[biggem001]

To release tommorrow.

no announcement on time. B2 was release about 9 am PST but this one is truely unknown. Its supposed to release with the Opera Desktop at a conference in San Fran, but thats at 8.30 pm PST over here in cali.

Possible additions:
Bug Fixes
VRML (3d browsing of somesort)
File managing, uploading/download - pretty much using upload things on photobucket and myspace n such.

Havn't read anything about video playback/flash stream support. i really hope it does come in tho!!


oh and opera and mozilla are planning to create a mobile browser together i read as well on the opera forums. that should be good if thats true.
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Released Early Morning PST on Oct 25,2007
Scroll down for BB Review.

[Mark Rejhon]

Let's see if this is true tomorrow...
(The Mozilla part is true -- there's an official announcement).

I hope Pearl support is fixed, as is "small fonts" on some models, especially 8800 series.

And VRML support? Interesting. It's not a popular desktop web feature, so that's why I find this mention interesting. Flash support would be more attractive.

[biggem001]

Originally Posted by Mark Rejhon

Let's see if this is true tomorrow...
(The Mozilla part is true -- there's an official announcement).

I hope Pearl support is fixed, as is "small fonts" on some models, especially 8800 series.

And VRML support? Interesting. It's not a popular desktop web feature, so that's why I find this mention interesting. Flash support would be more attractive.

good to see another Opera connoisseur

[gameboy213]

I look forward to this release big time! Huge fan of Beta 2

[Kidberry]

what does Opera do that the BB browser won't? will this browser allow viewing of websites like a PC? help!

[akosnitzky]

Originally Posted by Mark Rejhon

Let's see if this is true tomorrow...
(The Mozilla part is true -- there's an official announcement).

I hope Pearl support is fixed, as is "small fonts" on some models, especially 8800 series.

And VRML support? Interesting. It's not a popular desktop web feature, so that's why I find this mention interesting. Flash support would be more attractive.

Can you please elaborate more on the Mozilla item?

[xombi]

its up for download now, havent noticed anything particulary exciting on it though as yet since my upgrade!

[akosnitzky]

Wirelessly posted (Verizon 8830: BlackBerry8830/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

May someone post the link.

[luleese]

Originally Posted by Kidberry

what does Opera do that the BB browser won't? will this browser allow viewing of websites like a PC? help!

Yes, Opera allows you to view websites just as they look on a PC. All images, tables, formatting, style sheets...everything except flash. It's a pretty sweet experience, especially for sites like Facebook, which looks pretty terrible using the BB browser.

I highly recommend downloading it and giving it a try. You can zoom in to sections of pages and you move around/click items on the page via a built-in mouse cursor. Give it a whirl and let us know what you think!

Here's the link for downloading:
http://mini.opera.com/global/opera-m...anced-beta.zip

You need to unzip the file to your computer, then install it using the Application Loader.

[grandad]

Compared with BB Browser it's brilliant BUT on my Orange UK package it's chargeable as data outside of the Blackberry data package :(

[luleese]

Originally Posted by grandad

Compared with BB Browser it's brilliant BUT on my Orange UK package it's chargeable as data outside of the Blackberry data package :(

Really? That's not cool. This sort of thing doesn't apply to AT&T, does it? Anyone know?

[BBAdmin]

Someone please tell me you can you the MDS browser instead of having to use the WAP gateway! I like Opera, but the fact I could never use it on the MDS browser was a deal breaker for me.

[Mark Rejhon]

Originally Posted by luleese

Really? That's not cool. This sort of thing doesn't apply to AT&T, does it? Anyone know?

Nope. BB and non-BB data is the same thing on some carriers, such as AT&T.

Thankfully, some applications such as JiveTalk allows routing over BIS so the programmers can add support to go through BlackBerry servers, making it part of your BlackBerry data rather than chargeable data (for those carriers that distinguish the two).

Originally Posted by Kidberry

what does Opera do that the BB browser won't? will this browser allow viewing of websites like a PC? help!

It provides a web browser much more similiar to the iPhone browser than BlackBerry browser, with the ability to zoom in and out.

It's not quite iPhone, but good enough.

[Mark Rejhon]

BETA 3 is out:

BlackBerry plan users (or those with BlackBerry Browser): Enter this into BlackBerry Browser:
http://mini.opera.com/beta/

Non-BB plan users (i.e. Rogers $5 data plan users with no Browser icon), download from desktop PC and install to BlackBerry over USB cable:
http://www.operamini.com

[BBAdmin]

Cheers Mark. Let's download and see what we got!

[BBAdmin]

After about 4 minutes I'd had enough - I'm not very impressed. It isn't flush and I get tired of the constant zooming in and out. When zoomed out the page isn't clear enough and when zoomed in you're forever scrolling. I would have thought by now they would at least have had the option for having multiple pages open at once and then tabbing to other open web pages.

Roll on mobile Mozilla!!!

[Mark Rejhon]

Originally Posted by BBAdmin

After about 4 minutes I'd had enough - I'm not very impressed. It isn't flush and I get tired of the constant zooming in and out. When zoomed out the page isn't clear enough and when zoomed in you're forever scrolling. I would have thought by now they would at least have had the option for having multiple pages open at once and then tabbing to other open web pages.

To scroll, don't use the trackball - it scrolls too slow. Use the 2/4/6/8 keys for rocket-speed scrolling speed and read my Opera MINI HOWTO. It's easy to park your left thumb on the numbers, 5 for zooming, 2/4/6/8 for turbo scrolling (I turn on the animated feature in options, to make scrolling a little easier to track on the eyes), for easy one-handed reading of a webpage. You just have to get used to scrolling this way (without looking at the keypad - thankfully the "5" key on BlackBerry has a tiny bump on it, so you can feel for it), and then after a while, it becomes more of a pleasure.

I know, I felt the same way when scrolling using trackball (or trackwheel) in Opera which is no fun -- the trackball is great for clicking links and fine movements, but not for reading a webpage. Once you get past that mentality to use the trackball and use the numeric pad to scroll at high speeds, it stops being tedious.

Me, I use the smallest font size in Opera Mini's option in order to minimize the scrolling I need to do. I love it that the font is a beautifully antialiased 4-point font (smaller than BlackBerry Browser's smallest font), though you need good eyes to read that small. I also set it to "Full Screen" mode, to put maximum amount of text in one screenful.

P.S. I think BETA3 is having problems installing on my BlackBerry 8700, I'll try uninstalling and then reinstalling. I hope I can downgrade to BETA2 which was wonderful on my 8700.
EDIT: I successfully got it installed.
EDIT: Seems mostly the same as BETA2 but with an improvement: I can hit the Back key while a page is still loading to interrupt the loading, without it automatically exiting the application.

As a rule of thumb for pleasant a Opera Mini experience:
- Turn on "Full Screen" mode in Settings. This hides the useless title bar.
- Don't use trackball to scroll, use the 2/4/6/8 keys. This uses turbo scrolling
- Turn on "Visual Effects" in Settings. This makes the turbo scrolling easier to follow.
- If your eyes are good, use "Small" font size. MUCH more text per screenful in zoomed mode.

[biggem001]

My OFFICIAL Opera Mini 4 Beta Version 3

NOTE: This is with my blackberry 8300 on EDGE for ATT.
NOTE2: This is not a review of the product itself, but a review compared to Beta Version 2

Pros/Changes:
-Bookmarks are readily available through the main starting screen and also:
menu > Bookmarks. You can also go menu > Add Bookmark to bookmark your current page
-Also SPEED DIAL. Access it through the bookmark page. Menu > Bookmarks > Speed Dial. They range 1-9. Click to change, add title and address. It allows to copy from bookmarks or history, so no need to right down or copy the address unless its from the BB Browser. Use *+# where # is the number of the speed dial. - or for full qwerty users: ALT A + ALT #.
-Full history
-Cookies fixed. Cookies should be accurate in time now, not expiring early/late.
-NO FIX for Landscape view for BB. I had read that there will never be because blackberry's seem to crash when entering landscape mode. So most likely, no landscape for us :( i dont mind tho haha.
--Settings (this is all for menu > Settings)
--Image quality, Low Med and High. I havn't really noticed any difference between high quality select box on B3 than on the load higher quality check box on B2. There is a difference between Low Med and High though.
--Mobile view. Its actually just changed from the 'fit to width' view. So all it does it makes it like the normal Mini3 Browser.
--Show Overview. changed from Auto-Zoom.
MAIN BB FIX
I was excited when i tested out this fix. When loading any page, pressing the BACK button would exit Opera 4. So when your loading a page, and you accident press back cause a javascript error or anything of the sort, it just stops loading the page!

Cons:
-This shouldn't be considered a New Beta. More of an Update. This just added several small thing and a few fixes.
-No major updates for BB
-No addition of possible:
--3d implementation
--File manager
--Flash Video/Regular Video stream.


ONCE AGAIN:
OPERA MINI 4 BETA 3 DOES NOT HAVE STREAM CAPABILITIES OR FILE MANAGER! just to be sure so nobody asks

[sordomudo11]

Hi All,

I've tried installing both versions 3.1 and beta 4 several times on my Curve w/ T-mobile (via Wi-Fi--I don't have the unlimited data plan, just unlimited e-mail), but to no avail. I've changed my APN to wap.voicestream.com, have rebooted, uninstalled, reinstalled, installed the newest OS, installed via direct download, installed via download to PC/transfer over Application Installer.

Every single time I get: "Error. Failed to connect to the Internet." Any suggestions?

Thanks a ton in advance.

[akosnitzky]

I found it too laborious to go in and out. Add me to the uninstall group.