Welcome to the commercial mobile space - the OP (and many others) have just discovered what plagues also the TouchPad et al. For those devices that are clearly made and also MARKETED 'for the web', the crappiness of the therefore necessary software that's included (or available on 'their markets') is astounding.
Also, the current unofficial Opera version for Harmattan is quite old (released sometime in the summer), the N900 version is newer and has more options (portrait mode, etc.). An up-to-date official Opera version for Harmattan would be really nice.
Dear OP, did you already try Fennec (Firefox Mobile) Since it also doesn't feature Flash and does run reasonably fast it may be your best option.
Maybe built in one will improve but why would they? Nokia really knows how to profile the N9 as a phone.
Its browser does translate well the device's lack of ambition to be the next Nokia Internet Tablet (a long descending generation of devices for professional mobile web based usage) and so to say direct follow up of Nokia N900.
And so does the display.
Browser even limits the amount of browser windows you can open. So if you want to surf real hard, you need to hack the built in browser first or use multiple browsers.
Where is the config for this thing?
For me the most disappointing is the fact that the N9 browser is being recognized as Safari (vs Firefox for MicroB on the N900)
Since Apple has a habit of stimulating the dumbing down of websites to so called mobile versions, and worse, stimulate the use of special fronts called "apps" I am now left no choice but to move to Fennec if I want my mail client Zoho.com rendered correctly (talking about the thin client).
Yes on iPhone there is an app for that, so I am not supposed to have a browser based experience.
I am also missing from N900:
-One hand circular movement to zoom (why trying hard to need 2 fingers to zoom if you can do it with one )
Even a right click option "open in new window" requires more effort on the N9 as it jumps away from your finger, requiring repositioning.
-hold back arrow or swipe back to see real time history cache
-virtual cursor
What Firefox / Fennec does well is open in new tab on background instead of brining the new page up front.
Also save as PDF and many other options are there. I am quite happy with Fennec on N9. It saves the day somehow.
It is being detected as Safari and it can do pretty much anything that the iPhone browser can do. That means HTML5 websites designed for iPhones work pretty good (including stuff like geolocation, multitouch for zooming maps etc...).
Unfortunately not all websites have fancy mobile versions that take advantage of every feature that is available. Some webmasters still seem to live in the age of wap and love forcing "dumbed-down" mobile version of their site on every mobile device, which is... aggravating.
Also, the current unofficial Opera version for Harmattan is quite old (released sometime in the summer), the N900 version is newer and has more options (portrait mode, etc.). An up-to-date official Opera version for Harmattan would be really nice.
There was one supposedly coming, but I haven't heard anything for ages
There's also a optimized version of Fennec that'll be release in the store eventually.
(see fennec thread at forum.meego.com)
) 