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Hello,

Are you visiting the Opera Mini website on your phone and trying to download it from there? The Nokia N73 should be able torin Opera Mini version 4.

Alternatively, you can try downloading it on a PC and install it from there onto your phone using a cable.

Hi,

As far as I know, Opera 8 isn't available for the P910i. That phone uses Symbian UIQ 2.1, for which you can only download Opera 6.3, but later versions of Opera require UIQ 3.0 or above.

In fact, phones running UIQ 3.x usually have a more recent version of Opera already installed on them, though it's not always clearly labeled as being Opera. Earlier phones like the P910i were only supplied with SonyEricsson's browser on the phone, with Opera being available as an optional extra.

I'm sorry I could not have been more helpful to you.

Hello,

I'm afraid my knowledge of Opera since the Psion/EPOC years is limited so you might get a more reliable answer on the My Opera forums.

But... I'm not sure that it's possible to save images in Opera Mini because, unlike Opera Mobile, the web pages you view are first processed by a proxy server and turned into a proprietary format which is then sent to your phone for Opera Mini to display without the need for a fast processor or lots of memory. This means that the phone itself never recieves the original source code for the web pages, so you cannot view or save it. I think the same thing may apply to images meaning they can't be saved either, but I am not certain.

Opera Mobile processes the web pages itself, just like the desktop versions, so your phone recieves all the original files from the website, which you can then save. However, as you have noticed, processing web pages directly on the phone takes more time and is harder to make available for all models of phone.

I'm sorry I could not be of more help.

Hi,

You can download Opera Mini 4 directly onto your phone by visiting the Opera Mini website in your phone's WAP browser. Or you can download it onto a desktop computer and transfer it to the phone from there.

Alternatively, you can try installing Opera Mobile 8.65 on for the Nokia 6600. This browser has more features and is a more capable program, but needs more resources.

Hello,

If this is a Dopod D600 or HTC P3450, you can download Opera Mini 4, either directly onto your phone, or onto a desktop PC and transfer it over from there.

For other models of Dopod and HTC phones, you can check which is the most suitable version on the Opera Mini website.

I think the Dopod D600 runs Windows Mobile 5, so you might also be able to run Opera Mobile Edition instead of Opera Mini. It's a more powerful browser but uses more resources.

I hope that helps.

Hello,

You can download Opera Mini version 4 for your N73, either from a desktop computer or direct onto the phone itself.

I hope that helps and you find Opera to be a more capable browser than Safari!

Great news, I hope it still works well on todays web for you!

Hi,

Opera 3.62 is long since forgotten about at Opera, so your best bet is probably to contact them, explain you're an old Psion user and ask if they can supply you with a reg code. You'll have to make it clear you want one for Opera 3.62 on ER3 because they never were the sharpest when it came to telling the difference between their own EPOC products.

At this stage I think it would be only fair if they let you have one for free, but of course that's up to them and whichever employee gets your email.

There are some versions that do not require registration but these are for ER5 devices and won't load on your Psion 5. Again, you must make this clear to Opera because it wouldn't surprise me if they just sent you one of those ER5 OEM installers rather than a reg code.

Only two beta versions of Opera 5 worked on ER3 and they both had problems (such as being unable to handle form data properly) so you're right, Opera 3.62 is the best option for a Psion 5.

If whoever replies to you at Opera gives a bad answer then you could try emailing one of their support people from the Opera newsgroups privately and hope that they take more time dealing with your query. Some of them (tim@NOoperaSPAM.com) are much more helpful than others...

Hi,

MPEGs are played by a media player rather than Opera itself, so I'd say either Opera can't find one it can use as a plugin (so it can embed the player in the page) or it doesn't recognise the MPEG video 'MIME type' sent by the server, so it doesn't know what to do with the file it receives.

I'm not familiar with Opera 8 for Symbian I'm afraid, but does it work if you save the file (is there still a 'Save target as' option for links?) and then try opening it directly with a media player? Opera 8 for the desktop allows you to choose what happens to different types of files and add new ones etc, but I'm guessing the appearance of these settings in the menus has been stripped out of the current mobile versions in order to simplify the options, even if it's still possible to edit some INI files in the hidden System folder manually and alter how Opera handles MIME types.

Hello,

You don't say what version of Opera or on what system, but have you disabled images, either by clicking the Image mode icon on the toolbar (a small photo or picture frame with a cross in it when images are completely disabled or cut in half when set to 'cached only' mode.) or by using the keypress that changes modes? (G in older versions, or Shift+G in current Opera versions.)

If your image mode is fine and it's only this site that has this problem then could you be going through a proxy server or firewall that is stripping out the images from the page or blocking them from being downloaded for some strange reason?

Hi,

Without a URL or some example code I can't say, but Opera does support Javascript. A few possibilities are:

• You've installed Opera 6 and are trying to use DOM methods such as document.createElement() or properties such as innerHTML. These are only supported in Opera 7 and above.
• You might have a syntax error in your Javascript or HTML (see Post 39 for example) that Internet Explorer doesn't have a problem with, but more standards-orientated browsers like Opera or Firefox do. Does your code work in the desktop version of Opera?
• You might be using proprietary Javascript/ECMAscript extensions created by other browser makers which Opera doesn't support.

Do you have a URL? The desktop version of Opera has an error console to help track down problems in web pages. In Opera 9, go to the Tools menu, select Advanced and then click Error Console (or Javascript Console in earlier versions).

Java and Javascript are two completely different things by the way. Javascript is the web page scripting language created by Netscape whereas Java is the programming language and virtual platform created by Sun Microsystems for creating portable desktop applications or web applets (amongst other things). Opera has native support for Javascript but not Java. That comes from the Java installation on your system, but since the Ngage only includes the limited Micro Edition of Java I'm not sure if current versions of Opera for Symbian even use it because J2ME probably won't run most Java Applets on the web.

But I'm assuming you mean Javascript for this post?

Hi,

There's no easy way to do this I'm afraid. Opera 3.62 only had the most basic of spoofing methods (It could either mention Mozilla 3 or 4 in its user agent string) and doesn't even have an option to mention MSIE. Editing INI files manually won't help.

The only way to change it would be to edit the Opera.rsc file in your Opera 3.62 installation folder in a hex editor and carefully change the existing user agent string. It's quite near the top of the file, just search for "Mozilla" and skip the first match, which is a string for the menus rather than the user agent string. When you find it you'll have to overwrite each character in the existing string, so you're limited to what new user agent strings you can put into it. I set my Opera 3.62 to ID as IE6 on Windows XP about five years ago for similar reasons to you ;)

You can either use any of the available EPOC hex editors, such as RMRtext (probably the most basic but my old bookmarks for the others are all dead URLs), or copy the file to your desktop and edit it there. This is all probably against the Opera licensing agreement etc, but it's a long-dead browser and the old UA string can be problematic in 2005 so I can't see why they would complain.

Hi,

My knowledge of Mobile Opera is quite out of date now but I'd guess your 9300 is running a customised version of Opera 7. It could possibly be Opera 6 but I'm pretty sure version 7 had appeared for Symbian around the time the 9300 came out. One thing you could try is entering opera:about into the address bar and see if that displays anything. If not, I could make a quick test page to try and determine what version you have?

I'm not aware of any real ad-blocking built into Opera for Symbian but you can use a user stylesheet to hide certain sized elements (many ad banners share common sizes). Opera's Small Screen Rendering mode also hides some elements as it reflows pages to fit mobile screens.

Sorry I can't help you more. I think the problem with finding proper support is that the 9300 is one of the phones that uses a customised version of Opera licensed to Nokia. So, Opera probably see it as Nokia's responsibility to provide documentation and support to their users, and Nokia may either not want to provide comprehensive support or assume that Opera's own website already contains enough information for people to get by with. Opera's support for EPOC/Symbian versions in the early days was quite terrible but I thought it had improved since version 7!

Hi,

Your javascript syntax is a bit wrong, so this is probably causing an error. javascript: is only supposed to be used in the address bar of the browser or in the HREF value of links, and even then it's usually a bad idea to use it because nothing happens in browsers with Javascript turned off or unsupported. (the onclick attribute should be used to add Javascript to working links)

Everything between the <script...> and the </script> should be pure Javascript:

<html>
	<head>
		<title>Mobile Opera Javascript test</title>
		<script type="text/javascript">
			alert('Javascript works!')
		</script>
	</head>
	<body>
		<h1>Mobile Opera Javascript test</h1>
		<script type="text/javascript">
			document.write('Javascript writes to the page as well!')
		</script>
	</body>
</html>

Try the above code and see if it helps. There are easy-to-follow tutorials on the W3 Schools website for both Javascript and DOM.

Hi,

If you have access to a web server then you can view the user agent string of any browser by echoing it in a web page using Server-Side Includes, Perl or PHP, etc.

Alternatively, if the browser supports Javascript (which Opera does), you can make a script to echo the string locally— or just type/paste javascript:navigator.userAgent into the address bar.

You'll also find some old but hopefully helpful information about user agent strings in the reference section of this site, on a page that displays your own user agent string if Javascript is enabled.

Remember that there are other devices running Opera on UIQ, such as the high-end SonyEricssons, Arima U300 and the Ben-Q P30. Their user agents will differ slightly from the Motorola OEM versions but they're all based around the standard Opera strings that includes the version, platform and (sometimes) model of phone. Some versions also send the server an HTTP header field that lets you know what type of screen the device has, which is potentially useful if you want to send different content/stylesheets/javascript to different kinds of devices.

There's quite a difference between Opera 6 on the A920, Opera 6 on other Motorola devices, and Opera 7 on more recent models like the A1000. The A920 version doesn't include SSR but the others do, and version 7 was a complete rewrite of the browser engine and CSS parser so it can sometimes render things slightly different/better (and of course has a completely different set of bugs/quirks!).

Opera 8 for Symbian (Series 60) user agent string

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Symbian OS; Nokia 6600/4.09.1; 6329) Opera 8.00 [en]

Hi,

You can download the Opera browser from Opera's website. I'm not sure how the Doris browser copes with that site if you're planning to download and install directly from your phone.

Good luck with Opera on your Symbian phone!

Hi,

I'm afraid I don't know anything about Macs but I doubt there should be such problems with the latest version on OSX. If you're having exactly the same problems and errors with Opera 7 that you did with previous versions then I would guess (as a non Mac user) that it might be more down to the Mac or its settings than Opera as v7 has very little in common with 5 & 6 (in terms of the way it works).

Given that it seemed to run fine at first, maybe it's a cache problem? On old Symbian devices with limited memory, some versions of Opera could crash if the cache limits were set too high or automatic RAM caching was enabled. Try going into Opera's preferences, find the cache settings and take the RAM cache off of automatic. Set it to cache documents and images, and set the limit to about 4MB. Then set the Disk cache to about 4MB too. Does that help at all?

But, the best advice I can offer is to try searching Opera's knowledgebase for Macintosh problems or try asking about your problem on the Opera for Mac forum. Be sure to quote the error messages in full and describe what you're doing at the exact moment of the crash (what URL you were on, whether you clicked on something when it crashed, were any Opera dialogues being displayed at the time (download manager, chat, settings), etc). Also give some info about your system (RAM, processor, Firewall, AV software, etc). Someone there is bound to be able to tell you what might be causing it or whether Opera for Mac is generally less stable than other versions.

There is a test version of Opera 8 for Mac available so I don't know if that will be any more stable for you, but unless you're confident about installing beta software you're probably better off waiting until the finished version of Opera 8.0 (or whatever fancy name they finally decide to call it) is formally released in a few weeks.

Hi,

The MBM file should have the question mark but Opera.app should have the 'O' icon. If that is the case then you definitely have the ER3 edition installed so I don't know why it doesn't work. Are Messagesuite and the Standard C library installed on the C drive?

To check that it's definately Opera 3.62 and not Opera 5, go to the Opera folder:

C:\System\Apps\Opera\

...and check the file size of Opera.app If it's 1.6MB then it's Opera 3.62 but if it's only 143KB then you have Opera 5.

I know there are Osaris users successfully using Opera 3.62 so maybe you could try my backup of the Opera 3.62 installer for my Psion 5. It was downloaded a few years ago, before Opera changed the way they archive files:

Hi,

The only causes for this error I can remember are having installed the ER5 edition of Opera 3.62 (ER3/4 can't read the ER5 MBM file) or installing Opera 5 (only some of the betas ever worked on ER3/4).

Having said that, I have a vague memory of Messagesuite 1.52 having problems when installed on the Osaris. It's been quite a while now so I can't remember if it was just that the Email and Web apps didn't adjust to the Osaris screen or if there were differences in the library files. Do you have a copy of the official Osaris Messaguite and if so does Opera work when you install that instead?

If you want to make sure you have the ER3 edition of Opera 3.62, look at Opera.app in the Opera folder:

C:\System\Apps\Opera\Opera.mbm

If that file has the Opera 'O' icon then it's definately ER3. If it's a questionmark then it's ER5.

Hello,

Both relative-positioning and negative margins should work so the only thing I can think of is either you're not using the handheld media type (more info further down) and Opera 6 is ignoring the CSS, or you're using inline styling which is also being ignored because there's no way to add a media type to it.

Is it only the positioning of the images that isn't being applied on the 6600 or is the whole stylesheet being ignored?

Hi,

Relative positioning is supported so are you sure you're using it in the right way?

I'm not certain from the example what visual effect you're aiming for but the second image has no width or height specified so if it's more than 50x50px or is vertically-aligned to baseline, or has any margin applied, it will overhang the first image instead of aligning at the bottom/right corner.

Also, as both images are inline but you're applying the positioning to the containing block of the second, it could cause the images to seem off by a couple of pixels. How about using block level images and negative margins instead?

<style type="text/css">
   #elektra,#presto
      {display:block}
   #elektra
      {
      width:100px;
      height:100px;
      }
   #presto
      {
      width:50px;
      height:50px;
      margin:-50px 0 0 50px;
      }
</style>

<div>
   <img src="image1.gif" id="elektra" alt="Sensible text">
   <img src="image2.gif" id="presto" alt="More sensible text">
</div>

Does that help? If you apply any padding, margin or border to the first image, remember to take that into account when setting the margins for the second image otherwise they may not align where you expect them to.

Hello,

Are you talking about changing the class of the element by using the Javascript className property or setAttribute() method? If so then this won't work in current versions of Opera on Symbian.

Opera 6 is based on a static rendering engine which can't redraw the page once it's rendered. When you change a class then, technically, the class is changed 'internally' but Opera is unable to make those changes appear on screen.

Not being able to reflow an already rendered page is just a limitation of the Opera 4-6 rendering engine and is one of the primary reasons a complete rewrite was required for Opera 7. Sadly Opera 7 hasn't been made available for Symbian yet, though it'll probably appear when newer media-centric devices are released with faster processors (and more RAM).

You can still use Javascript to change simple things like background & text colours, visibility and the location of absolute-positioned elements, but you have to address the element directly to do it, not change the class name. For example, in the CSS:

#list {
   background:#ff0000;
   color:#ffffff;
}

...and in the Javascript;

document.getElementById('list').style.color='#0000ff'

or;

list=document.getElementById('list')
list.item=getElementsByTagName('li')
with(list.item[3].style) {
   background='#ffff00'
   color='#0000ff'
}

...etc.

Note that another problem with the old Opera rendering engine is that the background colour of any element can only be changed via Javascript if you've already set a background colour for that element in the stylesheet (or by using the bgColor attribute in the markup). This is because Opera 4-6 is unable to switch between solid background colours and transparency (the default for all elements) once the element is drawn. Background images cannot be changed via Javascript or CSS.

There's a little information about this topic in the Opera 5 FAQ though the same DHTML issues also apply to Opera 6:

• Opera 5 FAQ: Can Opera display pages that use DHTML?
• Opera 5 FAQ: Does Opera 5 support DHTML?
• Example page: Demonstration of Opera 5 for EPOC's static rendering engine being forced to reflow a page
• Notes: A comment about Small-screen mode (SSR) in Opera 7

Also note that className is a proprietary Microsoft Jscript property and is only supported in Opera 6 when it's set to identify as Internet Explorer. Opera 7 supports these additional Jscript properties and methods irrespective of the user agent selected.

Hi,

Ok, well it sounds like you found a bug. I hope they fix it quicker than they fixed similar bugs with form and dialogue widgets in Opera for EPOC. Maybe they can blame it all on the Crystal SDK again ;)

I don't know if this problem is specific to 6.10 but maybe you can use an older version until Opera fix it?

Hello,

I'm afraid I don't have a Series 60 device to test Opera on but you may have seen that the last poster is also having problems with a select list on the Series 60 edition of Opera 6.1. Perhaps the same bug is responsible fot both problems?

As it seems Javascript is capable of changing the value of a select list it's the only workaround I can think of, though it's not a very good one.

I'm sorry I can't help you any further.

Hello,

The code snippet you pasted seems fine so it may well be a bug. I don't have a Series 60 device to test it on though I know they changed form handling a lot since Opera 5 (your code works fine on that) even though Opera 5 & 6 share a lot of source code.

Out of interest, can you alter which option is selected through Javascript?

<html>
   <head>
      <title>Opera select element test</title>
   </head>
   <body onload="document.forms[0][0][1].selected=true">
      <form name="x">
         <select name="y">
            <option value="1">Default option</option>
            <option value="2">This should become selected onload</option>
         </select>
      </form>
   </body>
</html>

Hi,

As far as I know, you can't do that kind of thing with Opera yet, despite it being talked about for years as part of Symbian's Magpie concept and other 'ideas' for enhancing the Symbian office apps by integrating Opera's technology into the platform.

For all the press releases, comments and white papers I've seen, very little has so far materialised into products for end users and developers. The same goes for the Opera platform (a kind of less sophisticated but platform-agnostic 'concept' similar to Magpie) though now Opera are starting to use a dynamic browser engine for their handheld browsers (not for the Symbian version quite yet though) we might begin to see that technology appearing in real products before long. I know they've been tinkering with an Opera API for Symbian OS in internal builds.

I could be wrong about other Series 60 apps not being able to make use of the Opera libraries but I haven't heard of it so far. I'm only really familiar with Opera on the old Symbian EPOC platforms.

Hello,

Are you specifying the handheld media type when linking to or embedding the stylesheet:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="handheld" href="ssr.css" />

or;

<style type="text/css" media="handheld">
	img { display: none }
</style>

or;

@import url(ssr.css) handheld;

or;

@media handheld {
	img { display: none }
}

If not, and Opera is in SSR mode, the stylesheet may be ignored. A URL or some sample code would help.

See the reply to the post below about html tables for more information about using handheld stylesheets.

You can download the browser for Series 60 deivices (like the N-Gage) from Opera's website.

There isn't a WAP site but maybe you can download the installer from their website using your N-Gage's built in browser?

Hello,

It sounds like you're trying to use Opera 5 rather than Opera 3.62.

Unfortunately Opera 5 doesn't work on ER3 machines and there is no solution. The only thing you can do is remove it and install Opera 3.62 instead.

Some of the beta versions did work on ER3 but neither of the 'final' releases did. Opera have long since given up on EPOC so I can't see them ever fixing this.

There's a separate FAQ section for Opera 5, along with an online manual (takes a full minute to load on dialup!).

Opera 3.62 does work on ER3 and as long as you have Messagesuite 1.52 and the Standard C library installed on your Psion 5 you shouldn't get any errors like that.

Hi,

It sounds like Opera's Small Screen Rendering causing your page to render that way. It's enabled by default and one of the things it does is disable all tables if the page doesn't include a handheld stylesheet.

Trying to determine reliably which tables are used for layout and which contain genuine tabular data is a difficult thing to do in software, especially when it has the limited resources of a smartphone to run on, so current implementations of SSR reformat the page rather aggressively. No doubt they'll refine the technology over time but if you include a stylesheet for handhelds you won't have to worry about SSR as much.

To include a stylesheet that Opera 6 will take notice of, specify the handheld media type in a <link> or <style> tag. Alternatively use an @import or @media rule in your standard stylesheet.

Linking to an external handheld stylesheet

In the <head> section of your HTML documents, include a new link tag:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="handheld" href="ssr.css" />

Note that some browsers not supporting the handheld media type will still download the stylesheet even though they don't apply it.

Embedding a handheld stylesheet

In the <head> section of your HTML documents, include a new style element and set the media attribute in the opening tag:

<style type="text/css" media="handheld">
	body
		{
		background:#69c url(bg.jpg);
		color:#fff;
		}
	a
		{
		color:#ff0;
		}
	a:hover
		{
		background:#00f;
		text-decoration:none;
		}
	#ads,img.layout
		{
		display:none;
		}
</style>

Importing a handheld stylesheet

At the top of your standard stylesheet (external or embedded) include an import rule specifying a media type (or types):

@import url(ssr.css) handheld;

A note about MSIE

Although MSIE 5.5 and above supports the screen and print media types in @media rules, it doesn't support them in @import rules and will misinterpret any such rule using them:

@import url(/css/all.css) screen,projection;

This won't work in any version of IE because it interprets the contents of the rule as a literal string and then attempts to use it as a file path when requesting the stylesheet. If the above rule were to be used on this website MSIE would request the following URL, only to get a not found response:

http://mobileopera.com/bbs/url(%2Fcss%2Fall.css)%20screen,projection

Despite this bug in MSIE, you can still safely use handheld @import rules since they're not intended to be used by PCs anyway. Just expect a few 404s in your logs :)

Desktop browsers with better standards' support (like Opera and Mozilla) will interpret the rule correctly and download the stylesheet, though normally they won't apply it to the page until you go into Small Screen mode (Shift+F12 in Opera 7).

Including rules for handhelds in a 'normal' stylesheet

At any suitable point in an external or embedded stylesheet, include your handheld styling rules within a media rule:

h1
	{
	background:white url(h1_big.jpg);
	color:red;
	font-size:2em;
	margin:1em 4%;
	}

@media handheld,tv {
	h1
		{
		background:blue url(h1_small.jpg) repeat-y right center;
		color:white;
		padding:0.25em;
		margin:0 0 1em;
		font-size:1em;
		text-align:center;
		}
	h1 img
		{
		float:left;
		width:32px;
		height:24px;
		margin-right:0.25em;
		}
	#unnecessary,img.for_desktops,.etc
		{
		display:none;
		}
}

@media print {
	*
		{
		background:white;
		color:black;
		}
	#navigation,#adverts
		{
		display:none;
		}
}

...etc.

Note that @media rules aren't supported by IE5.1 or below for Windows or MacOS classic though they are in IE5.5/Win and (I think) the latest releases of IE5.2 for Mac OSX. Any CSS inside a @media screen {...} rule will be ignored by IE5.1 and below.

Hopefully using one of the above methods should let you display tables normally on your P800?

Hello,

Unfortunately NTLM authentication is not supported in Opera and I'm not aware of any practical workaround for Symbian users.

Disabling NTLM on the web server or switching to HTTP Basic Authentication will allow Opera to access the network though it's unlikely the admin would be prepared to do this. For Opera on other platforms there is a solution which involves installing and running your own proxy server, though that's of little use here.

NTLM uses a proprietary Microsoft authentication protocol made for Windows servers and MSIE (though limited third-party solutions for other platforms/servers exist) and as such Opera Software have shown little interest in implementing it.

However, Mozilla recently added support for NTLM authentication in the Windows version of their browser and I can see how some Symbian users are going to want to access corporate networks requiring it. Perhaps Opera will eventually reconsider, but as I understand it they currently have no plans to introduce NTLM support and would prefer to avoid any platform-specific feature of this nature.

Opera may still be primarily a browser for Windows but they seem to want to offer a consistent feature-set (and bug list!) wherever possible in matching versions across platforms.

Update

Since the above message was posted, Mozilla have announced native support for NTLM authentication. This will allow their browser to access networks using the protocol regardless of the platform Mozilla is running on. Previously this functionality was only present in Mozilla on Windows as it relied on part of the Operating System to provide support.

Some surplus waffle...

Consistent support in Mozilla is good news for people who use a Mac or Linux PC at home, as well as those who don't like having to use MSIE at work. But there's a potential problem with implementing support for someone elses protocol as Opera discovered when they integrated an ICQ client into Opera 5 in 2000.

Like NTLM, ICQ used a proprietary protocol controled by a single software vendor (Mirabilis) who were therefore at liberty to alter that protocol whenever and as often as they liked. If changes resulted in third-party ICQ programs breaking then it was no skin off their nose as they hadn't invited anyone to 'reverse-engineer' their protocol and make an alternative client. One day Mirabilis did just this and without any notification or explanation Opera users (along with owners of shareware such as nICQ) suddenly found themselves unable to chat. Because it was a closed protocol the authors of these third-party clients had no official documentation to refer to and learn how it had changed. They had to spend more time trying to work that out for themselves.

Eventually Opera determined the new ICQ protocol and released an update. Anyone who wanted to fix ICQ in Opera 5 had to download the browser all over again. Things were fine for a while, until Mirabilis altered the protocol again and third party apps needed fixing once more.

Opera went through this annoying cycle several times before deciding to shelve the idea of having integrated IM. To have the client keep breaking and then waiting a few days for a fix to appear was annoying for the users so it's no surprise if many of them went back to using the Mirabilis program and were left feeling alternative clients weren't worth the bother.

NTLM authentication is still strictly proprietary and no published specification is available from Microsoft. The only information currently available comes from individuals spending countless hours trying to figure it out and then sharing their findings on the web. While the quality of this information may be excellent there is no guarantee the protocols won't change with the next Windows SP or upgrade, and any third party implementation — such as that found in a non-Microsoft web browser — could break.

ICQ wasn't an essential Opera feature so it was no great loss when it stopped working, but what if a commercial product in an office environment suddenly broke? Those in charge won't care about protocols and standards, they'll just want things to work again like they used to before the switch. If the experience leaves people with a bad impression about an alternative product then it's damaging. Not only will that particular product be remembered as a waste of money but it would further any perception of being tied to Windows servers & clients without a viable alternative.

There's clearly a use for NTLM authentication in Opera, possibly more so since Symbian handsets have begun to ship in large volumes, but it's clear to see why Opera have been so reluctant. That said, despite being strongly in favour of open standards over proprietary solutions they have shown willingness to compromise and give people what they want so long as doing so doesn't detract from the product (e.g. quirks mode, support for more proprietary code like <marquee> and document.all, styled scrollbars and forms but not ActiveX or mimicking persistent broken behaviour etc.).

If Opera now believe NTLM authentication isn't going to disappear anytime soon and this will lead to problems for many Symbian users then perhaps they'll consider it for future versions. It's unreasonable to expect existing desktop workarounds to be used on smartphones and set-top boxes, and it's unlikely the average admin ot IT manager will switch to HTTP Basic or cookies just for Symbian phones. Principal aside, I suppose a lot depends on the resources required (They have to make a profit after all) and by what amount the memory footprint would increase, especially on mobile devices.

Another factor is whether supporting the protocol would be enough to get most intranets to work with Opera. There are enough corporate sites on the web that manage to block Opera without the help of NTLM authentication so how are networks designed with one browser and configuration in mind going to fare?

SSR may be a great styling aid but there's only so much the client can do when it's up against stupidity or ignorance.