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Microsoft Sends Broken Stylesheets to Opera
An anonymous reader writes "The Register has a story that the MSN homepage serves a different style sheet to the Opera web browser that makes Opera appear to be broken. Is this deliberate or a mistake? Who can possibly say? Opera's own take on the situation can be found here." This is not the first time.
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Seriously, isn't this why the W3C tries to make people follow standards? So it doesn't matter what browser you use, it should all work?
Anyone, including Microsoft, who writes a site that serves seperate pages to different browsers is doing a disservice to the public.
I love the bald-faced lying that MS pulls out for this behavior. "We're heavily invested in following standards." or "We're trying to produce the best site for all viewers." Yeah, right. Explain why there would be any reason at all to force every child entity 30 pixels to the left of its parent. For that matter, why does MSN still use the tired old hack of sending different pages to each browser? I don't need 4 versions of my site to handle every viewer. Amazing.
Illegitimi non carborundum
....this doesn't make much sense. MS makes a lot of money based on the popularity of their MSN portal. this portal links to a lot of their other properties as well and it is against their best interest to make it difficult for users with a different browsers to access this page.
one would think that since they want people coming to this page and accessing it regularly they would make it easier for them to get here.
conspiracy theory aside this doesn't make sense from a business point of view. i have a feeling this is a mistake of some sort.
"Unlike most of you, I am not a nut." - Homer J. Simpson
I think you miss the point. People don't use alternative browsers because of bullshit like this.
Isn't MSN meant to be commerically independent of Microsoft?
It is Microsoft's website afterall.
Who says it has to work with other companies browsers?
If you don't like it, either use IE (not me thanks) or not visit the website (that would be me).
Microsoft will notice the lack of ad revenue. Then they might fix it. If it is enough for them to care. Being that this is Opera, I kind of doubt it.
This is fine for a personal or hobby site but for e-commerce, you need to write to users, not standards. It makes no difference to the user that your page is coded to standards if he/she can't view it. Telling them they need a different browser isn't the answer either. Showing them what they want, in a manner that works correctly with their browser, is unfortunately the best solution if you want to be profitable.
I've had to code drop down menus differently for different browsers to get things to look the same, however when I'm done, you get the exact same page, with everything the same size and in the same place in IE, Netscape, Mozilla, and Konqueror. I've never used Opera so I don't test that one, but I guess I probably should.
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
Of course, I am happy with Moz and never think of using MSN. But that's just me.
sulli
RTFJ.
but it really looks like an honest typo in the style sheet. i can understand how they'd be pissed, but did they try contacting MS to get it fixed first? the fact that the server sends a client-specific style-sheet isn't exactly damning. it's a very common (though misguided) practice.
never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
As an unfortunate side-effect, this would reinforce webmasters' belief that everybody in the world uses MSIE.
Yep. What we really need is too late to accomplish. What we really need is a protocol that forbids you from identifying which browser you are, but only allows you to specify to which standards you conform.
Then maybe webmasters would write their HTML and such the way they're supposed to, and what's more the browsers would have to really support the standards they claim to support.
But, unfortunately, that's an ideal world, not the one we live in.
-Rob
MS lost out bigtime by failing to convince the cellphone manufacturers to adopt their embedded OS - most of the bignames plan to use Simian (is that how you spell it) which uses Opera as its browser.
The reality is that most windows users will never change their browser from IE to something else, so they are not afraid of Mozilla, konq, Safari, etc.
The cellphone market on the other hand is HUGE, and given recent advances in wireless bandwith, has the potential to be highly lucrative.
More than likely its probably safe to say that a significant percentage of all web browsing in the future will be on cellphones.
They are attempting to ensure that non MS cellphones can't surf the web properly, in an attempt to make consumers prefer buying MS enabled webphones, which in turn will generate more revenue in the embedded market for them, which they desperately need.
Just my opinion tho - can never tell what does guys are up to...
If I went to MS's site and the webpage they sent was broken, I would think MS had an incompetent webmaster who didn't know HTML. I wouldn't think Opera was broken.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
I disagree completely...
I can write a page that looks good in EVERY browser, including NS4 and lynx. So can you... so can anybody...
all it takes is a little time, and a bit of a brain.
Unfortunately, far to many people in web dev don't have brains, and far too many to "save time" use wysiwyg crap to gerate code for them.
having muyltiple pages for multiple browsers is a sign of not doing it right the first time, not a 'service'.
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
MS are free to serve up whatever they like on their servers.
Are you sure?
Without consequence as to what?
Okay. I'll use your logic, and the same logic as some other posts here from Microsoft agents.
I want to start serving stuff from my site that takes advantage of all known exploits in IE browsers. After all, it's my site. I can serve whatever I want. It's my business.
If users don't like it, then they should use Mozilla or Opera.
If you're a Microsoft user, why would you want to come to my site anyway?
It's just an accident. Give me the benefit of the doubt.
I'll probably get modded redundant since my above four arguments have already been made.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
If you are creating multiple copies of resources for different user agent strings, then it is a prime indication you haven't understood the very simple concept of the World Wide Web.
Making a website accessible does not mean text-only. This is a myth, and a badly misinformed piece of strawman fluff. Text-versions of websites should only be a last resort, when you've reached the point where you admit your design and markup skills are inadequate to do even a competant job, let alone a good one. Accessible websites can also be well designed, there's no mutual exclusivity.
If you so strongly want to believe this nonsense, please post a reference to either a standard or recommendation that states that User-Agent is a mandatory HTTP parameter. You know as well as I do that User-Agent strings are optional, and relying on them to determine presentation is so typically short-sighted that its now laughable.
You cannot succeed over the medium to long term adopting a browser-sniff route. It is folly.
"
all it takes is a little time
"
No! It's _easier_ to write bread-and-butter HTML that looks _fine_, if a little unexciting, than it is to write anything that could break any half-decent browser (i.e. one that understands what it's told, like w3m or opera).
YAW (who writes his boring but perfectly usable (100-hits a day on some pages, which ain't too bad) web-pages using 'cat > filename')
Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
My biggest complaint about the .NET framework:
.NET framework does a check to see which browser you use and then sends formats aspx pages for the capabilities of that browser. So if you use abs positioned divs, you'll get those for modern browsers but Netscape 4.7 (for instance) will get the same page (theoretically) but formatted via tables. This is great, if only MS were honest about it.
the
I constantly have to hard-code formatting for controls because MS treats Netscape 6 as a 'down-level' browser and doesn't bother sending out certain formatting tags. So some pages look bad in Netscape 6, the reason behind it would be that the formatting tags weren't sent out because Netscape doesn't support them, but this is false because when I add them by hand, netscape handles them fine and my pages look the same in both browsers.
I have to believe that MS does this so people say "this page looks like azz in Netscape" and assume that it's Netscape's problem.
the framework has been out for too long and this is still not fixed, so I can not believe that it is an honest or innocent mistake.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
They specifically designed their web site to send a different style sheet, (and '30' is not a typo.. '33' or '34' or something I'd believe) AND a larger page with less content, JUST to Opera. That seems pretty far from "an honest typo". This is MSN's HOME PAGE. You don't think they know what it looks like in different browsers? I work at a 4 person company, and we know what all our websites look like in IE, Moz/Netscape, and Opera. Furthermore, they have a motive to make it look better in IE, and they've shown in the past OVER and OVER that these kinds of underhanded tactics are their bread and butter. Someone at MS knew about this, and also knew it could never be proven in court.
By the way, the full quotation is:
"Never ascribe to malice, that which is adequately explained by incompetence"
- Napolean Bonaparte.
I think one of Microsoft's new unwritten policies is "When accused of malice, always hide behind incompetence".
"No no... we'd love to, but we simply CAN'T remove IE from Windows." Sound familiar?
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
And, not to defend MS or anything... but how come EVEN THE OPERA.COM SITE NEGLECTS TO MENTION THAT OPERA6.0 HAD A +30 BUG WHEN RENDERING CSS SHEETS?? Who is sabotaging who here?!?