It bears mentioning that not only is this post about the Opera web browser on the DS, but I am also writing it from within the browser as well. Honestly, I’m not sure whether that second point is more a testament to the application, to WordPress’s ability to gracefully degrade so the tools are still useful using the limited interface, or my sheer patience/stupidity to stand the hunt-and-peck required to write this.
Overall, the browser is fairly painless to use. The resolution on the DS is the biggest limitation, especially in terms of content width. But even such fairly intensive web apps such as gmail are usable from the browser, even if they do become slightly more complex to navigate.
I am half tempted to try and use the browser without the RAM Expansion afforded to me by the 3-in-1 (see my previous post about that), but I just don’t see it running very well. As it is, a little bit of sluggishness can be found on some sites, and I’m sure removng the expansion certainly wouldn’t HELP screen render times.
Using a browser like this and not having much experience with portable web browsing before now, I do wonder about the future of web standards and how long it may be until MOST sites either have WAP-friendly versions or simply all become coded to a proper standard that the content is displayed in a format specifically tailored for these types of web clients. In some ways I’m pretty late to the “mobile web” game, but really it’s still such a novelty that most developers that I know aren’t really thinking about it when they program a web site/application.
I guess we’ll see in time how long it takes before this type of surfing goes beyond something only the technophiles and the Blackberry/iPhone owners are doing.