[RobRich]

Long story short, the Opera Mini web browser is essentially an user interface. Much of the actual processing is done via Opera's intermediate servers, with content optimized and compressed on the back-end for delivery over the Internet to the Opera Mini front-end.

Despite being designed for smartphones and similar handheld devices, there are a couple of good reasons for deploying Opera Mini on the Windows platform. Most importantly, web developers can verify their code against the Opera Mini rendering engine. Opera Mini can also provide a rather nice alternative web browser in bandwidth-limited situations, such as using a dialup connection, since Opera's intermediate servers optimize and compress content.

MicroEmulator: The Key to Opera Mini under Windows

Opera Mini is developed as a Java Micro Edition (J2ME) application. Windows applications developed using Java are typically more associated with the Java Standard Edition (J2SE) platform. Enter MicroEmulator, an implementation of J2ME under J2SE.

Deploying Opera Mini under Windows

1. Be sure you have the latest Java Runtime Environment (JRE) for Windows installed.
2. Download and extract the latest release of MicroEmulator to a desired directory. You want the actual program, not the source files. If you need a compatible compression utility, it suggest 7-Zip. Be sure to completely decompress and unarchive the entire archive, which could require a couple of steps depending upon the compression utility used.
3. Download the Opera Mini *.jad and *.jar files to the same directory.
4. Launch "microemulator.jar" in the directory by double clicking the file. If it fails to load, verify you have the latest JRE installed (step 1). If it still fails, you can instead try using "java -jar microemulator.jar" from the command line in the directory.
5. With MicroEmulator now open, click options, select device, then add. Navigate to the directory where MicroEmulator is installed, then enter the devices directory. Select the "microemu-device-resizable.jar" device file, then click open. Set the newly selected device as the default. Click OK to proceed.
6. Click the resize button in the lower right-hand corner of MicroEmulator. Enter your desired dimensions, such as the common 800x600 or 1024x768 formats. Click OK. The MicroEmulator interface will scale to the entered dimensions.
7. Click file, click open JAD file, navigate to the required directory if needed, select the "opera-mini-4.0.10406-advanced-int.jad" file, then click open.
8. An Opera Mini selection should now appear in the MicroEmulator interface. Select it, and click start. Opera Mini should load. Read the EULA, then click accept if you agree with the software terms.
9. With Opera Mini now loaded, enter a web site address and start surfing.
10. A few notes. First, Opera Mini is designed primarily as a point-and-click interface, so keyboard shortcuts are largely useless. Second, you can improve image quality at the expense of increased bandwidth by clicking menu, tools, settings, then configuring your desired image compression level. You can also configure the desired text font size from the settings interface, along with various other configuration options.

Assuming everything is working, you should have something resembling the following graphic (click to enlarge):