Opera releases Mini 4 beta

Opera has released a beta of the new version of Opera Mini, a mobile phone browser.

A free download from the Opera website Opera Mini 4, codenamed Dimension, is the latest product in the family that already has 15 million users worldwide.

According to Christen Krogh, vice president of engineering at Opera, Opera Mini 4 is not meant to adapt the web for the mobile phone, but to put "the internet as you know it" on your handset.

Rather than show websites in a specially adapted small-screen format, it presents the sites as you would see them on a PC, allowing you to zoom in and out.

Krogh also emphasised that Opera Mini 4 isn't a high-end application only intended for the latest handsets. Indeed, it'll work on any Java-enabled mobile phone.

In a demonstration at the Web User offices, web pages loaded quickly using a GPRS (general packet radio service) connection.

However, it isn't suitable for all websites - Google Maps did not work in the demonstration, for example.

Jon von Tetzchner, the chief executive of Opera, said releasing the beta version would allow Opera to make sure the final version was as good as possible.

"The feedback from the beta users will go to make Opera Mini even better and we thank the community for their efforts. Opera Mini has succeeded only due to the support of the people who have made it the most popular mobile browser available today," he said.

www.operamini.com

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