Slashdot Mirror

Miladinoski writes "Opera Software ASA today released the first beta of their tenth version of the Opera browser. In addition to the browser's known features, like mouse gestures, keyboard shortcuts, voice navigation, mail and RSS support, speed dial and so forth, it now includes a Turbo mode which unclogs your connection to get faster browsing, a new interface, a tabbed browsing update and customizable speed dial. Opera 10 continues to follow the web standards by getting 100/100 and pixel-perfect scores on the Acid3 test. The beta is currently available for every modern OS platform."

Miladinoski writes "Opera Software ASA today released the first beta of their tenth version of the Opera browser. In addition to the browser's known features, like mouse gestures, keyboard shortcuts, voice navigation, mail and RSS support, speed dial and so forth, it now includes a Turbo mode which unclogs your connection to get faster browsing, a new interface, a tabbed browsing update and customizable speed dial. Opera 10 continues to follow the web standards by getting 100/100 and pixel-perfect scores on the Acid3 test. The beta is currently available for every modern OS platform."

Zadok_Allan writes "It's a bit late, but since many readers will remember the SGI O2 fondly, this might interest a few. The gist of the story is this: NetBSD now supports hardware accelerated graphics on the O2 both in X and in the kernel. We didn't get any help from SGI, and the documentation available doesn't go beyond a general description and a little theory of operation, which is why it took so long to figure it out. The X driver still has a few rough edges (all the acceleration frameworks pretty much expect a mappable linear framebuffer, if you don't have one — like on most SGI hardware — you'll have to jump through a lot of hoops and make sure there's no falling back to cfb and friends) but it supports XRENDER well enough to run KDE 3.5. Yes, it's usable on a 200MHz R5k O2. Not quite as snappy as any modern hardware but nowhere near as sluggish as you'd expect, and since Xsgi doesn't support any kind of XRENDER support, let alone hardware acceleration, pretty much anything using anti-aliased fonts gets a huge performance boost out of this compared to IRIX."

Kelson writes "The W3C Widget specification is running into a problem: Apple claims a patent on automatic updates and is unwilling to license it royalty-free in the event that it impacts the spec. The W3C is investigating to determine whether the spec includes anything covered by the patent, and decide what to do."

cstrep writes "Eight years ago, Opera introduced Mouse Gestures as a way to speed up your interaction with the browser, and focus on what's important: Content. In 2005, Voice Navigation was introduced, and more recently we've worked with Nintendo to create a browser that takes full advantage of the 'Wiimote' and later, the touchscreen in the DSi. Today Opera introduces Face Gestures, a revolutionary technology designed to make interacting with Opera easier on computers with cameras. Face Gestures lets you perform frequent browsing operations with natural and easy to make face gestures. By using an internal technology dubbed 'Face Observation Opera Language,' we are able to recognize pre-determined facial expressions and match them to commands on the Opera browser."

cstrep writes "Eight years ago, Opera introduced Mouse Gestures as a way to speed up your interaction with the browser, and focus on what's important: Content. In 2005, Voice Navigation was introduced, and more recently we've worked with Nintendo to create a browser that takes full advantage of the 'Wiimote' and later, the touchscreen in the DSi. Today Opera introduces Face Gestures, a revolutionary technology designed to make interacting with Opera easier on computers with cameras. Face Gestures lets you perform frequent browsing operations with natural and easy to make face gestures. By using an internal technology dubbed 'Face Observation Opera Language,' we are able to recognize pre-determined facial expressions and match them to commands on the Opera browser."

Khuffie writes "It seems that the upcoming version of Opera 10, of which the first Alpha has recently been released, has already passed the Acid 3 test with a 100/100. The only other rendering engine to have a complete score is WebKit, which can be seen in Google Chrome's nightly build. Opera 10 Alpha 1 will also finally include auto-updates, inline spell checking, and see some improvements to its built-in mail client, including much-requested rich text composition."

nk497 writes "The Metadata Analysis and Mining Application (MAMA) doesn't index content like a standard search engine, but looks at markup, style, scripting and the technology behind pages. Based on those existing MAMA-ed pages, 80.4 per cent of sites use cascading style sheets (CSS), while the average web page has 47 markup errors and 16,400 characters. Should you want to know which country is using the AJAX component XMLHttpRequest the most, MAMA can tell you that it's Norway, with 10.2 per cent of the data set." Additional coverage is available at Computerworld, and a deeper explanation is up at Opera's Dev site.

nk497 writes "The Metadata Analysis and Mining Application (MAMA) doesn't index content like a standard search engine, but looks at markup, style, scripting and the technology behind pages. Based on those existing MAMA-ed pages, 80.4 per cent of sites use cascading style sheets (CSS), while the average web page has 47 markup errors and 16,400 characters. Should you want to know which country is using the AJAX component XMLHttpRequest the most, MAMA can tell you that it's Norway, with 10.2 per cent of the data set." Additional coverage is available at Computerworld, and a deeper explanation is up at Opera's Dev site.

Kelson writes "Opera Software has released Opera 9.60, the latest version of their web browser & internet suite. It's an evolutionary release, focused on performance optimization, improving the email client and adding more items to the Opera Link synchronization service."

Kelson writes "Opera Software has released Opera 9.60, the latest version of their web browser & internet suite. It's an evolutionary release, focused on performance optimization, improving the email client and adding more items to the Opera Link synchronization service."

dotne writes "Microsoft has submitted Embedded OpenType (EOT) to W3C and a slimy campaign for EOT has been launched. EOT is a DRM layer on top of normal TrueType/Opentype files; EOT ties a font file to a certain web page or site and prevents reuse by other pages/sites. Microsoft's IE has supported EOT for years, but it has largely been ignored due to the clumsiness of having to regenerate font files when a page changes. Now that other browsers are moving to support normal TrueType and OpenType on the web (Safari, Opera, Mozilla, Prince), W3C is faced with a question: should they bless Microsoft's EOT for use on the web? Or, should they encourage normal font files on the web and help break Microsoft's forgotten monopoly?"

unkgoon writes "The Mozilla Developer News blog is reporting Firefox 3 will be released on Tuesday, June 17, 2008, and you're invited to the party! From the website: 'After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we're proud to announce that we're ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. Put on your party hats and get ready to download Firefox 3 — the best web browser, period.'" Update: 06/12 17:44 GMT by T : Dan100 was among several readers to write with news that, rather than just being announced, "Opera 9.5 has been released today after nearly two years of development. New features include increased speed (particularly in the Javascript engine), Opera Link (browser synchronisation), and a 'sharp' new theme." Dan100 also links to a full changelog from 9.27.

unkgoon writes "The Mozilla Developer News blog is reporting Firefox 3 will be released on Tuesday, June 17, 2008, and you're invited to the party! From the website: 'After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we're proud to announce that we're ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. Put on your party hats and get ready to download Firefox 3 — the best web browser, period.'" Update: 06/12 17:44 GMT by T : Dan100 was among several readers to write with news that, rather than just being announced, "Opera 9.5 has been released today after nearly two years of development. New features include increased speed (particularly in the Javascript engine), Opera Link (browser synchronisation), and a 'sharp' new theme." Dan100 also links to a full changelog from 9.27.

unkgoon writes "The Mozilla Developer News blog is reporting Firefox 3 will be released on Tuesday, June 17, 2008, and you're invited to the party! From the website: 'After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we're proud to announce that we're ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. Put on your party hats and get ready to download Firefox 3 — the best web browser, period.'" Update: 06/12 17:44 GMT by T : Dan100 was among several readers to write with news that, rather than just being announced, "Opera 9.5 has been released today after nearly two years of development. New features include increased speed (particularly in the Javascript engine), Opera Link (browser synchronisation), and a 'sharp' new theme." Dan100 also links to a full changelog from 9.27.

enemi writes "Just a few days after Safari released version 3.1, Opera employee David Storey writes on his blog that they've overtaken Apple's browser in the Acid3 test. In the race to be the first to reach the reference rendering, Opera's software leads now with 98%, closely following by Safari with 96% and Firefox 3 beta 4 with 71%. He also noted the implemented features will not make a public appearance in the following weeks, because they are getting close to releasing Opera 9.5. That version has been under public testing since September and the new CSS3 color modes and font rendering features might further delay this. They will probably show the score in a preview build soon and wait for a post 9.5 stable build to release the new features to the public." Update: 03/26 21:21 GMT by Z : Opera is now at 100%, apparently, with Safari close behind at 98%. Update: 03/27 by J : Public build r31356 of WebKit (Safari's rendering engine) is at 100%.

enemi writes "Just a few days after Safari released version 3.1, Opera employee David Storey writes on his blog that they've overtaken Apple's browser in the Acid3 test. In the race to be the first to reach the reference rendering, Opera's software leads now with 98%, closely following by Safari with 96% and Firefox 3 beta 4 with 71%. He also noted the implemented features will not make a public appearance in the following weeks, because they are getting close to releasing Opera 9.5. That version has been under public testing since September and the new CSS3 color modes and font rendering features might further delay this. They will probably show the score in a preview build soon and wait for a post 9.5 stable build to release the new features to the public." Update: 03/26 21:21 GMT by Z : Opera is now at 100%, apparently, with Safari close behind at 98%. Update: 03/27 by J : Public build r31356 of WebKit (Safari's rendering engine) is at 100%.

A number of readers have sent word about Opera Software ASA's antitrust complaint against Microsoft filed with the EU. Here is Opera's press release on the filing. The company wants the EU to "obligate Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop" and to "require Microsoft to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities." The latter request makes this a case to watch. Will the Commissioner take the Acid2 test using IE7?

Albert Sandberg writes "According to a developer blog, it looks like Opera 9.5 (which has been code-named Kestrel) will be the first browser to fully support the CSS selector test (test is here). Finally! Weekly builds should start being available in a few weeks."

Thelomen writes "Opera Browser contains an Easter egg that is not widely known, recently reported over at OperaWatch.com: type /. in the address bar and you are taken directly to slashdot.org. Other recent news from Opera is their new Speed Dial feature, present in the most recent build from Desktop Team. At first glance Speed Dial just looks like 9 bookmarks you can open with CTRL+1 to CTRL+9. However, the pages on the Speed Dial are shown in thumbnail and are automatically pre-fetched in background — a useful thing if you have some heavy pages among your top bookmarks."

Thelomen writes "Opera Browser contains an Easter egg that is not widely known, recently reported over at OperaWatch.com: type /. in the address bar and you are taken directly to slashdot.org. Other recent news from Opera is their new Speed Dial feature, present in the most recent build from Desktop Team. At first glance Speed Dial just looks like 9 bookmarks you can open with CTRL+1 to CTRL+9. However, the pages on the Speed Dial are shown in thumbnail and are automatically pre-fetched in background — a useful thing if you have some heavy pages among your top bookmarks."

Thelomen writes "Opera Browser contains an Easter egg that is not widely known, recently reported over at OperaWatch.com: type /. in the address bar and you are taken directly to slashdot.org. Other recent news from Opera is their new Speed Dial feature, present in the most recent build from Desktop Team. At first glance Speed Dial just looks like 9 bookmarks you can open with CTRL+1 to CTRL+9. However, the pages on the Speed Dial are shown in thumbnail and are automatically pre-fetched in background — a useful thing if you have some heavy pages among your top bookmarks."

An anonymous reader writes "The Opera developers have ported their browser to the $100 laptop. Håkon Wium Lie writes: 'Seeing Opera run on the OLPC for first time was a revelation — no browser has ever been more beautiful. The resolution of the screen is stunning (200dpi) and Opera makes the most of the embedded DejaVu fonts.' Claudio Santambrogio writes: 'Opera runs beautifully on it. The machine is not really the fastest, but Opera's performance is excellent — the browsing experience is beautifully smooth: all sites load fine and quickly, and even complex DHTML pages with heavy animations do not suffer.'"

An anonymous reader writes "The Opera developers have ported their browser to the $100 laptop. Håkon Wium Lie writes: 'Seeing Opera run on the OLPC for first time was a revelation — no browser has ever been more beautiful. The resolution of the screen is stunning (200dpi) and Opera makes the most of the embedded DejaVu fonts.' Claudio Santambrogio writes: 'Opera runs beautifully on it. The machine is not really the fastest, but Opera's performance is excellent — the browsing experience is beautifully smooth: all sites load fine and quickly, and even complex DHTML pages with heavy animations do not suffer.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Near the end of a story about Opera's determination to stay in the game: 'Earlier this week, Opera announced an addition that will keep it in step with its rivals. Johan Borg, a developer working on the browser, said Tuesday in a blog that the next edition, Opera 9.1, will include beefed up anti-phishing and anti-fraud features. Rather than simply indicate that a site is secure with a notation in the address bar, Opera 9.1 will also query Opera-owned servers for information on any site visited. Those that Opera has identifies as fraudulent will be automatically blocked by the browser.'"

taskforce writes "Opera Watch is reporting that the folks Opera Software are asking web developers for input on what they think the most important features are which could be added into the next version of the Opera desktop browser. Considering what has been added in Opera 9, what do you think would be most important for the browser from both a developer and a user standpoint?"

You submitted questions for Håkon Wium Lie on June 20. Today we have his answers, not only to the (+5 moderated) questions we sent him, but to a bunch of others he thought would also be interesting to answer.

 > Where... by bcat24
 >
 > Do you think the W3C development process is too slow? I know that
 > you guys want everything to be perfect, but it seems to take far
 > longer than necessary. CSS 3 shows promise and I wouldn't want it
 > to die a slow death in standardization.

No, I don't think W3C is too slow. W3C isn't the bottleneck, browsers are. The dominant browser on the web hasn't been updated for years, and it doesn't make sense for specifications to get too far ahead. Rather, the CSS Working Group in W3C has focused on specification maintenance and achieving interoperability between implementations. This work is not so glamorous and some people — even within W3C — would prefer if they concentrate on new specifications. However, I think the focus on interoperability (which has resulted in CSS 2.1) has been crucial to the success of CSS.

CSS3 is a set of specifications that are developed more or less independently of each other. The best way to push a specification forward is to implement it. In the past year, we've seen some encouraging CSS3 implementations come along. For example, Mozilla supports multi-column layouts, Opera supports media queries, Prince supports cross-references and Safari supports borders and backgrounds. A few years from now, I think a select group of CSS3 modules will be interoperably supported in all browsers.

 > Why is CSS such a good idea but a pain to use?
 > by rar
 >
 > CSS is clearly very useful for separating style from content. But
 > apparently people tend to have problems when using it for layouts.
 > Would you say this is because people have not yet understood how to
 > properly do layout in CSS, or is it CSS that is lacking in this
 > area? What can be done to improve the situation? --- Would the web
 > benefit from HTML and CSS being complemented with some kind of
 > "layout language"?

I think layout and style should be tackled by the same language and the two are intertwined. Trying to split the two is like splitting the HTML specification in two, one specification describing inline elements and the other describing block elements. It's not worth the effort.

I think CSS is capable of describing beautiful and scalable layouts. The CSS Zen Garden has been a eye-opening showcase of what is possible today. If MS IE had supported CSS tables, another set of layouts would have been possible. So, there is still lots of potential in the existing CSS specifications which should be the next milestone. Beyond that, the CSS Working Group has started work on a new CSS3 module for advanced layout. Feedback is welcome.

 > CSS Evolution!
 > by eieken
 >
 > Is the wave of webpages designed completely in CSS what you
 > intially intended when you came up with CSS? Do you see that
 > changing? Is that good or bad?

I saw a clear need for a web style sheet language when proposing CSS in 1994. I also wanted CSS to fully describe the presentation of a web pages -- not just add some styling. All in all, I think it has turned out quite well. It has taken longer than I expected, but the scale -- due to the growth of the web -- is more than anyone could imagine.

I used "I" too many times in the previous paragraph. It's important to realize that CSS is a community effort rather that one man's work. Bert Bos joined me early and we worked out the initial designs on a whiteboard during the summer of 1995. The www-style mailing lists and the W3C CSS Working Group have also been crucial in ensuring the success of CSS.

If you're interested in the history of web style sheets, you'll find plenty of material in my PhD thesis on the subject.

 > Two questions (cut to 1.5 by editor Roblimo)
 > by Dolda2000

 > If you were allowed (perhaps by court order, which wouldn't be
 > unthinkable) to force Microsoft to do one (1) change in Internet
 > Explorer, what would that be?

I would force them to support one (1) single web page before shipping IE7, namely Acid2. By using a tiny amount of resources to get Acid2 right, Microsoft can save web designers and users endless amounts of frustration in the future. It would also be an honorable thing to do. This is what Microsoft's W3C representative wrote in 1998:

Microsoft has a deep commitment to working with the W3C on HTML and CSS. We have the first commercial implementation of HTML4, we were the first vendor anywhere to implement even portions of CSS, and we have put a tremendous amount of energy into seeing CSS mature to Level 2. We are still committed to complete implementations of the Recommendations of the W3C in this area (CSS and HTML and the DOM).

May I have one (1) more change? Please? Then I would make IE7 support TrueType downloadable fonts. Microsoft's record in fonts isn't that bad. They made their core fonts available for anyone to use, and IE supports downloadable fonts. Unfortunately, only the proprietary EOT format is supported. A few lines of code would be sufficient to support zipped TrueType fonts as well, and this would unleash a new wave of typography on the web. (To protect yourself, make sure you use a browser where author style sheets can be turned off — Shift-G in Opera). > As a bonus question: What do you think of Slashdot's CSS? ;)

The new design looks great! The style sheets behind the scene are more complex than what the average web page needs. But, we wouldn't expect anything average from Slashdot, would we?

> 6)  Opera
 > by taskforce
 >
 > Opera 9.0 seems to offer a lot of decent additions to Opera's
 > standards pool. How satisfied are you personally with the work the
 > team has done on implementing standards, and is there anything in
 > there you feel is superflous and anything you would have preferred
 > to see which wasn't in there?

I'm very proud of the standards support in Opera 9. Acid2 is an obvious favorite of mine and seeing that smiley face makes me very happy.

Among the more experimental features is support for Audio in HTML5. Web applications can now make sounds in a sensible way! Combined with the canvas element, developers can create Flash-like content without resorting to a proprietary format.

Having support for Bittorrent is also great. From a technical point of view, it makes much sense. Also, it's a political statement of sorts.

During the development of Opera9. Geir Ivarsøy, who founded Opera with Jon von Tetzchner, died after fighting cancer for years. Geir did a spectacular initial CSS implementation in Opera, thus convincing me to join the company. In music, the 9th is legendary. Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner and Mahler all did 9 symphonies. Opera 9 was Geir's last symphony.

> Included styles, aliases
 > by Spy der Mann
 >
 > I always wanted to have "included" substyles or "aliases" in my
 > CSS definition, to save redundancy.
 >
 > (For includes)
 >
 >     .class1 { color:#ff0000; }
 >     .class2 { background-color:#ffffff; }
 >     .class3 { include:class1,class2;font-weight:bold; }
 >
 > (For aliases)
 >
 >     @alias color1 #ff0000;
 >     @alias color2 #ffffff;
 >     @alias default_image url('/img/image1.jpg');
 >
 >     .class1 { color:color1; }
 >     .class2 { background-image:default_image;background-color:co lor2; }
 >
 > This way we could change colors or images for a whole webpage
 > by editing a reduced number of lines.
 >
 > Had you considered any of these ideas in the past? If so,
 > why were they rejected?

Yes, aliases and constants have been considered. As David Wheeler noted, "Any problem in computer science can be solved with another layer of indirection."

CSS is already an indirection. Instead of putting properties and values directly on elements, it associates properties and values with selectors. What you (and others) are proposing is to add another layer of indirection. By doing so, one could possible write shorter, more manageable style sheets. However, there are also some downsides. It requires a new syntactic construct (@alias) and implementations must be able to remember a list of aliases. What if aliases are defined in one style sheet and referenced in another -- should that work? If so, what if the first style sheet isn't available?

For CSS1, the downsides of aliases were considered more significant than the benefits.

 > Definition of pixel
 > by Sara Chan
 >
 > The word pixel meant "picture element", but CSS redefined it
 >to mean something quite different (a particular subtended angle
 >of view [w3.org]). This causes confusion: CSS pixels are not pixels.
 >(Indeed, I have seen misinformed comments on Slashdot due to
 >that confusion.)
 >
 > My question is this: why call the subtended angle a "pixel", instead of
 >something else (e.g. "subangle")? If CSS wanted to use the subtended
 >angle for something, that is fine, but calling it a pixel seems to follow
 >the approach of Humpty Dumpty "When I use a word, it means just
 >what I choose it to mean".

In most cases, a CSS pixel will be equal to a device pixel. But, as you point out, the definition of a CSS pixel will sometimes be different. For example, on a laser printer, one CSS pixel can be equal to 3x3 device pixels to avoid printing illegibly small text and images. I don't recall anyone ever proposing another name for it. Subangle? Personally, I think most people would prefer the pragmatic "px" to the non-intuitive "sa".

> Vertical CSS Support
 > by infestedsenses
 >
 > As a developer who works with CSS every day, I find one
 > complication that continues to bother me in my daily work.
 > Support for CSS has always been good on the horizontal scope,
 > but vertical positioning has always been quite complicated.
 > Alone the procedure to affix a footer to the bottom of a screen
 > in dependance of the amount of content is unnecessarily difficult,
 > spawning hackish solutions such as "footerStickAlt"
 > [themaninblue.com]. Centering an object in the dead center of a
 > page also requires strange procedures such as this one [wpdfd.com],
 > which still aren't ideal (try making the viewport really small). The old
 > table method provided much easier methods for this. What are your
 > thoughts on this and do you see improvement following in future
 > CSS revisions?

Indeed, the CSS formatting model allows more control horizontally than vertically. This is due to (typically) having a known width, but an unknown height. As such, the height is harder to deal with.

However, CSS2 fixed positioning allows you to place content relative to the viewport (which is CSS-speak for window) instead of the document. For example, by setting position: fixed; bottom: 0 on an element, it will stick to the bottom. This works in Opera, Safari and Mozilla-based browsers. IE6 doesn't support it, however. It remains to be seen if IE7 will support it.

> About Microsoft...
 > by Chabil Ha'
 >
 > With MS's next browser release (IE 7), you mentioned in other
 > interviews that their decision to not supprt CSS2 was more a political
 > decision than a mechanical one. Aside from their obvious desire to
 > dominate the world, what politics do you think are in play that make
 > them not want to conform to the standard, and what do you think would
 > change that landscape so that they would have some initiative to
 > fully support it?

Great question. It's quite clear that Microsoft has the resources and talent to support CSS2 fully in IE and that plenty of people have reminded them why this is important. So, why don't they do it? The fundamental reason, I believe, is that standards don't benefit monopolists. Accepted, well-functioning, standards lower the barrier of entry to a market, and is therefore a threat to a monopolist.

From that perspective, it makes sense to leave CSS2 half-implemented. You can claim support (and many journalists will believe you), and you also ensure that no-one can use the unimplemented (or worse: buggily implemented) features of the standard. The only way to change the equation is to remind Microsoft how embarrassing it is to offer a sub-standard browser. And to use better browsers.

Another reason for not making a IE too good is that it will compete with Windows. A modern browser is an application platform; the combination of HTML, JavaScript, CSS and DOM allows developers to target the web instead of Windows, Linux, or Mac.

> From linvir
 > How long since you last used Linux?

I'm using it right now. Ubuntu on a IBM Thinkpad X41 is the environment I live in. Ubuntu rocks -- especially with Opera on top! (And Emacs right underneath.)

 > From Rob T Firefly (844560)
 > Why the curly brackets?

The initial CSS proposal didn't use them, instead relying on newlines to separate statements. TimBL didn't really like that and I therefore borrowed the curly braces from the C programming language. The syntax for comments came along as well. I think it works quite well.

 > why not XML?
 > by slashdot.org
 > Simple question (hopefully simple answer ;-)): why
 > did you not use XML?

The simple answer is that the development of CSS preceded XML by a year or so. However, if XML had been available, would we have used it? Probably not. And I suspect Brendan Eich of JavaScript fame would answer the same way on behalf of his language.

XML is a great syntax for structured data, but not suitable for all languages. Still, I think the SGML-based syntax for the FOSI style sheet language.

 > Padding
 > by Anonymous Coward

 > Why was the decision made to make padding apply outside
 > of the width of a 'box', rather than inside, which would seem
 > to make more sense?

It makes sense in some situations, but not in others. For example, when a child element is set to width: 100%, I don't think it should cover the padding of its parent. The box-sizing property in CSS3 addresses this issue. Ideally, the issue should have been addressed earlier, though.

> by nuzak

 > why not float:

 > DSSSL had this sort of thing solved before HTML even existed,
 > let alone CSS. But scheme is too scary and icky, and the W3C
 > believes in a principle of least power, so CSS has to be fully declarative,
 > static, and crippled until patched later.

You're wrong about DSSSL -- it didn't support floating text (as in having text wrap around images) at all. And the DSSSL specification only became publically available around 1996, years after HTML.

> by MagicM

 > How frustrating is it to write a specification knowing
 > that you're at the browser vendors' mercy?

That's part of the game. I don't think any specification has a birthright to be fully supported by all browsers. There should be healthy competition between different specifications. I believe simple, author-friendly specifications will prevail in this environment.

Microformats are another way of developing new formats. Instead of having to convince browser vendors to support your favorite specification, microformats add semantics to HTML through the CLASS attribute. And style it with CSS.

> New standards
 > by iamsure
 >
 > In your work at Opera, you have clearly paved a path that includes
 > going beyond the W3C standards. Whether it is WhatWG
 > implementations, or new functionality specific to Opera (2dgame),
 > you are pushing into new territory. Can you explain why W3C isn't
 > sufficient, and why efforts at Opera to expand beyond the standards
 > differ from Microsoft's embrace/extend model?

It's a fair question. The WhatWG was set up when it seemed as if W3C didn't care much about browsers anymore. That has definitely changed and work items from WhatWG are now channeled into W3C (e.g., XMLHttpRequest).

At Opera, we sometimes include experimental features before they have been standardized. When this happens they are labeled as such, but we still try to document them. For example, we support some Opera-only CSS properties for XML. If these features gain traction, we are happy to work with other organizations to standardize them. If they don't become popular, the features will most likely disappear.

 > Beyond HTML
 > by pr1000

 > How far can CSS be taken beyond the web page--that is,
 > have generalized or non-web specific features for such things
 > as page formatting or type setting? Do you plan/wish/hope to
 > take it farther than it currently is?

Yes, I think it's possible to take CSS further in several directions. I'm eager to see CSS being used in paper-based publishing and I joined the board of YesLogic — which makes the Prince XML to PDF converter — to make sure they added my favorite features. Bert and I used Prince to generate PDF from HTML and CSS sources for the third edition of our book. W3C just published a new Working Draft which describes features for printing, e.g., footnotes, cross-references, and even generated indexes.

For mobile units, I think Media Queries will be important. For example, they can express that large images should not be sent to mobile devices.

Another great opportunity for CSS is Web Applications. Just like documents, applications need to be styled and CSS is an intrinsic component of AJAX. The "AJAX" name sounds great, but allow me to propose a few alternate spellings that I find more accurate:

• AJACX: Asynchronous JavaScript, CSS and XMLHttpRequest
• ADJACS: Asynchronous DOM, JavaScript and CSS
• ADHJACS: Asynchronous DOM, HTML, JavaScript and CSS
• AJAHCS: Asynchronous JavaScript, HTML and CSS
• AJACS: Asynchronous JavaScript, HTML and CSS

Opera, Mozilla and Safari developers are collaborating in the WHAT WG and in W3C to make sure we have interoperable specifications for AJAX. I mean, ADHJACS.

 > by crush

 > Is the difficulty of producing a layout that consists of
 > three or more columns of equal height justification for
 > adding some new feature to the specification to make this easier?

I don't think so. CSS2 defines a table layout that can be used for this purpose. The problem is, and I'm repeating myself here, that the dominant browser doesn't support it. Adding yet more features to the specification wouldn't help.

 > How come, we um, lie?

Right. My name is, um, a bit troublesome to pronounce in English. But I'm a nice person who generally tells the truth. I often tell non-Norwegians that my first name is pronounced "howcome". That's close, but not quite. It does make for a great email address like howcome@opera.com, though.

So I may be a Lie, but I'm just a little white one :-)

You submitted questions for Håkon Wium Lie on June 20. Today we have his answers, not only to the (+5 moderated) questions we sent him, but to a bunch of others he thought would also be interesting to answer.

 > Where... by bcat24
 >
 > Do you think the W3C development process is too slow? I know that
 > you guys want everything to be perfect, but it seems to take far
 > longer than necessary. CSS 3 shows promise and I wouldn't want it
 > to die a slow death in standardization.

No, I don't think W3C is too slow. W3C isn't the bottleneck, browsers are. The dominant browser on the web hasn't been updated for years, and it doesn't make sense for specifications to get too far ahead. Rather, the CSS Working Group in W3C has focused on specification maintenance and achieving interoperability between implementations. This work is not so glamorous and some people — even within W3C — would prefer if they concentrate on new specifications. However, I think the focus on interoperability (which has resulted in CSS 2.1) has been crucial to the success of CSS.

CSS3 is a set of specifications that are developed more or less independently of each other. The best way to push a specification forward is to implement it. In the past year, we've seen some encouraging CSS3 implementations come along. For example, Mozilla supports multi-column layouts, Opera supports media queries, Prince supports cross-references and Safari supports borders and backgrounds. A few years from now, I think a select group of CSS3 modules will be interoperably supported in all browsers.

 > Why is CSS such a good idea but a pain to use?
 > by rar
 >
 > CSS is clearly very useful for separating style from content. But
 > apparently people tend to have problems when using it for layouts.
 > Would you say this is because people have not yet understood how to
 > properly do layout in CSS, or is it CSS that is lacking in this
 > area? What can be done to improve the situation? --- Would the web
 > benefit from HTML and CSS being complemented with some kind of
 > "layout language"?

I think layout and style should be tackled by the same language and the two are intertwined. Trying to split the two is like splitting the HTML specification in two, one specification describing inline elements and the other describing block elements. It's not worth the effort.

I think CSS is capable of describing beautiful and scalable layouts. The CSS Zen Garden has been a eye-opening showcase of what is possible today. If MS IE had supported CSS tables, another set of layouts would have been possible. So, there is still lots of potential in the existing CSS specifications which should be the next milestone. Beyond that, the CSS Working Group has started work on a new CSS3 module for advanced layout. Feedback is welcome.

 > CSS Evolution!
 > by eieken
 >
 > Is the wave of webpages designed completely in CSS what you
 > intially intended when you came up with CSS? Do you see that
 > changing? Is that good or bad?

I saw a clear need for a web style sheet language when proposing CSS in 1994. I also wanted CSS to fully describe the presentation of a web pages -- not just add some styling. All in all, I think it has turned out quite well. It has taken longer than I expected, but the scale -- due to the growth of the web -- is more than anyone could imagine.

I used "I" too many times in the previous paragraph. It's important to realize that CSS is a community effort rather that one man's work. Bert Bos joined me early and we worked out the initial designs on a whiteboard during the summer of 1995. The www-style mailing lists and the W3C CSS Working Group have also been crucial in ensuring the success of CSS.

If you're interested in the history of web style sheets, you'll find plenty of material in my PhD thesis on the subject.

 > Two questions (cut to 1.5 by editor Roblimo)
 > by Dolda2000

 > If you were allowed (perhaps by court order, which wouldn't be
 > unthinkable) to force Microsoft to do one (1) change in Internet
 > Explorer, what would that be?

I would force them to support one (1) single web page before shipping IE7, namely Acid2. By using a tiny amount of resources to get Acid2 right, Microsoft can save web designers and users endless amounts of frustration in the future. It would also be an honorable thing to do. This is what Microsoft's W3C representative wrote in 1998:

Microsoft has a deep commitment to working with the W3C on HTML and CSS. We have the first commercial implementation of HTML4, we were the first vendor anywhere to implement even portions of CSS, and we have put a tremendous amount of energy into seeing CSS mature to Level 2. We are still committed to complete implementations of the Recommendations of the W3C in this area (CSS and HTML and the DOM).

May I have one (1) more change? Please? Then I would make IE7 support TrueType downloadable fonts. Microsoft's record in fonts isn't that bad. They made their core fonts available for anyone to use, and IE supports downloadable fonts. Unfortunately, only the proprietary EOT format is supported. A few lines of code would be sufficient to support zipped TrueType fonts as well, and this would unleash a new wave of typography on the web. (To protect yourself, make sure you use a browser where author style sheets can be turned off — Shift-G in Opera). > As a bonus question: What do you think of Slashdot's CSS? ;)

The new design looks great! The style sheets behind the scene are more complex than what the average web page needs. But, we wouldn't expect anything average from Slashdot, would we?

> 6)  Opera
 > by taskforce
 >
 > Opera 9.0 seems to offer a lot of decent additions to Opera's
 > standards pool. How satisfied are you personally with the work the
 > team has done on implementing standards, and is there anything in
 > there you feel is superflous and anything you would have preferred
 > to see which wasn't in there?

I'm very proud of the standards support in Opera 9. Acid2 is an obvious favorite of mine and seeing that smiley face makes me very happy.

Among the more experimental features is support for Audio in HTML5. Web applications can now make sounds in a sensible way! Combined with the canvas element, developers can create Flash-like content without resorting to a proprietary format.

Having support for Bittorrent is also great. From a technical point of view, it makes much sense. Also, it's a political statement of sorts.

During the development of Opera9. Geir Ivarsøy, who founded Opera with Jon von Tetzchner, died after fighting cancer for years. Geir did a spectacular initial CSS implementation in Opera, thus convincing me to join the company. In music, the 9th is legendary. Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner and Mahler all did 9 symphonies. Opera 9 was Geir's last symphony.

> Included styles, aliases
 > by Spy der Mann
 >
 > I always wanted to have "included" substyles or "aliases" in my
 > CSS definition, to save redundancy.
 >
 > (For includes)
 >
 >     .class1 { color:#ff0000; }
 >     .class2 { background-color:#ffffff; }
 >     .class3 { include:class1,class2;font-weight:bold; }
 >
 > (For aliases)
 >
 >     @alias color1 #ff0000;
 >     @alias color2 #ffffff;
 >     @alias default_image url('/img/image1.jpg');
 >
 >     .class1 { color:color1; }
 >     .class2 { background-image:default_image;background-color:co lor2; }
 >
 > This way we could change colors or images for a whole webpage
 > by editing a reduced number of lines.
 >
 > Had you considered any of these ideas in the past? If so,
 > why were they rejected?

Yes, aliases and constants have been considered. As David Wheeler noted, "Any problem in computer science can be solved with another layer of indirection."

CSS is already an indirection. Instead of putting properties and values directly on elements, it associates properties and values with selectors. What you (and others) are proposing is to add another layer of indirection. By doing so, one could possible write shorter, more manageable style sheets. However, there are also some downsides. It requires a new syntactic construct (@alias) and implementations must be able to remember a list of aliases. What if aliases are defined in one style sheet and referenced in another -- should that work? If so, what if the first style sheet isn't available?

For CSS1, the downsides of aliases were considered more significant than the benefits.

 > Definition of pixel
 > by Sara Chan
 >
 > The word pixel meant "picture element", but CSS redefined it
 >to mean something quite different (a particular subtended angle
 >of view [w3.org]). This causes confusion: CSS pixels are not pixels.
 >(Indeed, I have seen misinformed comments on Slashdot due to
 >that confusion.)
 >
 > My question is this: why call the subtended angle a "pixel", instead of
 >something else (e.g. "subangle")? If CSS wanted to use the subtended
 >angle for something, that is fine, but calling it a pixel seems to follow
 >the approach of Humpty Dumpty "When I use a word, it means just
 >what I choose it to mean".

In most cases, a CSS pixel will be equal to a device pixel. But, as you point out, the definition of a CSS pixel will sometimes be different. For example, on a laser printer, one CSS pixel can be equal to 3x3 device pixels to avoid printing illegibly small text and images. I don't recall anyone ever proposing another name for it. Subangle? Personally, I think most people would prefer the pragmatic "px" to the non-intuitive "sa".

> Vertical CSS Support
 > by infestedsenses
 >
 > As a developer who works with CSS every day, I find one
 > complication that continues to bother me in my daily work.
 > Support for CSS has always been good on the horizontal scope,
 > but vertical positioning has always been quite complicated.
 > Alone the procedure to affix a footer to the bottom of a screen
 > in dependance of the amount of content is unnecessarily difficult,
 > spawning hackish solutions such as "footerStickAlt"
 > [themaninblue.com]. Centering an object in the dead center of a
 > page also requires strange procedures such as this one [wpdfd.com],
 > which still aren't ideal (try making the viewport really small). The old
 > table method provided much easier methods for this. What are your
 > thoughts on this and do you see improvement following in future
 > CSS revisions?

Indeed, the CSS formatting model allows more control horizontally than vertically. This is due to (typically) having a known width, but an unknown height. As such, the height is harder to deal with.

However, CSS2 fixed positioning allows you to place content relative to the viewport (which is CSS-speak for window) instead of the document. For example, by setting position: fixed; bottom: 0 on an element, it will stick to the bottom. This works in Opera, Safari and Mozilla-based browsers. IE6 doesn't support it, however. It remains to be seen if IE7 will support it.

> About Microsoft...
 > by Chabil Ha'
 >
 > With MS's next browser release (IE 7), you mentioned in other
 > interviews that their decision to not supprt CSS2 was more a political
 > decision than a mechanical one. Aside from their obvious desire to
 > dominate the world, what politics do you think are in play that make
 > them not want to conform to the standard, and what do you think would
 > change that landscape so that they would have some initiative to
 > fully support it?

Great question. It's quite clear that Microsoft has the resources and talent to support CSS2 fully in IE and that plenty of people have reminded them why this is important. So, why don't they do it? The fundamental reason, I believe, is that standards don't benefit monopolists. Accepted, well-functioning, standards lower the barrier of entry to a market, and is therefore a threat to a monopolist.

From that perspective, it makes sense to leave CSS2 half-implemented. You can claim support (and many journalists will believe you), and you also ensure that no-one can use the unimplemented (or worse: buggily implemented) features of the standard. The only way to change the equation is to remind Microsoft how embarrassing it is to offer a sub-standard browser. And to use better browsers.

Another reason for not making a IE too good is that it will compete with Windows. A modern browser is an application platform; the combination of HTML, JavaScript, CSS and DOM allows developers to target the web instead of Windows, Linux, or Mac.

> From linvir
 > How long since you last used Linux?

I'm using it right now. Ubuntu on a IBM Thinkpad X41 is the environment I live in. Ubuntu rocks -- especially with Opera on top! (And Emacs right underneath.)

 > From Rob T Firefly (844560)
 > Why the curly brackets?

The initial CSS proposal didn't use them, instead relying on newlines to separate statements. TimBL didn't really like that and I therefore borrowed the curly braces from the C programming language. The syntax for comments came along as well. I think it works quite well.

 > why not XML?
 > by slashdot.org
 > Simple question (hopefully simple answer ;-)): why
 > did you not use XML?

The simple answer is that the development of CSS preceded XML by a year or so. However, if XML had been available, would we have used it? Probably not. And I suspect Brendan Eich of JavaScript fame would answer the same way on behalf of his language.

XML is a great syntax for structured data, but not suitable for all languages. Still, I think the SGML-based syntax for the FOSI style sheet language.

 > Padding
 > by Anonymous Coward

 > Why was the decision made to make padding apply outside
 > of the width of a 'box', rather than inside, which would seem
 > to make more sense?

It makes sense in some situations, but not in others. For example, when a child element is set to width: 100%, I don't think it should cover the padding of its parent. The box-sizing property in CSS3 addresses this issue. Ideally, the issue should have been addressed earlier, though.

> by nuzak

 > why not float:

 > DSSSL had this sort of thing solved before HTML even existed,
 > let alone CSS. But scheme is too scary and icky, and the W3C
 > believes in a principle of least power, so CSS has to be fully declarative,
 > static, and crippled until patched later.

You're wrong about DSSSL -- it didn't support floating text (as in having text wrap around images) at all. And the DSSSL specification only became publically available around 1996, years after HTML.

> by MagicM

 > How frustrating is it to write a specification knowing
 > that you're at the browser vendors' mercy?

That's part of the game. I don't think any specification has a birthright to be fully supported by all browsers. There should be healthy competition between different specifications. I believe simple, author-friendly specifications will prevail in this environment.

Microformats are another way of developing new formats. Instead of having to convince browser vendors to support your favorite specification, microformats add semantics to HTML through the CLASS attribute. And style it with CSS.

> New standards
 > by iamsure
 >
 > In your work at Opera, you have clearly paved a path that includes
 > going beyond the W3C standards. Whether it is WhatWG
 > implementations, or new functionality specific to Opera (2dgame),
 > you are pushing into new territory. Can you explain why W3C isn't
 > sufficient, and why efforts at Opera to expand beyond the standards
 > differ from Microsoft's embrace/extend model?

It's a fair question. The WhatWG was set up when it seemed as if W3C didn't care much about browsers anymore. That has definitely changed and work items from WhatWG are now channeled into W3C (e.g., XMLHttpRequest).

At Opera, we sometimes include experimental features before they have been standardized. When this happens they are labeled as such, but we still try to document them. For example, we support some Opera-only CSS properties for XML. If these features gain traction, we are happy to work with other organizations to standardize them. If they don't become popular, the features will most likely disappear.

 > Beyond HTML
 > by pr1000

 > How far can CSS be taken beyond the web page--that is,
 > have generalized or non-web specific features for such things
 > as page formatting or type setting? Do you plan/wish/hope to
 > take it farther than it currently is?

Yes, I think it's possible to take CSS further in several directions. I'm eager to see CSS being used in paper-based publishing and I joined the board of YesLogic — which makes the Prince XML to PDF converter — to make sure they added my favorite features. Bert and I used Prince to generate PDF from HTML and CSS sources for the third edition of our book. W3C just published a new Working Draft which describes features for printing, e.g., footnotes, cross-references, and even generated indexes.

For mobile units, I think Media Queries will be important. For example, they can express that large images should not be sent to mobile devices.

Another great opportunity for CSS is Web Applications. Just like documents, applications need to be styled and CSS is an intrinsic component of AJAX. The "AJAX" name sounds great, but allow me to propose a few alternate spellings that I find more accurate:

• AJACX: Asynchronous JavaScript, CSS and XMLHttpRequest
• ADJACS: Asynchronous DOM, JavaScript and CSS
• ADHJACS: Asynchronous DOM, HTML, JavaScript and CSS
• AJAHCS: Asynchronous JavaScript, HTML and CSS
• AJACS: Asynchronous JavaScript, HTML and CSS

Opera, Mozilla and Safari developers are collaborating in the WHAT WG and in W3C to make sure we have interoperable specifications for AJAX. I mean, ADHJACS.

 > by crush

 > Is the difficulty of producing a layout that consists of
 > three or more columns of equal height justification for
 > adding some new feature to the specification to make this easier?

I don't think so. CSS2 defines a table layout that can be used for this purpose. The problem is, and I'm repeating myself here, that the dominant browser doesn't support it. Adding yet more features to the specification wouldn't help.

 > How come, we um, lie?

Right. My name is, um, a bit troublesome to pronounce in English. But I'm a nice person who generally tells the truth. I often tell non-Norwegians that my first name is pronounced "howcome". That's close, but not quite. It does make for a great email address like howcome@opera.com, though.

So I may be a Lie, but I'm just a little white one :-)

You submitted questions for Håkon Wium Lie on June 20. Today we have his answers, not only to the (+5 moderated) questions we sent him, but to a bunch of others he thought would also be interesting to answer.

 > Where... by bcat24
 >
 > Do you think the W3C development process is too slow? I know that
 > you guys want everything to be perfect, but it seems to take far
 > longer than necessary. CSS 3 shows promise and I wouldn't want it
 > to die a slow death in standardization.

No, I don't think W3C is too slow. W3C isn't the bottleneck, browsers are. The dominant browser on the web hasn't been updated for years, and it doesn't make sense for specifications to get too far ahead. Rather, the CSS Working Group in W3C has focused on specification maintenance and achieving interoperability between implementations. This work is not so glamorous and some people — even within W3C — would prefer if they concentrate on new specifications. However, I think the focus on interoperability (which has resulted in CSS 2.1) has been crucial to the success of CSS.

CSS3 is a set of specifications that are developed more or less independently of each other. The best way to push a specification forward is to implement it. In the past year, we've seen some encouraging CSS3 implementations come along. For example, Mozilla supports multi-column layouts, Opera supports media queries, Prince supports cross-references and Safari supports borders and backgrounds. A few years from now, I think a select group of CSS3 modules will be interoperably supported in all browsers.

 > Why is CSS such a good idea but a pain to use?
 > by rar
 >
 > CSS is clearly very useful for separating style from content. But
 > apparently people tend to have problems when using it for layouts.
 > Would you say this is because people have not yet understood how to
 > properly do layout in CSS, or is it CSS that is lacking in this
 > area? What can be done to improve the situation? --- Would the web
 > benefit from HTML and CSS being complemented with some kind of
 > "layout language"?

I think layout and style should be tackled by the same language and the two are intertwined. Trying to split the two is like splitting the HTML specification in two, one specification describing inline elements and the other describing block elements. It's not worth the effort.

I think CSS is capable of describing beautiful and scalable layouts. The CSS Zen Garden has been a eye-opening showcase of what is possible today. If MS IE had supported CSS tables, another set of layouts would have been possible. So, there is still lots of potential in the existing CSS specifications which should be the next milestone. Beyond that, the CSS Working Group has started work on a new CSS3 module for advanced layout. Feedback is welcome.

 > CSS Evolution!
 > by eieken
 >
 > Is the wave of webpages designed completely in CSS what you
 > intially intended when you came up with CSS? Do you see that
 > changing? Is that good or bad?

I saw a clear need for a web style sheet language when proposing CSS in 1994. I also wanted CSS to fully describe the presentation of a web pages -- not just add some styling. All in all, I think it has turned out quite well. It has taken longer than I expected, but the scale -- due to the growth of the web -- is more than anyone could imagine.

I used "I" too many times in the previous paragraph. It's important to realize that CSS is a community effort rather that one man's work. Bert Bos joined me early and we worked out the initial designs on a whiteboard during the summer of 1995. The www-style mailing lists and the W3C CSS Working Group have also been crucial in ensuring the success of CSS.

If you're interested in the history of web style sheets, you'll find plenty of material in my PhD thesis on the subject.

 > Two questions (cut to 1.5 by editor Roblimo)
 > by Dolda2000

 > If you were allowed (perhaps by court order, which wouldn't be
 > unthinkable) to force Microsoft to do one (1) change in Internet
 > Explorer, what would that be?

I would force them to support one (1) single web page before shipping IE7, namely Acid2. By using a tiny amount of resources to get Acid2 right, Microsoft can save web designers and users endless amounts of frustration in the future. It would also be an honorable thing to do. This is what Microsoft's W3C representative wrote in 1998:

Microsoft has a deep commitment to working with the W3C on HTML and CSS. We have the first commercial implementation of HTML4, we were the first vendor anywhere to implement even portions of CSS, and we have put a tremendous amount of energy into seeing CSS mature to Level 2. We are still committed to complete implementations of the Recommendations of the W3C in this area (CSS and HTML and the DOM).

May I have one (1) more change? Please? Then I would make IE7 support TrueType downloadable fonts. Microsoft's record in fonts isn't that bad. They made their core fonts available for anyone to use, and IE supports downloadable fonts. Unfortunately, only the proprietary EOT format is supported. A few lines of code would be sufficient to support zipped TrueType fonts as well, and this would unleash a new wave of typography on the web. (To protect yourself, make sure you use a browser where author style sheets can be turned off — Shift-G in Opera). > As a bonus question: What do you think of Slashdot's CSS? ;)

The new design looks great! The style sheets behind the scene are more complex than what the average web page needs. But, we wouldn't expect anything average from Slashdot, would we?

> 6)  Opera
 > by taskforce
 >
 > Opera 9.0 seems to offer a lot of decent additions to Opera's
 > standards pool. How satisfied are you personally with the work the
 > team has done on implementing standards, and is there anything in
 > there you feel is superflous and anything you would have preferred
 > to see which wasn't in there?

I'm very proud of the standards support in Opera 9. Acid2 is an obvious favorite of mine and seeing that smiley face makes me very happy.

Among the more experimental features is support for Audio in HTML5. Web applications can now make sounds in a sensible way! Combined with the canvas element, developers can create Flash-like content without resorting to a proprietary format.

Having support for Bittorrent is also great. From a technical point of view, it makes much sense. Also, it's a political statement of sorts.

During the development of Opera9. Geir Ivarsøy, who founded Opera with Jon von Tetzchner, died after fighting cancer for years. Geir did a spectacular initial CSS implementation in Opera, thus convincing me to join the company. In music, the 9th is legendary. Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner and Mahler all did 9 symphonies. Opera 9 was Geir's last symphony.

> Included styles, aliases
 > by Spy der Mann
 >
 > I always wanted to have "included" substyles or "aliases" in my
 > CSS definition, to save redundancy.
 >
 > (For includes)
 >
 >     .class1 { color:#ff0000; }
 >     .class2 { background-color:#ffffff; }
 >     .class3 { include:class1,class2;font-weight:bold; }
 >
 > (For aliases)
 >
 >     @alias color1 #ff0000;
 >     @alias color2 #ffffff;
 >     @alias default_image url('/img/image1.jpg');
 >
 >     .class1 { color:color1; }
 >     .class2 { background-image:default_image;background-color:co lor2; }
 >
 > This way we could change colors or images for a whole webpage
 > by editing a reduced number of lines.
 >
 > Had you considered any of these ideas in the past? If so,
 > why were they rejected?

Yes, aliases and constants have been considered. As David Wheeler noted, "Any problem in computer science can be solved with another layer of indirection."

CSS is already an indirection. Instead of putting properties and values directly on elements, it associates properties and values with selectors. What you (and others) are proposing is to add another layer of indirection. By doing so, one could possible write shorter, more manageable style sheets. However, there are also some downsides. It requires a new syntactic construct (@alias) and implementations must be able to remember a list of aliases. What if aliases are defined in one style sheet and referenced in another -- should that work? If so, what if the first style sheet isn't available?

For CSS1, the downsides of aliases were considered more significant than the benefits.

 > Definition of pixel
 > by Sara Chan
 >
 > The word pixel meant "picture element", but CSS redefined it
 >to mean something quite different (a particular subtended angle
 >of view [w3.org]). This causes confusion: CSS pixels are not pixels.
 >(Indeed, I have seen misinformed comments on Slashdot due to
 >that confusion.)
 >
 > My question is this: why call the subtended angle a "pixel", instead of
 >something else (e.g. "subangle")? If CSS wanted to use the subtended
 >angle for something, that is fine, but calling it a pixel seems to follow
 >the approach of Humpty Dumpty "When I use a word, it means just
 >what I choose it to mean".

In most cases, a CSS pixel will be equal to a device pixel. But, as you point out, the definition of a CSS pixel will sometimes be different. For example, on a laser printer, one CSS pixel can be equal to 3x3 device pixels to avoid printing illegibly small text and images. I don't recall anyone ever proposing another name for it. Subangle? Personally, I think most people would prefer the pragmatic "px" to the non-intuitive "sa".

> Vertical CSS Support
 > by infestedsenses
 >
 > As a developer who works with CSS every day, I find one
 > complication that continues to bother me in my daily work.
 > Support for CSS has always been good on the horizontal scope,
 > but vertical positioning has always been quite complicated.
 > Alone the procedure to affix a footer to the bottom of a screen
 > in dependance of the amount of content is unnecessarily difficult,
 > spawning hackish solutions such as "footerStickAlt"
 > [themaninblue.com]. Centering an object in the dead center of a
 > page also requires strange procedures such as this one [wpdfd.com],
 > which still aren't ideal (try making the viewport really small). The old
 > table method provided much easier methods for this. What are your
 > thoughts on this and do you see improvement following in future
 > CSS revisions?

Indeed, the CSS formatting model allows more control horizontally than vertically. This is due to (typically) having a known width, but an unknown height. As such, the height is harder to deal with.

However, CSS2 fixed positioning allows you to place content relative to the viewport (which is CSS-speak for window) instead of the document. For example, by setting position: fixed; bottom: 0 on an element, it will stick to the bottom. This works in Opera, Safari and Mozilla-based browsers. IE6 doesn't support it, however. It remains to be seen if IE7 will support it.

> About Microsoft...
 > by Chabil Ha'
 >
 > With MS's next browser release (IE 7), you mentioned in other
 > interviews that their decision to not supprt CSS2 was more a political
 > decision than a mechanical one. Aside from their obvious desire to
 > dominate the world, what politics do you think are in play that make
 > them not want to conform to the standard, and what do you think would
 > change that landscape so that they would have some initiative to
 > fully support it?

Great question. It's quite clear that Microsoft has the resources and talent to support CSS2 fully in IE and that plenty of people have reminded them why this is important. So, why don't they do it? The fundamental reason, I believe, is that standards don't benefit monopolists. Accepted, well-functioning, standards lower the barrier of entry to a market, and is therefore a threat to a monopolist.

From that perspective, it makes sense to leave CSS2 half-implemented. You can claim support (and many journalists will believe you), and you also ensure that no-one can use the unimplemented (or worse: buggily implemented) features of the standard. The only way to change the equation is to remind Microsoft how embarrassing it is to offer a sub-standard browser. And to use better browsers.

Another reason for not making a IE too good is that it will compete with Windows. A modern browser is an application platform; the combination of HTML, JavaScript, CSS and DOM allows developers to target the web instead of Windows, Linux, or Mac.

> From linvir
 > How long since you last used Linux?

I'm using it right now. Ubuntu on a IBM Thinkpad X41 is the environment I live in. Ubuntu rocks -- especially with Opera on top! (And Emacs right underneath.)

 > From Rob T Firefly (844560)
 > Why the curly brackets?

The initial CSS proposal didn't use them, instead relying on newlines to separate statements. TimBL didn't really like that and I therefore borrowed the curly braces from the C programming language. The syntax for comments came along as well. I think it works quite well.

 > why not XML?
 > by slashdot.org
 > Simple question (hopefully simple answer ;-)): why
 > did you not use XML?

The simple answer is that the development of CSS preceded XML by a year or so. However, if XML had been available, would we have used it? Probably not. And I suspect Brendan Eich of JavaScript fame would answer the same way on behalf of his language.

XML is a great syntax for structured data, but not suitable for all languages. Still, I think the SGML-based syntax for the FOSI style sheet language.

 > Padding
 > by Anonymous Coward

 > Why was the decision made to make padding apply outside
 > of the width of a 'box', rather than inside, which would seem
 > to make more sense?

It makes sense in some situations, but not in others. For example, when a child element is set to width: 100%, I don't think it should cover the padding of its parent. The box-sizing property in CSS3 addresses this issue. Ideally, the issue should have been addressed earlier, though.

> by nuzak

 > why not float:

 > DSSSL had this sort of thing solved before HTML even existed,
 > let alone CSS. But scheme is too scary and icky, and the W3C
 > believes in a principle of least power, so CSS has to be fully declarative,
 > static, and crippled until patched later.

You're wrong about DSSSL -- it didn't support floating text (as in having text wrap around images) at all. And the DSSSL specification only became publically available around 1996, years after HTML.

> by MagicM

 > How frustrating is it to write a specification knowing
 > that you're at the browser vendors' mercy?

That's part of the game. I don't think any specification has a birthright to be fully supported by all browsers. There should be healthy competition between different specifications. I believe simple, author-friendly specifications will prevail in this environment.

Microformats are another way of developing new formats. Instead of having to convince browser vendors to support your favorite specification, microformats add semantics to HTML through the CLASS attribute. And style it with CSS.

> New standards
 > by iamsure
 >
 > In your work at Opera, you have clearly paved a path that includes
 > going beyond the W3C standards. Whether it is WhatWG
 > implementations, or new functionality specific to Opera (2dgame),
 > you are pushing into new territory. Can you explain why W3C isn't
 > sufficient, and why efforts at Opera to expand beyond the standards
 > differ from Microsoft's embrace/extend model?

It's a fair question. The WhatWG was set up when it seemed as if W3C didn't care much about browsers anymore. That has definitely changed and work items from WhatWG are now channeled into W3C (e.g., XMLHttpRequest).

At Opera, we sometimes include experimental features before they have been standardized. When this happens they are labeled as such, but we still try to document them. For example, we support some Opera-only CSS properties for XML. If these features gain traction, we are happy to work with other organizations to standardize them. If they don't become popular, the features will most likely disappear.

 > Beyond HTML
 > by pr1000

 > How far can CSS be taken beyond the web page--that is,
 > have generalized or non-web specific features for such things
 > as page formatting or type setting? Do you plan/wish/hope to
 > take it farther than it currently is?

Yes, I think it's possible to take CSS further in several directions. I'm eager to see CSS being used in paper-based publishing and I joined the board of YesLogic — which makes the Prince XML to PDF converter — to make sure they added my favorite features. Bert and I used Prince to generate PDF from HTML and CSS sources for the third edition of our book. W3C just published a new Working Draft which describes features for printing, e.g., footnotes, cross-references, and even generated indexes.

For mobile units, I think Media Queries will be important. For example, they can express that large images should not be sent to mobile devices.

Another great opportunity for CSS is Web Applications. Just like documents, applications need to be styled and CSS is an intrinsic component of AJAX. The "AJAX" name sounds great, but allow me to propose a few alternate spellings that I find more accurate:

• AJACX: Asynchronous JavaScript, CSS and XMLHttpRequest
• ADJACS: Asynchronous DOM, JavaScript and CSS
• ADHJACS: Asynchronous DOM, HTML, JavaScript and CSS
• AJAHCS: Asynchronous JavaScript, HTML and CSS
• AJACS: Asynchronous JavaScript, HTML and CSS

Opera, Mozilla and Safari developers are collaborating in the WHAT WG and in W3C to make sure we have interoperable specifications for AJAX. I mean, ADHJACS.

 > by crush

 > Is the difficulty of producing a layout that consists of
 > three or more columns of equal height justification for
 > adding some new feature to the specification to make this easier?

I don't think so. CSS2 defines a table layout that can be used for this purpose. The problem is, and I'm repeating myself here, that the dominant browser doesn't support it. Adding yet more features to the specification wouldn't help.

 > How come, we um, lie?

Right. My name is, um, a bit troublesome to pronounce in English. But I'm a nice person who generally tells the truth. I often tell non-Norwegians that my first name is pronounced "howcome". That's close, but not quite. It does make for a great email address like howcome@opera.com, though.

So I may be a Lie, but I'm just a little white one :-)

You submitted questions for Håkon Wium Lie on June 20. Today we have his answers, not only to the (+5 moderated) questions we sent him, but to a bunch of others he thought would also be interesting to answer.

 > Where... by bcat24
 >
 > Do you think the W3C development process is too slow? I know that
 > you guys want everything to be perfect, but it seems to take far
 > longer than necessary. CSS 3 shows promise and I wouldn't want it
 > to die a slow death in standardization.

No, I don't think W3C is too slow. W3C isn't the bottleneck, browsers are. The dominant browser on the web hasn't been updated for years, and it doesn't make sense for specifications to get too far ahead. Rather, the CSS Working Group in W3C has focused on specification maintenance and achieving interoperability between implementations. This work is not so glamorous and some people — even within W3C — would prefer if they concentrate on new specifications. However, I think the focus on interoperability (which has resulted in CSS 2.1) has been crucial to the success of CSS.

CSS3 is a set of specifications that are developed more or less independently of each other. The best way to push a specification forward is to implement it. In the past year, we've seen some encouraging CSS3 implementations come along. For example, Mozilla supports multi-column layouts, Opera supports media queries, Prince supports cross-references and Safari supports borders and backgrounds. A few years from now, I think a select group of CSS3 modules will be interoperably supported in all browsers.

 > Why is CSS such a good idea but a pain to use?
 > by rar
 >
 > CSS is clearly very useful for separating style from content. But
 > apparently people tend to have problems when using it for layouts.
 > Would you say this is because people have not yet understood how to
 > properly do layout in CSS, or is it CSS that is lacking in this
 > area? What can be done to improve the situation? --- Would the web
 > benefit from HTML and CSS being complemented with some kind of
 > "layout language"?

I think layout and style should be tackled by the same language and the two are intertwined. Trying to split the two is like splitting the HTML specification in two, one specification describing inline elements and the other describing block elements. It's not worth the effort.

I think CSS is capable of describing beautiful and scalable layouts. The CSS Zen Garden has been a eye-opening showcase of what is possible today. If MS IE had supported CSS tables, another set of layouts would have been possible. So, there is still lots of potential in the existing CSS specifications which should be the next milestone. Beyond that, the CSS Working Group has started work on a new CSS3 module for advanced layout. Feedback is welcome.

 > CSS Evolution!
 > by eieken
 >
 > Is the wave of webpages designed completely in CSS what you
 > intially intended when you came up with CSS? Do you see that
 > changing? Is that good or bad?

I saw a clear need for a web style sheet language when proposing CSS in 1994. I also wanted CSS to fully describe the presentation of a web pages -- not just add some styling. All in all, I think it has turned out quite well. It has taken longer than I expected, but the scale -- due to the growth of the web -- is more than anyone could imagine.

I used "I" too many times in the previous paragraph. It's important to realize that CSS is a community effort rather that one man's work. Bert Bos joined me early and we worked out the initial designs on a whiteboard during the summer of 1995. The www-style mailing lists and the W3C CSS Working Group have also been crucial in ensuring the success of CSS.

If you're interested in the history of web style sheets, you'll find plenty of material in my PhD thesis on the subject.

 > Two questions (cut to 1.5 by editor Roblimo)
 > by Dolda2000

 > If you were allowed (perhaps by court order, which wouldn't be
 > unthinkable) to force Microsoft to do one (1) change in Internet
 > Explorer, what would that be?

I would force them to support one (1) single web page before shipping IE7, namely Acid2. By using a tiny amount of resources to get Acid2 right, Microsoft can save web designers and users endless amounts of frustration in the future. It would also be an honorable thing to do. This is what Microsoft's W3C representative wrote in 1998:

Microsoft has a deep commitment to working with the W3C on HTML and CSS. We have the first commercial implementation of HTML4, we were the first vendor anywhere to implement even portions of CSS, and we have put a tremendous amount of energy into seeing CSS mature to Level 2. We are still committed to complete implementations of the Recommendations of the W3C in this area (CSS and HTML and the DOM).

May I have one (1) more change? Please? Then I would make IE7 support TrueType downloadable fonts. Microsoft's record in fonts isn't that bad. They made their core fonts available for anyone to use, and IE supports downloadable fonts. Unfortunately, only the proprietary EOT format is supported. A few lines of code would be sufficient to support zipped TrueType fonts as well, and this would unleash a new wave of typography on the web. (To protect yourself, make sure you use a browser where author style sheets can be turned off — Shift-G in Opera). > As a bonus question: What do you think of Slashdot's CSS? ;)

The new design looks great! The style sheets behind the scene are more complex than what the average web page needs. But, we wouldn't expect anything average from Slashdot, would we?

> 6)  Opera
 > by taskforce
 >
 > Opera 9.0 seems to offer a lot of decent additions to Opera's
 > standards pool. How satisfied are you personally with the work the
 > team has done on implementing standards, and is there anything in
 > there you feel is superflous and anything you would have preferred
 > to see which wasn't in there?

I'm very proud of the standards support in Opera 9. Acid2 is an obvious favorite of mine and seeing that smiley face makes me very happy.

Among the more experimental features is support for Audio in HTML5. Web applications can now make sounds in a sensible way! Combined with the canvas element, developers can create Flash-like content without resorting to a proprietary format.

Having support for Bittorrent is also great. From a technical point of view, it makes much sense. Also, it's a political statement of sorts.

During the development of Opera9. Geir Ivarsøy, who founded Opera with Jon von Tetzchner, died after fighting cancer for years. Geir did a spectacular initial CSS implementation in Opera, thus convincing me to join the company. In music, the 9th is legendary. Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner and Mahler all did 9 symphonies. Opera 9 was Geir's last symphony.

> Included styles, aliases
 > by Spy der Mann
 >
 > I always wanted to have "included" substyles or "aliases" in my
 > CSS definition, to save redundancy.
 >
 > (For includes)
 >
 >     .class1 { color:#ff0000; }
 >     .class2 { background-color:#ffffff; }
 >     .class3 { include:class1,class2;font-weight:bold; }
 >
 > (For aliases)
 >
 >     @alias color1 #ff0000;
 >     @alias color2 #ffffff;
 >     @alias default_image url('/img/image1.jpg');
 >
 >     .class1 { color:color1; }
 >     .class2 { background-image:default_image;background-color:co lor2; }
 >
 > This way we could change colors or images for a whole webpage
 > by editing a reduced number of lines.
 >
 > Had you considered any of these ideas in the past? If so,
 > why were they rejected?

Yes, aliases and constants have been considered. As David Wheeler noted, "Any problem in computer science can be solved with another layer of indirection."

CSS is already an indirection. Instead of putting properties and values directly on elements, it associates properties and values with selectors. What you (and others) are proposing is to add another layer of indirection. By doing so, one could possible write shorter, more manageable style sheets. However, there are also some downsides. It requires a new syntactic construct (@alias) and implementations must be able to remember a list of aliases. What if aliases are defined in one style sheet and referenced in another -- should that work? If so, what if the first style sheet isn't available?

For CSS1, the downsides of aliases were considered more significant than the benefits.

 > Definition of pixel
 > by Sara Chan
 >
 > The word pixel meant "picture element", but CSS redefined it
 >to mean something quite different (a particular subtended angle
 >of view [w3.org]). This causes confusion: CSS pixels are not pixels.
 >(Indeed, I have seen misinformed comments on Slashdot due to
 >that confusion.)
 >
 > My question is this: why call the subtended angle a "pixel", instead of
 >something else (e.g. "subangle")? If CSS wanted to use the subtended
 >angle for something, that is fine, but calling it a pixel seems to follow
 >the approach of Humpty Dumpty "When I use a word, it means just
 >what I choose it to mean".

In most cases, a CSS pixel will be equal to a device pixel. But, as you point out, the definition of a CSS pixel will sometimes be different. For example, on a laser printer, one CSS pixel can be equal to 3x3 device pixels to avoid printing illegibly small text and images. I don't recall anyone ever proposing another name for it. Subangle? Personally, I think most people would prefer the pragmatic "px" to the non-intuitive "sa".

> Vertical CSS Support
 > by infestedsenses
 >
 > As a developer who works with CSS every day, I find one
 > complication that continues to bother me in my daily work.
 > Support for CSS has always been good on the horizontal scope,
 > but vertical positioning has always been quite complicated.
 > Alone the procedure to affix a footer to the bottom of a screen
 > in dependance of the amount of content is unnecessarily difficult,
 > spawning hackish solutions such as "footerStickAlt"
 > [themaninblue.com]. Centering an object in the dead center of a
 > page also requires strange procedures such as this one [wpdfd.com],
 > which still aren't ideal (try making the viewport really small). The old
 > table method provided much easier methods for this. What are your
 > thoughts on this and do you see improvement following in future
 > CSS revisions?

Indeed, the CSS formatting model allows more control horizontally than vertically. This is due to (typically) having a known width, but an unknown height. As such, the height is harder to deal with.

However, CSS2 fixed positioning allows you to place content relative to the viewport (which is CSS-speak for window) instead of the document. For example, by setting position: fixed; bottom: 0 on an element, it will stick to the bottom. This works in Opera, Safari and Mozilla-based browsers. IE6 doesn't support it, however. It remains to be seen if IE7 will support it.

> About Microsoft...
 > by Chabil Ha'
 >
 > With MS's next browser release (IE 7), you mentioned in other
 > interviews that their decision to not supprt CSS2 was more a political
 > decision than a mechanical one. Aside from their obvious desire to
 > dominate the world, what politics do you think are in play that make
 > them not want to conform to the standard, and what do you think would
 > change that landscape so that they would have some initiative to
 > fully support it?

Great question. It's quite clear that Microsoft has the resources and talent to support CSS2 fully in IE and that plenty of people have reminded them why this is important. So, why don't they do it? The fundamental reason, I believe, is that standards don't benefit monopolists. Accepted, well-functioning, standards lower the barrier of entry to a market, and is therefore a threat to a monopolist.

From that perspective, it makes sense to leave CSS2 half-implemented. You can claim support (and many journalists will believe you), and you also ensure that no-one can use the unimplemented (or worse: buggily implemented) features of the standard. The only way to change the equation is to remind Microsoft how embarrassing it is to offer a sub-standard browser. And to use better browsers.

Another reason for not making a IE too good is that it will compete with Windows. A modern browser is an application platform; the combination of HTML, JavaScript, CSS and DOM allows developers to target the web instead of Windows, Linux, or Mac.

> From linvir
 > How long since you last used Linux?

I'm using it right now. Ubuntu on a IBM Thinkpad X41 is the environment I live in. Ubuntu rocks -- especially with Opera on top! (And Emacs right underneath.)

 > From Rob T Firefly (844560)
 > Why the curly brackets?

The initial CSS proposal didn't use them, instead relying on newlines to separate statements. TimBL didn't really like that and I therefore borrowed the curly braces from the C programming language. The syntax for comments came along as well. I think it works quite well.

 > why not XML?
 > by slashdot.org
 > Simple question (hopefully simple answer ;-)): why
 > did you not use XML?

The simple answer is that the development of CSS preceded XML by a year or so. However, if XML had been available, would we have used it? Probably not. And I suspect Brendan Eich of JavaScript fame would answer the same way on behalf of his language.

XML is a great syntax for structured data, but not suitable for all languages. Still, I think the SGML-based syntax for the FOSI style sheet language.

 > Padding
 > by Anonymous Coward

 > Why was the decision made to make padding apply outside
 > of the width of a 'box', rather than inside, which would seem
 > to make more sense?

It makes sense in some situations, but not in others. For example, when a child element is set to width: 100%, I don't think it should cover the padding of its parent. The box-sizing property in CSS3 addresses this issue. Ideally, the issue should have been addressed earlier, though.

> by nuzak

 > why not float:

 > DSSSL had this sort of thing solved before HTML even existed,
 > let alone CSS. But scheme is too scary and icky, and the W3C
 > believes in a principle of least power, so CSS has to be fully declarative,
 > static, and crippled until patched later.

You're wrong about DSSSL -- it didn't support floating text (as in having text wrap around images) at all. And the DSSSL specification only became publically available around 1996, years after HTML.

> by MagicM

 > How frustrating is it to write a specification knowing
 > that you're at the browser vendors' mercy?

That's part of the game. I don't think any specification has a birthright to be fully supported by all browsers. There should be healthy competition between different specifications. I believe simple, author-friendly specifications will prevail in this environment.

Microformats are another way of developing new formats. Instead of having to convince browser vendors to support your favorite specification, microformats add semantics to HTML through the CLASS attribute. And style it with CSS.

> New standards
 > by iamsure
 >
 > In your work at Opera, you have clearly paved a path that includes
 > going beyond the W3C standards. Whether it is WhatWG
 > implementations, or new functionality specific to Opera (2dgame),
 > you are pushing into new territory. Can you explain why W3C isn't
 > sufficient, and why efforts at Opera to expand beyond the standards
 > differ from Microsoft's embrace/extend model?

It's a fair question. The WhatWG was set up when it seemed as if W3C didn't care much about browsers anymore. That has definitely changed and work items from WhatWG are now channeled into W3C (e.g., XMLHttpRequest).

At Opera, we sometimes include experimental features before they have been standardized. When this happens they are labeled as such, but we still try to document them. For example, we support some Opera-only CSS properties for XML. If these features gain traction, we are happy to work with other organizations to standardize them. If they don't become popular, the features will most likely disappear.

 > Beyond HTML
 > by pr1000

 > How far can CSS be taken beyond the web page--that is,
 > have generalized or non-web specific features for such things
 > as page formatting or type setting? Do you plan/wish/hope to
 > take it farther than it currently is?

Yes, I think it's possible to take CSS further in several directions. I'm eager to see CSS being used in paper-based publishing and I joined the board of YesLogic — which makes the Prince XML to PDF converter — to make sure they added my favorite features. Bert and I used Prince to generate PDF from HTML and CSS sources for the third edition of our book. W3C just published a new Working Draft which describes features for printing, e.g., footnotes, cross-references, and even generated indexes.

For mobile units, I think Media Queries will be important. For example, they can express that large images should not be sent to mobile devices.

Another great opportunity for CSS is Web Applications. Just like documents, applications need to be styled and CSS is an intrinsic component of AJAX. The "AJAX" name sounds great, but allow me to propose a few alternate spellings that I find more accurate:

• AJACX: Asynchronous JavaScript, CSS and XMLHttpRequest
• ADJACS: Asynchronous DOM, JavaScript and CSS
• ADHJACS: Asynchronous DOM, HTML, JavaScript and CSS
• AJAHCS: Asynchronous JavaScript, HTML and CSS
• AJACS: Asynchronous JavaScript, HTML and CSS

Opera, Mozilla and Safari developers are collaborating in the WHAT WG and in W3C to make sure we have interoperable specifications for AJAX. I mean, ADHJACS.

 > by crush

 > Is the difficulty of producing a layout that consists of
 > three or more columns of equal height justification for
 > adding some new feature to the specification to make this easier?

I don't think so. CSS2 defines a table layout that can be used for this purpose. The problem is, and I'm repeating myself here, that the dominant browser doesn't support it. Adding yet more features to the specification wouldn't help.

 > How come, we um, lie?

Right. My name is, um, a bit troublesome to pronounce in English. But I'm a nice person who generally tells the truth. I often tell non-Norwegians that my first name is pronounced "howcome". That's close, but not quite. It does make for a great email address like howcome@opera.com, though.

So I may be a Lie, but I'm just a little white one :-)

You submitted questions for Håkon Wium Lie on June 20. Today we have his answers, not only to the (+5 moderated) questions we sent him, but to a bunch of others he thought would also be interesting to answer.

 > Where... by bcat24
 >
 > Do you think the W3C development process is too slow? I know that
 > you guys want everything to be perfect, but it seems to take far
 > longer than necessary. CSS 3 shows promise and I wouldn't want it
 > to die a slow death in standardization.

No, I don't think W3C is too slow. W3C isn't the bottleneck, browsers are. The dominant browser on the web hasn't been updated for years, and it doesn't make sense for specifications to get too far ahead. Rather, the CSS Working Group in W3C has focused on specification maintenance and achieving interoperability between implementations. This work is not so glamorous and some people — even within W3C — would prefer if they concentrate on new specifications. However, I think the focus on interoperability (which has resulted in CSS 2.1) has been crucial to the success of CSS.

CSS3 is a set of specifications that are developed more or less independently of each other. The best way to push a specification forward is to implement it. In the past year, we've seen some encouraging CSS3 implementations come along. For example, Mozilla supports multi-column layouts, Opera supports media queries, Prince supports cross-references and Safari supports borders and backgrounds. A few years from now, I think a select group of CSS3 modules will be interoperably supported in all browsers.

 > Why is CSS such a good idea but a pain to use?
 > by rar
 >
 > CSS is clearly very useful for separating style from content. But
 > apparently people tend to have problems when using it for layouts.
 > Would you say this is because people have not yet understood how to
 > properly do layout in CSS, or is it CSS that is lacking in this
 > area? What can be done to improve the situation? --- Would the web
 > benefit from HTML and CSS being complemented with some kind of
 > "layout language"?

I think layout and style should be tackled by the same language and the two are intertwined. Trying to split the two is like splitting the HTML specification in two, one specification describing inline elements and the other describing block elements. It's not worth the effort.

I think CSS is capable of describing beautiful and scalable layouts. The CSS Zen Garden has been a eye-opening showcase of what is possible today. If MS IE had supported CSS tables, another set of layouts would have been possible. So, there is still lots of potential in the existing CSS specifications which should be the next milestone. Beyond that, the CSS Working Group has started work on a new CSS3 module for advanced layout. Feedback is welcome.

 > CSS Evolution!
 > by eieken
 >
 > Is the wave of webpages designed completely in CSS what you
 > intially intended when you came up with CSS? Do you see that
 > changing? Is that good or bad?

I saw a clear need for a web style sheet language when proposing CSS in 1994. I also wanted CSS to fully describe the presentation of a web pages -- not just add some styling. All in all, I think it has turned out quite well. It has taken longer than I expected, but the scale -- due to the growth of the web -- is more than anyone could imagine.

I used "I" too many times in the previous paragraph. It's important to realize that CSS is a community effort rather that one man's work. Bert Bos joined me early and we worked out the initial designs on a whiteboard during the summer of 1995. The www-style mailing lists and the W3C CSS Working Group have also been crucial in ensuring the success of CSS.

If you're interested in the history of web style sheets, you'll find plenty of material in my PhD thesis on the subject.

 > Two questions (cut to 1.5 by editor Roblimo)
 > by Dolda2000

 > If you were allowed (perhaps by court order, which wouldn't be
 > unthinkable) to force Microsoft to do one (1) change in Internet
 > Explorer, what would that be?

I would force them to support one (1) single web page before shipping IE7, namely Acid2. By using a tiny amount of resources to get Acid2 right, Microsoft can save web designers and users endless amounts of frustration in the future. It would also be an honorable thing to do. This is what Microsoft's W3C representative wrote in 1998:

Microsoft has a deep commitment to working with the W3C on HTML and CSS. We have the first commercial implementation of HTML4, we were the first vendor anywhere to implement even portions of CSS, and we have put a tremendous amount of energy into seeing CSS mature to Level 2. We are still committed to complete implementations of the Recommendations of the W3C in this area (CSS and HTML and the DOM).

May I have one (1) more change? Please? Then I would make IE7 support TrueType downloadable fonts. Microsoft's record in fonts isn't that bad. They made their core fonts available for anyone to use, and IE supports downloadable fonts. Unfortunately, only the proprietary EOT format is supported. A few lines of code would be sufficient to support zipped TrueType fonts as well, and this would unleash a new wave of typography on the web. (To protect yourself, make sure you use a browser where author style sheets can be turned off — Shift-G in Opera). > As a bonus question: What do you think of Slashdot's CSS? ;)

The new design looks great! The style sheets behind the scene are more complex than what the average web page needs. But, we wouldn't expect anything average from Slashdot, would we?

> 6)  Opera
 > by taskforce
 >
 > Opera 9.0 seems to offer a lot of decent additions to Opera's
 > standards pool. How satisfied are you personally with the work the
 > team has done on implementing standards, and is there anything in
 > there you feel is superflous and anything you would have preferred
 > to see which wasn't in there?

I'm very proud of the standards support in Opera 9. Acid2 is an obvious favorite of mine and seeing that smiley face makes me very happy.

Among the more experimental features is support for Audio in HTML5. Web applications can now make sounds in a sensible way! Combined with the canvas element, developers can create Flash-like content without resorting to a proprietary format.

Having support for Bittorrent is also great. From a technical point of view, it makes much sense. Also, it's a political statement of sorts.

During the development of Opera9. Geir Ivarsøy, who founded Opera with Jon von Tetzchner, died after fighting cancer for years. Geir did a spectacular initial CSS implementation in Opera, thus convincing me to join the company. In music, the 9th is legendary. Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner and Mahler all did 9 symphonies. Opera 9 was Geir's last symphony.

> Included styles, aliases
 > by Spy der Mann
 >
 > I always wanted to have "included" substyles or "aliases" in my
 > CSS definition, to save redundancy.
 >
 > (For includes)
 >
 >     .class1 { color:#ff0000; }
 >     .class2 { background-color:#ffffff; }
 >     .class3 { include:class1,class2;font-weight:bold; }
 >
 > (For aliases)
 >
 >     @alias color1 #ff0000;
 >     @alias color2 #ffffff;
 >     @alias default_image url('/img/image1.jpg');
 >
 >     .class1 { color:color1; }
 >     .class2 { background-image:default_image;background-color:co lor2; }
 >
 > This way we could change colors or images for a whole webpage
 > by editing a reduced number of lines.
 >
 > Had you considered any of these ideas in the past? If so,
 > why were they rejected?

Yes, aliases and constants have been considered. As David Wheeler noted, "Any problem in computer science can be solved with another layer of indirection."

CSS is already an indirection. Instead of putting properties and values directly on elements, it associates properties and values with selectors. What you (and others) are proposing is to add another layer of indirection. By doing so, one could possible write shorter, more manageable style sheets. However, there are also some downsides. It requires a new syntactic construct (@alias) and implementations must be able to remember a list of aliases. What if aliases are defined in one style sheet and referenced in another -- should that work? If so, what if the first style sheet isn't available?

For CSS1, the downsides of aliases were considered more significant than the benefits.

 > Definition of pixel
 > by Sara Chan
 >
 > The word pixel meant "picture element", but CSS redefined it
 >to mean something quite different (a particular subtended angle
 >of view [w3.org]). This causes confusion: CSS pixels are not pixels.
 >(Indeed, I have seen misinformed comments on Slashdot due to
 >that confusion.)
 >
 > My question is this: why call the subtended angle a "pixel", instead of
 >something else (e.g. "subangle")? If CSS wanted to use the subtended
 >angle for something, that is fine, but calling it a pixel seems to follow
 >the approach of Humpty Dumpty "When I use a word, it means just
 >what I choose it to mean".

In most cases, a CSS pixel will be equal to a device pixel. But, as you point out, the definition of a CSS pixel will sometimes be different. For example, on a laser printer, one CSS pixel can be equal to 3x3 device pixels to avoid printing illegibly small text and images. I don't recall anyone ever proposing another name for it. Subangle? Personally, I think most people would prefer the pragmatic "px" to the non-intuitive "sa".

> Vertical CSS Support
 > by infestedsenses
 >
 > As a developer who works with CSS every day, I find one
 > complication that continues to bother me in my daily work.
 > Support for CSS has always been good on the horizontal scope,
 > but vertical positioning has always been quite complicated.
 > Alone the procedure to affix a footer to the bottom of a screen
 > in dependance of the amount of content is unnecessarily difficult,
 > spawning hackish solutions such as "footerStickAlt"
 > [themaninblue.com]. Centering an object in the dead center of a
 > page also requires strange procedures such as this one [wpdfd.com],
 > which still aren't ideal (try making the viewport really small). The old
 > table method provided much easier methods for this. What are your
 > thoughts on this and do you see improvement following in future
 > CSS revisions?

Indeed, the CSS formatting model allows more control horizontally than vertically. This is due to (typically) having a known width, but an unknown height. As such, the height is harder to deal with.

However, CSS2 fixed positioning allows you to place content relative to the viewport (which is CSS-speak for window) instead of the document. For example, by setting position: fixed; bottom: 0 on an element, it will stick to the bottom. This works in Opera, Safari and Mozilla-based browsers. IE6 doesn't support it, however. It remains to be seen if IE7 will support it.

> About Microsoft...
 > by Chabil Ha'
 >
 > With MS's next browser release (IE 7), you mentioned in other
 > interviews that their decision to not supprt CSS2 was more a political
 > decision than a mechanical one. Aside from their obvious desire to
 > dominate the world, what politics do you think are in play that make
 > them not want to conform to the standard, and what do you think would
 > change that landscape so that they would have some initiative to
 > fully support it?

Great question. It's quite clear that Microsoft has the resources and talent to support CSS2 fully in IE and that plenty of people have reminded them why this is important. So, why don't they do it? The fundamental reason, I believe, is that standards don't benefit monopolists. Accepted, well-functioning, standards lower the barrier of entry to a market, and is therefore a threat to a monopolist.

From that perspective, it makes sense to leave CSS2 half-implemented. You can claim support (and many journalists will believe you), and you also ensure that no-one can use the unimplemented (or worse: buggily implemented) features of the standard. The only way to change the equation is to remind Microsoft how embarrassing it is to offer a sub-standard browser. And to use better browsers.

Another reason for not making a IE too good is that it will compete with Windows. A modern browser is an application platform; the combination of HTML, JavaScript, CSS and DOM allows developers to target the web instead of Windows, Linux, or Mac.

> From linvir
 > How long since you last used Linux?

I'm using it right now. Ubuntu on a IBM Thinkpad X41 is the environment I live in. Ubuntu rocks -- especially with Opera on top! (And Emacs right underneath.)

 > From Rob T Firefly (844560)
 > Why the curly brackets?

The initial CSS proposal didn't use them, instead relying on newlines to separate statements. TimBL didn't really like that and I therefore borrowed the curly braces from the C programming language. The syntax for comments came along as well. I think it works quite well.

 > why not XML?
 > by slashdot.org
 > Simple question (hopefully simple answer ;-)): why
 > did you not use XML?

The simple answer is that the development of CSS preceded XML by a year or so. However, if XML had been available, would we have used it? Probably not. And I suspect Brendan Eich of JavaScript fame would answer the same way on behalf of his language.

XML is a great syntax for structured data, but not suitable for all languages. Still, I think the SGML-based syntax for the FOSI style sheet language.

 > Padding
 > by Anonymous Coward

 > Why was the decision made to make padding apply outside
 > of the width of a 'box', rather than inside, which would seem
 > to make more sense?

It makes sense in some situations, but not in others. For example, when a child element is set to width: 100%, I don't think it should cover the padding of its parent. The box-sizing property in CSS3 addresses this issue. Ideally, the issue should have been addressed earlier, though.

> by nuzak

 > why not float:

 > DSSSL had this sort of thing solved before HTML even existed,
 > let alone CSS. But scheme is too scary and icky, and the W3C
 > believes in a principle of least power, so CSS has to be fully declarative,
 > static, and crippled until patched later.

You're wrong about DSSSL -- it didn't support floating text (as in having text wrap around images) at all. And the DSSSL specification only became publically available around 1996, years after HTML.

> by MagicM

 > How frustrating is it to write a specification knowing
 > that you're at the browser vendors' mercy?

That's part of the game. I don't think any specification has a birthright to be fully supported by all browsers. There should be healthy competition between different specifications. I believe simple, author-friendly specifications will prevail in this environment.

Microformats are another way of developing new formats. Instead of having to convince browser vendors to support your favorite specification, microformats add semantics to HTML through the CLASS attribute. And style it with CSS.

> New standards
 > by iamsure
 >
 > In your work at Opera, you have clearly paved a path that includes
 > going beyond the W3C standards. Whether it is WhatWG
 > implementations, or new functionality specific to Opera (2dgame),
 > you are pushing into new territory. Can you explain why W3C isn't
 > sufficient, and why efforts at Opera to expand beyond the standards
 > differ from Microsoft's embrace/extend model?

It's a fair question. The WhatWG was set up when it seemed as if W3C didn't care much about browsers anymore. That has definitely changed and work items from WhatWG are now channeled into W3C (e.g., XMLHttpRequest).

At Opera, we sometimes include experimental features before they have been standardized. When this happens they are labeled as such, but we still try to document them. For example, we support some Opera-only CSS properties for XML. If these features gain traction, we are happy to work with other organizations to standardize them. If they don't become popular, the features will most likely disappear.

 > Beyond HTML
 > by pr1000

 > How far can CSS be taken beyond the web page--that is,
 > have generalized or non-web specific features for such things
 > as page formatting or type setting? Do you plan/wish/hope to
 > take it farther than it currently is?

Yes, I think it's possible to take CSS further in several directions. I'm eager to see CSS being used in paper-based publishing and I joined the board of YesLogic — which makes the Prince XML to PDF converter — to make sure they added my favorite features. Bert and I used Prince to generate PDF from HTML and CSS sources for the third edition of our book. W3C just published a new Working Draft which describes features for printing, e.g., footnotes, cross-references, and even generated indexes.

For mobile units, I think Media Queries will be important. For example, they can express that large images should not be sent to mobile devices.

Another great opportunity for CSS is Web Applications. Just like documents, applications need to be styled and CSS is an intrinsic component of AJAX. The "AJAX" name sounds great, but allow me to propose a few alternate spellings that I find more accurate:

• AJACX: Asynchronous JavaScript, CSS and XMLHttpRequest
• ADJACS: Asynchronous DOM, JavaScript and CSS
• ADHJACS: Asynchronous DOM, HTML, JavaScript and CSS
• AJAHCS: Asynchronous JavaScript, HTML and CSS
• AJACS: Asynchronous JavaScript, HTML and CSS

Opera, Mozilla and Safari developers are collaborating in the WHAT WG and in W3C to make sure we have interoperable specifications for AJAX. I mean, ADHJACS.

 > by crush

 > Is the difficulty of producing a layout that consists of
 > three or more columns of equal height justification for
 > adding some new feature to the specification to make this easier?

I don't think so. CSS2 defines a table layout that can be used for this purpose. The problem is, and I'm repeating myself here, that the dominant browser doesn't support it. Adding yet more features to the specification wouldn't help.

 > How come, we um, lie?

Right. My name is, um, a bit troublesome to pronounce in English. But I'm a nice person who generally tells the truth. I often tell non-Norwegians that my first name is pronounced "howcome". That's close, but not quite. It does make for a great email address like howcome@opera.com, though.

So I may be a Lie, but I'm just a little white one :-)

Back in 1994, while working for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Håkon Wium Lie (pronounced more or less "how come") proposed the idea of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Got a CSS question? An Ajax question? Want to know why Håkon loves Free Software so much? Or something else, related or not? Go ahead and ask -- after checking some of the links above, so you don't duplicate questions he's answered in other interviews or in articles he's written. (One question per post, please.) We hope to post his answers Friday.

Nurgled writes "After teasing us for months with betas and snapshots, Opera Software have finally released version 9.0 of their web browser. The new version features correct ACID2 rendering, native support for the SVG Basic profile, a built-in BitTorrent client, support for Microsoft's designmode and contenteditable extensions, per-site configuration, Atom support, Web Forms 2.0 support, Canvas support (and some Opera-specific extensions), NTLM authentication, some support of parts of CSS3 and lots more. The full changelog is available." p14nd4 adds "And for you *nix users, it hasn't hit their .deb repository quite yet, but there are regular installers available for the major players, including a fixed Ubuntu installer and an x86 Solaris version."

Nurgled writes "After teasing us for months with betas and snapshots, Opera Software have finally released version 9.0 of their web browser. The new version features correct ACID2 rendering, native support for the SVG Basic profile, a built-in BitTorrent client, support for Microsoft's designmode and contenteditable extensions, per-site configuration, Atom support, Web Forms 2.0 support, Canvas support (and some Opera-specific extensions), NTLM authentication, some support of parts of CSS3 and lots more. The full changelog is available." p14nd4 adds "And for you *nix users, it hasn't hit their .deb repository quite yet, but there are regular installers available for the major players, including a fixed Ubuntu installer and an x86 Solaris version."

Nurgled writes "After teasing us for months with betas and snapshots, Opera Software have finally released version 9.0 of their web browser. The new version features correct ACID2 rendering, native support for the SVG Basic profile, a built-in BitTorrent client, support for Microsoft's designmode and contenteditable extensions, per-site configuration, Atom support, Web Forms 2.0 support, Canvas support (and some Opera-specific extensions), NTLM authentication, some support of parts of CSS3 and lots more. The full changelog is available." p14nd4 adds "And for you *nix users, it hasn't hit their .deb repository quite yet, but there are regular installers available for the major players, including a fixed Ubuntu installer and an x86 Solaris version."

worb writes "One of the two founders of Opera Software, Geir Ivarsoy, recently passed away after a long battle with cancer. His funeral yesterday was attended by Opera employees who paid their last respects to their former lead programmer. While Opera hasn't had the same success as Firefox on the desktop, it has had considerable success in the mobile phone market due to its speed and small footprint, combined with excellent standards compliance and innovative features."

dxprog writes "Opera has announced that they and Nintendo are going in together to create a web browser for the DS. The browser, based on Opera's core engine, will take advantage of the system's two screens and the touchscreen to provide on-the-go portable internet access. From the article: 'Within just five seconds of turning on the system, the Nintendo DS is already fully operational. This makes it the ideal device to enable people to swiftly obtain the latest information from the internet, wherever they are.'" Update: 02/15 15:50 GMT by Z : More information about the browser and game announcements available from Gamasutra, and Iwata's aim that they'll hit 10 Million DS units sold is reported on the Next Generation site.

ZarK writes "Technical Preview 2 of the upcoming Opera 9.0 browser is now available for download. In addition to the general bugfix and rendering improvements there's also new features, like x-platform type widgets, improved content blocking, bittorrent support, thumbnail preview of tabs and more. Improved functionality also comes in the fact that a good lot of the scripts from userscripts.org will now work, advanced settings have improved in opera:config, and more browser customization is available at the opera community. However, some clear indications that this is still an alpha release is the experimental support for NTLM which breaks the proxy functionality for some users, and the fact that widgets are always on top."

ZarK writes "Technical Preview 2 of the upcoming Opera 9.0 browser is now available for download. In addition to the general bugfix and rendering improvements there's also new features, like x-platform type widgets, improved content blocking, bittorrent support, thumbnail preview of tabs and more. Improved functionality also comes in the fact that a good lot of the scripts from userscripts.org will now work, advanced settings have improved in opera:config, and more browser customization is available at the opera community. However, some clear indications that this is still an alpha release is the experimental support for NTLM which breaks the proxy functionality for some users, and the fact that widgets are always on top."

Back in 2005 (last week) we sent Opera Software CEO Jon von Tetzchner twelve of your questions. This year (this week), we have his answers. Enjoy!

1) Re:Competing vs Free Open Source Product
by CSMastermind (847625)

Some have suggested that Microsoft should buy the Opera browser. How do you feel about this? If they did, would you plan to continue with work on the browser? Would you ever work for Microsoft?

Jon von Tetzchner:

We have been competing with Microsoft for a long time and I have not felt that they have always fought fairly. I would be disappointed if we were to end up in their hands and I find that very unlikely. I believe a lot of people at Opera would find them selves other work and that would include me.

2) What can we look forward to?
by robyannetta (820243)

I've been pimping Firefox since version 0.7 but have recently moved to Opera because Firefox doesn't natively support some things that Opera does:

local.google.com Native user agent switching
Opera 9's upcoming Acid2 compatibilty
Eye candy and general coolness factors

Can you give us a taste of new, unannounced features we'll see in future versions?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Thanks for using Opera. You have moved from one good browser to another. :)

There is a lot of new things coming in Merlin. We continue focusing on making Opera even smaller and faster, while adding a lot of useful, new features. Some of these features are by request from our user community, so feel free to add your own requests.

A lot of the focus is on improving what we have got. Our users want us to do this and we want to do this. This means that we will continue to focus on making Opera work faster and better with all the sites out there. We will continue to innovate new features that makes your browsing more pleasant. We aim to give you more control over your browsing. The idea is that you should feel the browser has been made for you. This is one of the reasons why we have so many different ways to do the same thing, as people are different and have different ways of working.

We will also work on improving the other parts of the program, such as the mail client, IRC client, RSS, News (nntp), etc. Each of these parts should follow the rule of being small, fast and user friendly.

3) Market growth?
by sheridan3003 (165213)

Do you find that the majority of Opera users are on the IT side of things, and if so how do you plan to get more users who are the "typical user", or only use their computer at work for their assigned tasks? Since IE is embedded when they get their new machine out of the box, how are you introducing Opera to users that probably have a limited understanding that they can have a different browser, or even more than one browser on their machine?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Our goal is to increase our user base significantly. Our user base in general has a higher degree of people which use the Internet extensively. Most of them have tried every other browser before choosing Opera. We consider it very important to focus on keeping our users happy and build from there. There is nothing better than a happy user and we will do what we can to innovate and push the limits to what you can expect in a browser. At the same time we will also try to remove any barriers for new users and make it easy for them to migrate to Opera.

In addition to this we will work on our distribution and marketing, of course, but nothing really beats a happy user that tells his friends and family.

4) Would you sell to Microsoft?
by lilmouse (310335)

Recently someone suggested that MS should simply buy Opera as a web browser for Vista. What do you think of that idea? Would you sell?

Jon von Tetzchner:

I am not interested in selling out to Microsoft. However, if Microsoft is interested in including Opera with Windows, we would be happy to provide them with it. I do believe that would be positive for the web in general.

5) Feature thieves
by tehshen (794722)

Opera has been an innovative browser for some time; it was one of the first to offer popup blocking, tabs (or MDI of some description), sessions, mouse gestures, and so on. However, since then, other browsers have implemented them as well; Firefox has extensions offering mouse gestures and sessions, and popup blocking and tabs are now commonplace. After offering so many features, would you prefer browsers such as Firefox and IE to come up with their own ideas instead of taking them from other browsers, or prefer the sharing of ideas so the web is better off overall?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Although our competitors have opened their eyes to some of our features, many are still only to be found in Opera and we aim to continue adding new ones. I am happy that we are considered the most innovate browser company and that is something we will be working hard to maintain. It is quite flattering that our features are being copied like that and I would prefer us to be in the position of being copied and not the other way around.

6) Google as a search partner?
by furnk (935156)

Can you offer more information on the terms of the recently announced agreement with Google?

What exactly is a "major presence"? Was Google just the obvious choice because of its scope, or is there some flirting going on in the hopes of a more lasting relationship?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Google provides what many people consider to be the best search engine. Our goal is to provide our users with the best solutions available, so Google was a natural choice, although there are other good choices out there.

The latest announcement about our agreement with Google with regards to Opera Mobile and Opera Mini states: "Opera will make Google Search a major part of the browser`s home screen." That means just that. Google search will be easy to find.

Google is an important partner of Opera and we hope to continue our cooperation into the future. Do not read anything more into that. It just means that we will always strive to get good partners for us to provide a strong product and thus increase our market share.

7) One critical thing missing from Opera...
by JaguarSavages (558510)

Better extensions/plugins. Firefox has earned great acclaim for its dynamic extension support. Extensions such as Fasterfox, Adblock, Web Developer, and many others are the sole reason people use Firefox over Opera (or any other browser). I know Opera is working to help unify the Netscape plugin API, but the upcoming version 9 doesn't appear to have anything that can match Firefox's extension capabilities. When will we see Opera support plugin/extensions as powerful as Firefox's?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Opera does have quite extensive extension capabilities today. User Javascipt is one such example. This is something we first used when we made the Bork version of Opera. We have later added this as a user feature and there are already more than 100 scripts available from the developer community. You can find a lot on userjs.org. Many of these script are very powerful.

Our concern with regards to extensions has been security and general usability. We have seen the number of security issues Microsoft has struggled with and many of them have been related to the APIs between the different applications. However, we do see a demand and we do tend to listen to demands from our users.

8) Will Opera ever go Open Source?
by PenguinBoyDave (806137)

I like Opera...in fact, I have stopped using Firefox in favor of Opera for reasons mentioned in someone elses question. Would you ever consider going back to charging for the browser, yet making it Open Source, and offering support for the paid version?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Thanks for choosing Opera. We apprieciate it. :)

We aim to keep Opera free. Our goal is to increase our market share and we have now taken a big step forward by making Opera free without a banner. We have already seen a good increase in downloads and we are adding significant resources to work on Opera in general and on the desktop.

I do not believe that making Opera open source would benefit us all that much. I do not think it has benefitted Netscape much either. I believe that we should work as closely with the community as possible and find ways to enable the community to engage and influence what we do to an even greater extent. I do not think that going open source would make us more efficient.

9) Web developers and Opera "testing"
by bushboy (112290)

I've worked in a few high profile companies in the UK who are all very serious about adhering to web standards, checking all designs in internet explorer, firefox and safari, but I've yet to encounter a company who will ensure that Opera renders page layouts correctly.

What level of market share would you say is required by Opera for web developers to ensure their layouts render correctly ?

Jon von Tetzchner:

IMHO, it is best for web developers to focus on following web standards. This still leaves them with having to code for IE, but most of the time, this will lead to the fastest and best result. I also think that is absolutely necessary as the web evolves from being desktop only to being cross-platform and cross-device.

I believe that web developers should strive to test with as many browsers as possible and that Opera should be part of that as one of the major browsers in the market. Very many sites are already testing with Opera as we do have a significant market share, with between 10 and 15 million active desktop users and more than 20 million mobile deployments so far.

10) Future of free version?
by simetra (155655)

Hi
I love Opera and bought it... several years ago, then a recent upgrade. THEN, you made it free!!!

So, that makes me think, maybe you made the PC version free, and are going to concentrate on the mobile versions, which you probably really make money on. Does this mean that the free PC version will stagnate? Or will future versions be built, with fun new features?

Also... how about a new logo? Or maybe a cross-marketing deal with Oprah?

Jon von Tetzchner:

We are increasing our efforts on the desktop as well as on mobile and other markets. We have big plans for our desktop version, so do not worry, you can expect even more in the future as we are adding programmers to work on the desktop as well as in the core, which benefits all versions of Opera.

No new logo is planned. Our feeling is that the current logo works well and it has been built over years. It is already being used by partners all across the world in promoting the fact that Opera comes with their products.

We have not plans for a cross-marketing deal with Oprah, but maybe it makes sense? :)

11) Bug tracking, developer tools and HTML/CSS/JS
by smurfsurf (892933)

1. Opera Bug Tracking System My experience with Opera's bug tracking system are rather frustrating. I can not check if some bug is already known (describing a bug and creating a test case is time consuming). Also, I reported some things and never ever got any feedback besides an automatic email. I do not know if Opera considers it a bug, if it is not a bug but an error on my side, if someone works on it, if it was fixed, simply nothing comes back. The Opera BTS is a black hole, and since some time now, I do not feel like making the effort to report bugs.

Do you plan to open up the BTS or at least allow the submitter to view the ticket? Or enhance the feedback?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Your feedback is well received. The BTS works very well for internal use, but I can understand that it is not optimal for those that would like to do more than just report an issue. We will discuss this internally and see what we can do. We still want it to be possible for people to register bugs without having to have an account in our system.

2. Developer Tools

How about a DOM Inspector (and a Javascript Debugger)? Firefox's DOM Inspector and XMLHttpRequest Monitor are dearly missing in Opera.

There are some excellent third party tools available (please see nontroppo.org/wiki/WebDevToolbar for a good starting point). We are also actively working on extending built-in solutions and there are some improvements with regards to that in Merlin as well. This is something we take very seriously as more and more people are using Opera to build applications.

3. HTML/CSS/JS

Any word on opacity support? On a Richtext Editing component?

Both are part of Merlin.

12) Norwegian babes
by HonkyLips (654494)

From previous Opera related posts on Slashdot, it has come to my attention that you have some real babes working for you in Norway. Are any of them single and if so, would they be interested in dating a guy who reads slashdot? BTW I use Safari but I can be persuaded to switch...

Jon von Tetzchner:

I must admit to not having total control over who of our employees are currently single and who are not, but I am sure some of our employees are single. However, who they date is clearly up to them.

I believe most people working at Opera read Slashdot either frequently or now and then. We are a very technical bunch.

Happy New Year to everybody at Slashdot! May the new year be very exciting and positive and peaceful!

-- Regards/Vennlig hilsen/Kær kvedja...
Jon S. von Tetzchner
Opera Software

Opera's Vision: www.opera.com/company/vision/

Back in 2005 (last week) we sent Opera Software CEO Jon von Tetzchner twelve of your questions. This year (this week), we have his answers. Enjoy!

1) Re:Competing vs Free Open Source Product
by CSMastermind (847625)

Some have suggested that Microsoft should buy the Opera browser. How do you feel about this? If they did, would you plan to continue with work on the browser? Would you ever work for Microsoft?

Jon von Tetzchner:

We have been competing with Microsoft for a long time and I have not felt that they have always fought fairly. I would be disappointed if we were to end up in their hands and I find that very unlikely. I believe a lot of people at Opera would find them selves other work and that would include me.

2) What can we look forward to?
by robyannetta (820243)

I've been pimping Firefox since version 0.7 but have recently moved to Opera because Firefox doesn't natively support some things that Opera does:

local.google.com Native user agent switching
Opera 9's upcoming Acid2 compatibilty
Eye candy and general coolness factors

Can you give us a taste of new, unannounced features we'll see in future versions?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Thanks for using Opera. You have moved from one good browser to another. :)

There is a lot of new things coming in Merlin. We continue focusing on making Opera even smaller and faster, while adding a lot of useful, new features. Some of these features are by request from our user community, so feel free to add your own requests.

A lot of the focus is on improving what we have got. Our users want us to do this and we want to do this. This means that we will continue to focus on making Opera work faster and better with all the sites out there. We will continue to innovate new features that makes your browsing more pleasant. We aim to give you more control over your browsing. The idea is that you should feel the browser has been made for you. This is one of the reasons why we have so many different ways to do the same thing, as people are different and have different ways of working.

We will also work on improving the other parts of the program, such as the mail client, IRC client, RSS, News (nntp), etc. Each of these parts should follow the rule of being small, fast and user friendly.

3) Market growth?
by sheridan3003 (165213)

Do you find that the majority of Opera users are on the IT side of things, and if so how do you plan to get more users who are the "typical user", or only use their computer at work for their assigned tasks? Since IE is embedded when they get their new machine out of the box, how are you introducing Opera to users that probably have a limited understanding that they can have a different browser, or even more than one browser on their machine?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Our goal is to increase our user base significantly. Our user base in general has a higher degree of people which use the Internet extensively. Most of them have tried every other browser before choosing Opera. We consider it very important to focus on keeping our users happy and build from there. There is nothing better than a happy user and we will do what we can to innovate and push the limits to what you can expect in a browser. At the same time we will also try to remove any barriers for new users and make it easy for them to migrate to Opera.

In addition to this we will work on our distribution and marketing, of course, but nothing really beats a happy user that tells his friends and family.

4) Would you sell to Microsoft?
by lilmouse (310335)

Recently someone suggested that MS should simply buy Opera as a web browser for Vista. What do you think of that idea? Would you sell?

Jon von Tetzchner:

I am not interested in selling out to Microsoft. However, if Microsoft is interested in including Opera with Windows, we would be happy to provide them with it. I do believe that would be positive for the web in general.

5) Feature thieves
by tehshen (794722)

Opera has been an innovative browser for some time; it was one of the first to offer popup blocking, tabs (or MDI of some description), sessions, mouse gestures, and so on. However, since then, other browsers have implemented them as well; Firefox has extensions offering mouse gestures and sessions, and popup blocking and tabs are now commonplace. After offering so many features, would you prefer browsers such as Firefox and IE to come up with their own ideas instead of taking them from other browsers, or prefer the sharing of ideas so the web is better off overall?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Although our competitors have opened their eyes to some of our features, many are still only to be found in Opera and we aim to continue adding new ones. I am happy that we are considered the most innovate browser company and that is something we will be working hard to maintain. It is quite flattering that our features are being copied like that and I would prefer us to be in the position of being copied and not the other way around.

6) Google as a search partner?
by furnk (935156)

Can you offer more information on the terms of the recently announced agreement with Google?

What exactly is a "major presence"? Was Google just the obvious choice because of its scope, or is there some flirting going on in the hopes of a more lasting relationship?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Google provides what many people consider to be the best search engine. Our goal is to provide our users with the best solutions available, so Google was a natural choice, although there are other good choices out there.

The latest announcement about our agreement with Google with regards to Opera Mobile and Opera Mini states: "Opera will make Google Search a major part of the browser`s home screen." That means just that. Google search will be easy to find.

Google is an important partner of Opera and we hope to continue our cooperation into the future. Do not read anything more into that. It just means that we will always strive to get good partners for us to provide a strong product and thus increase our market share.

7) One critical thing missing from Opera...
by JaguarSavages (558510)

Better extensions/plugins. Firefox has earned great acclaim for its dynamic extension support. Extensions such as Fasterfox, Adblock, Web Developer, and many others are the sole reason people use Firefox over Opera (or any other browser). I know Opera is working to help unify the Netscape plugin API, but the upcoming version 9 doesn't appear to have anything that can match Firefox's extension capabilities. When will we see Opera support plugin/extensions as powerful as Firefox's?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Opera does have quite extensive extension capabilities today. User Javascipt is one such example. This is something we first used when we made the Bork version of Opera. We have later added this as a user feature and there are already more than 100 scripts available from the developer community. You can find a lot on userjs.org. Many of these script are very powerful.

Our concern with regards to extensions has been security and general usability. We have seen the number of security issues Microsoft has struggled with and many of them have been related to the APIs between the different applications. However, we do see a demand and we do tend to listen to demands from our users.

8) Will Opera ever go Open Source?
by PenguinBoyDave (806137)

I like Opera...in fact, I have stopped using Firefox in favor of Opera for reasons mentioned in someone elses question. Would you ever consider going back to charging for the browser, yet making it Open Source, and offering support for the paid version?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Thanks for choosing Opera. We apprieciate it. :)

We aim to keep Opera free. Our goal is to increase our market share and we have now taken a big step forward by making Opera free without a banner. We have already seen a good increase in downloads and we are adding significant resources to work on Opera in general and on the desktop.

I do not believe that making Opera open source would benefit us all that much. I do not think it has benefitted Netscape much either. I believe that we should work as closely with the community as possible and find ways to enable the community to engage and influence what we do to an even greater extent. I do not think that going open source would make us more efficient.

9) Web developers and Opera "testing"
by bushboy (112290)

I've worked in a few high profile companies in the UK who are all very serious about adhering to web standards, checking all designs in internet explorer, firefox and safari, but I've yet to encounter a company who will ensure that Opera renders page layouts correctly.

What level of market share would you say is required by Opera for web developers to ensure their layouts render correctly ?

Jon von Tetzchner:

IMHO, it is best for web developers to focus on following web standards. This still leaves them with having to code for IE, but most of the time, this will lead to the fastest and best result. I also think that is absolutely necessary as the web evolves from being desktop only to being cross-platform and cross-device.

I believe that web developers should strive to test with as many browsers as possible and that Opera should be part of that as one of the major browsers in the market. Very many sites are already testing with Opera as we do have a significant market share, with between 10 and 15 million active desktop users and more than 20 million mobile deployments so far.

10) Future of free version?
by simetra (155655)

Hi
I love Opera and bought it... several years ago, then a recent upgrade. THEN, you made it free!!!

So, that makes me think, maybe you made the PC version free, and are going to concentrate on the mobile versions, which you probably really make money on. Does this mean that the free PC version will stagnate? Or will future versions be built, with fun new features?

Also... how about a new logo? Or maybe a cross-marketing deal with Oprah?

Jon von Tetzchner:

We are increasing our efforts on the desktop as well as on mobile and other markets. We have big plans for our desktop version, so do not worry, you can expect even more in the future as we are adding programmers to work on the desktop as well as in the core, which benefits all versions of Opera.

No new logo is planned. Our feeling is that the current logo works well and it has been built over years. It is already being used by partners all across the world in promoting the fact that Opera comes with their products.

We have not plans for a cross-marketing deal with Oprah, but maybe it makes sense? :)

11) Bug tracking, developer tools and HTML/CSS/JS
by smurfsurf (892933)

1. Opera Bug Tracking System My experience with Opera's bug tracking system are rather frustrating. I can not check if some bug is already known (describing a bug and creating a test case is time consuming). Also, I reported some things and never ever got any feedback besides an automatic email. I do not know if Opera considers it a bug, if it is not a bug but an error on my side, if someone works on it, if it was fixed, simply nothing comes back. The Opera BTS is a black hole, and since some time now, I do not feel like making the effort to report bugs.

Do you plan to open up the BTS or at least allow the submitter to view the ticket? Or enhance the feedback?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Your feedback is well received. The BTS works very well for internal use, but I can understand that it is not optimal for those that would like to do more than just report an issue. We will discuss this internally and see what we can do. We still want it to be possible for people to register bugs without having to have an account in our system.

2. Developer Tools

How about a DOM Inspector (and a Javascript Debugger)? Firefox's DOM Inspector and XMLHttpRequest Monitor are dearly missing in Opera.

There are some excellent third party tools available (please see nontroppo.org/wiki/WebDevToolbar for a good starting point). We are also actively working on extending built-in solutions and there are some improvements with regards to that in Merlin as well. This is something we take very seriously as more and more people are using Opera to build applications.

3. HTML/CSS/JS

Any word on opacity support? On a Richtext Editing component?

Both are part of Merlin.

12) Norwegian babes
by HonkyLips (654494)

From previous Opera related posts on Slashdot, it has come to my attention that you have some real babes working for you in Norway. Are any of them single and if so, would they be interested in dating a guy who reads slashdot? BTW I use Safari but I can be persuaded to switch...

Jon von Tetzchner:

I must admit to not having total control over who of our employees are currently single and who are not, but I am sure some of our employees are single. However, who they date is clearly up to them.

I believe most people working at Opera read Slashdot either frequently or now and then. We are a very technical bunch.

Happy New Year to everybody at Slashdot! May the new year be very exciting and positive and peaceful!

-- Regards/Vennlig hilsen/Kær kvedja...
Jon S. von Tetzchner
Opera Software

Opera's Vision: www.opera.com/company/vision/

Back in 2005 (last week) we sent Opera Software CEO Jon von Tetzchner twelve of your questions. This year (this week), we have his answers. Enjoy!

1) Re:Competing vs Free Open Source Product
by CSMastermind (847625)

Some have suggested that Microsoft should buy the Opera browser. How do you feel about this? If they did, would you plan to continue with work on the browser? Would you ever work for Microsoft?

Jon von Tetzchner:

We have been competing with Microsoft for a long time and I have not felt that they have always fought fairly. I would be disappointed if we were to end up in their hands and I find that very unlikely. I believe a lot of people at Opera would find them selves other work and that would include me.

2) What can we look forward to?
by robyannetta (820243)

I've been pimping Firefox since version 0.7 but have recently moved to Opera because Firefox doesn't natively support some things that Opera does:

local.google.com Native user agent switching
Opera 9's upcoming Acid2 compatibilty
Eye candy and general coolness factors

Can you give us a taste of new, unannounced features we'll see in future versions?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Thanks for using Opera. You have moved from one good browser to another. :)

There is a lot of new things coming in Merlin. We continue focusing on making Opera even smaller and faster, while adding a lot of useful, new features. Some of these features are by request from our user community, so feel free to add your own requests.

A lot of the focus is on improving what we have got. Our users want us to do this and we want to do this. This means that we will continue to focus on making Opera work faster and better with all the sites out there. We will continue to innovate new features that makes your browsing more pleasant. We aim to give you more control over your browsing. The idea is that you should feel the browser has been made for you. This is one of the reasons why we have so many different ways to do the same thing, as people are different and have different ways of working.

We will also work on improving the other parts of the program, such as the mail client, IRC client, RSS, News (nntp), etc. Each of these parts should follow the rule of being small, fast and user friendly.

3) Market growth?
by sheridan3003 (165213)

Do you find that the majority of Opera users are on the IT side of things, and if so how do you plan to get more users who are the "typical user", or only use their computer at work for their assigned tasks? Since IE is embedded when they get their new machine out of the box, how are you introducing Opera to users that probably have a limited understanding that they can have a different browser, or even more than one browser on their machine?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Our goal is to increase our user base significantly. Our user base in general has a higher degree of people which use the Internet extensively. Most of them have tried every other browser before choosing Opera. We consider it very important to focus on keeping our users happy and build from there. There is nothing better than a happy user and we will do what we can to innovate and push the limits to what you can expect in a browser. At the same time we will also try to remove any barriers for new users and make it easy for them to migrate to Opera.

In addition to this we will work on our distribution and marketing, of course, but nothing really beats a happy user that tells his friends and family.

4) Would you sell to Microsoft?
by lilmouse (310335)

Recently someone suggested that MS should simply buy Opera as a web browser for Vista. What do you think of that idea? Would you sell?

Jon von Tetzchner:

I am not interested in selling out to Microsoft. However, if Microsoft is interested in including Opera with Windows, we would be happy to provide them with it. I do believe that would be positive for the web in general.

5) Feature thieves
by tehshen (794722)

Opera has been an innovative browser for some time; it was one of the first to offer popup blocking, tabs (or MDI of some description), sessions, mouse gestures, and so on. However, since then, other browsers have implemented them as well; Firefox has extensions offering mouse gestures and sessions, and popup blocking and tabs are now commonplace. After offering so many features, would you prefer browsers such as Firefox and IE to come up with their own ideas instead of taking them from other browsers, or prefer the sharing of ideas so the web is better off overall?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Although our competitors have opened their eyes to some of our features, many are still only to be found in Opera and we aim to continue adding new ones. I am happy that we are considered the most innovate browser company and that is something we will be working hard to maintain. It is quite flattering that our features are being copied like that and I would prefer us to be in the position of being copied and not the other way around.

6) Google as a search partner?
by furnk (935156)

Can you offer more information on the terms of the recently announced agreement with Google?

What exactly is a "major presence"? Was Google just the obvious choice because of its scope, or is there some flirting going on in the hopes of a more lasting relationship?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Google provides what many people consider to be the best search engine. Our goal is to provide our users with the best solutions available, so Google was a natural choice, although there are other good choices out there.

The latest announcement about our agreement with Google with regards to Opera Mobile and Opera Mini states: "Opera will make Google Search a major part of the browser`s home screen." That means just that. Google search will be easy to find.

Google is an important partner of Opera and we hope to continue our cooperation into the future. Do not read anything more into that. It just means that we will always strive to get good partners for us to provide a strong product and thus increase our market share.

7) One critical thing missing from Opera...
by JaguarSavages (558510)

Better extensions/plugins. Firefox has earned great acclaim for its dynamic extension support. Extensions such as Fasterfox, Adblock, Web Developer, and many others are the sole reason people use Firefox over Opera (or any other browser). I know Opera is working to help unify the Netscape plugin API, but the upcoming version 9 doesn't appear to have anything that can match Firefox's extension capabilities. When will we see Opera support plugin/extensions as powerful as Firefox's?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Opera does have quite extensive extension capabilities today. User Javascipt is one such example. This is something we first used when we made the Bork version of Opera. We have later added this as a user feature and there are already more than 100 scripts available from the developer community. You can find a lot on userjs.org. Many of these script are very powerful.

Our concern with regards to extensions has been security and general usability. We have seen the number of security issues Microsoft has struggled with and many of them have been related to the APIs between the different applications. However, we do see a demand and we do tend to listen to demands from our users.

8) Will Opera ever go Open Source?
by PenguinBoyDave (806137)

I like Opera...in fact, I have stopped using Firefox in favor of Opera for reasons mentioned in someone elses question. Would you ever consider going back to charging for the browser, yet making it Open Source, and offering support for the paid version?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Thanks for choosing Opera. We apprieciate it. :)

We aim to keep Opera free. Our goal is to increase our market share and we have now taken a big step forward by making Opera free without a banner. We have already seen a good increase in downloads and we are adding significant resources to work on Opera in general and on the desktop.

I do not believe that making Opera open source would benefit us all that much. I do not think it has benefitted Netscape much either. I believe that we should work as closely with the community as possible and find ways to enable the community to engage and influence what we do to an even greater extent. I do not think that going open source would make us more efficient.

9) Web developers and Opera "testing"
by bushboy (112290)

I've worked in a few high profile companies in the UK who are all very serious about adhering to web standards, checking all designs in internet explorer, firefox and safari, but I've yet to encounter a company who will ensure that Opera renders page layouts correctly.

What level of market share would you say is required by Opera for web developers to ensure their layouts render correctly ?

Jon von Tetzchner:

IMHO, it is best for web developers to focus on following web standards. This still leaves them with having to code for IE, but most of the time, this will lead to the fastest and best result. I also think that is absolutely necessary as the web evolves from being desktop only to being cross-platform and cross-device.

I believe that web developers should strive to test with as many browsers as possible and that Opera should be part of that as one of the major browsers in the market. Very many sites are already testing with Opera as we do have a significant market share, with between 10 and 15 million active desktop users and more than 20 million mobile deployments so far.

10) Future of free version?
by simetra (155655)

Hi
I love Opera and bought it... several years ago, then a recent upgrade. THEN, you made it free!!!

So, that makes me think, maybe you made the PC version free, and are going to concentrate on the mobile versions, which you probably really make money on. Does this mean that the free PC version will stagnate? Or will future versions be built, with fun new features?

Also... how about a new logo? Or maybe a cross-marketing deal with Oprah?

Jon von Tetzchner:

We are increasing our efforts on the desktop as well as on mobile and other markets. We have big plans for our desktop version, so do not worry, you can expect even more in the future as we are adding programmers to work on the desktop as well as in the core, which benefits all versions of Opera.

No new logo is planned. Our feeling is that the current logo works well and it has been built over years. It is already being used by partners all across the world in promoting the fact that Opera comes with their products.

We have not plans for a cross-marketing deal with Oprah, but maybe it makes sense? :)

11) Bug tracking, developer tools and HTML/CSS/JS
by smurfsurf (892933)

1. Opera Bug Tracking System My experience with Opera's bug tracking system are rather frustrating. I can not check if some bug is already known (describing a bug and creating a test case is time consuming). Also, I reported some things and never ever got any feedback besides an automatic email. I do not know if Opera considers it a bug, if it is not a bug but an error on my side, if someone works on it, if it was fixed, simply nothing comes back. The Opera BTS is a black hole, and since some time now, I do not feel like making the effort to report bugs.

Do you plan to open up the BTS or at least allow the submitter to view the ticket? Or enhance the feedback?

Jon von Tetzchner:

Your feedback is well received. The BTS works very well for internal use, but I can understand that it is not optimal for those that would like to do more than just report an issue. We will discuss this internally and see what we can do. We still want it to be possible for people to register bugs without having to have an account in our system.

2. Developer Tools

How about a DOM Inspector (and a Javascript Debugger)? Firefox's DOM Inspector and XMLHttpRequest Monitor are dearly missing in Opera.

There are some excellent third party tools available (please see nontroppo.org/wiki/WebDevToolbar for a good starting point). We are also actively working on extending built-in solutions and there are some improvements with regards to that in Merlin as well. This is something we take very seriously as more and more people are using Opera to build applications.

3. HTML/CSS/JS

Any word on opacity support? On a Richtext Editing component?

Both are part of Merlin.

12) Norwegian babes
by HonkyLips (654494)

From previous Opera related posts on Slashdot, it has come to my attention that you have some real babes working for you in Norway. Are any of them single and if so, would they be interested in dating a guy who reads slashdot? BTW I use Safari but I can be persuaded to switch...

Jon von Tetzchner:

I must admit to not having total control over who of our employees are currently single and who are not, but I am sure some of our employees are single. However, who they date is clearly up to them.

I believe most people working at Opera read Slashdot either frequently or now and then. We are a very technical bunch.

Happy New Year to everybody at Slashdot! May the new year be very exciting and positive and peaceful!

-- Regards/Vennlig hilsen/Kær kvedja...
Jon S. von Tetzchner
Opera Software

Opera's Vision: www.opera.com/company/vision/

Opera Software has gotten all kinds of media play lately, including rumors that both Google and Microsoft were buying the company. Whether you love or hate Opera, you've got to give them credit for building a decent browser and grabbing a small but noticeable market share in the face of competition from both MSIE and Firefox. Co-founder/CEO Jon von Tetzchner is obviously reponsible for at least some of this success -- and for much of the company's high press profile, due not only to the Opera Browser itself but to at least one whacky PR stunt and at least one high-profile beef with Microsoft. So who is this guy? Ask and find out. He's obviously not your typical software company CEO, so we don't expect typical CEO-type answers from him. We'll send him (direct, not through a PR person) 10 or 12 of your best questions Friday afternoon (US EST), and run his answers during the first week of 2006.

Opera Software has gotten all kinds of media play lately, including rumors that both Google and Microsoft were buying the company. Whether you love or hate Opera, you've got to give them credit for building a decent browser and grabbing a small but noticeable market share in the face of competition from both MSIE and Firefox. Co-founder/CEO Jon von Tetzchner is obviously reponsible for at least some of this success -- and for much of the company's high press profile, due not only to the Opera Browser itself but to at least one whacky PR stunt and at least one high-profile beef with Microsoft. So who is this guy? Ask and find out. He's obviously not your typical software company CEO, so we don't expect typical CEO-type answers from him. We'll send him (direct, not through a PR person) 10 or 12 of your best questions Friday afternoon (US EST), and run his answers during the first week of 2006.

Opera Software has gotten all kinds of media play lately, including rumors that both Google and Microsoft were buying the company. Whether you love or hate Opera, you've got to give them credit for building a decent browser and grabbing a small but noticeable market share in the face of competition from both MSIE and Firefox. Co-founder/CEO Jon von Tetzchner is obviously reponsible for at least some of this success -- and for much of the company's high press profile, due not only to the Opera Browser itself but to at least one whacky PR stunt and at least one high-profile beef with Microsoft. So who is this guy? Ask and find out. He's obviously not your typical software company CEO, so we don't expect typical CEO-type answers from him. We'll send him (direct, not through a PR person) 10 or 12 of your best questions Friday afternoon (US EST), and run his answers during the first week of 2006.

An anonymous reader writes "Opera has announced that they will be putting one lucky user's face up in Times Square during the New Year's Eve celebrations. The ABC SuperSign will display the winner of of Opera's most recent contest that only requires a submission of your picture and the reason why you should be chosen as their New Year's mascot. Nearly one million partygoers will witness the super sized fan tribute with the Opera browser logo on the 585 square foot (that's 54 square meters!) screen."

nekura writes "Just last month, Opera was celebrating their 10 year anniversary by giving away free registration codes; now they've trumped that by offering Opera for free. Quoth their site, 'Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee. Opera's growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made todays milestone an achievable goal. Premium support is available.' Anyone who was on the verge of switching before now has virtually no reason not to."

rbochan writes "Allegations in an article over at CNET propose that alternate browsers such as Firefox and Opera impede law enforcement and investigation efforts because they "use different structures, files and naming conventions for the data that investigators are after", which can "cause trouble for examiners.""

osvejda writes "Opera Software ASA is celebrating 10-year anniversary of its browser. As a surprise party favor they're giving away free registration codes (for as long as the party lasts). Also see photos from the party, listen to music by employees, play games and more."

Opera Watch writes "The next version of Opera, 8.02, will have an embedded BitTorrent client. Opera has released today a Technical Preview of this new version on its FTP directory, though they have made no official announcement as of yet."