Has anyone tried the new Opera 8.5 browser for PPC? It's supposed to
be fast and feature-rich. However, a few posters have been unable
to unregister Opera as the default browser and return the default to
PIE. Anyone have any first-hand comments about the value of this
browser?

Thanks!
Scott

Scott wrote:
> Has anyone tried the new Opera 8.5 browser for PPC? It's supposed
to
> be fast and feature-rich. However, a few posters have been unable
> to unregister Opera as the default browser and return the default to
> PIE. Anyone have any first-hand comments about the value of this
> browser?

I've been using it for around 2 weeks. It is very fast, and seems to
be stable. I'd say for general web use, it's the most usable compared
to PIE and NetFront 3.2. The small screen rendering is slightly better
than NetFront's SmartFit mode IMO. It also seems to have a decent
JavaScript implementation, including support for xmlhttprequest, which
neither PIE or NetFront does, for all those AJAX sites - Google Maps
for example works, on a VGA device it's probably usable ;).

On the down side, there's no Flash or Java, and while I try to avoid
sites with that stuff when surfing with the PDA, it would be nice to
have the option.

I have a few gripes about the UI - although most of the time it's nice
not to have tabs taking up screen real-estate when you have multiple
pages open, I'd like the option of tabs. Also the SIP doesn't seem to
pop up automatically when you tap in the URL bar, and sometimes when
you then manually bring it up, the URL bar loses focus, so it can take
3 taps before you can even start typing an address.

Hopefully the bugs will get fixed before it's out of beta, maybe some
features added, and I'd like to know what it's going to cost, but it
looks promising.

On Tue, 07 Feb 2006 17:32:16 -0600, Scott <golden@uslink.net> wrote:

>Has anyone tried the new Opera 8.5 browser for PPC? It's supposed to
>be fast and feature-rich. However, a few posters have been unable
>to unregister Opera as the default browser and return the default to
>PIE. Anyone have any first-hand comments about the value of this
>browser?

I like it a lot, and yes, it's as fast as advertised - but I haven't
tried to unregister it yet.

Given that it's a Beta, it's not surprising some people are
experiencing problems - that's why Betas are released ;-))

I've got about 30 days left on the trial so I'll let you know in due
course if it broke my system and needed a hard reset !

Some of the speed 'increase' seems to be down to the way it loads and
renders the page. If you go to the BBC small screen news website, it
doesn't load the banner image etc until it's displayed the content
(though it reserves a placeholder for the image). So you *do* get to
see more, quicker, than in PIE.

Cheers - Neil

Scott wrote:
> However, a few posters have been unable
> to unregister Opera as the default browser and return the default to
> PIE
>
Hi Scott,

Iam a happy user of the beta on WM5. I hope the issues it does have get fixed
ready for release.

With regards to making PIE the default browser again, here is information I
gleaned from the Opera forums and posted to a site I use.
Disclaimer - you have to be familiar with registry editing - so don't mess if
you don't know what you are doing!

http://www.4winmobile.com/6-vt1251.html?postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=50

HTH
--
Tony Brookes

Chorley, UK

Sent using Virtual Access V5.51 build 315
on Windows 2000 build 2600

Tonybro wrote:
>
> Scott wrote:
> > However, a few posters have been unable
> > to unregister Opera as the default browser and return the default to
> > PIE
> >
> Hi Scott,
>
> Iam a happy user of the beta on WM5. I hope the issues it does have get fixed
> ready for release.
>
> With regards to making PIE the default browser again, here is information I
> gleaned from the Opera forums and posted to a site I use.
> Disclaimer - you have to be familiar with registry editing - so don't mess if
> you don't know what you are doing!
>
> http://www.4winmobile.com/6-vt1251.html?postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=50
>
> HTH
> --
> Tony Brookes
>
> Chorley, UK
>
> Sent using Virtual Access V5.51 build 315
> on Windows 2000 build 2600

Tonybro,

Is it true that after installing Opera, there is an option to make it the default
browser...which one can decline?

Also, is the only benefit to making Opera the default browser the fact that when
clicking on an .htm file, it would open Opera instead of PIE? Is there any other
benefit?

Thanks!
Scott

@Scott - Yes there is an option to set Opera as default when you first
run it, to be honest for the time being I would not recomend doing
this.

I did this and found that it broke the ability to click a hyperlink
inside an email, thus I then had to copy the link, manually open the
browser and paste it into the address bar, this of course is fixed if
you apply the registry entries Tony posted.

So for now I would say install the beta, but do not set it as the
default until they fix this problem :)

Later days - Dave
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Http://www.4WinMobile.com - The UK's Largest Windows Mobile Website

"Scott" <golden@uslink.net> wrote in message
news:43E92E00.AE82B8B9@uslink.net...
> Has anyone tried the new Opera 8.5 browser for PPC? It's supposed to
> be fast and feature-rich. However, a few posters have been unable
> to unregister Opera as the default browser and return the default to
> PIE. Anyone have any first-hand comments about the value of this
> browser?
>
> Thanks!
> Scott

..02:

It is better than the stock browser on 2002 devices and back. On 2003 SE
and forward the stock browser with MultiIE works better (which hopefully
will soon be released for WM5, assuming same functionality as 2003...).

Short and sweet....

Scott wrote:
>
> Has anyone tried the new Opera 8.5 browser for PPC? It's supposed to
> be fast and feature-rich. However, a few posters have been unable
> to unregister Opera as the default browser and return the default to
> PIE. Anyone have any first-hand comments about the value of this
> browser?
>
> Thanks!
> Scott


OK, I decided to installed Opera 8.5, but after clicking on the .cab
files (in the PPC), it said it was not compatible with my operating
system, which is Pocket PC version 4.20.0 (build 13252). Elsewhere,
it's listed as OS Version: Windows CE 4.20...ROM Revision: 1.00.14 ENG.

Am I out of luck?

Thanks!
Scott