Opera has released the latest version of their xHTML browser for mobile phones code named Dimension today. Opera Mini 4.0 beta aims to give a desktop PC like browsing experience to mobile devices.

Here’s a list of new features available in Opera 4.0:

New Desktop-like layout mode
With ‘PC View’ layout (also known as ‘Desktop layout’), a thumbnail of the webpage, similar to what you would see on the PC/desktop browser, is first shown. Using the mouse curser (also new in this beta) or a stylus you could select a region and instantly zoom in.

Power scrolling
Scroll faster using the keypad. Simply hit 2 to go up, 4 to go left, 6 to go right and 8 to go down. Opera Mini will snap the view to the content. Hit 5 to zoom in and out.

Virtual mouse cursor
We included a virtual mouse to make it easy to scroll in any direction. The mouse cursor will look for content and links, and snap the view to them.

Quick access to key functionality with the context menu
Hit 1 to open the context menu, where you can turn on Small Screen Rendering (Fit to width) or reload the page. When focusing the cursor on a link you can see where the link really will take you, or choose to open the linked page with images turned off. When browsing with images off, you can choose to load the images in a page by selecting “Load images”. You can even load the image in its original size and uncompressed, high quality by choosing “Open image”.

Zoom
Using zooming technology (called ‘Intelligent Zoom’) used in ‘PC View’, the text content is neatly reformatted to the size of your phone’s screen

New standards support
Support for HTML tables, CSS handheld stylesheets, and more advanced support for CSS have been added to Opera Mini.

Bi-directional support
Support for bi-directional text for languages such as Hebrew and Arabic

With inputs from Daniel Goldman, Opera evangelist

There’s also an online Opera Mini 4.0 Beta simulator at operamini.com/beta/simulator

An Opera Mini vs. iPhone comparison video can be found here

Visit mini.opera.com/beta to download Opera Mini 4.0 directly to your mobile device