One should think that it's a good thing if a web site has a mobile optimized version of their content. With Opera Mini, a mobile browser that compresses full web pages in a way that they can be nicely viewed on mobile phones, I have quickly discovered that this is not always the case. Here are take two examples:
- Amazon: While the mobile pages are loading a bit faster than Amazon's full web pages the mobile version only contains a fraction of the information of the full page. When looking at an article I can not even browse the description. Sorry guys, that's too limiting. I want to see the full page compressed by Opera Mini and not Amazon's mobile version.
- Another example is Spiegel online, a German news magazine. Again, the mobile version, if reachable at all from Opera Mini only contains a fraction of the articles and pictures present on the full page. Again, I would very much prefer Opera to fetching the full web page and then compressing it.
I am not sure if Opera is actively requesting the 'mobile' versions of these web sites (I don't even want to say 'mobile optimized' anymore) or if the web sites choose themselves to send the mobile optimized version based on the browser identity string. If so, Opera should make the request with a full web browser identity. Opera, any chance of adding a 'mobile/full version' selection feature in the next release?
There used to be an option with opera mobile browser of whether to announce itself to a website as a mobile or a computer - (there may still be but i don't use it anymore).
This is clearly what you want - i guess they've just not put it in to opera mini (or you haven't found the setting!)
Posted by: Will H | February 28, 2008 at 03:37 PM