[General Topics] Menneisyys:
1.2.3 Page Saving

The new page saving feature allows for saving the current page, along with all its resources (images), to a file. The file is in the native (condensed HTML in textual mode + JPEG images) format of Opera Mini currently not readable by other applications. Should you still need some of the contents for copy/paste operations, you can still directly copy from the file with a text viewer. This also means this also allows for some kind of rudimentary copy/paste functionality if you use an external file viewer like that of Resco File Explorer. Then, based on the (latest) timestamp of the saved page (the saved pages have cryptic filenames; however, you can easily recognize them based both of their timestamp in the file system and their header, which contains the title of the page), you view it and look for the info you wanted to copy to clipboard (and, from there, to, say, Notes or Word Mobile). As you can see, it’s in no way so easy than, say, copying and straightforward than copying the full / the visible textual contents of the page into a text input field, where a user could already highlight anything and copy to the clipboard (unless she uses TAO Intent), though. Hope the Opera coders also implement this, otherwise, very simple-to-code feature.

Note that the page saving target dialog is only displayed once (upon the first page saving attempt) and is pretty much far away from being pretty and/or intuitional (and, of course, it has missing functionality present in, say, the standard OS file save dialog like creating subdirectories) but it still does the job. Just select the directory you’d like to save your pages to. Again, remember this can’t be changed later so select a directory with sufficiently large free storage.

First, you’ll need to select the storage type you’d like to save your pages to. In the following screenshot, I’ve selected Storage Card:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/042008OM41/OM41SaveTarget1.png

After pressing Action, you’ll be shown the directories in there. You can select any of them (and, then, iteratively, any of its subdirectories etc.). Just press Select (left softkey) on the directory you’d like to save your stuff in. For example, in the following screenshot, I’ve stayed on Storage Card when pressing the key; this means it’ll store the pages in the root of the card:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/042008OM41/OM41SaveTarget2.png

(note that, as the storage card roots can only have up to 128 files, this isn’t the best thing to do unless you’re absolutely sure you only want to save some pages.)

Finally, you’ll be prompted a "Page saved." message:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/042008OM41/OM41SaveTarget3.png

Get rid of it with the Action button.

After this, all the saved pages will be listed in Tools / Saved Pages (and the latest three on the startpage):

http://www.winmobiletech.com/042008OM41/OM41StartpageSavedPageList.png

A VGA screenshot with more than one saved page:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/042008OM41/OM41ListOfSavedPages.png

http://www.winmobiletech.com/042008OM41/OM41ListOfSavedPagesVGA.png

1.2.4 Finding text in pages

Tools / Find in page implements something I’ve been asking for years: in-page text search. It not only iterates over all the occurrences of the searched-for word (see the "Next" left softkey), but also conveniently highlights all the occurrences. In the following screenshot, you can see the results of searching for the word "Opera" in the Opera Mini forums:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/042008OM41/41FindInPagesOpera.png

1.2.5 In-app file up/download

A lot of users have been asking the Opera folks for allowing for in-browser download and, even more importantly, upload.

1.2.5.1 Download

In-browser downloading, for Windows Mobile users, isn’t that important. It’s probably mostly MS Smartphone users that will find this useful because, as has also been explained in my MS Smartphone Web Browsing Bible (see section 1.1.1 Fixing the binary file download problem), the built-in Internet Explorer Mobile only downloads certain types of files. For Symbian users with, say, a Nokia N95 with a pre-20 firmware version, it’s more so because Symbian often killed Opera Mini when loading up Nokia Web for handling the download. This isn’t an issue with the new firmware version any more, of course – neither is with N95 8GB, N95-3, N82 or the soon-to-come, new, DVB-H enabled N-series models.)

Note that, while file system access is supported in the latest and most recommended Jbed 3.1, this isn’t necessarily the case with other MIDlet Managers. Therefore, you’re strongly recommended to upgrade to Jbed 3.1.

The new in-Opera download looks like this:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/042008OM41/MP3Download1.png

If you select Save As, you’ll be presented the usual file selector; here, I instruct it to save the contents on the storage card:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/042008OM41/MP3Download2.png

Then, the download will start:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/042008OM41/MP3Download3.png

If, instead of Save As, you select Open:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/042008OM41/MP3Download4.png

you’ll be taken to IE:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/042008OM41/MP3Download5.png

which downloads the file:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/042008OM41/MP3Download6.png

Unfortunately, if you go for in-process download, you can’t do anything else during downloading – as is the case with regular page loading. That is, you end up staring at the download screen. If you absolutely hate this and/or the download takes too much time (for example, during fetching a looooooong MP3), go for downloading within Internet Explorer Mobile and switching back to Opera Mini for browsing. You can safely do this: IEM will just download the file in the background without problems. (Unless, of course, you haven’t registered the file type with the system. Then, you’ll need to stick strictly with the built-in downloader of OM4.1.)

1.2.5.2 Upload

With Jukka "Yucca" Korpela’s excellent article & tester suite File input (or "upload") in HTML forms:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/042008OM41/FileUpload2.png

Then, the usual Opera file handler will be shown (not that of the OS). Let’s upload some text file:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/042008OM41/FileUpload3.png

http://www.winmobiletech.com/042008OM41/FileUpload4.png

and the results are as expected:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/042008OM41/FileUpload5.png

(note that it the (later?) 4.0 series it is rendered as can be seen in HERE but, of course, the "Choose" file chooser couldn’t be activated)

In this regard, Opera Mini (along with the commercial (!) Opera Mobile and [the, currently, severely crippled Technical Preview] NetFront) is the only browser to support file upload on the MS Smartphone platform. Let me point out that the built-in Internet Explorer Mobile (still) doesn’t support upload.

2. What’s still missing / problematic?

Now, in addition to direct copy/paste of textual contents, I only miss navigating (switching back) to any already-downloaded page while loading a new one. You can only navigate on the current page while fetching a new page but can’t use, say, #5 to quickly bring up the list of currently open pages and quickly switch to another page. There isn’t a "download page in background" feature either, which would be able for allowing this. This can be a nuisance, particularly on inherently sloooooooooow platforms like the current crop of BlackBerries.

Also, on Pocket PC devices with a built-in keyboard could benefit from some similar keyboard layout than on BlackBerries. On the latter, you can use the (wide and easy-to-reach) Space button to scroll a page down. I wish you could do the same on Windows Mobile devices. (In there, you still must use the "8" button, which is pretty much out of reach in two-hand, "bedtime" operation.)

The problem of "flashing", non-displayed pictures, particularly with pages heavily loaded with them, is still present.

Finally, the lack of italic support is (still) a big pain in the back. I don’t understand why the Opera folks don’t implement this (must be related to the additional storage the custom, smallest character set would require with added italic support, I don’t know – if that’s the problem, at least non-smallest characters should have this support) – after all, ALL major KVM’s do support rendering text in italics. (See my related tests in my MIDlet Bible.)