Some of you may have come across Opera Mini before. It’s a free web-browser that will run on any cellphone that has Java support (if you can play mobile games, you probably have Java) which is good news for my trusty Nokia 6234. Although it won’t run on the iPhone.
Instead of directly requesting pages from their servers, Opera Mini runs the pages through Opera’s servers which “optimise” the code for the mobile browser (not really applicable if you write standards-compliant XHTML), re-encode images to smaller sizes/resolutions and then forward the result to your phone.
Like Safari on iPhone, Opera Mini supports CSS and XHTML and Javascript. Unlike Safari, it allows file uploads (making my photo editing app a little easier). So if anyone wants to make an application for any mobile, then looking at Opera Mini might be a good option. To experiment with it, a simulator is available to test any website with. It’s interaction style isn’t quite as cool as iPhone, but it’s useful nonetheless. The latest beta version of Opera looks like it’s stolen a few ideas from the iPhones interface too.
Changing the topic slightly, the Nintendo Wii has version of Opera 9 as it’s on-board browser which supports most of the functionality of the desktop version. But, the really cool bit is that Javascript has been extended to support additional events related to the Wiimote controller – events such as the tilt/roll angle, speed etc. So gesture based web-apps are a real possibility! It might be more interesting to make a Wii app. Wii!