SiteCrafting, Inc.
13 Apr
Opera on the iPhone
I got my team together this afternoon to give the newly approved Opera Mini for iPhone/iPod touch/iPad a try. Overall we agree it's great to see another browser in this space but they've got an uphill battle if they ever hope to overtake mobile Safari. Check out the rundown of our thoughts after the jump!
Pro's
- snappy load times (via 3rd party server caching)
- responsive scrolling without as much "rubber-banding" of content below finger
- background loading of pages over multiple tabs
- back arrow used for both back and zoom out
- multiple search engine choices
Con's
- only two levels of scaling/zoom (fit to screen and full res)
- zoomed out rendering choppy, aliased
- tab access pretty but pointless since current page can't be used in any way
- un-characteristic double taps needed to select from URL bar dropdown, close tabs
- two top toolbars if not in "full screen" mode take up valuable screen real estate
Bottom line
- competition always good to keep browser tech moving forward (we're looking at you Mozilla and Google)
- privacy concerns raised with 3rd party caching/optimization of content
- might keep it on last screen of apps for testing purposes in Opera Mini mobile mode
- uphill battle to fight against Safari already embedded into OS
- some solid ideas but overall poor implementation
What do you think? What would you add to this pro/con list?
Critiques, CSS, Review, XHTML
by Kevin Freitas | 4/13/2010 5:02pm | Comments (1)
by Kevin Freitas | 4/13/2010 5:02pm | Comments (1)
I have to agree with you Kevin. I liked the way our mobile site loaded and responded initially, but when I switched to full site view was very disappointed in Opera's execution compared with Safari. Though encouraged by the speed the tradeoff on presentation makes it a no-go for me.
Left by Brian Forth | Apr 13, 2010