Opera Mini 4.2 on VZW BB Tour OS 5.0 - answers!

I've seen a lot of threads here asking the same question, and so I'm going to post the answer here in hopes that the people who created all those threads can find it. Consolidation is good for the soul, or so they say.

If you have a VZW BB Tour (I do) and you just upgraded to OS 5.0.0.591 (I did), you may have noticed a problem with Opera Mini 4.2. Suddenly, the BB menu key doesn't work, you can't select things with the trackball any longer ... it's a mess.

Some of you moved on to OM5b2, and if you're happy there then don't look back. As for me, I think OM5 blows chunks. Teeny tiny text in the GUI, slow cursor movement with their so-called "acceleration" feature, speed dial entries deciding to change themselves from the mobile version of the site to the full version without being told to? The list goes on and on and on. But, if you like it, stop reading here.

Opera re-released OM 4.2, but all they changed was the version number. Your BB sees that app as Opera Mini 4, which lets it coexist on your device with OM5, which is now "Opera Mini" to your device. The glitch doesn't have anything to do with that.

Apparently, the third party app world has not caught up with the BB Tour having OS 5.0 yet. OM 4.2 doesn't see your BlackBerry as a BLACKBERRY right at the moment, and so it's defaulted to generic mode. That means you have to use some different keys/buttons, but the program STILL WORKS.

Pay attention to the bar along the bottom of the screen. You're not used to seeing that, because OM 4.2 ran as a native BB app under OS 4.7, and you didn't need the softkeys. But in generic mode, you must use softkeys. The menu bar shows you the functions. Three positions, left, center, and right.

Left is Q, center is SPACE BAR, and right is P.

You still move around with the trackball, but you select with the SPACE BAR now (the Enter key seems to work, for menus and input boxes, but only the Space bar will select a link on a web page, it seems).

Page down is G, page up is H.

Okay, I know. It sucks. Hopefully Opera will get wind of this and release a tweaked version of 4.2 for those of us who prefer the older browser. BUT! It doesn't suck as much as having to use the dreadful OM5b2, now does it? Hmm? You know it doesn't, admit it...

Hope this helps someone else. :)