In my last (and, now, heavily outdated)
article on making Opera Mini 4 be invoked on my just clicking a URL, I’ve already elaborated on the advantages of doing this (and, actually, the advantages of Opera Mini 4 itself). Please do read it if you want to know why making use of direct invocation can be really advantageous.
Because there’s a lot of news worth reporting on (and I’ve been asked by
Serola to join the
Opera Mini Fan Blog as the first blogger, because of which I've decided to update this really important tutorial) and the original article didn’t elaborate on other mobile platforms like Symbian and BlackBerry, I’ve decided to devote an entirely new article to this question.
1.1 badbob101’s StartOperaMini
(the download is at the bottom of the first post; as of 05/12/2008, 09b is the latest version, which you'll want to go for.)
I recommend this solution the most because it’s really-really easy to install and maintain and it’s much more flexible than, say,
superdave’s, otherwise, in some respects cleaner and faster solution.
All you need to do is, in order to set it up,
downloading and installing the free MortScript (just copy the
MortScript-4.1-PPC.cab file from the
cab subdirectory of the ZIP file to your handset and tap it there) and, then, just copying StartOperaMini.mscr anywhere (including a storage card) on your handset and, as with MortScript, clicking it from File Explorer. It’ll automatically find the current location of Jbed, the index of Opera Mini and set up everything just fine. Unlike with the early solution, absolutely no manual setup is needed.
Note that, after running it, in addition to several property files, two link files will also be created. Feel free to manually copy them to
\Windows\Start Menu\Programs so that they are easily accessible (not just from a file explorer):
The - in the above screenshot highlighted - Start Opera Mini Setup lets you fine-tune your settings:
You, in most cases, won’t want to touch this. However, there are cases when you will want to do this; most importantly, when you want to enable the browser selector screen (see Badbob’s early script version’s default functionality) upon every invocation:
Another recommended setting you can do is NOT forcing the script to kill the already-running Jbed / Opera Mini session by double-tapping
Kill Jbed first [Yes] item; the results of this will be as follows (with the given item highlighted):
Also note that you can also directly edit these options in the configuration file,
StartOperaMini_ini.txt. For example, not letting for the killing of Jbed (to greatly speed up initial page loading and also keeping the already-opened pages in memory), just change
kill_jbed(1) to
kill_jbed(0) (that is, 1 to 0 in the parentheses) in it.
1.2 Other Windows Mobile solutions
You might also want to check out
JZ SmartMort’s
script-based solution, particularly recommended for MS Smartphone users and
superdave’s native C++ program
HERE. Note that the latter doesn’t let for using Jbed elsewhere than under \Windows\ and it doesn’t support the enhanced, autocomplete-capable 4.1 interface; you’ll need to switch to the pre-4.1 input mode by clearing the "
Direct Address Input" checkbox in Setings.
1.3 Other operating systems
Unfortunately, other mobile operating systems don’t support this kind of operation. However, nothing is lost! Unlike under Windows Mobile (particularly on MS Smartphone devices with their pretty much restricted – no copy/paste features built-in, for example – OS), it’s very easy to quickly invoke a given URL in both Symbian and BB.
1.3.1 Symbian
In
Messaging, highlight the URL:
Press the left softkey and select Copy:
Switch to Opera Mini, press #1, press the Delete ("C") and, then, the Down buttons once to highlight "Insert symbol":
Now, long-press the Pen button until "Paste" is shown over the right softkey:
Not releasing the Pen button, press the right softkey; the contents of the clipboard are copied to the text input area:
You can, now, go on as usual by sumbitting the URL:
1.3.2 BlackBerry
In the mailer, highlight the URL by going up/down with the trackball:
Press the Menu button (NOT Action! The latter will take you straight to the built-in browser) and select Copy:
Switch / go to OM and press #1; press Del once to delete the contents of the input field and roll the trackball down to highlight "Insert symbol":
Press the trackball and select Paste:
The URL is pasted to the input field:
Now, just press the trackball three times (the first will be an OK; the third):
Note that this will work in all cases, even with true HTML mails even with the latest, 4.5 beta OS, because the current, still non-upgraded BIS / BES servers still send out non-HTML mails to clients. An example of an otherwise full HTML mail sent as plaintext:
Incidentally, the case is exactly the same with Symbian - that is, you'll always be presented pure-text versions of HTML mails with easily-to-copy links.
