Opera Brings iPhone Experience to Windows Mobile
Four months after announcing their new mobile web browser, Opera has finally released a beta version for Windows Mobile. Symbian support is expected in the future. In February Opera announced they also intended to support Linux-based devices.
The most noticeable change in this new version is an iPhone-like pan and zoom interface. Rather than starting with only the viewable portion of the web page, the browser shows the entire page, so the user can choose the content to view. This feature, which should finally bring enjoyable browsing to Windows Mobile, could be the reason the mobile beta is only available for phones with touchscreens.
Opera also claims faster browsing. The company re-engineered its rendering engine and says its browser is 2.5 times faster than the clunky Pocket IE.
Coders hip to Opera’s Dragonfly developer tools get something with this beta, too: remote debugging. You can develop on your normal machine, but test a web application running on your Windows Mobile device. Be sure to check out Opera’s remote debugging tutorial.
There is a significant downside to remind you that this browser is beta software. ActiveX is disabled, so Flash isn’t available. Hey! Something else in common with iPhone!
For a closer look at this latest version, watch this video from Opera’s February announcement of Mobile 9.5:
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