Review: Opera Mini 4 Beta 2

Opera Mini 4 beta 2 is a mobile browser for mobile phones which are java enabled. It is one of the (probably the one and only) best mobile browser around which provides superior browsing experience.

What makes it superior is the fact that it gives a true browsing experience, in the sense, it is capable of rendering actual web pages as you would see it on a desktop web browser like IE, Firefox or Opera.

An other factor that makes it really superior is its performance. Pages are fetched and rendered very fast and definitely it is the fastest mobile browser around. The magic behind this performance is due to the fact that the requested web pages are first processed and optimized by Opera’s proxy servers and then given to the mobile phone. Size of the images in these optimized web pages is greatly reduced though the only minor drawback is that their resolution is very less. But thats a small sacrifice for the responsiveness that is gained in turn.

About Opera Mini

I would like to only touch of upon some of the notable features. For a complete list of features, Opera Mini’s web site is the best place to refer (its a great page explaining all the features crisp and clear).

Henceforth, in this post, when I say “Opera Mini” I am referring to Opera Mini 4 beta 2

Start Page:

Opera Mini’s startup page is a really smart move towards usability. At first, I was not happy with this because the default browser that comes along with the Nokia phones (based on S60,3rd edition platform) which takes you to a default home page that you have set. But after having used Opera Mini for quite some time, I found that it was a good thing to have a start page. What makes start page so useful is the fact that all you bookmarks and your recent browsing history is accessible from here. Well thought usability!!

Start Page

Menu

Web page Preview:

Any page fetched by default is shown in a fit-to-screen preview. A small box overlay hovers over the preview which can be moved in any direction either using the keypad or using your phones joystick. This box overlay gives an indication of the content that would be zoomed onto fit the phone’s screen. A cute little mouse pointer is also provided which proves to be useful at times when selecting items in that web page.

When scrolling through a web page (in zoomed mode), Opera aligns/positions the page automatically such that the text appears centrally. So that way we do not have a scroll left/right to adjust the text such that it falls within the viewable region. Very intelligent!!

Full page preview

Zoomed portion of the preview

Shortcut Keys:

There are shortcuts for doing almost any operation. There are two sets of shortcuts: the first set is accessed by pressing “#” key followed by other characters. This gives the most common operations like managing your bookmarks or navigating between pages. The second set of shortcuts can be accessed by pressing “*” key followed by other character. These shortcuts are used to access bookmarked web sites and to change the viewing mode to full screen or toggling between portrait and landscape mode. Check the screenshots below the complete list of shortcuts.

Shortcuts accessed by pressing #

Shortcuts accessed by pressing *

Bookmarks:

Websites can be easily bookmarked by using the shortcut “#7″. You can also bookmark a website by chossing Add Bookmark option from Menu->Tools.

While adding a bookmark, you can also choose to display this bookmark on the start page. not adding all bookmarks to the start page ensures that the start page is not cluttered and only the most important bookmarks are availabled for access on the start page.

Adding bookmark from the Menu

Choose to display this book mark in the start page

You can manage the add/delete/modify/rearrange the bookmarks by pressing the shortcut key “#2″ and then selecting the Manage option. You can also access the bookmark list from the menu.

Managing bookmarks

One of the biggest drawbacks of Opera Mini has to do with the reordering of the bookmark list. Say, for example, you need to move a particular bookmark from the bottom of the list to the top, then you would have to click Manage->Move Up every single time until the item reaches to the top. Especially if your list is huge, any new bookmark appears at the bottom of the list and it becomes a pain to move this new bookmark to the top of the list.

Viewing in Landscape and Portrait modes:

This is one feature which not just cool but also very useful. Most of the phones these days have bigger screen which are tall but not wide. (there are exceptions, for example, my Nokia E61 has a wider screen which gives you landscape view). For these kind of phones this is useful feature where you can rotate the screen to make it into a landscape mode thus giving you more reading space on the screen. I highly appreciate this feature because very few phones have this inbuilt capability to rotate the screen from portrait to landscape mode (Nokia E60 has this feature inbuilt). “*#” will toggle between landscape and portrait mode.

Screen in landscape mode.

Screen in portrait mode

Apart from these viewing modes, in each of these modes you can choose to have these pages displayed in Full screen mode. “**” will toggle between full screen mode and normal mode.

In Normal Mode

In Full screen mode

Search Engines:

There is inbuilt support for some of the popular search engines to which you can issue a query. Since Opera has tied up with Yahoo, they seem to have not included Google and MSN search. I was not sure how to add a new search engine, say Google, all by myself. Though I added Google to the list of search engines, but when I issued a query, Opera says the page could not be found.

Multiple Search Engines

Settings:

From the settings screen, you can choose to disable images from being loaded. Disabling images would make you pages load even more faster. You can also choose an option to make you web page fit to the screen’s width.

Settings Screen

You can also choose your default viewing mode: Landscape/Portrait and Full Screen.

Settings Screen (contd.)

Verdict:

Pros: Great browser with great usability and performance. Support for Portrait/Landscape mode of viewing. Easy shortcuts for doing almost anything.

Cons: It is a pain to reorder your bookmarks. Cannot search within a page. Not sure how to added other search engines. Some (very few) web pages are rendered blank.

But on a whole, this is the best mobile browser around. Guaranteed.. you will be hooked to it for a very long time.

Below are some of the screenshots of other web pages that were browsed using Opera Mini.

Twitter – Mobile Version

Google Reader – Mobile version

Mini Techmeme – Mobile version of techmeme

Page Information for the web page being displayed

Free Screen Capturing on Symbian Phones

Are you a reviewer like myself who wants to take screenshots of your symbian phone. Whatever might be the reason for screen capturing, many of us find it difficult to locate a free tool for doing the same.

Eventually we would end up finding this nice free tool called Screenshot for Symbian OS which was developed by Antony Pranata.

This mobile application is a freeware and its source code is also available for you to modify under GPL.

Screenshot for Symbian OS is available for Symbian OS S60 (1st, 2nd and 3rd editions) and UIQ 2.x platforms.

Features of Screenshot for Symbian OS:
- Capturing Mode: Lets you capture one shot (default) or shots every 1, 2, 5 and 10 seconds.
- Shortcut: Lets you choose from 5 predefined pair of keys which need to pressed for taking a screenshot. Default is + key combination.
- Image Format: You choose to save the image as JPEG or PNG of different qualities.
- Location: You can either choose to store the capture screen images either in the phone memory or external storage card.
- File name: Choose the prefix text that is used to form the name of the captured image file.
- Directory: Choose a directory name under which the screen capture image files are stored.
- Delay of first shot: You can choose to give a delay before taking the first shot. Default is “No delay”.

When you launch the application, it has a back button for hiding the application in the background. The application shows the last captured screenshot on its home screen. You can choose to send this to a different phone or your PC based on the connection capabilities of the phone. You can also choose the deactivate screen capture if you choose to such that screen capture does not work if you press the keys combination.

Ironically, this tool does not let you take a screenshot of the settings screen of this application.

On a whole, this application does a great job of capturing the screenshots on your phone.

Home screen

Folder showing the captured images.

Settings screen captured on a Nokia E61

Web-based Aggregator Review: Newsgator

After having used Google Reader, Bloglines beta and Newsgator for quite some time, I can conclude that Google Reader is definitely leading the pack and Bloglines is just a split second behind. Well, I guess you can forget Newsgator. It is no where near and is seriously lagging behind.

In this post, I would like to cover Newsgator and explain its deficiencies.

Newsgator by default takes it to their beta page. The classic Version of the their reader is still available but will be phased out soon.

The standard features include showing a folder view on the left-hand side. You can organize your feeds into different folders. Clicking on each of the feeds would display the feed items on the right-hand side. The feeds have 3 kind of views – Headlines, Summaries and Full Posts. The default is to show summaries.

There is no such thing as read item. One would have to manually mark an item as read. Of course there is an option where you can mark all the above items in the list to be read.

Some of the other actions that you can do with each of feed items is that you can add each item to Clippings. When you add a particular post to clippings, they get added to your My Clippings folder. This is something similar to adding star to you feed item in Google Reader. You can also mail a particular item or IM it to your chat partner. Only AOL Messenger and Yahoo Messenger are supported. But how often would you send a new items over chat!!

Clicking on a particular folder shows all the feeds in that folder. But the only drawback is that it displays all the items from the first feed. The next feed starts only when the first feed items are listed. What would have been preferable is to show a snapshot of all the feeds in the first page itself. There are lot of other usability issues that if fixed make simple but yet a sweet reader/aggregator.

Apart from these, Newsgator provides tools for you make it easier to add feeds to your newsgator account as and when you browse.

Lacking features:
- Configurable Home Page
- Ability to search within feeds
- Mobile Phone optimized web page
- Good usability

Pros: On a whole, its a decent web-based aggregator which lacks a lot of good features and usability. If you are a novice and are intimidated by the look and feel of Google Reader and Bloglines, then you can consider Newsgator.

Cons: Bad usability and of course lacks the feature list mentioned above.

Poll: Which is the best web-based aggregator/feed reader ?

Here is an interesting topic which about which I am really curious to know user’s preferences.

So I am asking you again.. Which do you feel is the best web-based aggregator / feed reader out there ??

Let me be open. Right now, my favorite is Google Reader. It has its own advantages compared to others. I am planning to write a more detailed comparison on the same.

Until then, I would like to find out your answer.

I am sure I have missed out lot of other good online feed readers. If you think your web-based feed reader is better than other options that have been mentioned in the poll, then please us all know by leaving a comment.

Tips: Format any web page for viewing on mobile phone

There are a lot of websites which are not optimized for viewing them on mobile phones.

These web sites/pages can be reformatted for viewing them on your mobile phone.

Go to Google Mobile Search web page and click on settings. In the settings screen, choose the “Yes” for the option which says “Format web pages for your phone”.

After having done this, in Google Mobile Search (http://mobile.google.com/search) give the URL(web address) as the search string.

If the URL (of the web page which you need to be reformatted) is valid (i.e. if the webpage exists) then it should appear as the first search result.

Now, opening the URL from the first search result will open up the reformatted web page. Great isn’t it!!

The way it is done is that Google automatically reformats the web page for viewing on mobile phone. Thanks to Google!!

Mobile Phone optimized web pages

One of the biggest problems which a person faces while surfing the internet from their mobile phone is to find a web page that has been optimized for mobile phone screens. Having personally realized this pain, I’ve with a round up of web services which are optimized for use on Mobile Phones.

I know there are lot of other web sites which are optimized for mobile phones. So, I would be updating the below list periodically.

Also, please feel free to let me know if you’ve come across other websites which I am missing in the list below.

Web Mail:
Yahoo!
Mail – http://m.yahoo.com/mail
Gmail – http://mobile.google.com/gmail

General News:
Google News – http://mobile.google.com/m/news
The New York
Times – http://mobile.nytimes.com/
BusinessWeek – http://businessweek.mobi/index.jsp
Reuters News – http://mobile.reuters.com/mobile/m/Home

Technology News:
Mini-Techmeme – http://www.techmeme.com/mini
Technorati – http://m.technorati.com/
Zdnet
news – http://m.zdnet.com/

Social Networking & Blogging:
Facebook – http://m.facebook.com/home.php
WordPress.com
Blog – http://m.wordpress.com/
Twitter – http://m.twitter.com/home
Jaiku – http://m.jaiku.com/

Search:
Google mobile search – http://mobile.google.com/search
Wapedia – Mobile
Encyclopedia – http://wapedia.mobi/en/

RSS Reader:
Google Reader – http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/
Newsgator – http://m.newsgator.com/

Chat Client:
Y! Messenger – http://mm.yahoo.com/?Referer=yahoo&card=d&Referer=internal

Photos & Videos:
Picasa Web – http://picasaweb.google.com/m?source=mobileproducts&pli=1
YouTube
Mobile – http://m.youtube.com/

Others:
Google Mobile services – http://mobile.google.com/
MSN Mobile – http://mobile.msn.com/device/en-us/default.aspx

Google introduces Blogger Play

Google has added Blogger Play (http://play.blogger.com) which is a online photo slide continuously playing photos uploaded by the Blogger community.

The official google buzz blog says that it was used in house for quite sometime until finally google wanted to give it back to the public.

Some of the other features which would be nice to have are having a Blogger Play Page Element (basically a widget) which users could add to their blogs or any other website they wish.

Also, it would be interesting to have a screensaver application which can be installed and used on either windows/linux/mac os machines.

About Digitally Smart

Digitally Smart is a blog run by Mohasin where he covers topics of varying interest from software tips to hardware reviews. The common ground between all these topics in technology.

Please feel free to leave your comments about Digitally Smart in this post.

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