I must say that I am deeply impressed by this release.
I even somewhat hate to say it, but Opera blows Firefox/Fennec out of the water. It beats MicroB in UI and general simplicity of use and speed of menus etc., but since it doesn't support Flash, it cannot become my #1 browser just yet.
For me this release of Opera has been a "d'uh" experience, where I can't understand how the Mozilla team didn't think of these features. For example, that the browser should load up fast (sorry a bit of sarcasm here) and the "symarrow + direction keys" zoom box. Simply brilliant. Of course as it doesn't support "hover" mode, then this is kind of plus minus zero. However, it's a solution that works well!
- MicroB seems to render pages nicer. E.g. better font size, layout.
- "Automatic" zooming does not really work.
- Switching between tabs is a bit cumbersome, compared to switching between MicroB instances via dashboard.
Otherwise great. I think its definitely faster then MicroB over 3g.
My N800 has been collecting dust since the touch screen's nonlinearity has gotten so bad that the on-screen keyboard is nearly useless. Not only is Opera a fantastic browser with a great UI, but it's popup keyboard has large enough keys that are positioned high enough to make data entry possible.
As for no Flash support, Flash laden websites bring my N800 to its knees. So Opera without Flash is just fine with me.
Opera is way faster in initial load times and page renderings than all the rest N900 browsers.
On screen keyboard is great (I'd say better looking than the Nokia stock.) Auto rotation is amazing.
Full screen browsing is excellent. It formats the pages to fit screen width so no unnecessary scrolling/zooming to get everything.
For an alpha release it's way better than Firefox 1.1 (slow-slow-slow) and on par if a bit better than microB.
Missing features are flash and battery optimizations. All the rest don't look or feel like alpha to me.
BTW mine is a 900Mhz N900. Maybe that's why Opera is so fast.
Also i find the tab swithing much better than microB. It's more natural to do it from within the browser than undo full screen/go to dashboard/select/set full screen that microB does.
This release does more harm to flash web than any of Mr.-Its-Fantastic could with one of his useless, but widely published rants . Life goes on without flash for me!
. Life goes on without flash for me!
