Trying Opera Mobile now. Am I missing something?

borderline · 10-22-06, 09:30 PM

Okay, so I downloaded Opera for the 30 day trial, and I have to say I'm fairly impressed. It renders pages much nicer than PIE, and I haven't been able to live without tabbed browsing since I first tried Mozilla a couple years ago.

However, I'm having trouble figuring some things out. It seems this was developed strictly for pocketpc phones, because a lot of commands are accessable only through the keypad. I would expect there to be a button to pull up the favorites screen (like PIE), but the only ways I see are through menu-diving or by pressing "1" on the soft keyboard. And menu-diving seems to be the ONLY way to get back to the homepage.

By using a combination of Vito buttonmapper and Mortscript, I've developed an easier way to get to the favorites list. But it shouldn't have been that hard. There's a whole lot of real-estate on the bottom of my screen just waiting for some soft buttons. There's an 'Action' button, a 'Menu' button, then an inch and a half of blank space before the Input menu. Is there some way in Opera to customize the button layout that I haven't found yet? Wouldn't it make sense for Opera to put at least a few common buttons in that blank space?

10-22-06, 10:04 PM

Are you SURE you got Opera Mobile and not Opera Mini? Mini's the one designed for phones.. and you did get Opera Mobile for Windows Mobile PPC, and not Opera Mobile 8.60 for Windows Mobile, Smartphone? It sounds like you got the wrong one... or else you don't have any buttons assigned to the softkeys at the bottom of the screen.

Did you set up any buttons for SoftKeys? If not, that's why you may not be able to access those menus - and most PPCs dont' have dedicated softkey buttons - nor do some PPC Phones.

borderline · 10-22-06, 11:02 PM

Originally Posted by Haesslich

Are you SURE you got Opera Mobile and not Opera Mini?

I'm pretty sure I've got Mobile, not Mini. 'Menu'-->'Tools'-->'About Opera' reports Opera 8.60 for Windows Mobile (1682)

Not sure about the PPC/Smartphone thing, though. I'll look into that tomorrow. I think the page I downloaded from only gave me an option for WM5 or WM2003SE/Smartphone, and I assumed the latter option was for both types of devices. It's possible I overlooked the proper link.

The screenshot on the page you supplied for PPC didn't look any better, though. It didn't have any other (soft)buttons than those WM5 softkeys at the bottom, and they seemed to be driving more menus. It was also running on a device with a built-in hardware keyboard, something my X50V seems to be lacking.

I just noticed, the device in the screenshot (for PPC) is definately some kind of phone.

10-22-06, 11:25 PM

Originally Posted by borderline

I'm pretty sure I've got Mobile, not Mini. 'Menu'-->'Tools'-->'About Opera' reports Opera 8.60 for Windows Mobile (1682)

Not sure about the PPC/Smartphone thing, though. I'll look into that tomorrow. I think the page I downloaded from only gave me an option for WM5 or WM2003SE/Smartphone, and I assumed the latter option was for both types of devices. It's possible I overlooked the proper link.

The screenshot on the page you supplied for PPC didn't look any better, though. It didn't have any other (soft)buttons than those WM5 softkeys at the bottom, and they seemed to be driving more menus. It was also running on a device with a built-in hardware keyboard, something my X50V seems to be lacking.

I just noticed, the device in the screenshot (for PPC) is definately some kind of phone.

Yeah, that's a Wizard, IIRC, which is a PDA Phone. Did you assign any softkey functions to your hardware buttons there? That may be the issue.

control · 10-22-06, 11:27 PM

Do you have the 'Action' softkey at the bottom left? Action->Go to and then tap 'Bookmarks' is the fastest way I know to get to the favorites list.

borderline · 10-23-06, 08:14 AM

Originally Posted by control

Do you have the 'Action' softkey at the bottom left? Action->Go to and then tap 'Bookmarks' is the fastest way I know to get to the favorites list.

Exactly. That's what I thought. I guess I'll dump Opera until they're ready for primetime.

Menneisyys · 10-23-06, 12:53 PM

Originally Posted by borderline

However, I'm having trouble figuring some things out. It seems this was developed strictly for pocketpc phones, because a lot of commands are accessable only through the keypad.

Unfortunately, this (you can't for example assin a hardware button, not used in Opera Mobile, to a functionality only accessible in PPC PE thumbboards is indeed a problem; I've also complained about this some months ago to the Opera folks, also showing them how this should be implemented (by button scancodes, which I've thoroughly discussed in several of my articles - see the links here). That is, they are aware of the problem; hope they fix it.

Menneisyys · 10-23-06, 12:55 PM

BTW, you could also tell the Opera folks to do this so that they see there is popular demand. You can freely refer to my explanation of hardware keycodes - they will surely find my mail where I addressed this problem and my solution.