Earlier this week, we covered how to enable touch screen support in Google Chrome and ways to optimize Mozilla Firefox desktop browser for multi-touch display with the help of extensions. In our article, we had mentioned that Internet Explorer 10 seems to be the best web browser for Windows 8 tablets at this point of time.
Matri6, a regular reader of IntoWindows, has sent us a mail informing that the best browser available for touch-screen devices is Opera Mobile and it can be installed on Windows tablets as well! As we all know, Opera Mobile is designed for tablets and touch screen devices. Though Opera doesn’t provide a link to Opera Mobile installer for Windows desktop at the download page, Matri6 has provided us a link that will help us to download Opera Mobile 11 from Opera FTP servers.
Those who have tried Opera browser on touch screen devices such as iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab will agree that it’s the best and the most feature-rich browser for touch devices. It offers all the features that you really need while browsing on a touch device.
To start with, Opera Mobile supports tabbed browsing and visual tabs even help you see a preview before switching. The user interface is a extremely touch-friendly, to say the list. Unlike other desktop browsers including Internet Explorer 10, it provides a very smooth experience.
Just like in desktop browsers, Speed Dials help you pin your favourite web pages to the new Tab so that you can open your favourite websites with a tap. The size of the page or text can be adjusted with the help of pinch-to-zoom.
Most of the features available in modern desktop browsers are also available in Opera Mobile. All-in-all, a must have browser for your Windows tablet. We have tested Opera Mobile on a tablet running Windows 8 (x86) and can confirm that it works very smoothly. We highly recommend Opera Mobile for all Windows tablets.
The only catch is that there is no way to download Opera Mobile for Windows desktop directly from Opera Mobile download page. The official download page provides links for Windows Mobile, Android, and iOS. So, to install Opera Mobile 11 on your Windows tablet, follow the steps given below.
Step 1: Visit this Opera FTP page and click on Opera Mobile 11 Win7.exe file. Yes, Opera 11 was released almost six months ago (v11.5 is the latest) but we Windows tablet users have no choice but to download this version.
Step 2: Once download is done, run Opera Mobile 11 Win7.exe and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.
Step 3: Launch the browser and enjoy the best browser for touch devices on your Windows tablet.
Do let us know if you know any other links to download the latest version of Opera Mobile for Windows desktop.
Alceste says
I am really pissed at Mozilla and Google. Both were whining like crazy, when Microsoft announced that there wouldn’t be any other browser on Metro (or whatever ist called now) than IE. Yet now that they fought for their right to do so, they simply don’t come up with Software which is worth using! Even if they finally came up with elementary functions, such as pinch to zoom (come on a tablet!), they wouldn’t be better than IE (okay maybe for the Flash part, though I see this as an Advantage, since it will force most of the Website owners to Switch to HTML5). Opera imho is the onloy browser which can compete with IE, which is because of their innovative zoom. Opera reformats the text when zooming, a Feature I regularly miss when Surfing Wikipedia on my Win8 device (ironically the stupid apps won’t give you zoom either). However and that’s the down side of it, Opera mobile, as mentioned in the article is not supported on Windows anymore (already used it on my HP TM2.
Brayan Habid says
It’s a great browser for my windows 7 tablet, but it lacks flash support, and that’s currently a great disadvantage.
mayasl says
Installed in my PC which is running on Windows 8 (Developer Preview), just for checking purpose. It is working fine. But, i don’t know how to disable auto zooming. Anyhow, Chrome performs better than Opera Mobile.