Opera grasps at straws with latest IE criticism

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Missing the point of Opera's criticism

Having been an Opera user for a long time, I know the burden of Opera always being purely standards compliant. I totally believe that if Opera added compatibility into Opera for IE's horrible rendering issues years ago, Opera would be compatible with most if not all websites out there. With that compatibility in place, more people would stay with Opera because it would work with their bank's website or some favorite obscure website built with MS Front page. So, I know that Opera is serious about standards compliance, especially since it means that they will lose possible users because of it. Opera has a team dedicated to trying to fix badly written websites. Instead of building in an IE specific quirk in the kernel to allow IE-only sites to work, Opera will contact the website???s company and try to speak directly to their developers. They will tell them exactly what is wrong and how to fix it. On the other hand, again without modifying the kernel, they auto-download a userJS script that is site specific and will fix specific websites that are chronic about not making their site standards compliant. Heck, certain key developers at Opera are major contributors to the current web standards.

So, based on the above, I honestly don't believe there are any ulterior motives here other than wanting MS to be purely standards compliant for the betterment of the industry. Opera and Firefox *would* benefit from MS doing this. Not as much from people bailing to other browsers, but for web developers being forced to fix their websites. Imagine if all browsers were standards compliant and a developer only had to write their code once and all browsers would work perfectly. That???s the dream.

However, having said that, and understanding Opera's comments, currently working for a fortune 500 company, I know that within the intranet, there exists million dollar web-based applications that were written 5+ years ago and were designed in an IE 5,6 / Netscape 4.x era. Updating said application may either not be possible, or would be extremely expensive. There are some companies still running on IE6 for this very reason. So, I???m sure MS had a decision which was made for them. Large companies said they want the features of IE8 but they don???t want it to break their in-house web apps. MS either caved or was going to go that route from the beginning. Maybe IE9 will have the compatibility mode removed?

So, I agree that helping MS??? customers make the transition to IE8 easier is a good thing, understand that Opera is taking the high ground and wanting the industry as a whole to be purely standards based for the good of the industry.

Posted by: nstuff   Posted on: 08/30/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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