Nigeria Content Online

It is possible some
people may not have heard of browser wars. This term is used to
describe the rivalries for the control of the web browsing market,
specifically between Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Netscape’s
Navigator in the 1990s (Internet Explorer won that one hands down), and
the resurgence of rivals to Internet Explorer since 2003. The major
competitors are Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari, and more recently,
Google’s Chrome.

All this is in the
desktop computing space however, and Opera, a Norwegian software maker,
has always been one of the ‘little’ boys in that battle. But in recent
times, the mobile browsing space is becoming more significant and more
important, and when it comes to that space, Opera is king. Today, we
are going to take a look at their browser for mobile phones, Opera Mini.

First things first,
Opera Mini is free. Simply go to Opera.com and download it. It is
supported through a partnership between the Opera Software company and
Google.

The browser is
designed primarily for mobile phones, smart phones, and personal
digital assistants. It uses the Java ME platform and as a result,
requires that the mobile device be capable of running Java ME
applications.

Opera Mini was
derived from the Opera browser for personal computers, which has been
publicly available since 1996. It began as a pilot project in 2005 and
after limited releases in Europe, it was officially launched worldwide
on January 24, 2006.

Easy interface

Opera Mini has an
easy interface with an address bar and a Google search bar. Mobile
users do not need more than this really, and Opera manages to put them
in a short column that requires little scrolling. A pop-up menu
available from any screen brings you directly to any of these basic
navigational components, no matter how deeply you are in a site. A
Settings tool opts in or out of image loading, forcing the screen to
jump to the first available text, font size changes, etc.

For me, the killer
feature of Opera Mini is that it requests web pages through Opera
Software’s servers. The servers are configured to process, and then
compress them before relaying the pages back to your mobile phone. This
compression process makes transfer time about two to three times
faster, and the pre-processing smoothes compatibility with web pages
not designed for mobile phones.

Some websites are
not yet compatible with mobile phones, so do not render well on your
Blackberry’s native browser, but render quite well on Opera Mini. All
this is done without taxing the phone itself, and most crucially for
me, in a way that is very friendly to the Nigerian pocket. Images on
the websites are scaled down so you can see them on your phone, but
they do not use much of the 100MB that Zain (what’s their new name
nowadays?) allocates on what I consider to be the most reasonably
priced mobile Internet plan in Nigeria.

For someone like me
who does most of my mobile browsing on a Blackberry, this browser is a
must have. The only problem I had with it was that it kept crashing
each time I opened more than four tabs at a time, but that was probably
a function of the kind of websites I visit.

However, it beats
RIM’s own Blackberry browser hands down, and neither the Android’s
native browser, nor Safari on the iPhone are nearly as good as what
Opera has put out in the Mini. This browser is a must-use for anyone
who is serious about having access to the Internet on the go.