Opera Mini 4 beta released; includes desktop-like (22/06/2007 17:50)

Opera today released a beta version of Opera Mini 4, code named ‘Dimension’, which includes a new desktop-like layout mode.
The main focus of Opera Mini 4.0 beta was to make mobile browsing easier and more in-line with traditional browsing on PCs.

New Desktop-like layout mode

Prior to this beta, Opera Mini only had one layout mode, called ‘fit-to-width’, which reformatted the webpages nicely to fit in a single column. The fit-to-width mode works fine on most pages. However fitting pages with intensive structures and complicated designs into a single column is not always the best option. Enter ‘PC View’ layout.
With ‘PC View’ layout (also known as ‘Desktop layout’), a thumbnail of the webpage, similar to what you would see on the PC/desktop browser, is first shown. Using the mouse cursor (also new in this beta) or a stylus you could select a region and instantly zoom in. (See screenshots below)
The immediate recognition of the pages with ‘PC View’ layout adds to the browsing speed on mobile phones. Navigating pages are also easier, since the menus and page content are in the same position as on the PC. The new desktop layout mode should also help in reducing some of the barriers to the adoption of mobile browsing.

Zoom

Zooming is done instantly, adding a pleasant effect to the experience. The zooming technology (called ‘Intelligent Zoom’) used in ‘PC View’ was first introduced by Opera for the Nintendo Wii browser.
When you’re zoomed-in, the text content is neatly reformatted to the size of your phone’s screen, thus eliminating the need to scroll horizontally.

Context menu

The new Opera Mini beta also adds a context menu, which is accessible by pressing the number ‘1’ key. From the context menu, you could quickly change between modes, reload the page, and view the page URL.

Mouse cursor

Also new with this beta is the addition of a virtual mouse cursor to make it easy to scroll in any direction. Navigating over a link, changes the cursor to the familiar hand pointer. Opera Mini now also highlights links in a visually appealing manner.

Power scrolling

The numbers ‘2’ and ‘8’ on the keypad act as ‘page up’ and ‘page down’, respectively. While the ‘4’ and ‘6’ buttons moves the cursor between columns to the left and right.

Rewrite of code

Opera Mini developers rewrote the entire code for the new beta and added lots of improvements to the rendering layouts. However, since it’s all being rewritten, not all features of Opera Mini 3 have been added yet, for example the RSS feed reader, content folding, etc.

Cache

Content that is shared between pages are now cached, adding to the browsing speed. For example, if you first load page A on a site, and then page B, and they share data/text/images, only the difference will be sent in page B.

New standards support

Support for HTML tables, CSS handheld stylesheets, and more advanced support for CSS have been added to Opera Mini. The smiley face on the Acid2 test is clearly recognizable; however it doesn’t pass the test just yet. We’re working on it.

Bi-directional support

With this new release we’ve also added support for bi-directional text, adding support for languages such as Hebrew.

Mobile browser choice

All of the new features and functionalities of Opera Mini further proves its claim to being the best browser option for mobile phones.
Download
http://operamini.com/beta

Current stable version is : Opera Mini 3.12 get it at http://operamini.com