Behind Your Business

Opera Software launched an Android version of the company's Opera Mini 5 mobile browser Thursday that promises to significantly improve page loading and speed on compatible smartphones. The beta release continues the company's campaign to increase the visibility of its browser on a global basis.

Opera Mini 5 works in tandem with Opera's servers to compress web-page content up to 90 percent before the data is sent to mobile phones, noted Opera Vice President Dag Olav Norem. "Opera Mini will give Android users fast and cost-efficient access to their favorite web sites and services," he said.

A Desktop-Like Experience

Opera Mini 5 now includes popular browser features from the company's platform for desktop PCs and notebooks, such as speed dial, tabbed browsing, password management, and bookmarks. The goal is to enable the platform to deliver a desktop-like web-browsing experience on mobile handsets, the company said.

Tabbed browsing enables several web sites to be viewed at the same time while easily jumping from one to another, while the speed-dial feature provides one-click access to favorite web pages. Additionally, bookmarks and speed-dial settings can now be synchronized between the user's mobile phone and a notebook or desktop PC.

To eliminate the need for horizontal panning on small mobile screens, the browser's mobile view intelligently reformats web pages into a single column. Users also can switch to a landscape mode to view a wider swath of web-page content.

The default size of text from selected web sites can be optimized from within the browser to make it even easier to view content on small screens. Moreover, users can adjust the default zoom level from 60 percent to 200 percent.

Additionally, Android users equipped with touchscreen handsets will be able to navigate content using the mobile platform's new zooming and kinetic scrolling features. And favorite web sites can now...