Day in, day out…

I’ve been using the next generation of Opera Mini browser – Opera Mini 5 beta – on my BlackBerry Pearl.

In a nutshell – in comparison with Opera Mini 4 – it looks slick, but usability sucks!

It is almost sacrilegious to comment on the quality of a Beta product, but I couldn’t find a way to pass on my feedback to Opera directly (comment, if you know how). May be folks at Opera haven’t tested this version with BlackBerry Pearl. May be the Pearl is just too old. But here is what’s been bothering me last few days:

Keyboard Shortcuts

I don’t know about others, but I use keyboard shortcuts extensively with Opera Mini. To access speed dial entries, to refresh, to go to bookmarks, etc.

In Mini 4, it was as easy as hitting * n to access speed dial entry n (e.g., * 1 for speed dial 1, * 2 for speed dial 2, etc.).

In Mini 5 beta, the ALT key must be used to use a symbol or number. So the keyboard not-so-shortcut to access speed dial entry n becomes ALT * ALT n (e.g., ALT * ALT 1 for speed dial 1, ALT * ALT 2 for speed dial 2, etc.). A little annoying!

Typing

The Inline Editing feature in Mini 5 beta allows you to use the multi-tap input method to edit text-box entries on web pages. I prefer using the SureType input method. So I turned off the Inline Editing feature.

Even without Inline Editing, the text box entries are edited right on the web page. Mini 4 would open a text entry dialog of a sort to edit text. This is cool!

Scrolling

Now this could be just that my Pearl is too old for the new generation of software, it doesn’t have enough resources to handle them. But scrolling performance is really poor. Every scrolling movement results in the hourglass (processor busy). I have a feeling that it still accepts trackball inputs while it is busy, though. Because when the hourglass is gone, its scrolls way too much. I must scroll back to get where I want to – which of course means another few seconds of hourglass.

This is not an issue in Mini 4.

Mobile view

Staying on the scrolling topic, what happened to the fast scrolling in mobile view by moving the trackball horizontally? That was so handy! In Mini 5, the mouse pointer is always visible. So moving the trackball horizontally only moves the pointer.

I loved how Mini 4 would go to next link or page down/up by moving the trackball vertically and scroll fast by moving it horizontally.

For now, I am just trying to get used to keyboard navigation. It results in a slightly better performance.

Fonts

Mini 4 fonts were almost perfect sized for me. Mini 5 beta fonts are either too big, or too small. In my settings, I’ve set the font size to medium. Which makes fonts a little bigger than what Mini 4 had. I guess I’ll get used to them.

However, the fonts on Mini 5 beta’s menu and other interface are a little too small. Wonder how to change them, I am sure there is a way.

All in all, I think Mini 5 beta is a neat looking browser for the phone, but seems a little resource hungry, which in case of an older phone like the Pearl is a problem. Most of the new features are targeted towards touchscreen devices and don’t apply to Pearl.

What’s been your experience?