[ajm]

Opera Mini ftw! It truly provides a desktop browsing experience for your BB like Safari does for iPhone.

Hints:

- Navigate faster using E,S,X,F,D. Let me explain: its the number pad, 2/8 for up/down, 4/6 for left/right. MUCH FASTER than the scroll ball! Also hit 5 for ZOOM in/out. Notice how moving left/right this way causes Opera to line up to columns on the page?

(The above hint is probably the single biggest usability improvement. Those who didn't quite like Opera Mini at first, myself included, will be surprised at how much better it becomes with the faster navigation)

- use font size small. I don't know why but this is rendered so much better than the other sizes.

- uncheck mobile view, check all 3 items under "appearance"

- Use the Curve/Pearl's "escape" key (the button to the right of the scroll ball). It unzooms (if zoomed) or navigates to the previous page.

- Opera can make a quicksearch from any page! Example: Go to maps.google.com, place the cursor over the search field and hit the BB Menu key (left of ball). Create Search. Now you can search from the Opera start page, queries such as "pizza 10101" or "10101 to 90210" for directions. I added eBay, Amazon, Answers.com, Wikipedia, Froogle, Cosctco, Home Depot, and a ton more that help me all the time.

- You can get rid of the annoying prompt on startup - the prompt about allowing Opera to access this or that. Go into your blackberry's Options > Security > Firewall > Enable. I now have this always enabled and it works with every application I use and everything I have installed. Once you grant something access thru the firewall you don't need to hear about it again.

- You can add your most used bookmarks to Opera's start page.

- Opera 9.5 beta on the PC is my new browser. Its the fastest thing yet. It finally does everything my Firefox did but mostly without having to add a dozen extensions, like I did with Firefox. And now I synchronize my desktop Opera with Mini, so I can manipulate Mini's bookmarks from my PC. This is a big time saver!