It’s annoying to find it, but many web sites try to figure out which browser a user is using, and will remove features if it’s not one of their “blessed” ones. To fight this, some browsers let you masquerade under a different browser identity, and in those cases, the dirty tricksters stand out like a sore thumb.

I wish the author would have indicated the version numbers of the browsers in this roundup. I’m sure many of them have been updated more recently than the article!

To check out the nightly builds of 2.0:

http://ftp.mozilla.org//pub/mozilla.org/camino/nightly/latest-2.0-M1.9/Camino.dmg

Great idea! I wonder if this could be built into a toolbar or something similar.

Also, I understand your point, and I’m going to give this matter more thought.

Have fun :-)

Forgive me for this, but I’m going to try again to get you to see the point. This is short-sighted thinking in that while it works in a “here and for this moment” stop-gap fashion, it puts the burden to “fix the problem” on the wrong group: as I wrote before, supporting non-standard code perpetuates the problem. Mixed support of alternatives from the standards leaves developers of both of browsers and webpages without a well-understood and universally accepted objective to code for. This is the hell that web developers have been trying to get away from for quite some time. This is not just an issue for Opera, but for ALL browsers.

When there is more than one implmentation of a “language”, a common standard needs to be developed so that there is common understanding of what the compiler/interpreter/render is to accept and what coders are to code.

If a coder chooses to work outside the standard, using code only supported by one implementation of the langauge, their code not working on the other implementations of the langauge are not the “fault” of those implementating the languages, but the coder in choosing to use features they should know are outside of the standard and so will fail in other environments.

If I choose to use an extension to C that is not implemented in other compilers, it is not the fault of other compilers that my code won’t compile (correctly) on them and it is not for the other compiler developers to “cover for” my decision. Same deal for web development.

While you might get frustrated in not being able to render the page faithfully in your choice of browser, your frustration really should be directed at the coders of the relevant website.

I wouldn’t mind seeing browsers display a score or icon or the like (on the toolbar or whatever) rating the adherence of the page to the standard as this may help users understand where the real issue lies. I’ve seen your line of reasoning elsewhere and it rests on users’ innocently making an unreasonable demand on the browsers: they shouldn’t me made to cover for coder’s poor decisions.

The dictionary shortcut (other browser users would use a copy & paste to Dictionary) is only in WebKit-based browsers (AFAIK) and I think it is better described that way. It is quite neat, if a bit niche.

I only use Opera as a browser and I’m sure that’s true for many people. There may be so little for Opera (the company) or the user to gain in presenting packages without the non-browser code that Opera don’t. After all, if you’re not losing anything in extras how their presence is a negative feature? Every program has features I never use, but as long as they stay out of my way, that’s fine. Their presence may affect download sizes and disk space somewhat, but it shouldn’t affect the run-time situation much.

Perhaps i[f] we all used Opera[,] web sites would be forced to code appropriately and stop sniffing for the user agent.”

Firstly, this is not specific to Opera and is not an issue of browsers as I wrote above: it’s an issue of user’s asking (impractically) that browsers should “cover” for others’ choosing to code using non-standard “features”.

Secondly, determining what the user agent itself is, is a poor solution to branching Javascript code to handle non-standard implementations, it is better to check for object/method support. There are excellent explanations for the reasons behind this on the internet.

I really don’t think it matters if Opera adheres more stringently to web standards than any other browser if the browser doesn’t work in the one site that I (or any random user) want it to. I agree that web sites should be %100 compliant as much as possible, but if my browser doesn’t display the page that I want to view correctly, than I’m going to use a browser that does. Again, I wish I had some good data on this, but I don’t. More just a feeling that I’ve had using the browser. Like thinking: “Where is that, I thought there was an option for X on this site.” Yes, they were probably heavily javascripted sites, and no, they probably weren’t perfect, but if it works in another browser and not in Opera, I’m going to use the other browser.

One thing in the back of my mind when using Opera is all the extra features. Mail, RSS, Widgets(?!), etc… For me, I love having my feeds in Google Reader, my mail in Mail.app, and I’ve got the Dashboard for widgets, so I don’t use those extra features. On the other hand, I’ve never had the impression that Opera was “bloated” with the extra features like Mozilla was, and now SeaMonkey. I simply want to browse with my browser.

The final thought I have about Opera is integration. I love having my usernames and passwords stored in Keychain. CMD-CTRL-D does not define the word that is highlighted. I’m not sure how to send the current page as an email, although you can send a link using the right-click contextual menu. OK, this is all small stuff, but we are discussing preferences in browsers.

What I see Opera has going for it, or what I’ve loved about it in the past: Syncing Opera across platforms is awesome, works like a charm. Using the widgets on Linux or Windows when I’m in that neck of the woods is nice. Opera is fast, and lightweight for the number of features it has. I think the best thing that Opera has going for it is adherence to web standards. Perhaps is we all used Opera web sites would be forced to code appropriately and stop sniffing for the user agent.

Again, YMMV, and to each his own. :)

I wasn’t trying to argue with you ;-) Writing “but the fact is” is a little dogmatic (!) and might be read as assuming I don’t know much about Apple computers or their users. It happens that I’ve owned Apple machines since the ][+ and I did, indirectly, indicate that “look and feel” is valued by many Mac users. (I’ve also used a wide range of other OSes and machine since those days.) It’s just I’ve long, long gotten past liking a product mostly for its “look and feel”. I like nice products as much as anyone, but, particularly for work that matters, a product has to work well first. It’s really just a matter of priorities and I think, to an extent, looking past “gloss” and “hype”. It’s probably what happens when you get older (read: more experienced) and cynical :-)

Regards the “bad buttons”, etc., I’ve rarely experienced this and am sceptical that this is particularly true of Opera compared to other browsers. All browsers have compliance issues as any of the better HTML/CSS/DOM compatibility tables show.

That said, these “faults” are most often a case of the website developer not testing their code for compliance, not a fault in the browser itself. It is particularly true for websites developed initially for Explorer, as Explorer is the odd one out in its methods of accessing the DOM (the internal representation of the structure of a webpage Javascript accesses) and a few other things. The up-shot is that code for Explorer in particular needs validating against other browsers (and vice versa). Some browser developers “accommodate” Explorer’s non-standard approaches to varying degrees. Apparently, some browser developers even resort to detecting specific popular websites and having ad hoc code deal with their quirks. While I understand the logic behind this (it keeps the punters happy), I feel it perpetuates the problem.

That Opera scores very well on the Acid 3 test would have me suspect that the issue will be that the website concerned is not standards-compliant and I would first be looking at the website developer, not the browser ;-) The Acid 3 test is specifically targeted at this type of issue, after all.

Every now and then, after a Firefox update, I’ll give their RSS handler a try; but, Safari remains superior.