Opera Mini 4.1 Beta Released
On my Treo, I typically use Xiino as my browser of choice, putting up with its quirks because it’s so much better than the built-in browser. But all Xiino traffic goes through a proxy server, and lately that proxy seems to be not working so well. The last release of Xiino, the mellifluously named 3.4.1E, came out in 2004 or so, and all is silent on the development front.
So I tried out Opera Mini 4.0, which was pretty but sort of sluggish, and now that Opera Mini 4.1 is in beta, I’ve installed that and am relying on it. It does way more JavaScript and CSS than either of the other Palm browsers I’ve used, and it has a fun zooming interface that makes you feel like a myopic person using a regular computer.
The beta introduces much faster proxying; autocomplete on URLs, search within page, and some other coolness.
Since Opera Mini is written in Java, to run it we Palm users need to install a Java Virtual Machine, which Palm conveniently made unavailable earlier this year. It’s not too hard to track down a torrent of the JVM though.
Note also that the Opera site says “Opera Mini 4.1 beta will install next to any existing version of Opera Mini on your device and will not overwrite any of your data,” which in my case I found to be untrue.
It runs not just on Palms, but on Blackberries and all sorts of Java-capable platforms: see the list.
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