Get our Newsletter!Am I the only person on planet Earth who doesn’t like Opera Mini?
Seriously. I recently downloaded the Opera Mini app (v 5.0.0198) on my iPod Touch and I don’t like it.
I know, I know… there’s a million of you people out there who are yelling “It’s better than Safari!”, and in some ways you’re right. I can’t argue with the points mentioned on this video from YouTube, but let me outline some of the reasons I don’t like Opera Mini.
Where’s my video?
Obviously Flash isn’t supported on the iPod, but at least Safari displays videos embedded from YouTube. Come to think of it, YouTube doesn’t work at all in Opera Mini. WTF?
Why is everything left-justified?
Opera Mini seems to left-justify all text on the screen (unless CSS rules have it centered or right-justified) – but what really bugs me is that Opera Mini crams the text into a certain column width regardless of the text’s container. This is distracting, and as a web developer it pisses me off.
Zooming Sucks
Have you tried to zoom in on a webpage in Opera Mini? It’s a pain in the ass.
I’ll Stick with Safari
For right now, I’m going to stick with Safari. I really, really wanted Opera Mini to blow Safari away but I just feel like the app was rushed.
Anyone agree or disagree with me?
I may not have an iPhone or iPod, but can say that I have had a similar experience with Opera Mini for the Android. Though the speed of page loads are perceptibly improved due to compression algorihms built into the browser, I have to say that the lack of a zoom function (at least in an intuitive place) as well as its somewhat haphazard design, detract from the usability of the tool. I still look forward to updates in the hopes that this is just a matter of Beta-like bugs needing real-world use to be discovered and corrected. However, I won’t hold my breath.