Opera has released a desktop version of its mobile browser, so developers can see how their pages will look on a mobile phone and even create a widget or two. Opera Mobile now runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux desktops, and renders pages just as they would appear on a mobile phone running the diminutive browser. What's more, …

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Monday 26th April 2010 12:43 GMT Anonymous Coward

Small Screen Rendering mode

How does this differ from the desktop SSR mode, which has been available for the best part of a decade? Or is this just a marketing gimmick to boost awareness of the feature amongst web designers? Perhaps some people think they need to be using a special tool to test their mobile pages and don't have faith in SSR mode on a desktop version?

I can't see this new version being any different because surely it's still subject to the same limitations. For example, different phones may have different fonts, and Mobile Opera being simulated on a desktop is probably going to use your desktop fonts or at best get bundled with one font of its own.

And as for widgets, you need to specify a width and height for them, so if you want to develop them on a desktop, surely you just set their sizes to those of phones?

I think Opera's 'Widget platform' thingy is already in Opera 10.5. Widgets can now be installed and removed from the Windows control panel rather than the Widgets panel of previous versions, thus presenting them to the user as proper applications rather than specialist HTML5 web pages.

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Monday 26th April 2010 13:29 GMT Obvious Robert

Opera Mobile

Re Opera Mobile being dependent entirely on Symbian - they have also developed a version for Android, however for some reason they've only seen fit to make it available directly to vendors rather than for general consumption via the Android Market.

Slightly odd move considering that Skyfire and Firefox Mobile (Fennec) are both currently in the works for Android and both have massive potential to steal a significant chunk of Opera Mini's Android user base.

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1. Monday 26th April 2010 17:24 GMT david bates
  
  Unless Im missing some significance...
  
  then Opera Mobile is available on Android Market - cant remember what verson, but its there.
  
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Monday 26th April 2010 18:52 GMT Anonymous Coward

The future of Opera Mobile

"the future of Opera Mobile now depends entirely on Symbian"

What about Opera Mobile for Android and Brew?

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Monday 26th April 2010 18:52 GMT Alastair 7

@david bates

Nope. Opera *Mini* is on the Market, but not Mobile. Very strange choice to say the least- it's significantly less capable than the inbuilt browser. Mini is perfect for smaller, less-featured phones, but your average Android phone needs to be running Mobile if they want to get any kind of market share.

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1. Monday 26th April 2010 19:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Opera Mini is not just for less capable phones
  
  Opera Mini is actually fine on high-end smartphones too.
  
  The thing about Opera Mini is the 90% compression, which makes 3G connections (and slower) much faster. And a lot cheaper when you pay for your data.
  
  So Opera can get significant market share with Opera Mini simply because most people are on slow, expensive mobile connections.
  
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Monday 26th April 2010 18:54 GMT Anonymous Coward

@david bates

No Opera MINI is available for free on the Android Marketplace, the same as the iPhone Opera Mini.

Opera Mobile is a full blowen mobile browser that does LOCAL page rendering.

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