Opera Mini on Treo

“Begging” would not be too strong of a word to describe what I have done to the various folks I know at Opera ASA, begging for a version of Opera for Palm OS. I was told, in various different ways, not to hold my breath (this started several years ago).

The day I read about Opera Mini, I wondered if my dream had finally come true.

But no… it was only for folks in Norway. Oh to be young and unattached, I would have been on a plane that very day!!!

However, yesterday I found Opera Mini for Treo 600 on MyTreo.net while I was looking for something else (I can’t even remember what, I was so excited). There’s also a version of Opera Mini for Opera 650.

And I knew this was the day.

I knew that Opera Mini was not officially supported on the Palm, and I expected some rough edges (and I got them) but rough edges are better than no edges.

The page held several clues, but not several links. I hope to remedy that for others who are looking for information about setting up Opera Mini on a Treo. For example, the page said:

You must have Java installed for this app to work.

Great, but where do I find Java for Treo?

After looking around for awhile, I finally located a link for Java for Treo from Palm.com. There are installation instructions for both Mac and Windows there.

The five (5) files I installed are:

1. J9JavaVMMidp20.prc
2. GolfScoreTracker.prc [note: this is not strictly necessary, but I wanted to test it to make sure it worked
3. PIMPrefs.prc
4. fileconnect.prc
5. pimop.prc

Oh, and of course, Opera Mini.prc.

I launched Opera Mini from my Treo and was—

—confused.

I shouldn’t have been, of course, if I had read the rest of the page at MyTreo.net:

Opera Mini runs default in Norwegian, but you can change that to English in the “verktøy” menu under “instillinger” - change “språk” to English.

Those directions were enough for me to figure it out, but they could be a bit more clear. Here are the exact menu items you need to follow:

1. ‘Meny’
2. ‘verktøy’
3. ‘Innstillinger’
4. Click ‘Norsk’ button
5. Choose ‘English’ from the box
6. Click OK
7. Click ‘Lagre’

That will set the menu to English.

Then the next step was figuring out how to put in an URL (the box which appears is a search box, not an URL one).

To enter an URL, press the Menu button and select “Enter Address”.

It was here that I found my first flaw: Opera automatically fills in “www.” which is good, but it sets the cursor before the “www” so when you start typing, it goes in front of the www prefix. So if you aren’t careful, you can end up with apple.comwww rather than www.apple.com.

There is also a “clear” button which doesn’t really clear, it resets to “www.” and removes the insertion point (focus is no longer set on the form to input an URL). These are minor bugs in a 1.0 release which I hope will be fixed in 1.1.

I finally entered the URL I wanted (the DDOE of course :-) and was asked:

Can Opera Mini use airtime to send or receive an http connection until Opera Mini terminates? [yes/no]

Clearly Opera wants to avoid anyone being surprised by any airtime charges that they might accrue while using Opera Mini, but there’s no box to say “Yes, always and forever” so you have to agree to this every time Opera Mini starts.

Opera does seem to disconnect as soon as possible, to minimize charges, which is great… in theory. For me, I have an unlimited data plan with Sprint, so the constant reconnecting is rather annoying. But again, given that it is currently not supported for Sprint and/or the Treo, I’ll “suck it up” as the kids say.

The Bad

Opera Mini also does not seem to do several of the things that I want to do:

1. Cannot register Opera Mini as the default browser (perhaps this is a limitation of the Palm OS?)
2. Opera Mini cannot be set as the browser to use with SnapperMail, even using the B-U-G option to access hidden features. SnapperMail tech support said that Opera Mini “must support the PalmOS Exchange Manager” for this to work. I assume it doesn’t because it is not a Palm-specific app.
3. Could not find a way to assign a hard button to launch Opera (went to Prefs > Buttons, but Opera does not appear in the listing).
4. Does not work with pages which require HTTP login
5. Cannot download files such as .exe or .dmg. This is a real bummer, because one of the things I want to be able to do is download files onto my Treo and transfer them to my Mac using MissingSync. Apparently Blazer4 can do this, but I’m not ready to buy a Treo650 yet :-/
6. Also cannot download .prc or .zip files, which even Blazer3 can do :-/
7. Navigation with the Treo 5-way is jumpy… it often will move two links when I push the button once. Have to use the stylus.

Making an https connection gave me a warning:

WARNING: the connection between your phone and this page is not secure.

So don’t try that either if you are concerned about https security (again, Blazer3 seemed to be able to do that).

The Good

1. Opera Mini can use Internet Sharing via MissingSync (which Blazer3 cannot). Unfortunately until it can download files etc, this will be of limited use, but it’s nice to know it is there.
2. Jump directly to main text part (under Menu > Tools… > Settings) skips images at the top of a page, such as tntluoma.com. Nice little timesaver.
3. Rendering of pages (which, after all, is the most important part, right???) works really, really well. Opera’s small screen rendering is amazing.
4. Image controls: Menu > Tools…> Settings lets you control if images load at all, and gives you the option for “higher image quality” which noties that it will double the amount of transfered data. Honestly, on the Treo600 I couldn’t tell the difference, but users with a high-resolution screen like the Treo650 might be able to.
5. Start page has a whole host of search engines built-in (no way to add/edit them however)
6. There was recently a thread on the Treo YahooGroup about http://www.seidioonline.com/ not working with Blazer. Opera showed it easily, and fast.
7. Scroll to the bottom of the start page and you will see recent items from your history, and a link to more. Nice touch.
8. Amazon.com works. Given that even Amazon.com’s own wireless page is useless and their “PDA” version is a link to a nonexistent site this is quite handy.

The Ugly

Opera Mini is still rough around some GUI edges. Here are some observations (in no particular order):

1. No way to paste in an URL from another program
2. Navigation difficult. Needs an easier way to input an URL
3. No way to set home page
4. Menu button leads to a menu item labeled “Menu” which does approximately nothing. So why is it there?
5. “Navigate” menu item offers only “Back”… What happened for “Forward” and “Home” and “Go to…” which seem like obvious additions?
6. No way to add current page to bookmark
7. No way to view current URL (and there’s no “copy” feature even if you could)

Again, it should be noted that I was reviewing Opera Mini on unsupported hardware using a file that I might not even have been allowed to use (I later realized that there was nothing at mytreo.net that seemed to indicate they had permission to offer Opera Mini for download.)

Conclusion

If I am browsing on my Treo, I’ll be using Opera (with the exceptions noted above).

Why?

Simple: the speed alone is astounding, and the resultant page is very useful. Sites which formerly were not even accessible (page loading timeout) now load quickly.

I trust that Opera will rectify the various issues and improve the GUI in future releases. I look forward to using Opera on my Treo as often as I have my Windows and Mac machines before it.