Great article, but sometimes I find it hard to convince my friends on the value of it, as they often felt that the disabled users (the blind, dialup users.etc) are such a minority that it’s impractical to consider them and would rather spend more time building more site effects/features to further please the majority.

How have you guys convinced people, especially those running small local businesses?

I hope the Flash ‘standard’ goes away. I think the only thing really holding things back is IE6 which, thanks to the flop of Vista, many people still use because they are using the WinXP base install.

Joey, if you’d care to demonstrate how you think I’m lying, then that contributes to the discussion. Otherwise, that’s just a childish insult.

“So what you’re really saying is that in addition to supporting the proposed (but not yet ratified as a standard) HTML5 implementation, you company is creating Opera specific extensions, with the expectation that with the EU’s help, they will become defacto standards.”

WTF is that? Opera, just like all other companies, is allowing its people to participate in standards bodies.

Standards in which people from other companies also collaborate and discuss and things are finalized by consensus and agreement. Opera is doing no different than Mozilla, Google, IBM, Apple and MS and a host of other companies and organizations which are part of the W3C.

It seems you don’t know anything about standards and equally nothing about browsers. And you know what? I’m actually glad the EU took action against MS. Before that MS didnt really give a shit about standards, but since then, we’ve seen MS take standards seriously with their IE9 developer preview.

No, that’s what you’re incorrectly saying. What I’m saying that those people are working with various industry groups and standards committees – for example, HTML5, ECMAscript, CSS, JIL and BONDI, the Mobile Best Practices Working Group, the British Standards Institution etc.

“the country where Opera is based is NOT part of the European Union”. That’s true, but it is part of the European Economic Area which “allows Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway to participate in Europe’s single market without having to join the Union. In exchange, they are obliged to adopt certain EU internal market legislation.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Area

“Lastly, Apple and Linux distros also bundle one browser of their choice, so why isn’t there a complaint against them as well?”

Because they don’t seem to be acting in a manner that suggests unfair practices.

“Or was Microsoft just too attractive and easy a target since the EC (in the form of Neelie Kroes) has already demonstrated that Microsoft is on their list of American companies to litigate against?”

I’m sorry, I can’t answer on behalf of the EC.

-> “…about 25 devote most of their time working on actually making the standards…”

So what you’re really saying is that in addition to supporting the proposed (but not yet ratified as a standard) HTML5 implementation, you company is creating Opera specific extensions, with the expectation that with the EU’s help, they will become defacto standards.

Isn’t that what Microsoft got (and still gets) skewered for with IE 6? Proprietary extensions that didn’t work in other browers, or worked in a less than optimal manner?

As for Opera suing Microsoft, I know that Opera didn’t, however the country where Opera is based is NOT part of the European Union, so how come Opera gets to complain to the European Commission (which is the basically the DOJ of the EU)?

Lastly, Apple and Linux distros also bundle one browser of their choice, so why isn’t there a complaint against them as well?

Millions of Apple and Linux desktops are also not chump change, so why aren’t you an equal opportunity whiner going after all operating systems for equal footing?

Or was Microsoft just too attractive and easy a target since the EC (in the form of Neelie Kroes) has already demonstrated that Microsoft is on their list of American companies to litigate against?