Opera Mini 4 is here!

By Chris Mills

DEPRECATED: This article is deprecated, and a newer article with updated information is available at A developer’s look at Opera Mini 5. You should read this one if you want updated information on the latest version of Opera Mini.

Today is an exciting time here at Opera - we're very proud to announce the release of the final version of Opera Mini 4! It's packed with great new features, totally free, and will make your mobile browsing even happier than the last version.

Visit our Opera Mini & Opera Mobile page for details and download instructions.

Here at dev.opera.com, we've produced a number of new articles to help you as developers and designers find your way around developering web sites that give a good user experience in Opera Mini 4, as well as other browsers out there, mobile and desktop! The following are now available from dev.opera.com:

1. Opera Mini request headers: Opera Mini 4 uses various custom HTTP headers, in addition to the standard ones - this article tells you what they are, and what you can do with them
2. Differences between Opera Mini 3 and 4: As you might expect, this article explains the main differences between Opera Mini 4 and the previous version - 3 - in terms of standards support etc
3. Safe Media queries: With mobile and desktop browsers having such varying support for media queries, using them effectively across browsers/platforms can be difficult; here we explore a solution to this issue
4. How to serve the right content to mobile browsers: This article looks at the different methods available to you for serving appropriate content to mobile devices, and what to watch out for
5. Designing and Developing mobile web sites in the real world, part 1: In this 2 part series, Brian Suda gives some real world advice hard won from his first hand experience of developing mobile web sites. 2 real case studies presented, with Brian exploring the issues his team faced, and how they were overcome. Other topics include standards support, identifying mobile users, and server-sniffing
6. Designing and Developing mobile web sites in the real world, part 2: Part 2 of Brian's informative article
7. Evolving the Internet on your phone: Designing web sites with Opera Mini 4 in mind: Ok, not a new article, but still very relevant. Written originally back when Opera Mini 4 beta 2 was released, this article covers Opera Mini 4's standards support in greater detail, and gives some useful design tips

If you have anything cool to share in terms of development/design techniques for Opera Mini 4, or other mobile devices, then why not write an article yourself? Send me your ideas and submissions at cmills[at]opera[dot]com. I hope you enjoy the new Mini browser!

Chris Mills

Chris Mills

Chris Mills is a web technologist, open standards evangelist and education agitator, currently working at Opera Software in the developer relations team. He spends most of his time writing articles about web standards for dev.opera.com and other publications (such as .net mag and A List Apart), giving talks at universities and industry conferences, and lobbying universities to improve their web education courses. He believes that education is the answer to everything, but in particular he is passionate about using education to improve the overall content quality, accessibility, usability and future-viability of the Web.

He is the creator of the Opera Web standards curriculum, contributor to the WaSP InterACT project, and coauthor of InterACT with web standards: A Holistic Approach to Web Design. In August 2011, he also accepted the position of co-chair of the newly-formed Web Education Community Group.

Outside work he is a heavy metal drummer, proud father of three and lover of good beer.

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