Opera Software just released the second beta of its Opera Mini 5 mobile web browser for phones running the Google Android mobile operating system.
Opera, which pioneered many of the most popular web browser features, such as tabbed browsing, has become a important supplier of mobile web browsers with an estimated 30-to-50 million users around the world. The Opera Mini browser compresses website content by as much as 90-percent, easing the bandwidth burden and potentially saving mobile Internet users money if they have metered data plans.
“Android users should not have to compromise when it comes to surfing the Web on their phones. Opera Mini will give Android users a fast and cost-efficient access to their favorite Web sites and services,” said Dag Olav Norem, Opera's vice president of products in an official statement.
Opera Mini 5 should be a step in the proper directions as far as web developers are concerned. Although it is not yet clear how much HTML5 or CSS3 that Opera Mini 5 will support, it does support multi-background images, the background-origin CSS attribute, and word-wrapping.
Tabbed Browsing, Speed Dial, and A Password Manager
The Opera Mini 5 Beta includes several new features, including tabs, for easily moving back and forth from on web page to another; Speed Dial, which lets a user create short cuts to favorite or frequently-visited websites, and a new password manager.
All of these features would seem to encourage mobile web browsers, which in turn could be a boost to mobile commerce.
The beta can be downloaded directly to an Android phone from m.opera.com/next.
