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"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.. ;)"
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.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
First of all, this is bait for trolls to speak about IE and flaming OS zealots to scream about mozilla
.01seconds to render the pictures on a screen.
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
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
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.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
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
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".
-- My HARDWARE, My CHOICE.
Ah, but Opera is far more than a browser for Windows. It's also a browser for cell phones, terminals, PDAs and more. Some of these *are* double-digit MHz machines.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
From reading the article, I get the feeling that the real reason for the rewrite is not to get better speed, that would just be a side effect. It sounds like it had to be rewritten because they were running up to limitations in what they could do by just extending their current engine. These things happen from time to time with larger projects.
You can add Gesture capability to Mozilla. Just get This.
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.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
Everyone take a deep breathe. Now exhale. I am not the great satan here guys... ;-)
;-)
Let me clarify...
My comment was taken slighly out of context in the CNET article. I believe in standards and we test against Opera and Mozilla on a continual basis and I'm no MS fan. Let me repeat, I believe in standards 100%.
I was trying to make the point that now that Microsoft has achieved browser market dominance (with proprietary extensions included), strict adherence to standards is EXACTLY what Microsoft hopes non-MS browser developers will pursue as doing so necessarily creates incompatibility with IE. This in turn leaves users with the impression that non-MS browsers are broken or not as advanced when they fail to render pages in the manner IE has led them to expect.
I don't like Microsoft's tactics at all. Period. But unfortunately, at this point in the game, a browser's market penetration is more a measure of end-user acceptance than it is one of developer acceptance. The point I was trying to get across was that non-MS browser developers should co-opt Microsoft's proprietary extensions strategy and use it against them! By supporting all of the MS extras end users wouldn't perceive non-MS browsers as lacking. As a developer I can appreciate the fact that this would take some work. It's not a perfect solution, but the sad fact is Microsoft isn't going to change it's ways and no amount of name calling will change that.
Just trying to think of ways non-MS browsers could turn the MS tide. Does this make any sense?
-Monte Hurd
Systems Architect
Starphire Technologies