Opera wants Microsoft to follow standards

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/12/13/opera-colpains-eu-microsoft

The first part of the complaint doesn't seem to be anything new (And I'm not sure how much there is to be gained there. Obviously, an OS has to be bundled with *some* browser, if nothing else then to allow the user to download new browsers

But the second part is interesting. They want Microsoft to follow basic web standards.
That would sure be nice.

anyone who has ever done any form of web development is painfully aware of how true that is.

 

As a web designer and developer for a living, I back this up, it's entirely true.

IE is one of the biggest bastards in the world to make websites compatible with.

At least Opera, Firefox and Safari both render things somewhat 100% identical to each other.

 

Wellll, not 100%...
That'd be nice, but non-IE browsers aren't *that* good.
But at least they try to shoot for the same goal, unlike IE.

 

Opera must watch its back as well if m$ (&Google & Yahoo) turn around and get Nokia (or any other mobile devices sellers) not to bundle their product with just Opera Mini. They might get a run for their current secured de facto income from this niche

yeah! let cheer them on in this

cheers ...

 

I don't think it's just Opera... I think everyone wants MS to follow standards

 

Ultimately, IMO, it seems as if Opera simply wants to have their browser included in Windows.

I’ve built websites for over 10 years and I’ve never had any issues with compatibility. Matter of fact, I’d probably go a little further and say that I appreciate IE’s “forgiveness” when building websites, not as strict as the others for missing tags, etc. Ooppss… did I admit that I make mistakes when building sites? Sure, and if you have built as many sites as I have, I’m sure you have made some mistakes as well…

At the end, I just hope this does not have the undesired effect of

1) not having IE installed. Now the issue becomes how do you get to the net and download ANY browser? Think about it… Guess we can always “pay” extra for the browser.

2) I surely hope the “standards” are actually kept up to date. Standards are great, but many times they can slow down innovation and stifle creativity.

I think people should be careful what they ask for and really think this one through, instead of jumping on the “MS sucks” bandwagon.

Opera is an ok browser… on par with IE 7 and FF in the sense it is nothing to write home about. Honestly, it is too bad they could not have taken a similar approach to FF and attempted to engage MS in the market place.

 

With all due respect, anybody can make a specification and name it "standard".
It solely up to market power of which specification will actually became more de facto widespread. Whining will not change anything.

 

I've been trying to figure this one out, microsoft didnt endorse ff, but they did help them make the browser more vista friendly..... thats some weird competition there

TO be honest, i use firefox for leisure and ie7 for business, paying my credit card or checking balances work too perfect on ie, but i still trust ff for websurfing because the safe extensions that are available.

 

not really... it is the same reason that Intel helps amd, MS helps apple/FF, etc.... competition is actually a very good thing for a large company. Without competition you get called a monopoly and idiots attempting to get elected want to step in a make a name off destroying your company.

I'm surprised anyone even brought this up though... no one is ever smart enough to remember when MS helps open source... people only seem to remember MS is evil.

It is true, MS does help, but MS is looking out for their own interests.

I think FF may also hurt Opera's case anyway... of course MS will point at the success of FF, the build of IE 7, the hiring of that guy/gal who was suppose to be a " web standards guru", building of Expression for web standards, and stating the next IE will be standards compliant all as proof they are already moving in that direction.

Opera may be jumping the gun on this... but we will see. guess I'm getting tired of these lawsuits....

When they started making the web browser they knew MS controlled windows.... maybe they should build a better windows instead of complaining.... I'm really getting tired of hearing about it.... they need to build a better product anyway.

I think Opera is desperate now that they are starting to hear what IE 8 is going to be....

 

You watch your mouth!

I agree with this though... It looks to me like Opera is just trying to take advantage of Microsoft where they're weakest.

 

MS made a little over 5 billion (with capital B) last quarter.... they are not weak. Just like I told one of the guys I graduated from college with last week, who was saying MS lost a case worth a couple of million. I asked him if he made 5 billion in a quarter, what would it feel like to lose 200 million? Really...


Then you consider they finally "woke up" and started pushing out their "Live" stuff, MS is hitting on at least 6 of 8 cylinders. I think most people would be surprised at what MS is doing right now… they are really moving, making some good moves, and making some very nice products.

I’m not even a MS fanboy either… I like Ubuntu and koffice… and testing online Open Office.

But if anyone has been following the progress of IE 7 and IE8, then they know the most logical place for MS to go is in “compliance.” I can’t remember who they hired, but it was some person well-respected in the web development community to ensure MS’s next browser is more compliant. That is the only reason why I’m a little baffled with this lawsuit. I would not be surprised if MS did not settle out of court and agree to help opera in some way.

I like opera (as a company). Opera “going away” would not be in the best interest of anyone… especially MS. We all saw what happens when MS has no competitors in a certain product line; things stay idle for long periods of time. For example, IE 6 was around for 100 years before FF started making a splash…. Now all of a sudden, we have IE 7 and now IE 8 around the corner.

So really, opera wants to be on the shipping OS to compete more directly with IE 8. Bottom line really. If anyone followed the last EU ruling and results, you will know it was all BS… nothing of any real importance (outside of the lawyers getting paid) resulted from that outcome. Will this be different? Who knows. I'm not even sure it matters with most people. All of us geeks take arms over one thing or another, but the general consumer could care less if they were on linux, windows, IE7, FF, Opera, or whatever. All they want is a system that works... installs programs... does not have issues on websites.

Much like when I get in my car, I don't want to see any lights or fuss under the hood. I take my car to the dealer so I don't have to mess with that crap... I check my tires, but that is about it (like some run anti-virus). I don't want to know about cars... most people don't care to know about computers.... but we, the computer elite, forget that.....

 

I didn't mean to say that Microsoft was weak; just that the first part of the complaint seemed strange to me, and sort of disingenuous. Check out http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/1700ap_eu_microsoft_browser_wars.html 5th paragraph. Basically I'm on the same page as Microsoft on this one, I guess, at least so far as the browser integration goes, at least right now.

PS I love Opera. It's by far my favorite browser.

 

Take the Acid 2 Web Standards Compliance test using Safari 3, Firefox 3, Opera 9.5, and IE7. Watch how all of the browsers except IE get it perfect. Even Firefox 2 and Opera 9 render thing that look pretty close to smiley faces. IE7, on the other hand, doesn't even come freaking close. There's nothing even remotely smiley-faced about it, there are random scrollbars in the image; it's crazy how bad it is. And somehow, IE6 was even worse. MS doesn't seem to care at all about standards compliance, and it shows.

 

Yes, but some of us fix them. And I'd say if you can't even match tags, you have no business making websites. No offense, but that is not hard to do.
Moreover, it's not that it's forgiving in the face of errors that I object to. It's the fact that it fails completely in the face of *correct* code.
We have here a browser released in what, 2006 (Is it 2007?), with zero XHTML support. XHTML is only dating back to 1999!
It still doesn't support half of CSS2!
The problem is not that IE covers for your errors, it's that it *forces* you to make dozens and dozens of errors because otherwise IE can't understand your code.

I'd have thought a self-proclaimed web developer actually *knew* this, but the standards *are* kept up to date, they're still evolving (HTML5 looks pretty neat btw)
And how can it slow innovation or stifle creativity?
The fundamental problem is that without standards, browsers can't render your webpages. You don't know which browser people use to view your site, so they *have* to agree on how it should be rendered. Would it give you more creativity to take that away? Force you to lock yourself in to one browser only? Or write a completely separate site for each possible browser?
No, web standards can *never* slow down innovation or creativity.
Breaking the standards (like IE does) can and has done slowed down innovation for the past 7 years. There are so many things other browsers allow, but which can't be used widely because IE doesn't support it.

I don't know if you actually read their complaint.
As they say, Microsoft's de-facto "standards" make it needlessly difficult and costly to do web development. That goes for browser development too. You basically have to write 2 or 3 separate browsers in order to support both MS's broken-HTML and real-world HTML/XHTML.

And I have to take issue with saying IE7 is on par with other browsers. It really really really isn't, and I'd have expected even the dimmest web developer on the planet to be aware of this. How can a browser that still doesn't understand 7-8 year old standards be "on par" with modern ones?

Sure, they've got some good developers who want standards compliance, and then they constrain them with rules that "we can't break the web", because they internally believe that 50% of existing websites *only* render correctly in IE6. Which may have been true 6 years ago, but today? Well, browse your favorite sites in Firefox and see how many problems you encounter. Not many, I'll bet.
Microsoft hasn't realized that 99.9% of all websites *can* be rendered in standards compliant browsers, but they use this as an excuse for constraining their standards compliance. (We'd like to fix this in IE, but we can't because it'd break existing sites - rubbish) That's why the complaint (it's not a lawsuit) is still painfully relevant.