Planet Mobile Web

We are pleased to announce that a brand new mobile Web course is open for registration: “Mobile Web 2: Applications” will provide you with all the knowledge you need to write mobile Web applications that can ship both online and in application stores, using today’s advanced technologies.

During this course, participants will:

• Understand the specifics of developing Web applications for the mobile environment.
• Learn the latest HTML5 and Javascript APIs that are actually usable in real-world environments.
• Discover the options at your disposal to package applications so that they work offline or can be shipped to application stores.
• Be informed about what technologies are coming next so that you will be ready to use them when they become broadly available.

Developped by the W3C/MobiWebApp team, and taught by Robin Berjon, W3C Device APIs working group chair and newly elected TAG member, this new course will last 8 weeks, with a start date of 12 March 2012. Read the course description and register quickly before 1 March to benefit from the early bird rate(165€).

It’s that time of the year again when the mobile web ecosystem changes. Google Chrome Beta for Android was released and it appears as the future replacement of Android Browser. I’ve made a deep analysis on the browser HTML5 compatibility and the comparison with Safari on iOS and Android Browser and I’ll show in this post my results.

Quick look

If you have an Android 4.0 device, go to the Market and download it so you can try it yourself. Chrome for Android is a big step for the whole mobile web community and I’m happy for it. It’s still the first beta so there are some things that need some work but in a quick look, it seems stable, fast, nice, and with the latest HTML5 support.

It’s the beginning of the future of some APIs in the mobile world, including Request Animation Frame, FullScreen API, Page Visibility API and IndexedDB. Unfortunately, Chrome is not available yet for Android 2.x and 3.x and WebGL is still out of this version.

I’ve played a couple of hours with the browser and here is my review. I’ll update this post if I find some new information to add or correct. Follow me if you want to get updates.

Why Chrome?

Do we really need a new browser for Android? The answer depends on our point of view. Android is right now the platform with more options in terms of web browsing: the by-default Android Browser, Opera Mobile, Opera Mini, Firefox, UCWeb and now Google Chrome. Chrome appears in the Android world not as a new browser but as a long-term replacement for Android Browser.

The problem was Android Browser. It was always behind Safari on iOS for iPhone and iPad and it was far away behind its desktop cousin Google Chrome; at least, in terms of HTML5 compatibility. Android Browser had problems in the past and the worst problem from my point of view: it doesn’t auto-update. And we know that Android users –because of vendors and carriers- usually upgrade only one version of the operating systems, so millions of users are prisoners of the same Android Browser version until they upgrade their device.

Today, the future of Android browser has begun. Google has released the first beta version of Google Chrome for Android. Starting from the ground from the Chromium Project instead of the original WebKit-based Android browser, Google did a good job aligning the browsing experience and HTML5 compatibility with the present and future standards.

Chrome Beta is a 17Mb free download available on selected countries via Android Market only for Android 4.0 smartphones and tablets. And that is the first bad news: Gingerbread (2.3) and Honeycomb (3.x) users don’t have a Chrome version now and there is no official communication about a version for those platforms in the future. Currently, only 1% of Android users are under 4.0.

Features

The browser claims to have a faster scrolling experience and I’m not sure yet if SPDY protocol is supported, but I hope so.

One of the most important features for me: it’s an Android app downloaded from the Market. Why this is so important? Because it can be updated in the same way. We will get auto-update feature on Chrome, and that’s the best news we as web developers can receive.

Chrome for Android has a nice UI optimized for tabbed browsing using a new tab browsing experience compared to Android Browser. You can flip/swipe between tabs, as in webOS (if you are creating a touch game, you should avoid use the edges).

It supports Incognito mode (private mode) and a feature called Bandwidth management that preload pages when you are using Wi-Fi. There is no information on how this feature works (rel=preload maybe?) but I believe the search bar is using it. When you search something the first results are being preloaded by default if you are on Wi-Fi.

The user interface includes a fixed URL bar, a tab button and a menu button. The URL bar is always visible and there is no way to hide it, as in Safari for iOS or even Android Browser. The URL bar doesn’t show the page’s title or the page’s icon, just the URL.

I really like the new feature called Link Preview that will make a quick zoom on areas with lots of links in a site without a mobile viewport (see image below). This feature helps the user selecting the right link.

Of course, if you sign in with your Google Account, you will get full synchronization between Chrome for Desktop and Chrome for Android, search suggestions, opened tabs, history and bookmarks.

Detection

To avoid misdetection of Chrome for Android as a desktop, the user agent looks like:

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.0.2; en-us; Galaxy Nexus Build/ICL53F) AppleWebKit/535.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) CrMo/16.0.912.75 Mobile Safari/535.7

As you can see, there is no Chrome string there; just CrMo (Chrome Mobile?) and other Android-typical strings.

I’ve made a quick test on some websites, and they are all detecting Chrome as Android Browser.

Remote debugging

For developers, remote debugging and profiling is one of the greatest additions. I’ve received lot of feedback a month ago when I’ve created iWebInspector, a remote debugger helper for iOS Simulator. Now you have the same tool for Android devices.

It allows us to use a full Remote Inspector –the same as in Chrome for Desktop- remotely using USB debugging. Unfortunately, this feature doesn’t work via the network as in BlackBerry Browser for PlayBook and Smartphones 7.0, Weinre or iWebInspector.

You need to use USB debugging mode, meaning that you as a web developer needs the Android SDK tools, the debugging drivers of your phone for Windows users and a couple of command-line tools to deal with. Maybe, it’s time for a iWebInspector for Chrome to help designers with this process :). I believe this process should be easier for web developer but it’s not a big deal when you understand how to do it.

For more information and instructions on how to set this up, visit http://code.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/debugging.html

Hybrids and PhoneGap

This is a big question. Every developer that had experience with hybrid development in Android, including PhoneGap apps knows that sometimes the embedded WebView on Android gives us lots of problems compared with UIWebView on iOS.

At least today in this first beta, there is no way to use Chrome engine inside your hybrid Android app. However, in the FAQ this feature is mentioned so I believe it’s being under consideration so go now and help me ask for this feature. In the future, PhoneGap or other frameworks can detect if Chrome is available and use ChromeView instead of the original WebView. Let’s dream with that :)

About UI frameworks, just a quick test says that jQuery Mobile and Sencha Touch seems to work properly on Chrome for Android.

HTML5 compatibility

The Chrome team did a good job porting Chromium to Android with the latest HTML5 APIs that we already have in Chrome for Desktop and Chrome OS. First, we have almost every API available in Android Browser 4.0. The only missing API is Network Information API that is on Android Browser since 2.2 and it’s not here on Chrome.

We have the typical HTML5 basic support, such as new elements, video –H.264 and WebM support- & audio tags, Geolocation, hardware accelerated Canvas (2D Drawing), Web Storage, SQL Storage (ok, we can discuss if it’s an HTML5 API), Offline AppCache, and all the CSS3 stuff, such as selectors, effects, media queries, transforms, transitions and animations.

The browser also adds support for mobile-specific stuff such as Touch events, viewport definition, mobile icon support (apple-touch-icon) for bookmarks and orientation change events to the Chrome for Desktop compatibility APIs.

Chrome for Android also supports:

• History API
• SVG and inline SVG
• XMLHttpRequest 2.0
• Device Orientation & Motion API (accelerometer and gyroscope)
• Media Capture API
• Web Workers (not shared)
• Web Timing API (available also on iOS5 and IE9 on Windows Phone 7.5)
• Chrome Performance Timing API (http://ecmanaut.blogspot.com/2010/06/google-bom-feature-ms-since-pageload.html)
• File API (File, FileList, FileReader, Blob types)
• Console API
• Content Editing API (contenteditable attribute and selection API)
• Flex CSS Model (the legacy version, not the latest standard)
• Form validation and new input types including range and date selections (excepting week selector).
• Fixed positioning and scrolling areas (overflow: scroll).

And for new APIs in the mobile world, we can mention compatibility with:

• Page Visibility API
• IndexedDB –the standard replacement for the SQL Storage API- (Firefox already supported this on mobile)
• Request Animation Frame for smoother animations using HTML5
• FullScreen API, but it’s not working properly yet (see below)

Missing features

Looking at the APIs available on other mobile browsers or in Chrome for Desktop that are not there yet in this first beta version for Android:

• WebGL, aka 3D drawing API. The objects seems to be there as in iOS 4 and 5 but there is no way to use it.
• Network Information API
• Full Camera API (for using the camera source in a <video> tag and create augmented reality experiences)
• Notification API, available in Chrome for Desktop and Firefox for Android
• Gesture Events (they are only on Safari for iOS)
• Flash Player support. However, this is a good decision, as Adobe will not support Flash Player in mobile in the future.
• No home screen / applications menu icon support yet.
• Some text-based input types don’t change virtual keyboard, such as email and url while number-based input types do.
• There is still no support for datalist, menu and command. However, almost no browser is supporting these HTML5 elements.
• No Input Speech extension for input types, available on Chrome for Desktop with the x-input-speech.
• No extensions support yet. However, the APIs for extensions are there but disabled, such as window.chrome.app.experimental APIs.
• SearchBox API is there but is not working. This API allow us to communicate with the URL bar (known as Omnibox in the Chrome world) while the user is typing or searching.
• No compass support
• No Web Audio support available on Chrome for Desktop
• Custom Protocol Handler API is there but it’s disabled.

Bugs

This is the first beta version and there are still some bugs to be solved . If you find a bug, you can fill a request.

• The FullScreen API is there and is working buggy. You can enable full-screen, sending in this mode an element and its content. However, it’s not really full-screen (the URL bar is still there) and there is no way to close this mode (by JavaScript or back button).
• SearchBox, Custom Protocol Handler and Add Search Providers API are there but they don’t work

Emulating Chrome for Android

Unfortunately, there is no official way to emulate Chrome for Android. You can say that Chrome for Desktop should be enough but the reality is that it’s not. Mobile has specific design properties that need other kind of testing. While the code is based on Chromium, as far as I know, it’s not exactly 100% the same source code as Google for Desktop, so we still need testing on it.

We have Android Emulator; however there is no official way to install Chrome on it. Android Emulator doesn’t support Market so you can’t install the Chrome package. If you are curious like me then you will find a way to get the Chrome package and install it on the emulator. Yes, I did it (don’t ask me how). However, Chrome is not working fully (it has something to do with some libraries). I could get the Chrome UI but not the ChromeView (the rendering area), so nothing is shown on the screen. I hope the Chrome team can figure out some way to emulate it soon. I know they are reading this post (right? ;) ), so make us happy team.

Conclusion

It’s a great time for the mobile web. This release even put in hold my vacations in the great Tokyo for a couple of hours so I could make this review.

A new first-class browser appears in the mobile web space, joining the list to Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. We are going to deal in the next –maybe two- years with Chrome and Android Browser at the same time but for the future, it was a good decision from Google.

I’ll continue my testing over a real device with Android 4.0 and post my results here. I’ll also update Mobile HTML5 in the next few days.

Did you find anything else on Chrome for Android? Do you have any other ideas? Use the comments area below.

At this year’s 21th International World Wide Web Conference – WWW2012, W3C organizes a W3C tutorial track over two days, on Monday 16 and Tuesday 17 April 2012.

Half-day tutorials from leading experts will be available to researchers and developers seeking to pick up new skills on the latest developments on W3C Web standards.

One of these W3C tutorials will be about “Developing Mobile Web Applications” and will be taught by Dominique Hazaël-Massieux (W3C Mobile Web Activity Lead) and Frances de Waal (W3DevCampus trainer for the Mobile Web and Application Best Practices online training course). The tutorial informations are summarized below:

• W3C tutorial on “Developing Mobile Web Applications”
• by Frances de Wall and Dominique Hazaël-Massieux
• on Tuesday April 17th – morning
• at the Lyon Convention Centre, Lyon, France
• Abstract: Participants to the tutorial will learn how to build applications for mobile devices using Web technologies. We will first focus on what makes it different to use the Web on mobile devices compared to computers: the specific constraints of these devices, as well as their increasing specific advantages. The tutorial will then look at how to exploit all the specificities of the mobile user experience, via JavaScript APIs, touch interactions, camera integration, etc.
• Please register to this tutorial before 13 February to get an early bird rate!

Part of the goals of our MobiWebApp project is to help more European SMEs get involved in the standardization work around Web applications on mobile devices.

As a result, we’ve been pushing for the adoption of a new W3C Membership level targeted at small enterprises, which W3C just announced is now available to any company with less than 10 employees, less than 2.25M Euros of gross revenues and has never been a W3C Member before.

The fee for most Europe-based companies is at 1950€ (as can be verified in the W3C fees calculator), making it a great opportunity for small business that would like to help shape the future standards of the Web. Don’t miss it!

Oscar Clark

Having worked invideo games and mobile, I could not miss the first London MobileMonday of 2012. “Mobile Games” was the hot topic of the night,discussed by a great panel of professionals and chaired by OscarClark of Papaya Mobile. Notthat one would want to miss any of these industry gatherings, but,for me, it was also the first time on the volunteer side. In fact,they even gave me the chance to blog about the event, so here I am.

The Copy Cats

The third, less positivetrend of 2011 was the increase of the number of “copycat” gameson the market. Apparently, some big and medium companies (in order toavoid the risks of innovation, and the costs of experimenting withnew channels, noted Georgina), prefer to reproduce famous existinggames, replicating the gameplay. One of the possible solutions tothis problem is to use the cloud to make social-mobile games for alarge market, which is something that big publishers are alreadybetting on. “Social mobile is going to explode”, said Gareth,“thanks to the cloud”.

1. 

   Research about your target market and decide the business model before stating to design your game: if you go web, you can have a “try before you buy” approach and make the first level teasing like a movie trailer or, if you are opting for the freemium approach, the gameplay must be compelling enough to make your audience play often and pay for in-app. That’s what Natural Motion did before releasing “My Horse”, and that’s a point on which all the panelists agree, the marketing must be integrated with the game design.
   
   
2. Choose your coding language and engines with care: Objective C can limit your chance to port the game to other platforms in the future, warned Georgina, who suggested C++ for the core features of any game so they can be transferred, but only if you’re using the same core mechanics. The rest of the code could then be more quickly ported from one program to others. When someone from the audience asked if the panel would suggest developing games separately for each platform, the answer was unanimous: you can develop you own engines, but don’t underestimate the value of cross-platform engines such as Unity, Marmalade and so on.
   
   
3. Don’t limit your business to only one market; try to plan your production so to include porting the game to other platforms and stores. Having one product on one app store is not going to be enough for funders to notice you, as Ian hinted, and, as in Struan’s experience, being an established developer on one app store also helps to get more users thanks to “internal” cross-promotion. As Gareth said “there’s an opportunity in throwing at different channels out of the app stores” such as operator’s markets, if you have good content, or, better, a network of content. But there’s a catch: be specific about the channel you address: don’t go for the common lower denominator, try to exploit all the hardware features.
   
   
4. Make a clever use of analytics: pass the knowledge from the commercial to the production team and back, change your product price and game design according to the feedback from your customers. Never before the game industry has had such an amount of data, comments and feedback from the users, let all the people in your company understand the information you get.
   
   
5. Have a roadmap for main changes, but be able to respond to the market. In the console world sales data were locked due to licensing and access issues, and both prices, design and were basically fixed. Now, instead, you can change your game’s design depending on the rise or fall in sales, so have an expert to look at your data and let your product evolve with them.
   
   
6. Beware! When porting your product to the iPad, remember that it is used in a much different way and for longer game sessions compared with mobiles. Ian was the first to point that out: people use their mobiles to play on the go, shorter and simpler games, but if they can choose, they opt for the iPad as console and buy optimised games. Porting from iPhone to the iOS tablet is one of the simplest ways to differentiate, he said, and Georgina added that her company produces games with high quality graphic exactly for that reason. That applies to all the platforms.
   
   
7. Don’t save on Q&A, or better, set a budget for proper testing. Ian pointed clearly out that many mobile developers unfortunately have no idea how much important that is for every release. I would add: test features that will make your product stand out from the crowd - original soundtrack, great graphic, vibration effects, multiplayer etc. Don’t be scared to be original and innovative, as long as your products are technically impeccable and fun.
   
   
8. Apply for grants and funding. Abertay University, TIGA and ICT KTN periodically offer the chance to get some money for your ideas and support the applicants during the process with mentoring sessions. Someone from the audience even said he had won one of the challenges and got a fair amount for a mobile game! You’ve just missed the deadline for the contest to produce a game integrated with the SDK and marketed through the networks of Antix Labs and Turbulenz, so try not to miss the next one.

Found on the Mobile Web is a regular WAP Review feature listing newly added and updated sites on the YesWAP.com mobile portal and WapReview mobile site directory. With these latest additions the directory and portal now list 2361 mobile sites.

Tech/Internet/Web Design & Development

Move the Web Forward movethewebforward.org A "Responsive Web Design" promoting web developer community involvement in open standards. Links to web design and development resources and places where you can contribute to creating and promoting open standards.
Content:  Usability:

Search/Local

Nokia Places m.nokia.me/p?nord Local search engine powered by Nokia Maps. Results include address, a small map and click to call phone numbers
Content:  Usability:

Tech/Tech News Sites and Blogs

AfriGadget afrigadget.com Bamboo laptop cases, generating biogas from cow manure; boats, airplanes and soccer balls made from recycled materials. These are just a few of the hundreds of the amazing creations found in Afrigadget, a blog celebrating the ingenuity of African inventors and tinkers.
Content:  Usability:

Tech/Mobile/MobileTech

jQuery Mobile Gallery www.jqmgallery.com A gallery and directory of mobile sites and apps built with JQuery Mobile.
Content:  Usability:

Tech/Mobile/OS - Brand Specific/WebOS/Palm OS

webOS | Getting started www.hpwebos.com/us/products/software/webos/gettingstarted... It's probably a little late to post this, but I just discovered these mobile friendly Getting Started video tutorials and tips for new webOS users from HP. The well made videos do a great job of demonstrating the largely unrealized potential of WebOS.
Content:  Usability:

Business/News

MarketingProfs m.marketingprofs.com Tips, advice, and news for marketing professionals from a team of PROFessors and PROFessionals. Some content is behind a paywall but the majority of articles are free.

There's currently a bug in the mobile template that causes every other headline on the front page to link to the desktop version of the article rather than the mobile one to the consternation of users with a slow connection or metered data plans.
Content:  Usability:

Search/Maps and Directions

Nokia Maps m.maps.nokia.com Nokia Maps beta mobile webapp for Android and iOS is location aware, and supports paning and zooming.
Content:  Usability:

Entertainment and Leisure/Life Style/Women's Interest

Real Beauty m.realbeauty.com Mobile edition of Hearst Publishing's online magazine, Real Beauty. Features hair, makeup, skincare, and fitness tips. The site's mobile template design is by Crisp Wireless
Content:  Usability:

Entertainment and Leisure/Games

Braineez braineez.mobie.in Braineez lets you win virtual trophies, shields, cups, medals, badges etc. by participating in competitions like quizzes or an essay writing contest.
Content:  Usability:

Shopping/Stores

AGRICH agrich.mobi An illustrated online mobile seed catalog . Shop for seeds and plants. AGRICH sells vegetable, herb and flower seeds and plants, trees and shrubs in retail and wholesale quantities. Pay with PayPal or set up a wholesale account. US based company ships seeds worldwide.
Content:  Usability:

Occasionally, you come across a survey which has a lot of information and insights.

This is one. Its not from me but I found it useful to understand the industry issues around connected TV one of my top trends for 2012 http://www.opengardensblog.futuretext.com/archives/2012/01/technology-predictionstrends-2012.html
as below

Thank you for your email. Here is the survey detail that you can forward on:
Welcome to Informa Telecoms & Media's latest Future of TV Survey.

We would love to hear your views on the issues shaping the industry in the next five years.

Your participation will be anonymous and should take no longer than 10 minutes.

To thank you for your participation, we will send you the headline results of this survey,

plus the chance to win an Amazon voucher worth US$150. Please leave us your contact details

at the end of this survey to be entered into the draw.

To complete the The Future of TV 1Q12 survey, click below: 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Futureoftv2012

Last week we hosted an event loftily entitled "The Future of the Mobile Web" at the Dublin Convention Centre.

read more

HP continues to divulge bits and pieces of a road map for the ill-starred and nearly-orphaned webOS. The company has followed up its December plan to release webOS mobile platform and development tools with a proposed timeline, with a full release set before year’s end.  Some people see a life for the associated Enyo JavaScript framework aside from any success or failure webOS ultimately achieves.

My colleagues in Chicago just launched a great responsively-designed greygoose.com, and Jason Grigsby and I were wondering how they brought up the user-friendlier telephone keypad in iOS instead of the ok-but-not-great number keypad. The team dynamically set the input type to tel with Javascript, but we were wondering if there would be a better way.

After some Twitter-talk with Grigsby and Chris Coyier, I set up a demo page to see if setting pattern="[0-9]* would make a difference. Thankfully it did.

So here’s the recommended format for numeric input types:

<input type="number" pattern="[0-9]*" />

Adding pattern="[0-9]*" triggers iOS to bring up the obese-finger-friendly keypad instead of the just-alright numeric keypad riddled with punctuation. Usability wins and the crowd goes wild.

By default iOS only triggers the number-only keypad on tel inputs, but this way the input type and the keypad don’t need to be bound. Semantics win and the crowd rises to their feet in jubilation.

Also worth noting the Kindle Fire pulls up a friendlier keypad regardless of whether pattern="[0-9]* is set:

Number & Tel inputs on Amazon Kindle

Big thanks to Björn Rixman, Chris and Jason for working through this!

Related Resources:

• Dive into HTML5 Forms
• The Current State of HTML5 Forms
• Web Form Design

When the Java ME version of the Opera Mini Browser is running on many touch screen phones, an unnecessary virtual keypad appears at the bottom of the screen (image above left). The keypad wastes space, looks ugly and isn't needed with touch aware apps like Opera Mini. The keypad is not part of Opera Mini. It's something your phone adds because it doesn't recognize that Opera Mini is optimized for touch

Here are several ways to get rid of the virtual keypad so your Opera Mini looks like the right hand image above.

I. By using the phone's menu

Some phones have a menu option for getting rid of the keypad. I've only seen it on Samsungs but it may be an option on other brands as well.

• Open the folder or menu where you launch Opera Mini. On my Samsung Wave it's called "Games and more".
• Look for and tap a button named  "Options", "Menu" or something similar or has an icon that looks like a menu, stack of papers or three dots. On the Wave it's  the middle button with the three dots in the left hand screenshot below.
• In the Options menu (image below, center) look for and tap a button labeled "Use virtual keypad"
• On the next screen tap the check mark next to Opera Mini (image below, right) to remove it and then tap the Save button. Now launch Opera Mini and the virtual keypad should be gone

If your phone doesn't have a menu option to remove the keypad continue reading to see if Opera Mini has a fix for your phone.

II. By using an official version of Mini customized for your phone to remove the virtual keypad.

If Opera recognizes and officially supports your phone it should deliver a modified version of Opera Mini that contains code telling your phone to remove the keypad.  Opera can only recognize your phone if you download Mini from m.opera.com using the phone's built in browser.  If you download Opera Mini from an unofficial source or downloaded it with your PC and copied to the phone using Bluetooth or a cable you have a generic version that's not optimised for your phone.

If you download Mini from m.opera.com with your phone's built-in browser and you still get the virtual keypad, let Opera know so they can fix it in a future release. File a bug report at mini.bugs.opera.com. Also visit people.opera.com/forsberg/detect/ with your phone's built-in browser and fill in the form listing the phone make and model.

If you still have the virtual keypad after downloading from m.opera.com with your phone browser and you don't want to wait for Opera to get around to fixing it, which can take months, it's fairly easy to fix it yourself. Read on for instructions.

III. By modifying the Opera Mini jad file to remove the virtual keypad

You will need a PC, some patience and the ability to follow directions in order to modify Opera Mini. If you lack any of those or want someone else to do the work, skip to the end of this post for a link to an already modified version of Opera Mini.

Obtain an official copy of the Opera Mini jad file. You can download the unsigned versions of Opera Mini directlty to your PC from www.opera.com/mobile/download/versions/

The trouble with unsigned apps is that on most phones you will get annoying pop-up messages asking you to allow Opera Mini to connect. On some phones you only get one pop-up when you first start Opera Mini but on others you get pop-ups every time you click a link which makes Opera Mini almost unusable. A few phones won't allow unsigned apps to connect at all.

There are many ways to download signed versions of Opera Mini to your PC but the easiest is to use the Opera Desktop browser which is available for Windows, Mac OSx and Linux.  Download and install it from www.opera.com/browser/ Then:

• Launch the Opera PC browser
• Go to m.opera.com using the Opera PC browser
• Click "Other Download Options"
• Click "Select Code-Signing Certificate" under "Options for Opera Mini 6.5:" (or under "Options for Opera Mini 4.4:" if you prefer that version)
• Click "All Certificates" (works on most phones. If it doesn't on yours try repeating this process with one of the other signed options)
• Click "Download Opera Mini 6.5" and save the file (named mini.jad) somewhere you can find it later
• Open the downloaded mini.jad with a text editor or Windows Wordpad
• Scroll to the bottom of the file and paste in the following lines:

MIDlet-Touch-Support: True
UseNativeTextButtons: hide
ReverseSoftkeys: hide
UseNativeCommands: hide

Upload the file to Dropbox.com or another file sharing service that is easy to use in your phone browser. Click here to get a free 2GB Dropbox account (by using this referral link I get an extra 250 MB of storage in my Dropbox which I thank you for).

Visit Dropbox with your phone browser and click the modified mini.jad link to download it on your phone.

If that didn't work or you don't have a PC or are just in a hurry, here's a link to my modified version of the signed (All Certificates) version of the Opera Mini 6.5 ,jad file:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4637247/mini.jad

Click the above link in your phone browser to install Opera Mini 6.5 with the virtual keypad disabled.

Last week I did a post explaining how to modify Opera Mini's jad file to hide the unneeded touch keypad that displays at the bottom of the screen on some touchscreen phones. The post included a link to the modified Opera Mini. I received a request asking for a copy of the latest signed Java version of UC Browser modified to hide the keypad.

The process for modifying the UC Browser or any other Java app is exactly the same as what was described in the original post:

1.Download the app's jad file to a PC. You can get UC Browser jad files (signed or unsigned ) at www.ucweb.com/English/UCbrowser/platform.html?platform=java

2. Open the downloaded mini.jad with a text editor or Windows Wordpad

3. Scroll to the bottom of the file and paste in the following lines:

MIDlet-Touch-Support: True
UseNativeTextButtons: hide
ReverseSoftkeys: hide
UseNativeCommands: hide

4. Upload the file to Dropbox.com or another file sharing service that is easy to use in your phone browser. Click here to get a free 2GB Dropbox account (by using this referral link I get an extra 250 MB of storage in my Dropbox which I thank you for).

5. Visit Dropbox with your phone browser and click the modified mini.jad link to download it to your phone.

I posted the modified UC Browser jad at:
dl.dropbox.com/u/4637247/UCBrowser_V8.0.3.107_Java_pf70(Build11112416).jad
Short link: is.gd/uc8touch. To install it, go to is.gd/uc8touch with your phone browser.