"Fastest Browser On Earth" Cuts Crud

gabec writes "The guys at Opera have been rewriting their rendering engine over the past 18 months, tossing out legacy code and making the browser more DOM compliant with the intention of making the self-proclaimed "fastest browser on earth" even faster. They claim to have succeeded, according to this article on ZDNet.. Fun stuff.. ;)"

Comments

I've fallen in love with Opera, but...

[Marx_Mrvelous]

They need a few things, IMHO. The frist is a hotkey to enable/disable popus (which they may have, I haven't looked very deeply). The second is a mozilla-like "kill all popups I don't request" option. They kill *all* popups, which interferes with my webmail programs, surveys, etc.

Re:I've fallen in love with Opera, but...

[NanoGator]

"It's free if you don't mind the built-in banner ad."

For a while they were showing comics in that space. That was seriously cool.

That's an interesting way to do banner ads: They provided interesting content up there to grab my attention. Then, I start looking up there frequently to see if there's something of interest as opposed to focusing it out. That's ingenious! It's kinda like how TV works.

If websites had figured that out ages ago, I betcha anything that we'd not only have a market for 'banner based content', but there'd also be a more successful ad model.

This is a bit silly

[FortKnox]

First of all, this is bait for trolls to speak about IE and flaming OS zealots to scream about mozilla

Between Opera, IE, and Mozilla, the speed difference is small enough for your average user not to know the difference.
I think we're better off improving the features (like removing pop-up adds, etc...) than to try to squeak out another .01seconds to render the pictures on a screen.

Re:The truth

[SomeOtherGuy]

Actually, I.E. will always be the best browser. Say what you will about Microsoft, they make a damn fine internet browser.

Damn fine until you realize you can't block popups or have tabs. But then again -- maybe I am the only one who does not liked popups and thinks 1 window is cleaner than 15 windows.

Re:The truth

[gerf]

Mozilla > Opera

Mozilla wasn't built for only browsing. It was built as a platform, for further development in the open source community. Thus, speed is not the main focus, but useability, and modability. Opera on the other hand, is zoned in on being a hella-good browser. They don't mess around trying to incorporate extra packages and options that are just not necessary for average users. The problem is, average users use IE...

By the way, if you get the student discout, it's half price to buy opera, sans banner ads. And, unless i'm mistaken, that purchase lasts a lifetime.

But ultimately, Hurd concluded, Opera and other Microsoft competitors would do better to support the technologies that the market-leading Internet Explorer browser made available, rather than focusing on industry standards

Mozilla does not attempt to cater to the IE crap-nuances. Opera does. They actually write code that basically says 'click here to emulate IE f0rk-ups.' Oh, i do like opera more than mozilla or 'scape, for my little pitiful uses. I LOVE the glorious plethora of shortcuts, both mouse and keyboard

wince...

[natefaerber]

But ultimately, Hurd concluded, Opera and other Microsoft competitors would do better to support the technologies that the market-leading Internet Explorer browser made available, rather than focusing on industry standards.

"What these other browser makers should do is stop complaining about what Microsoft is doing and start supporting what Microsoft is supporting," Hurd said. "People out there aren't reading these specs; they're using IE."

This would be a huge mistake for any competitor. Why would you want to jump into line with MS? You would have no opportunity lead. You would just play catch up and never be able to offer the customer a superior product.

Follow the standards and anyone can lead the market if they implement them better. They will also avoid being blindsided by new MS "standards".

Re:Idiot web developer

[legLess]

Quoth fireboy1919:

Have you tried writing advanced web code for multiple browsers?

Yes, actually. I've been doing it for a living for 6 years. I'm as aware as anyone of the browser quirks and incompatibilities. I know that you can't just code to standards and upload. But my point is still true - now, more than ever before, a 100% standards-compliant web page has more chance of appearing and working correctly in every modern browser.

We'll never have 100% compliance across all browsers, and we'll always have to test browsers before we ship markup. But marking up to standards is The Right Way, and thanks to browser makers following standards I'm spending less and less time hacking workarounds and more time designing and producing.

I do capability-sniffing in some code, and I hate it - but that's progress over browser-sniffing. I developed an intranet many years back and flat-out told the company, "You have to use IE4+ or it won't work." With a standard desktop, the company and I agreed this was ok because it saved a lot of development and debugging. Today I could create the same functionality faster and have it work cross-browser.

The nature of this beast (browser development and upgrades) is that it's slow, but there is noticeable progress in the right direction. Can't ask for more than that in the real world.