PC with beta2 too, make sure you read this article.
Modify the default scrolling behaviour of Pocket PC Web browsers. Note that even the beta 2 of Opera uses jump-by-link by default (on all operating systems, not just WM5), as far as its D-pad navigation is concerned; you will most probably want to override this and switch to the 'scroll a page at a time' behaviour. Note that the new scroll a page feature (invokable via the Space key) only works on devices with a built-in keyboard; for example, on the HTC Wizard (screenshot of Opera running on my HTC Wizard here).
Opera 8.5 beta on WM5 - it is certainly different from the WM2003(SE) version and is working GREAT!
WM5 compliance report: the bandwidth reduction service OnSpeed works pretty good; additional Toonel information – this article will be useful for everyone that wants to configure his or her Opera to access the Web sites through a HTTP proxy.
Pocket PC version of Famous Web Browser, Opera 8.5 beta Officially Released!

Web browsing: what are all the options right now?

I've been using VGA hack for a while against Pocket IE and really like the way it renders pages. But I hate the way VGA Hack works with almost everything else.
Can VGA Hack (or similar) be applied to specific apps only? Say PIE, Word and Excel only?
Failing that, what rival browsers exist?
Opera mobile and opera mini. Never used either and will try them out, but I never use the "1 column" mode in PIE and basically want pages to be as close as possible to a VGA desktop computer. I want framed sites to render well in particular.
Tabbed browsing *would* be nice but I certainly don't care that much.
Faster page rendering would be a real bonus. A couple of sites I visit (say http://www.todayonly.co.uk ) seem to take forever in PIE.
So, what else is there? There's some Japanese browser too, iirc, but how stable is that? How good is the rendering?

Opera is definitely the one you want. Works flawlessly with VGA, automatically and intelligently scales framed pages to display nicely, and will switch to classicl desktop view at a quick click. It even allows your device to identify as a desktop computer when querried by a page.

I disagree.
Pie+ for me is the most stable and feature packed browser. Not really a browser as such but a load of extensions to Pie.

In my view Netfront 3.3 is also a good option. Specially the fact that it supports Flash which Opera doesn't.
By the way I have also tried Mini Opera and in fact am writing this post using mini opera. Give it a try
Regards

Please check out the Web Browser category ( http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&cat=61 ) on my blog (the later articles have also been cross-posted to the General forum here at XDA-Dev) - it answers ALL your questions. It's really woth checking it out because, based on the info there, you will be able to make an informed decision on which browser to choose.

just try opera 8.6 version it will surely solve ur problem.

I have to Second the Netfront Suggestion
I have used a number of IE addins, and I used Opera during the Beta testing process. I find the in the end I keep coming back to Netfront. I like it enought that I finally did purchase a copy. It renders well in VGA. It has a number of layout formats so you can get a desktop like experience. What I like to use is the following.
Virtual resolution: 800x600
Zoom: 75%
Rendering: Smart-Fit
I also like to set quick render. This causes the page to display in a text layout while the browser retrieves the images and other layout information. This way if you just need a link from the page, you can click it before the whole page is drawn. This can be annoying though if you are trying to read the page because as soon as the browser was retrieved everything, it redraws the whole page, inturupting your reading. For me, this has not been a problem, but Netfront is flexible enough to suit most tastes.
They do offer a short free trial. I suggest checking it out.

Update:
OK, tried Opera for a few days and really, really liked it. However, sometimes it seems like it just doesn't respond at all. When it works, it great. When it's slow, it unusable. Basically, for features it's spot on but for responsiveness I've had to rule it out entirely.
I'm trying Netfront now and so far I'm hugely impressed. Accurate, rapid page rendering and seems to do everything it is supposed to do. I'll give it a week or so before I decide but it certainly looks like a bargain to me (under GBP£20 iirc - the price of a good sandwich)

still mostly happy with netfront,but how do you turn off the irritating way is fills the screen with the focused frame? Nice feature for 240x240 screens, but for vga it just slows me down.

xiasma said:
still mostly happy with netfront,but how do you turn off the irritating way is fills the screen with the focused frame? Nice feature for 240x240 screens, but for vga it just slows me down.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure what you're referring to, but you can always change the rendering mode.

To disable focus on frames navigate to "menu / tools / browser settings/ misc (tab) and uncheck box "enable smart frame operation"
This box is checked by default. With this box checked netfront fills the whole screen with a particular frame you have tapped upon.
Regards

xiasma said:
Update:
OK, tried Opera for a few days and really, really liked it. However, sometimes it seems like it just doesn't respond at all. When it works, it great.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think its bcoz ur cache is saved on ur phones memory thus try to change its cache on ur storage card so it will free up the memory & will use less resources.

niketkumar said:
I think its bcoz ur cache is saved on ur phones memory thus try to change its cache on ur storage card so it will free up the memory & will use less resources.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Let me disagree. It's mostly with other Web browsers (most notably, NetFront) that seem to "freeze" when writing to (comparatively) slow (say, flash ROM-based) storage.
Of course, it's worth relocating the Opera cache (see my tutorial at http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&p=916&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 ), but also make sure you only relocate it to a well-optimized card.

By the way do u know that how can i change the location of cache (PIE) on to the storage card ?

niketkumar said:
By the way do u know that how can i change the location of cache (PIE) on to the storage card ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah. Please read for example http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/articles.php?action=expand,42768

I think Opera for PPC works only with an acceptable speed if you relocate the cache NOT to a faster card BUT to virtual memory card.. there is a driver which does that. I'm greatly impressed with it..

Opera Mobile 10 Beta is now out on Winmo, Anyone tried it on the HD2 yet ?

http://www.mobiletechworld.com/2009/11/18/opera-mobile-10-beta-available-on-windows-mobile/
Did anyone try it on the HD2?

ooh thanks for the tip, downloading and trying now.

First impression: Wow it loads up quick. Probably at least 1 third of the time of 9.5
It uses HTC keyboard rather than the Opera one as in Mini 5.
Just tested loading engadget on 10 and 9.5 and they came out about the same, around 16 sec on low strength wifi connection.
Tried testing a few sites and if anything 10 might be slightly slower at downloading and rendering, only by a second though and I might not be timing that accurately. Overall though it's much faster to load so one benefit there.
Note: Just realised I've been doing above tests with Opera Turbo off. doh. Re-testing with new sites now.
OK, with turbo on, thinkbroadband.com loads just under 5 seconds on Opera 10 and on 9.5 it's just under 9 seconds.

Biffy said:
First impression: Wow it loads up quick. Probably at least 1 third of the time of 9.5
It uses HTC keyboard rather than the Opera one as in Mini 5.
Just tested loading engadget on 10 and 9.5 and they came out about the same, around 16 sec on low strength wifi connection.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
try activating the opera proxy

Thank you for letting us know. It looks promising.
Does multitouch work naturally like in original 9.7 version included in hd2?
What I mean is, does the multitouch gesture zoom in the web page (enlarging the textsize etc) or does it zoom in the window (like non-supported applications manually added through registry)?
Thank you.

I think it's 9.5 included with HD2, but no, the multitouch isn't working in 10 beta.
Also need to find a way to replace it as the default browser...
Edit: Updated tests above with turbo on
Edit 2, I was wrong, it is 9.7 sorry.

No auto-rotation like in 9.7 either.
Another noticeable difference is the page updates way quicker. E.g. browsing my rememberthemilk.com tasks page on 9.7, there's a lot of the checked pattern when swiping around the page. On 10 there is none at all.

@ Biffy
Thank you for your quick response.
Is the executable named as "OperaL.exe"?
If not, did you try to rename it? This might restore multitouch gestures and auto-rotation

Will check the OperaL.exe, but won't I need to move it to the overwrite the default folder maybe?
Also tried swiping around engadget.com, in 9.7 it's not hard to get a bit of the checker pattern even after the page is loaded. On 10 I can't seem to get any and think it may be smoother overall too.
Edit: Renamed exe to OperaL.exe but now no pages seem to load...
It's nice to see the tab limit has been increased from the tiny amount on 9.7

I'm not sure if this new version will be work good with our htc hd2... because the opera version by default are optimised for our devices, not likely the beta version of opera.
(omg sorry for my poor english)

Biffy said:
Will check the OperaL.exe, but won't I need to move it to the overwrite the default folder maybe?
Also tried swiping around engadget.com, in 9.7 it's not hard to get a bit of the checker pattern even after the page is loaded. On 10 I can't seem to get any and think it may be smoother overall too.
Edit: Renamed exe to OperaL.exe but now no pages seem to load...
It's nice to see the tab limit has been increased from the tiny amount on 9.7
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think that it is necessary to have it in the same location. But it may be necessary for the executable to have the same filename, window name & class name (you can check the last 2 using a task manager, but the filename is the easiest to start with).
You can increase the maximum number of tabs in version 9.7.
See the tips & tricks thread or type opera:config in your opera mobile

Just trying to sort out my wifi problem, as no connections were working. Then will retry as OperaL.exe
I knew about the tabs in 9.7 but it's still nice in 10 it's better by default, one less thing to have to tweak.

My connection is working again after a reset, don't know what happened there...
Renaming to OperaL.exe hasn't changed anything. The default executable is Opera9.exe, would it be worth trying that, or something else?
Edit: Opera9.exe doesn't help either. Guess it's not going to be such a simple fix.

Got to say, I like the way the interface is heading.
Not too worried about the lack of HD2-centric optimisations, that will surely come later.

Loads fast

Biffy said:
My connection is working again after a reset, don't know what happened there...
Renaming to OperaL.exe hasn't changed anything. The default executable is Opera9.exe, would it be worth trying that, or something else?
Edit: Opera9.exe doesn't help either. Guess it's not going to be such a simple fix.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for trying.
Hopefully there will be a solution, so that Opera 10 will remain optimized for our device.

I think the thing I miss most is the auto-rotation. As it makes zoom un-necessary on lots of pages.

Pinch & zoom doesn't work, either auto rotate and no much differences from 9.7, better ui, opera turbo and little more.
and opera turbo loads faster yes, but it is a ****ty compressor that makes the images looks like crap.
I still with 9.7

been playing with Opera 10 this morning - FAST.
i guess you either love or hate Turbo, but I love it.
The only issue I am having is that the links from the sense browser page still open in 9.7, but 10 has made itself default for mail links, so a little muddled.

Turbo got better .. it can play animated gifs now for example (it couldn't before). But you can;t set image quality, and the default quality is very bad.

removing Opera 9.5 preloaded on Pure.

Opera 9.5 cam preloaded on my Pure and i want to upgrade to Opera 10. i've searched the forums for solutions however everything points to manual removal via registry which i'm too lazy to want to go through. can anyone suggest an alternative method please?

It can't be removed it is Cooked into the Rom the phone came with, you could remove the registry entries for it, but they will be overwriten with those of Opera 10 when you install that.
Install 10 and forget about 9, it will still be there on the phone, but internet related 'stuff' will use 10 (as long as you set it to default on installation), only if you uninstalled 10 will you use 9 again, although in my experience the default browser becomes IE, then you'd need to edit the reg to change the default to Opera 9.

Opera preloaded into RAM. Instantly loads when you click ICON
I had the Pure for less than a month before the volume down HW button went soft and the metal grill over the earpiece became discolored black mostly but a gradient oil rainbow or oxidizing copper effect to it (probably from oils from the skin). The Pure's default Opera was preloaded into RAM and therefore it was like instant start up. Does Anyone know how to enable this? I currently use a Tilt2 (Rhodium, aka TP2, etc.) and would love to have opera preloaded. I am running NRGz LEO with 6.5.3 and Sense 2.5 Dec 31st release.
As for removing it I agree with the guy above me who says you should probably just leave it on. I would either disable the old browser or enable the new one to work with the TouchFlo3D or Sense Internet tab, otherwise you are consuming unessicary resources (few megs of RAM). I never use these feature because I have shortcuts in Sense directly to my browsers. The newest SkyFire comes in handy for heavily Flash laden sites.
If you really want to get rid of it, flash over to another ROM that doesn't have it cooked in. Get rid of all that AT&T bloatware. NRGZ28 helped me pimp out my Tilt2 and get rid of the AT&T bloat. Or if you want to do it on your own:
1): Backup your settings however you like.
2): Hard reset phone
3): Cancel the AT&T UC (User Customization) Startup installation
4): Customize your settings for everything you like
5): Create your own UC after you have everything how you like: Start with the basics of just lining up your cab's to be installed after flashing a new rom, and then creating a XML settings file to modify registry entries and the like. Follow these instructions:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=1902590#post1902590
More info on UC here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=560371&highlight=User+Customization
Or if you don't want to do it yourself, there are people who have ripped and dumbed your default ROM and took out the AT&T bloat and then repackaged them. Some Devices have startup screens and radios and everything. Let me know if you have trouble finding the Cleaned up AT&T ROM dumps although most of these will have Opera still in there. Some of them already have updated Opera.
I mention all of this because you ask about opera but really all your software could use an upgrade if you are running any AT&T build.