Opera PR manager doesn’t like S60 Browser
Opera PR Manager Eskil Sivertsen writes harsh words about the S60 browser in his post Browsing from hell…
Seems like more and more people are realizing that not only is the KHTML browser not very good; it makes for a very bad user experience in terms of navigation. Once the initial wow factor of its full page view and mini map has settled, using the browser for Web browsing is really a slow and awkward experience. I have it on my new Nokia N73, and I have really tried to use it, but it simply takes too much work.
Well, everybody has the freedom of opinion, right? In all justness, however, not everybody agrees with Eskil. I don’t. And most of the comments I have seen from Nokia product reviews and from the blogosphere (and I have read a lot of them) have been glowinly positive. Nevertheless, I must admit that Opera browser is also great, as well as Opera Mini - especially if you want to save from data bills.
Personally, I like it to have competition here. As Symbian’s David Wood said, “the killer app for smartphone is choice”.
Concerning Opera mini - I really don’t like the way the browser changes the layout of full html pages to fit the viewing platform, as it means the designers lose control of how their pages look. I much prefer the S60 browser’s solution to viewing large pages on a small screen.
If I want pages optimized for a small screen I’ll use WAP. I personally believe that the responsibility of a proper page layout/viewing rests with the page designer and not the browser app.
By using proper CSS and/or a publishing framework that adapts the page content to the exact platform it is being viewed on you don’t need to depend on the browser’s interpretation of the page you want to view.
Why would he like, or say that he likes???
That really does seem like a pretty harsh comment. Apart from the lack of memory on the E70 (but that’s a hardware issue) I have had nothing but good experience with the S60 Browser. There’s always room for improvement, but I really like the way the individual pieces of content are resized to fit the screen, but the overall page layout are kept intact.
I used to use Opera Mini on my 6680, and have now installed it on my E70, but although it fits the landscape screen it doesn’t move the options to the side (top and bottom), it leave it at the bottom (left and right), which gets annoying after a while.
Anyway, both good browsers, but hopefully, since the S60 Browser is Open Source, people will start developing the browser and making lots of good additions.
For a browser that’s sitting free on my E61, I really prefer the KHTML browser over the Oera browser, which costs me like €20. For me then, there isn’t really any incentive to switch to Opera.
He’s the Opera PR manager, of course he isnt going to liek a competing application!
My vote goes to the S60 browser as well.
1. It’s much faster (overall use and it renders the pages faster)
2. I don’t like the the up n’ down scrolling the “small screen rendering” (or whatever) entails in Opera
3. It can go to places Opera can’t even dream about
Still, at this point S60 browser lacks password memory-functions and some other functions which could ease the use a bit (like proper keypad shortcuts).
The Register review was written by Orlowski who usually makes good reviews. However, with the S60 browser I don’t think he didn’t take the time to learn how to use it properly.
S60 browser is so different in it’s approach compared to the standard set by previous Nokia default browsers and Opera’s and Netfront’t offerings alike so there’s bound to be some resistance. Wake up!..:)
I agree that he’s not going to just agree that the competition has a good product (especially if it’s free), but the art of PR is to also be diplomatic. You can’t just go around saying that it’s useless, you have to be nice and give constructive critisism where appropriate instead.
Only Apple seem to be able to get away with so obvious ’slagging off’ of the opposition, and even that’s starting to backfire now.
Does the one choice of browser have to exclude the other? I use opera mini to read sites with lots of content as I find opera mini does a fine job in scaling down the page and let me read then text.
For other sites, checking m.gmail.com for example, I prefer the S60 browser.
But most of my browsing is done on a PC and not on a mobile phone.
I started to use the S60 browser but nowadys I use Opera Mini much more, it’s simply more efficient and horizontal scrolling to find the left side of a text column is annoying even with the S60 Browser’s mini map.
Look, the S60 Browser is a wonderful bit of code, and renders pages beautifully. But the fact is, you simply cannot surf into a site more than 3 or 4 pages deep before it runs out of memory (even clearing the cache on every page load), which makes it pretty, but functionally useless.
I rely heavily on my ability to access web content from my E61 and E70, and so I had absolutely no choice but to switch to Opera. If I want to Google something or load a single web page, S60’s browser works well enough, but to actually use the web, Opera is the only functional solution…
…for now. S60 Developers, please read the Symbian Forums all across the net and give every S60 3rd owner what they want - to be able to use your beautiful browser without running into the memory wall over and over. Opera has never run either phone out of memory yet, there’s no reason why the S60 browser can manage its RAM use to accomplish the same.
The right way to evaluate this comment is to investigate the review from The Register further and not to take it personal. No browser is perfect, but there are some that are better than others. I still haven’t seen a mobile browser support streaming video from YouTube or Google Video.
In any case, after using both the regular Opera and the S60 browser, I must admit that I like Opera better. What I don’t like about the S60 browser is that it doesn’t have Small-Screen Rendering - SSR. I don’t have the time to scroll horizontally when all I want to do is read/view the content of the page. Implement SSR and get it this over with.
Tommi - To know who’s right - you or Eskil - all we need to know is the total number of downloads or purchases of the S60 3rd Edition version of Opera. If Eskil is right, there should be a considerable amount of people buying their version of Opera. If not, we’ll assume that we - the S60 3rd Edition users - are happy with the browser. How about it Eskil?… if you are reading this… and I know you’re reading this, after all you are a PR guy -Lol… why don’t you post the numbers on your blog and show us how we - the consumers - have voted with our pockets.
S60 Browser team - please implement a page up and a page down shortcut… and SSR of course - but you already knew that, right? There’s no way you would’ve designed a browser without considering the size of the screens of your current S60 phones and expect people to scroll horizontally.
@Jose
The S60 browser does do SSR, but not at the sacrifice of the designer-intended page layout. Each of the content columns are resized to fit onto the screen horizontally, so you can scroll up and down. Granted, it would possibly be a good thing to have an option to force the opera-style SSR, but I haven’t found the S60 approach bad at all, infact it leaves everything as I would expect on the web… navigation on the left, content in the middle, and a few little widgets on the right. When a page is re-rendered to be in one column, the columns have to be rearranged properly, and if the designer has made the page ‘incorrectly’ then the navigation may be forced to an unnatural position.
I do agree with you on the page up/down shortcuts though. It’d be nice to have an options page to customise what each keypad key does.
@ Henrikki
> It’s much faster (overall use and it renders
> the pages faster)
Eh? Opera is clearly faster.
> It can go to places Opera can’t even dream
> about
Such as? What places?
@ Duncan Sample
> The S60 browser does do SSR, but not at the
> sacrifice of the designer-intended page
> layout.
That’s a polite way to say that its SSR sucks. It isn’t even (proper) SSR.