Yesterday, I got an opppurtunity to try out the latest offering by the Opera browser team - the "Opera Mini Dimension"(beta)... For those who have no idea about Opera Mini, it is a J2ME based mobile browser, which can be installed on any Java enabled phone, and can be used to access the Internet, provided you have subscribed for GPRS with your service provider. I have been using Opera Mini for around 2 years by now, since its advent, and it has change the way people access net through their cell phones.
Back to Dimension.... It was last month when I heard that the Opera team is coming up with there next version (ver4) of their popular browser, and I registered for their beta distribution.... The wait was long, really long :( - over a month!!!! But, the wait was finally over yesterday, when I got my hands on the new Dimension... Despite a few bugs, which almost every beta product has, it was quite "revolutionary"...
Some features I noticed were:
+ It is possible to get the complete web page as a whole on the mobile screen, and we can zoom in to a particular page.
+ While in zoomed in state, it is possible to do both horizontal as well as vertical scrolling :)
+ When I am tired of the horizontal scrolling, I can directly switch to "fit to width" mode (the classic Opera mini mode), and continue browsing
Some features were missing in this beta version, which I know that they will include in the final release version :
- No RSS feeds
- The server fails to remember the logged in user after some time, so you need to re-login at regular interval
- Was expecting some kind of Flash support, but its missing here too
- Photo blogging is not supported in this version
- Landscape mode of browsing is still missing...
Inspite of all the shortcomings, it was a commendable effort by the dev team to come up with so many interesting features in the new version. Who would not like to have internet access on the move??? :)
