I think that any power user is aware that user agent can be changed via opera:config, but a field in the normal configuration menu with a couple of predefined string can make the life easier for everyone else.
Many android browsers are equipped with three choices: Desktop, Android and Iphone. Also opera for desktop has many choices.
Why not provide opera mobile with this feature ?
Because it's a commercial product and Opera's success is partly measured with the market share they hold. Thus it wouldn't be optimal solution to allow their apps to lie that they're Safari on an iPhone when they're not.
Also, usually it's the web pages that need to be fixed instead of building workarounds for browsers. Opera works quite a bit to get web designers realize that browser sniffing is usually very bad idea. Why then support such behaviour with user-agent switching?
Most of the web devs are too lazy and incompetent anyway ( ) to realize that changing user-agent is not an acceptable solution to fix their sites.
Because it's a commercial product and Opera's success is partly measured with the market share they hold. Thus it wouldn't be optimal solution to allow their apps to lie that they're Safari on an iPhone when they're not.
Precisely. By changing your user agent to iPhone, that will only increase the stats on the website so that they think than even more iPhone users are visiting, making them even less likely to produce a vendor-neutral site.
I'm really really enjoying using Opera mobile on the N900. Posting from it right now. I think all the browsers have their strong point, the firefox add-ons are great and I'd like to see more of this in Opera.
I love the start page and portrait mode w/keyboard rocks. Great work.
i upgraded the current version of Opera Mobile on my N900 to the new version, Opera Mobile 10.1 beta.. unfortunately, after the upgrade, when i launched Opera, it gave me a blank page and nothing else. any idea how to resolve this?
We all have different preferences and priorities in a browser.
For me, Opera doesn't cut it. Yet.
That may well change one day but for now microB is by far my favorite browser.
Note: This is all based on using Opera on an N810 running Maemo4.
Tear is pretty awesome on Maemo4. Gmail is very usable on Tear when compared to Opera on Maemo4. Also, Tear is much better integrated into the OS (hardware buttons, associations) compared to Opera.
I think Opera has an edge in speed and also on click dragging. Click dragging in Tear always results in a click where you dragged. This doesn't happen in Opera. And Opera's interface is simply gorgeous. It's really nice to look at.
I have both installed and use each for different sites.
) to realize that changing user-agent is not an acceptable solution to fix their sites.
