

Opera Mini 8 for iOS - jacobr
https://itunes.apple.com/app/id363729560

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gond1945
I can see the usecase for this. Especially abroad (expensive data) and in
areas with poor data (Edge connection or even GPRS) this would be a life-
saver.

~~~
macNchz
>in areas with poor data (Edge connection or even GPRS) this would be a life-
saver.

I have had Opera Mini installed on my iPhone since it was released for exactly
this reason—it performs noticeably better than Safari when at the very fringes
of data service coverage. It's not really a situation I'm in terribly often,
but it has saved the day a handful of times.

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girvo
I've been a massive fan of Opera Mini for _years_ now, and this is really
impressive! I wonder how it's implemented? Years ago, on Windows Mobile (not
Windows Phone) it struggled with Javascript. Is that still the case? Is it
merely UIWebView + a proxy to do the compression?

~~~
johansch
This release has a secondary new mode that we hope will replace the older
OBML-without-javascript mode over time, as devices get faster. It's basically
Opera Turbo v2, attempting to get optimally efficient network benefits of the
old Opera Mini to work with full web rendering using webkit. (On iOS Apple
have been thoughtful enough to make it possible to make it possible to replace
the network layer of the built-in webkit component.)

~~~
acc00
Cool, so OBML remains on Presto until it is phased out completely?

Can you point to any papers/specs/sources concerning OBML or the likes?

I was always fascinated by it (and have been trying to do something similar
for my own amusement, most recently with webkit), but while getting a
serialised render tree to display is trivial, making something half as usable
as Opera Mini has always been seems impossible.

I believe there is still a huge market for smaller devices (probably smaller
than feature phones) on which this style of web access is much thought after.

~~~
johansch
Sorry, all of that is proprietary.

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centro
As a side note if you haven't checked out Opera's Other Browser "Coast". I
would really recommend playing around with it. It feels closer to the Web as
OS concept than anything else I've seen.

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tealshift
I like almost everything except I quite detest the fact that it must reload
every time I navigate back and forth. That previous versions DIDN'T do that
was a huge draw for me.

Perhaps the devs could make it so it only reloads if you tap the back/forward
buttons, and doesn't if you use the back/forward swipe gestures. I think that
would be ideal both functionally and aesthetically.

The reason for not reloading is two-fold: 1) Much snappier browsing
experience. 2) Reduced data usage.

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kalleboo
Chrome for iOS also had this "halfway mode" where the transport is compressed
but the render is WebKit. In eagerly awaiting the speed comparisons...

Personally I had to turn it off in chrome as a handful of links stopped
working (presumably due to abuse originating from the shared proxy IPs)

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jacobr
[http://dev.opera.com/blog/opera-mini-8-for-
ios](http://dev.opera.com/blog/opera-mini-8-for-ios) has some further info for
developers

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ehPReth
I really like the built-in QR code scanner. I noticed that my private
certificate authorities I've installed don't seem to work -- is this an iOS
limitation?

~~~
johansch
If you are using the "Opera Mini" data savings mode it's Opera's fault,
otherwise it's an iOS limitation.

~~~
ehPReth
Ah yeah, I turned that off first thing. Seems strange that private CAs
wouldn't work in apps

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ianlevesque
Private CAs do work in apps unless the app itself is doing something strange.

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ehPReth
I gave Chrome a go as well and get the same certificate error as I got in
Opera. Ah well.

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RamunasM
Awesome! The UI is very smooth

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vfclists
How does it handle authenticated and SSL pages?

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Touche
Does this use Blink? If not, that's a shame.

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mantraxD
What would the benefit of that be?

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Touche
Support for WebRTC, among the many other features Blink has over WebKit.

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recursive
I thought Blink was just a rendering engine.

