Little Springs Design. 2001 – 2010.

We've designed a couple of mobile browsers, which makes us always curious when a new design comes along. (I'd tell you which ones, but alas they've not given us permission). Especially fun is looking at what the browsers do on some of the challenging implementation decisions we wrestled with.

So, Opera Mini 5 has increasing amounts of competition from the likes of Obigo, Bolt, Skyfire, and so forth. Rather than sitting on their well-deserved laurels they took the design to the next level.

I won't really talk about features here; that's well covered elsewhere by folks you trust to talk about such things. Instead, design.

Control overlay is very nice

The most obvious change in design is of course the treatment of the Menu button. Previously, the design was inherited from Nokia UI of over 10 years ago, with a list of available actions in a menu above the left softkey. This time they took an approach similar to Gravity, with overlays showing available controls.

The advantage of this approach is both aesthetic (it's much prettier) and functional. Most softkey menus have just order and label to suggest their functionality; they become unwieldy as application capability increases. Opera Mini 5 uses the same familiar activation of the menu, but then provides a number of controls simply not available in a menu:

• Visual control distinction: Large icons for frequent actions
• Controls beyond just links/buttons: Integrated URL and search bars
• Controls beyond just links/buttons: Access to other tabs
• Progressive disclosure without submenus: Access to less important controls by a second action

And they didn't go overboard. They could have made a two-dimensional grid of controls, adding extra confusion. The control overlay could have been very intimidating, but it's not.

Overlay problems

By putting a "power" button (odd choice, that) in one of the five limited spots in the overlay, the more-used History and/or Bookmarks. By relegating the exit function to the menu, you reduce the need for the exit guard, allow use of the word "Exit," and provide space for other controls.

The forward and back buttons are poor choices for the overlay. The right softkey is also back, so this replicates the function. And the "forward" button remains disabled most of the time, as it is on most browsers. So three of the five controls in the icon bar of the overlay shouldn't be there. No wonder I spend so much time in the little menu.

Perhaps history and bookmarks were relegated to the menu because the quick-dial feature imported from the desktop browser needed prominence. This isn't a great design choice, especially for people who don't save bookmarks but instead use history.

Other visual choices

Page wipe-to-left for "forward" (and its reverse) is interesting, but mistimed and inconsistently applied. You'll have to try a few pages before you can be sure to have seen it, but when you do you'll find that the current page doesn't wipe off the screen until the new one is loaded. This solves the problem of wanting something to look at while the new page loads, but then has the problem of a perceived disconnect between action and result. I'd drop the wiping feature.

Wiping is also inconsistent with the display of the chrome controls. Here, things fly in from the bottom, but then is left and right once in the controls. Disconcerting.

Tabbed browsing, finally

Hooray for tabbed browsing! I can have two tasks going at once. And, unlike the iPhone, it doesn't force a refresh just to look at the other tab. This is terrific, and much easier than the native S60 non-touch browser.

Interface "cruft"

We've been hearing a lot from the design elite about the goal of "the content is the interface." Proponents point to Jef Han's work on multi-touch displays, full-screen browsers, and the like.

To a degree, Opera Mini delivers here. It sports a full-screen mode that lets you really maximize your view. And by putting all of the controls in the overlay, the same keypress that gets you access to the overlay in default mode also gets you access in full-screen mode. Very nice. In contrast, the native browser uses the first keypress to display the title and menu bar; the second keypress actually opens the menu.

I guess we're crufty people around here, but we like using tools when interacting with content. And in Opera Mini 5, the cruft is the weak spot.

Helpless Help

Help has no contents other than keyboard shortcuts and the "about" information. Maybe this is because it's a beta product. But if so, it's (almost) always best to leave a feature out than to implement it half-way. And yes, that counts for not-enough-content.

"Saved Pages" vs. "Bookmarks

Because there is no help, I don't know what they are thinking with regards to "Saved Pages." This appears to be a mechanism in which the web page is stored somewhere on the device, perhaps accessible offline? Certainly I had to approve the application getting device access (no explanation of what access) about six times to use the service.

Indeed, there are three separate ways to explicitly save a site: quick dial, saved pages, and bookmarks. Let's get rid of one of those, and better integrate the other two. Maybe they are, but at least the access methods and names imply they are not.

History

Given the fact that many people use history very extensively, we'd like to see it vastly improved on all browsers. The good: Opera Mini has a clear visual distinction between sites visited "Today" and "Earlier." The bad: when, earlier? And how do I pick between these?

Perhaps it isn't fair to pick on Opera here. Even desktop browsers do this at best indifferently. We'd like to see several changes to the history function. These start with, but are not limited to:

• Define browsing "sessions" within time. "Yesterday around 8am" is contextually different than "Yesterday at lunchtime," and makes it easier to search the way people think.
• Consolidate links for pages that are just refreshing themselves (cough - gmail).
• Go beyond the page title, perhaps grabbing the first h1 in the document.
• Include favicons in the display.
• History search, ideally searching the whole page and not just the title.

Blackberry challenges

I don't have any screen shots for you, but Jana downloaded the Blackberry version. And deleted it, as she couldn't figure out how to use it. She said the controls didn't work.

I still don't like the rendering

Opera hasn't changed some of their core rendering decisions. This is unsurprising, but disappointing. Stuff that is unchanged:

• Ignore the page keyboard shortcuts (access keys) in favor of the browser's.
• Reports itself as a desktop browser, causing sites to render the desktop version even when they have a mobile one they'd presumably rather offer you.
• Insufficient control over screen width. I can't use the desktop version of Google calendar even though I am forced there.

And, rendering bugs

I tried for 15 minutes to sign into ToodleDo before giving up and using the native browser. The page was telling me it was the wrong credentials, but I typed the correct ones. Opera somehow inserted, deleted, or changed characters when sending the content up. I don't know why, but it's enough to make me use the built-in browser instead.

There are several sites or on-screen widgets of one sort or another that tend to cause issues in one browser or another, and seem to not be getting better. To view the whole web, I have to use 2-3 browsers to get everything working. These are usually pretty detailed, niggly things causing failures, such that if I could view a style-less version I could make the site work. Whether that is the right answer, all browsers (not just Opera) that proclaim desktop compliance need to look at how they are being used, and think outside the box regarding workarounds, at the least.

As far as all the not-as-mobile-as-we-wish comments, maybe it's time to start another one-web rant and talk about what the mobile internet should really be offering. Maybe, if we can rope in the right people, that's a good panel for the next Design for Mobile conference.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 at 6:57 pm and is filed under Design, Mobile applications, Mobile web, Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.