An Upgraded Opera For Mobile Browsing

The Opera Mobile browser is preferred by many to Internet Explorer Mobile for Web browsing on Windows Mobile-based equipment. So it's good news for lots of people that there's an incremental upgrade just out, Opera Mobile 8.65. And Version 9 is on the way. And if you're a BlackBerry user, Opera wants you as well.Opera Mobile makes several performance and stability improvements, some UI and display changes, and provides added support for plug-ins, including Flash and Media Player. It's available for download as a 3-day free trial with purchase option from www.opera.com/mobile. (Remember, if your Windows Mobile device doesn't have a touchscreen it's a "smartphone," and if it does it's a "Pocket PC" -- there are some functionality differences in Opera depending on which one you've got.)

This new version not only straightens out some memory-management issues, but adds features you're familiar with from desktop browsers, like saving images found in the Web page, copying text, and sending links. (You can see a full list of changes here. And for a bit more on Opera Mobile, see 7 Web Browsing Tricks Make Your Smartphone Act Like An iPhone.)

If you're a BlackBerry user, Opera Mobile isn't for you -- but the Opera Mini 4.0 beta, released a month ago, may be. Opera Mini runs on almost any mobile phone that can access the Web. This new beta does good things on any mobile phone -- it includes a new "landscape mode" to give you a wider view of the page, for example, and a new multisearch Start Page allows you to set your own search engine.

For BlackBerry users, Opera Mini 4.0 is tweaked to present a new user interface and menus customized for your hardware. You can download the beta version of Opera Mini 4.0 free at www.operamini.com/beta/.

And Here's a Flash: More Improvements In Mobile Browsing Mobile browsing, the subject of the aforementioned "7 Web Browsing Tricks" and Smartphone Browser Shootout: Palm, BlackBerry, HTC Vs. iPhone, will doubtless be in the news some more over the next few days as news trickles out from Adobe's MAX conference for its Flash developer community going on now in Chicago. The forthcoming Flash Lite 3 the next version of the Flash player for mobile phones, is the subject of some of the presentations -- the version that will run Flash video, among other improvements.