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Opera Software Brings Its Browser to Mobile Phones

Posted by timothy on Wed Oct 16, 2002 08:42 AM
from the smart-idea dept.
The Internet
13Echo writes "Now this is cool! Opera Software has presented a technology today that solves the problems of web pages on small screens. They have created a small-screen HTML rendering technique that slightly reformats web pages to fit within the bounds of small displays. Some screenshots can be found here along with extra details as to how they do it. A full press release can be found here. As a result, horizontal scrollbars are not needed, and it even features zooming abilities for magnifying web pages."
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  • More info.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by GnomeKing (564248) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @08:45AM (#4461147)
    without the full press release is available at the register here [theregister.co.uk]
    • Such as:
      "Visually impaired users can zoom out on a page to achieve legible font sizes for reading."
      Zoom out to get legible fonts? Yeah.
        • No it doesn't. The Zaurus includes Opera, but it lacks this feature ("content reformatting to fit small screens"). And that lack is painful- unless you use the absolutely smallest (4 pixel) text size, when reading a site like slashdot you'll have to horizontally scroll for each and every line of text.

          That's additionally painful because the screen updates aren't nearly instantaneous and more importantly, you can't scroll to the end of the line with a single button press. Stupidly, the hardware cursor keys do the equivalent of arrow keys, rather than PageUp/PageDown & Home/End. So to read the last two words of each line of a web page, you've got to scroll 4 right (redrawing each time), then scroll 4 back to start the next sentence. (Then probably scroll 2 down to advance through the document). Ten fairly slow redraws where one should've sufficed.

          Its so irritating that I'd often tend to just ignore/guess the last word of each line, rather than crawl over to read it. If the website is nice enough to offer a "printable" or "pda" mode, then that'll generally work, by enabling line breaks based on your viewing width. Slashdot has the "&lite=1" option, for instance- too bad it doesn't stick when you link from the main page to an article!!

          Because of those problems, I've often preferred to run lynx when browsing with a Zaurus. It ignores most of the page elements that lead to unflexible formatting. (Oddly, "links", a more advanced text-based browser, supports things like tables and frames, and thus becomes unusable on small screens the same as a pixelized program would)

          Opera on the Zaurus will also view PDF files, and the problem is even worse there. All the same obstacles are there, PLUS the document authors probably used a dual column layout, PLUS redrawing after a scroll takes 10 seconds instead of 0.5. PDF is evil! The press release didn't mention it, but I hope they can apply some auto-reformating to PDF files as well.

          My other hope, as always, is that they won't try to patent this technique. The Opera developers aren't in the US, so maybe they're not so infected by IP-fever...

  • Illegal? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Penguinoflight (517245) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @08:46AM (#4461162) Homepage Journal
    Isn't changing the appearance of a copywrited material illegal? I know people talk about this when removing banner ads from pages, noting that removing the code for the banner isn't really right, but you can take out the actual image.. Here it's still modification to the user, so how's it any different?

    • Re:Illegal? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by koh (124962) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @08:58AM (#4461278) Journal
      It is illegal to crack a site and deface the copyrighted pages there, but you can reformat local content on your machine with no problem...

      If your reasoning was true, it would lead to not being able to write a little poem on the book you offer to your mother, for instance...

    • Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by toriver (11308) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @08:58AM (#4461282)
      If the authors of the copyrighted (note spelling) work didn't want the appearance "changed" from some initial appearance, they shouldn't have used HTML in the first place.

      HTML is just text and markup - there is no appearance until it's rendered in a user agent, and one of the basic rules of the web used to be that the rendering was 100% up to the user agent: ALT-attribute if you cannot render images and all that.

      To complain that some content is transformed before display on a device is like complaining that you lose the colors if you use a B&W photo copier with a colored book.

    • Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by henben (578800) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @09:01AM (#4461302)
      Isn't changing the appearance of a copywrited material illegal?

      By its nature, how HTML is rendered is up to the browser. An HTML document doesn't have a set "appearance". Or are you saying that opening a website in a text-only browser is some kind of copyright violation?

      I don't think ad-filtering proxies have ever been found to be illegal, anyway.

    • Try this:

      Drag the edge of your browser so that it's very very small. Watch as text and images probably just got moved all over the place. Once it's on your "machine" you can do with it what you please.

    • Re:Illegal? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      this is the fun part... I can do whatever I want with your copyrighted material.. I can mangle it, reword it so you sound like you support the cloning and worship of hitler, I can change every aspect of it I wish... I just cannot release it to the public or display it for anything but private use.

      so no it's not illegal, no matter what the lawyer turds say...

  • Tired... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Coplan (13643) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @08:46AM (#4461170) Homepage Journal
    I'm tired of the "jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none" hardware that's coming out these days. I personally find no need to have a web browser built into my phone (or for that matter, I have no use for a phone that CAN have a web browser built in).

    If you need to get on the 'net that badly, you need a life.

    IMHO, It's much more useful to use your mobile phone as an interface between your computer and the 'net. I do, and it works beautifully without any problems due to limited space. If it's a pain in the ass to set up your laptop to do this, then you really don't need to get on the 'net. Can't you wait the 15 minutes until you get home?

    Porn doesn't look good on a 1X2" screen.

    • I went on a kick for a while where I wanted to find one of these silly mobile devices that does everything. I bought an iPaq to replace an old broken Handspring, but instead of using it for contact information and such, I was watching Bruce Lee movies on it at work. What I finally realised is that even with limitless power, there is no way something with a screen that small and limited controls will ever be as useful as a real computer. Phones should make phone calls. The only real innovation I've seen lately is iSync from Apple, where you can syncronize addresses between your Palm, phone, and computer via bluetooth (not that I can afford a bluetooth phone). The rest of this is just silly.
    • No seriously. There are a multitude of options opening up with this. I am tired of the "doesn't work for me, why should it be useful for anyone else"-attitude that's evident in people who just can't keep up with technology anymore. (If it's too loud, then you're too old!)

      What if it's not 15 minutes until you get home, because you didn't have the train-schedule handy? What if a plane crashes into a building and you have no close by news source? What if you are plain and simply bored and want some fresh entertainment?

      • Re:Tired... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by doi (584455)
        What if a plane crashes into a building and you have no close by news source?

        Well, if I'm near the building where the plane crashed, I kinda already know what's going on, what do I need CNN.com to tell me about it? Not to mention that a flaming cascade of debris is going to command my attention a hell of a lot more than getting the news from a web site. Dunno about you, but I'd be running away too fast to browse or even care about the news.

        And if I'm nowhere near that building, thank god, and I can wait to get home to see horrendous suffering replayed over and over and over and over again on my big TV screen instead of wondering how much that guy is really bleeding on my small PDA/phone screen.

    • Re:Tired... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 16 2002, @08:53AM (#4461233)
      Porn doesn't look good on a 1X2" screen.

      Soooo...your equipment is too small then?
    • can't you wait the 15 mins till you get home to use a real phone instead of a cell phone?

      • Re:Tired... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by eggstasy (458692) <eggstasy@gmail.com> on Wednesday October 16 2002, @09:10AM (#4461379)
        It's called travelling. You make it sound like you've never been more than 15 minutes away from home.
        If you're out in the middle of nowhere on a road that's not even on the map what do you do?
        a)Wander around aimlessly in hopes of making it back to the main roads?
        b)Call someone who knows the area better than you do?
        c)Download a better map from the web?
        d)Profit!? :)

        I'd love to have a web enabled phone thingy. It's much less clunky than a laptop, and it will soon be affordable to everyone. Most people nowadays fail to realize the potential of the web, seeing it as some sort of frivolous entertainment thing that you could do well without. The web is an extension of your limited memory. With omnipresent web access and well developed google skills you effectively know *everything*, it's just not on your brain yet. Computers (and the web), as foretold by Vannevar Bush, are increasingly becoming an indispensable expansion of your brain. Learn how to live with it, and you'll have a great advantage over those who don't.
        • I have a handheld GPS unit. I also have a mouth. I stop and ask directions (I know, I know, blasphemy for a male). I have a road map of just about everywhere I could possibly be (girlfriend's idea in case the GPS isn't working or something).

          I will own my first cell phone in a few weeks. I have to have it. It will be off 100% of the time I am sure.

          I travel quite a bit. I have NEVER had the need to use a phone.
    • If my iPaq can't run a quake server on emulated PalmOS while converting my mp3s to ogg while I watch a 160x120 AVI of the matrix on my 20-minute commuter rail trip, then the terrorists have already won.

    • Re:Tired... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by FortKnox (169099) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @09:06AM (#4461350) Homepage Journal
      I personally find no need to have a web browser built into my phone (or for that matter, I have no use for a phone that CAN have a web browser built in).

      I have similar feelings and a simple solution for us both:

      Don't buy one!

      Just because you don't like the idea doesn't mean technology should stop right then and there. Sheesh.

    • I'm tired of the "jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none" hardware that's coming out these days. I personally find no need to have a web browser built into my phone (or for that matter, I have no use for a phone that CAN have a web browser built in).

      If you need to get on the 'net that badly, you need a life.

      Why have a radio in your car? Can't you wait until you get home to listen to the news/ballgame/music? What about mobil phones in general. 10 years ago, anyone with a mobil phone was just being excessive. Now children have them. Not that we NEED any of these things, but they are useful. They do make our lives more convenient.

    • There are other uses for the web than PR0N (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Per Abrahamsen (1397) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @09:22AM (#4461450) Homepage
      For example, I often use a web page [rejseplanen.dk]for finding the optimal connections for visiting my family by train and bus. Ot I might decide to see a movie after meeting some friends in the city, or we might decide to eat that place we have been recommended, but can't quite remember the location of. In all such cases, web access would be convenient.

      And no, I do not carry a laptop with me all the time. Did you just say someone else what in the need of a life?

      I do carry a cell-phone though, and WAP might have been the solution, had it worked. My phone has WAP support, but I have yet to make it do anything remotely useful.

  • Opera lags the state of the art, as usual (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sneakums (2534) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @08:48AM (#4461189)
    From the Opera Small-Screen Rendering [opera.com] page:
    Instead of presenting table content in columns and rows, tables are reformatted into a one-dimensional structure that better fits smaller screens.
    Come on, lynx has been doing this for years!

  • ok, next... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by vkt-tje (259058) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @08:50AM (#4461205)
    ok, nice!
    The next thing we need is phones with slightly bigger screens.
    Small is beautiful, but I like it practical as well.
    Look at the first mobile phones (GSM style). They were thicker. That is not good. But they were broader than the current models without that ever being a problem.
    Why not go back to the slightly larger models and put a bigger screen in them?

  • Good work now ...... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mattygfunk1 (596840) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @08:51AM (#4461214) Homepage
    It would please me no end to see this implemented as an option in desktop browsers. I'm sick of web developers not only ignoring people with 800x600 screens but 1024x768 screens too!

    mmmmmm forced useability.

    -----
    thank god allmighty for tities and beer [wallpaperscoverings.com]

    • Run Lynx or Links. Seriously.

    • Re:Good work now ...... (Score:5, Informative)

      by RailGunner (554645) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @08:58AM (#4461284)
      Opera already can zoom in and out of pages, it also automatically scales both text and images for you.
      It's a drop down box on the right side of the address bar. Download Opera at Opera.com and check it out!

      It's a neat feature.. useful when pages use an 8 point font and the text is hard to read or when you follow the "Awful Link of the Day" over at somethingawful and have to scale down the 48 point yellow font on an orange background..

  • Drool? (Score:4, Informative)

    by BoBaBrain (215786) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @08:54AM (#4461248)
    True, nobody *needs* this, but it does do what is does well [opera.com].

    The only website I'd like to view on my phone is the yellow pages.

  • Also note.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Fweeky (41046) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @08:56AM (#4461258) Homepage
    .. Opera's nice new redesigned website, using XHTML and CSS. No more tables.

    Now, let's see Mozilla.org do the same please :)

  • scrolling (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cacheMan (150533) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @08:59AM (#4461291)
    These phones better have a good way to scroll through pages.

  • Not for me yet (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mattygfunk1 (596840) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @09:03AM (#4461320) Homepage
    Until 3G becomes a reality here (I'm in the great Southern land of Australia) I don't want to be downloading images on my mobile phone.

    High WAP charges, already slow download speeds (9.6k IIRC), and the Nokia featured in the story is by far the largest display on a mobile currently available here (most others are considerably smaller though PDAs will benefit), mean this wont be useful for me in the near future.

    ------
    that bong ba ba ba bong [wallpaperscoverings.com]

  • How do Opera do it? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by henben (578800) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @09:08AM (#4461370)
    Opera seem to be a generation ahead of IE now.

    In Opera 6, you can zoom pages from 20 to 1000%, switch to a custom stylesheet with one click, use mouse gestures, browse in tabs (long before Mozilla did it), highlight a piece of text and do a dozen different kinds of search on it with a single right-click...

    What did IE 6 add? Cookie management. And, uh ...

    Opera runs on a dozen OSs, IE has to target Windows environments only.

    Are Microsoft complacent, or is IE 7 going to incorporate some of these useful new features and maybe even innovate a little?

    • You can get IE for the Mac as well as Solaris. I'm not saying those versions are as good as the Windows version (especially not the Solaris one!), but they exist.
    • "Are Microsoft complacent, or is IE 7 going to incorporate some of these useful new features and maybe even innovate a little?"

      Call me mad but I bet they will somehow trick people to get a passport user.

      Just like in XP, not forced but tricked.

      So, support Opera too. They didn't do anything bad, just they are a small company (still!) and they earn their food money from coding. So, its not GPL. Easy as is.
    • Or is it "Slashdot won't work with Opera?"

      Half the time, when I click on a link on the main page to get to a story, Opera/Slashdot forgets who I am and I become Anonymous Coward. Especially irritating when I want to reply or moderate! Logging in again doesn't help: the login is accepted but ignored.
      I asked Opera but they don't know what is going on, and there doesn't seem to be any way of contacting /. to ask them; so I end up using Opera for most things but sometimes have to switch to IE when using Slashdot!
      I hope /. gets commission from MS for this...

  • Already been done (Score:4, Informative)

    by LiamQ (110676) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @09:09AM (#4461376)

    Reqwireless WebViewer [reqwireless.com] already solved these same problems almost a year ago, and with the added bonus that it works on many more mobile phones than what Opera appears to be targeting.

    Opera still seems limited to Symbian OS phones like the Sony Ericsson P800 and Nokia 7650, which Reqwireless WebViewer supports. Additionally, Reqwireless WebViewer works on phones such as the Motorola i85s, i95cl, Accompli 008, T720, V60i, Samsung SPH-A500, and RIM BlackBerry 5810.

    (Disclaimer: I work for Reqwireless and wrote most of WebViewer. I'm kind of annoyed that Opera is acting as though they've done something new.)

  • Hope it will force better web design (Score:5, Insightful)

    by InodoroPereyra (514794) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @09:12AM (#4461392)
    I am one of the many people sickened by the "optimized for 'whatever x watever' resolution" web pages. A good web page should scale gracefully at different resolutions, and for different displays including text browsers. And this is doable. Just avoid this moronic 800 pixels wide table framing your pages, and use a good desing, and follow the standards.

    If enough people start surfing the net from small devices, web logs will show that and the web designers will have to listen.

    Other than that, this is the way to go. We don't need yet one more document format for small devices. Better use HTML/XHTML and adapt the rendering to the device you are using ...

  • I'd say that the first impression is that this looks very promissing. This combined with zooming will work with most textbased sites, but there might be problems with sites using tables to structurize a graphical menu (games sites, etc. not just p0rn :) ).
    Anyway, it will allow me to read /. on the train going to work instead of sitting here wasting my boss' time.

  • Internet browser on a SIM card (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    While the Opera browser is cool, the SmartTrust internet browser [smallerhttp] is even smaller - it fits on any standard SIM-card.

  • Bad idea... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by stubear (130454) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @09:33AM (#4461545)
    As a designer I don't like this concept at all. I placed my content in two columns for a reason and when the web browser makes decisions to combine this data, they can ultimately change, and confuse, the meaning of the data. We don't need cell phones with full web page support, we need to start pushing the use of XML to push data to these devices in ways that are more practical. I hope there is a way to force Opera to render the page the way I designed it the way IE offers a meta tag that shut off the smart tags feature of their web browser.
    • Boohoo, your pixel-perfect layout is ruined. SFW? Use a PDF if you want you precious layot to survive. This "I designed this web to be 643pixels wide and use all kinds of shitty 1pixels imagaes to layout it exactly this way in IE, so screw other browsers". Please grow up. As a designer your job is to make the web look good in any browser. Not pixel by pixel.
      This attitude is starting to piss me off!
      J.

  • Nokia 7650 users don't need to wait for Opera (Score:4, Informative)

    by LiamQ (110676) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @09:37AM (#4461586)
    If you've got a Nokia 7650, you don't need to wait for Opera's next-year release. You can enjoy the real Web today, with no horizontal scrolling (unless you want it when viewing full-size images), using Reqwireless WebViewer [reqwireless.com]. Also works with most other J2ME phones.

  • A quick reminder: (Score:4, Funny)

    by Dannon (142147) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @10:33AM (#4462030) Journal
    Opera in phone: Good.
    Phone going off at the Opera: Bad.

    Thanks for your attention.

  • They say WAP is crap. They're wrong. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Serveert (102805) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @10:53AM (#4462187)
    This thing is still a huge hack. Only a few HTML sites can be displayed on phones.

    People don't realize why WAP was developed in the first place and why WAP is here to stay... WAP is a wireless protocol providing reliable transport over a wireless medium. Something TCP/IP can't do over the airwaves, sorry. Wap 2.0 supports WML which is optimized for small screens. It does exactly what this does.. but better. C'mon, rolling tables into 1 dimension is a hack. WML accomplishes this much better with decks. If you're familiar with WML you'd know this.

    In the future WAP 2.0 will support XHTML.. and HTML is merging into XHTML. Then, and only then, can we have one markup on websites and display it properly for all situations on both wireless devices and wireline devices.

    So, don't be surprised if carriers are using WAP for a long, long time despite all the FUD and bullshit.

  • Great! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Suppafly (179830) <slashdot AT suppafly DOT net> on Wednesday October 16 2002, @11:35AM (#4462577)
    Just what we need.. another reason for people to brag about how great gesture notation and tabbed browsing are.

    I can see it now.. people spasmatically jerking their cell phones around trying to get gesture notation to work.
    • Opera was last of the 3 to come to the browser market, it's just amazing they're ahead of mozilla here. Besides, Internet Explorer is totally the wrong browser for a mobile phone, it's just too buggy, and to targeted toward dumb multimedia stuff instead of good page rendering. Besides, mobile phones and embeded stuff is usually more standard compliant, and IE has never been close.

      • Re:Uh, nothing new there. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Ilgaz (86384) on Wednesday October 16 2002, @09:02AM (#4461313) Homepage
        Couple of programming students from Bhosphorus University (http://www.boun.edu.tr),here in Istanbul implemented WAP rendered HTML pages for Turkcell, nr1 and a giant GSM company of Turkey and Turkish populated countries (http://www.turkcell.com.tr). The stuff is working on server side. Gets HTML pages for you and re-renders (codes?) for WAP (wml)

        I tried it on WAP. I know it was stupid :) but I wanted to see how idea works.

        The error on a highly non compliant site I just typed was "Sorry, site isn't W3C compliant".

        Webmasters ignoring W3C, that stuff is coming to you. Sooner or later. Code standards compliant pages and you will save from lot of headache later.

        Also WAP is going great way. All standards compliant. E.g. nothing refuses you because you are a Ericsson customer other than Nokia. Mobile stuff is free from non standards... Oh wait! Hotmail. :) Its the only non wap offering big mail provider. If you have MS POCKET PC IE, you can logon!

        BTW, commercial company (especially resellers) webmasters, you will block Opera from accessing to your site? I can understand all the dotcom troubles now, ignore a $2000 phone customer wanting to buy something from you... Yea,right.

    • "This should prove interesting. I really hope this surges opera forward in the mobile web browsing sector. Does anyone have an idea if IE for Windows pocket pc is to be implemented in current mobile phones?"

      Nokia is the king. Nokia chose Opera for mobile. MS Pocket IE is a joke now.

      Symbian is the king of PDA, they chose Opera.

      Opera is the current king of non PocketPC (WinCE) PDA/Phone environment. BTW, no reason that Opera won't be implemented on Windows CE too... Its a totally respected company too.

      Geeks, you don't have to hate Opera just to be c00l (the poster I replied, its not directed to you).
    • My collegues and I refuse to carry mobile phones despite the number of emergency-type situations we often find ourselves in.

      If you just want it for emergencies, why not just carry it around powered off, only turning it on to makes calls? I can't imagine you'd be significantly endangered (assuming the dangers you speak of) by a minute or two of exposure on the rare occasions you need to use it (especially if it is a real emergency).

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