Opera Mini 5 beta for mobile closely follows Opera 10 in design

Opera software is really on a roll. On the first day of September, the final version of Opera 10 Web browser was released. Today, the Opera Mini 5 beta has been released, porting all the successful design elements down from Opera 10 to even the most sluggish Java phone.

The latest Opera Mini 5 features tabbed browsing, the "speed dial" homescreen with thumbnails of the user's top six most visited sites, support for both touchscreen and keypad-based devices, a password manager, and an interface that is by far the best design work the company has done in the Mini format.

Users of Opera Mini 4.2 are in for a bit of a shock with this improved layout, and the change in function for menu buttons seems to have already thrown some users off. Several users today in Opera's forums were puzzled by the lack of a settings menu. It's not that there is no settings control, it's just that the menu button now pulls up the improved navigation bar, where a small pull-down menu lets the user access bookmarks, history, settings, inline text search, and help menu.

From here, the user can alter settings for image quality, inline text editing, font size, speed dial, landscape/portrait view, shortcut keys, full screen view, password manager, and more.

Opera Mini 5 uses the Presto 2.2 rendering engine, which supports the majority of JavaScript functions, except those that require asynchronous operations. It still lacks the rich content support (Flash, Silverlight, Etc.) that makes third party cross-platform browsers like Skyfire and Bolt stand out from the pack, but at a paltry 221k, Opera 5.0 beta still brings a fast and enjoyable experience to resource-constrained devices. Pages viewed in Opera Mini are rendered and compressed on Opera's servers, shrinking them as much as 90% for faster, easier consumption.

"The idea of navigating the vastness of the Web from such a small screen can be a daunting leap, which is why we have long committed to make the browsing experience you are familiar with from your PC, easy to do on your mobile phone," said Opera's CEO Jon von Tetzchner today.

To download the Opera Mini 5 beta for J2ME JAD/JAR-enabled phones, you can point your current mobile browser to m.opera.com/next. BlackBerry users running OS versions 4.2x, 4.3x, and 4.7x can go to the PC download site and transfer Opera Mini 5 to their devices. Device support for Android and iPhone is not yet complete.