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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.
While there are still copies of Netscape and Netscape users out there. It looks like the majority of the people use Internet Explorer, Opera, and Netscape (not sure what order). It looks like Microsoft is taking aim at Opera now.
For what its worth, I think Opera is the best browser out there. It has great speed, and renders the HTML like its suppose to be rendered. Can't speak for stylesheets though, don't use them.
It would be nice to see a browser capable of masquerading around as IE or Netscape to decieve these foolish websites into not knowing what they are.
I've heard plenty of stories of forms suddenly working when a feature in a browser was changed to show Internet Explorer for Windows/Mac, and otherwise breaking when they work just fine. Or in my case, I came across a site that said IE and Netscape only, but used Opera and it worked perfectly - this sort of ignorance on the part of web developers really is intolerable.
Why did they pick Opera, and not Mozilla or Netscape, not to mention Safari?
Just tried www.msn.com with Opera 7. No matter what I set the agent identification to, msn keeps sending the wrong (faulty) stylesheet.
It looks like MSN uses more advanced techniques to find out what the client is than just the agent identification, in order to sabotage Opera in this case.
Older version of IE were also purposely broken in the same way; forced obelesence? As a regular Opera user I notice the same problem on some portions of the Microsoft web site as well (not just MSN).
To me this just proves that the remedy isn't working, that MS as a company prefers dirty tricks to competition and that the states that have not agreed to settlement had better press MS hard. (Wow holy run on sentence batman). It's sad that a company as successful and as full of talented people as MS has to resort to this type of behavior when a competitor comes out with a good product.
I'm reminded of a famous quote "Can't we just all get a long". I guess if your MS and you can't or won't compete the answer is no.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Why?
Why browse with flash, style sheets, scripting or Java turned on?
I have one site that requires IE and most days I never turn it on.
If it can't be written in plain text then it's probally not something I really need to read.
Henry J. Cobb http://www.io.com/~hcobb Any sufficiently cool technology is indistinguishable from religion.
According to the web logs on the various sites I host, Mozilla and other Gecko-based browsers make up almost 15% of web traffic now, and Opera has a signficant enough user-base that it also makes it into the top 10 user-agents on web sites that get 1M+ hits per month from 100+ countries. I think the problem is that people need to move away from Microsoft web deveopment tools until they can learn to play nice and output standards-compliant HTML code. Ever try using the "save as HTML" feature in a Microsoft product? A 100-row table becomes a 2MB plaintext file by the time it makes it to the web...
My browser is set to send nonsense as its id strings; it doesn't seem to do my surfing experience much harm.
[FUCK BETA]
I used to have different style sheets for different browsers in an effort to make my websites look good for all of them. More than once I updated some of the html and only tested the pages in IE where they looked fine (I know, I know, but programmers are naturally lazy.) It turns out the style sheets for the other browsers totally made the pages look broken. I'm not defending MS. It would not surprise me if they did it on purpose, but I am saying it is easy to do. Now I just have one style sheet and I made sure to use simpler html that would look good on all browsers. Sometimes simple is better.
Pocket PC Games
The same thing happens on some versions of the support.ms.com site and it's annoying as hell. I belive that MS just takes the default IE one and then strips out what they think to be for "inferior browsers" which leaves a broken and messed up template.
MS are free to serve up whatever they like on their servers. You don't have to go to msn.com, nobody is forcing you. So while this seems unethical nobody is being coerced into anything. An alternative might be to have laws that force companies to serve up sensible HTML to all browsers. How is that going to be implemented? That would be one hell of a legal nightmare. And what about people who write shoddy HTML for all platforms? Should they be punsihed less than people who can at least get it right for some platforms? So while we might not like what MS is doing there really isn't anything you can do about it. If you need to use msn.com, don't use Opera. If you like Opera, don't use msn.com. Nobody is forcing you to do anything.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
W3C calls their CSS and HTML specifications as "Recommendations" rather than "Requirements" or "Standard", per se. Instead, they provide specifications on how user agents (be it browsers or cell phones) are recommended to follow.
Of course, it would be lovely if all browser makers were to forced to follow the recommendations down to the nitty gritty, but even the recommendations don't always provide strict requirements on how a property or class should be rendered.
The fact that Microsoft is pushing out (delibrately) a broken style sheet is just wrong.
This may or may not be true; I've seen some quite impressive standards compliant sites that seem to work in many of the major browsers. But does that excuse feeding a deliberately broken style-sheet to a competitor's browser, and only to that browser? I would say not.
From the old article, one of Microsoft's marketing directors should get his facts straight:
... He added that Microsoft wants users to visit the Web site "regardless of the browser they choose."
"We supported the latest W3C standards when developing the content and services delivered from MSN,"
But Visse recommended that for the best experience with MSN, customers should use a browser that tightly adheres to the W3C standard.
"If customers choose to use a browser that does not tightly support W3C standards, then they may encounter a less then optimal experience on MSN," he said.
except, that if you ask the W3C validator, it doesn't work!
www.microsoft.com
www.msn.com
Microsoft has a long history of intentionally breaking compatibility with other products to promote their own, as early as (and maybe earlier) the Windows 3.1 -> 3.11 "upgrade" which conveniently broke the diagnostic and repair software PC Tools.
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
Actualy thats an interesting point. Should I bother to make a special version of my page for older browsers (Like NS4 and IE4) which have frankly awful CSS and DHTML support? Especicaly give how few people still use those two browsers. Or should I maybe have one primitive version which runs in even mosaic etc, and one which works with all the more common browsers which conform to the latest standards? And why cant there be some nice easy javascript way to determine if browsers support CSS2 and other fancy standards?
I just check in Opera on msdn.microsoft.com and I definitely get served two different pages wheter I identify myself as MSIE6.0 or Opera. Oddly enough, the MSIE6.0 page renders just fine in my version of Opera. Hmmmmmm....It must be an accident!
On (semi) related topic. Why has slashdot.org blocked validator.w3.org? Are they embarresed by the results? After all I can always do a "Save as" and then upload the page to the validator.
Pretty childish, if you ask me.
J.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Since I do use Opera as my primary browser, and have since it came out, I tried clicking on the MSN link to see what would happen. Nothing. Took me a bit to remember why.
I have well over 100 msn sites loopbacked in my hosts file (along with lots of advertising and pop up sites) on all computers, using Andrew Short's file as a starting point (http://remember.mine.nu). I can always try Mozilla if a site doesn't look right, but I'm not going to reboot for the rare useful content on MSN!
Thats not the point. An average user who frequents msn.com, who may be trying out the Opera browser would be deceived into thinking that Opera is flawed because of these display problems. It specifically targets the Opera browser in a way that would be invisible to most users. Yes, if you are aware that this is what MS is doing, you could make an informed decision not to frequent msn.com, but most users would not be aware of what was really happening.
Besides that, its cheesey.
It was like that when I got here.
Yeah but the stylesheet for opera is designed to work with Opera v6. The bug in the stylesheet was hidden by a bug in v6 which was only last week fixed in v7. sure, there's a bug in the stylesheet, but that doesn't mean it's new or that it was placed there specifically to break Opera v7.
I am a developer, I always use Opera, *Except* when visiting MSDN to search for documentation. MSDN (and MSN it seems) is the *ONLY* page I have ever visitted that consistently fucks up in Opera... I've always thought it was a Microsoft problem, and this clinches it !. Now, if only there was another development environment even remotely as good and user friendly as VS.NET, i wouldn't have to visit MSDN at all....
Its about ethics. MS has as much right to serve Opera broken CSS as we do to complain about it. Nobody's forcing anyone to do anything, but MS is intentionally misleading people to believe that Opera is somehow broken (not that Opera Software needs help, seven holes found in one week seems a bit severe).
As far
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Um, I suppose you didn't read Opera's take on this; MSN's webserver(s) uses a special broken CSS for Opera. When using the stylesheet intended for IE6, Opera displays the page just fine.
Hmmm... although the thing is, the item in the stylesheet which they claim is broken (ul tag style) is the same in the Nav6 stylesheet.
Mozilla renders the page perfectly, and it gets the nav6 stylesheet with that very same ul {} declaration... here's all three listed together:
Opera: ul {list-style-position: outside; margin: -2px 0px 0px -30px; list-style-image: url(http://msimg.com/m/8/bullet-black.gif);}
Nav 6: ul {list-style-position: outside; margin: -2px 0px 0px -30px; list-style-image: url(http://msimg.com/m/8/bullet-black.gif);}
IE6: ul {list-style-position: outside; margin: -2px 0px 0px 8px; list-style-image: url(http://msimg.com/m/8/bullet-black.gif);}
Looks like human error to me.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
if microsoft had been even remotely honest about something, anything, in the past.. maybe folks would be less likey to jump all over their ass for something like this.. myslef included. I don't trust that company to do anything other than what's in the interest of preserving their (albeit fading) grip on the industry. For all their recent blabbing about better security and better standards support, i've seen nothing of the kind.
I messed around with a few other UserAgent strings, and it gets a little clearer:
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.0 [en]" -> site.css
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.1) Oprah 7.0 [en]" -> site-win-ie6.css
So far, exactly as reported in the article
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible) Oprah 7.0 [en]" -> site.css
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.1) Oprah 7.0 [en]" -> site-win-ie5.css
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.1; Opera 7.0) Oprah 7.0 [en]" -> site.css
It's pretty clear what they're doing:
In other words, it doesn't matter what Opera claims to be compatible with - they always get the default sheet, just like a completely unrecognized browser does.
I'm trying to apply Hanlon's Razor here, but it's hard...
MSN Lists Opera as a "Top Pick"
Human nature is to believe in evil more than incompetence. However, I am pretty sure that the people at MSN were just so incompetent they could not get a simple thing like margins correct, rather than so evil as to try such an in-ept form of sabotage. Of course, does it really matter if Microsoft is evil or stupid? The result should be the same, do not consider them a viable company to do business with.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
yea but they are feeding opera a different style sheet... why? the MSIE6 works perfectly normal. It only happens if the user agent is Opera. Thats deliberate. They won't say it is. But thats what it is. What to most people do when a page doesn't work in some browser? Use a different one and that different one will probably be internet explorer for the majority of people. So lame. I don't know what else I can do to be anti-ms, I won't use or buy anything associated with them. :/
d) the -38px adjustment is in there to overcome a non-standard +38px adjustment that Opera v6 adds to lists.
Lemme see...
wget --user-agent="nice fucking investigation, guys" --output-document bullshit.html http://www.msn.com
Ooh, what's this? The same stylesheet the opera guys are complaining about is being sent to ME now? Why, Microsoft is targeting my bullshit browser! Scandal!!
The problem with the "Oprah" test the opera guys ran is that their user string pretty clearly contains the string "MSIE 6.0", which is probably tested for before the string "Opera" (if, indeed, the word "Opera" is tested at all)... and thus, they received the IE 6 stylesheet. site.css is most likely a generic stylesheet sent to any browser that fails all other string checks.
Good one, guys.
Honestly, this is not an effort against Opera. If I choose to break my own site, so be it..
/. story on that.
.0004% of our hits, I'd have to say "Do the change, ignore Opera".
.0004% of the browsers hitting them were Opera, they wouldn't waste the time to do make special pages specifically to break Opera.. It's simply a bug.. It's not worth the effort.. If someone did anything, I'd bet they were trying to make a better page for the Opera people, and failed.. Probably a newbie was given the job. Who cares if you mess up the page that no one sees..
In my industry, just about every site does video of some sort. There's always some group that feels they were intentionally blocked because of whatever reason. I've seen sites that stream exclusively Windows Media, and some that use propriatory plugins like "Emblaze".. Some were using the Netscape "Push" method (send a multipart header, and then send a new mime delimiter between frames). Netscape "Push" doesn't (or didn't) work with MSIE.. Windows Media doesn't work with Linux. (with a few exceptions).. Something doesn't work with something else.
If I choose to make my site not work with MSIE or Netscape, and only let Opera viewers see it, well, it's my site.. If Slashdot decides tommorrow that they like a feature of Mozilla 9.999, and it doesn't work with any other browser, including MSIE, how many of you are going to be bitching for MSIE compatability?
I'll get a bunch of comments back "Microsoft Sucks", but I'd *LOVE* it if they'd put the REMOTE_USER_AGENT string beside your name in the comments.
For those curious, mine is:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3a) Gecko/20021212
I'm not defending Microsoft. It's shitty that they did it, but honestly it's their site. Try doing a Windows Update from Netscape, that doesn't work either.
Want more fun? Try installing a nice fresh copy of an older Microsoft OS (say WinNT 4.0), and get yourself up to day.. Years ago, they broke the Microsoft pages, so you couldn't get the updates. But I can't say that I've ever seen a
Where I work, we try our best to make our pages render correctly on our machines.. That means, keep everyone in the office happy, and hopefully it will make the majority of our customers happy. We have enough varity by choice to keep things interesting. here's the short list of the browsers we use:
Win98/Win2k/WinXP:
MSIE 5.0 -> MSIE 6.1
Netscape 4.7 -> Netscape 7.01
Mozilla 1.1 -> Mozilla 1.3a
Opera (unsure of version)
Mac: OS/9, OS/X
MSIE (unsure of version)
Netscape (unsure. various versions)
Mozilla (unsure. various versions)
Linux: (Slackware)
Mozilla 1.1 -> 1.3a
Netscape (various)
Konqueror 3.0.1
But sure as hell, we'll have some sort of rendering problem on some browser, and someone will scream that there's a conspiracy against them specifically..
Our sites don't require any special browser. They all work. We don't know of any compatability issues right now, but I'm sure someone will find that Konqueror v1.0 won't work with a particular page, if they try hard enough. Our site has average users browsing. Some advanced users, lots of regular users..
In the last 24 hours we had 17,017 different REMOTE_USER_AGENT strings sent to one of the servers, in 1,949,023 requests from 116,273 unique IP's.. If I take the list and:
cat list.txt | cut -f 1-3 -d ";" | sort | uniq -c > work.txt
less work.txt
Here's the top 10 results:
474500 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1
317359 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98
140794 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98
91425 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0
66331 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98
31072 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0
29963 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; AOL 8.0
26778 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0
25426 "Mozilla/3.0 (compatible
20841 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows 98
And in comparison, we'll look at some other top 10's.. Here's the top 11 Linux clients (11, because the first Opera was #11)
grep -i linux work.txt
1563 "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686
387 "Mozilla (X11; I; Linux 2.0.32 i586
161 "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3; Linux
145 "Mozilla/4.7 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.2.13 i686
96 "Mozilla/5.0 Galeon/1.2.7 (X11; Linux i686; U
72 "Mozilla/5.0 Galeon/1.2.5 (X11; Linux i686; U
67 "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586
64 "Mozilla/4.78 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.7-10 i686
56 "Mozilla/4.78 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.9-34 i686
46 "Mozilla/5.0 Galeon/1.2.6 (X11; Linux i686; U
39 "Opera/6.11 (Linux 2.4.2 i386; U
And the top 10 Opera clients.
127 "Opera/6.01 (Windows 98; U
118 "Opera/6.05 (Windows XP; U
104 "Opera/6.05 (Windows 2000; U
74 "Opera/7.01 (Windows NT 5.0; U
72 "Opera/6.05 (Windows 98; U
60 "Opera/6.0 (Windows 98; U
56 "Opera/7.0 (Windows NT 5.1; U
49 "Opera/6.0 (Windows 2000; U
41 "Opera/7.0 (Windows 98; U
39 "Opera/6.11 (Linux 2.4.2 i386; U
Ok, lets give better Opera numbers. It seems Opera has a few different formats for its browser string. Thanks guys. That helps me a lot..
The top 10 browser string with "Opera" anywhere in it are:
cat list.txt | grep -i opera | sort | uniq -c | sort -r -n -k 1
---
752 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows XP) Opera 6.05 [en]"
627 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows XP) Opera 7.0 [en]"
617 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.0 [en]"
378 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98) Opera 7.0 [en]"
277 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.01 [en]"
271 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 2000) Opera 6.05 [en]"
246 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98) Opera 6.05 [en]"
222 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows XP) Opera 6.05 [de]"
194 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0) Opera 7.0 [en]"
156 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows ME) Opera 6.05 [en]"
Or more specifically, lets find every Opera browser regardless of OS type.. That's just about as big as we can inflate your numbers.
cat list.txt | grep -i opera > work.txt
cat work.txt | grep ^\"Opera > a.list
cat work.txt | grep -v ^\"Opera > b.list
cat a.list | cut -f 2 -d \" | cut -f 1 -d " " > opera.id
cat b.list | cut -f 2 -d ")" | cut -f 1 -d \[ >> opera.id
And then a little cleanup in 'vi' to fix the leading space, and the space versus slash in the two types...
cat opera.id | sort | uniq -c | sort -r -n -k 1
---
2565 Opera/6.05
2488 Opera/7.0
678 Opera/7.01
549 Opera/6.01
537 Opera/6.0
438 Opera/6.04
336 Opera/6.03
105 Opera/6.11
63 Opera/5.12
47 Opera/6.02
47 Opera/5.0
43 Opera/6.0/\xa4/
32 Opera/5.02
30 Opera/4.0/Beta/4
28 Opera/5.11
27 Opera/5.01
21 Opera/6.01/~/
14 Opera/5.12/\xa1\xe8/
13 Opera/3.60
12 Opera/5.12/OCV2/
9 "
7 Opera/6.1
2 Opera
1 Opera/6.01/OCV2/
Now honestly, who should I be designing pages for? the 2,500 hits from Opera 7.0, or the 474,500 from "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1 ?
**WE** do respect peoples ability to choose what browser they want, and *WE* won't limit it, but I'd bet with these numbers in front of them, most bosses would have the pages designed for the majority..
If the decision were presented to me, wether to include a really great feature that works in Netscape and MSIE but not Opera, or not, and I did exactly what I just did, and saw that 8,092 of 1,949,023 hits came from Opera, that's
If Microsoft had half a clue (which I'm sure someone there does), and they checked to see what browsers were viewing, and *THEY* saw that
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
"When using the stylesheet intended for IE6, Opera displays the page just fine."
And when you save the page which was served to Opera and load it in IE6, it's broken and crap. So obviously that's a bug in IE6?
"Why would Microsoft care about Opera? Or think that misrendering the MSN home page is a good way to undermine it?"
Just wanted to say that I'm glad you took a moment to take a step back and and say "Why?" as opposed to jumping the gun and saying "Damn MS trying to enforce it's monopoly as usual". Frankly, I'm tired of the wild assumptions that MS works that way.
As an Opera user and a Windows user, you can understand that I've run across exactly this problem. I'd like to share with you a few observations I've made on this topic:
- As an Opera user, I find myself having to deal with a number of sites that just don't care about me. Having IE available as a backup is just part of my everyday Opera life. I don't see MS as being very different here. Some sites block me totally, like the site I use to send payments to my credit card.
- Because of my having to keep IE on hot standby, it doesn't even occur to me anymore to email MS (or any other site) and complain about lack of Opera testing. If they don't get feedback, they ain't gonna fix it.
- Website maintenance is a perpetual, priority based job. Often problems are ranked by how many people are affected by them. Truth be told, Opera's just not significant today in light of other things going on. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if nobody there had Opera installed. Anybody who's ever done web development at a Dilbert-esque corp would probably understand this.
- Wouldn't it be weird that MS would break Opera, but not Mozilla, Netscape, or other browsers?
- What possible benefit could that bring them? Despite my comment earlier, Opera handles the vast majority of sites(*) just fine. When I run across a site that doesn't work with Opera, it feels like the operators of the site were moronic, not that Opera is incompatible. In other words, MS's site not working right with Opera makes MS look incompetant, not Opera. * Sites that I personally have visited, other people's experiences may vary.
- MS's site is a marketing tool. Head on over there and you hear all about TabletPC's, PocketPc's, MS's latest server stuff, Windows XP, etc etc etc. Breaking their site means potentially shoo'ing off customers. I seriously doubt any PHB would want to do that.
If other Opera users share my observations, then it actually makes sense that MS just doesn't care. But the idea that they're doing it to enforce a monopoly is not so evident.
Please don't flame me for not jumping on the "MS is like OCP!!!" bandwagon. I'm just the type of person that'd rather look at all the details than try to find details to support a bias.
It seems more likely a misunderstanding on many parts...
Opera 6.03 almost renders the MSN page correctly (no far-left text, but there are some glitches with alignment on wrapped rows), so it would seem that the 'buggy' stylesheet is in fact to compensate for 6's CSS bugs.
From MS's side, Opera 7 has only just recently become available in non-beta form, so it's reasonable to expect they haven't tested with it yet.
From Opera's side, they're looking to sell their browser, and they've just worked hard to produce the most compliant browser they've built so far. Suddenly they find the MS site (the site of their most fearful competitor, with an incredibly dodgy history) is rendering in a broken manner. In these circumstances, I could understand forgetting a small list-processing bug. All Opera should need to do is post an apology, once they realise this.
Because of my having to keep IE on hot standby, it doesn't even occur to me anymore to email MS (or any other site) and complain about lack of Opera testing. If they don't get feedback, they ain't gonna fix it.
Let's get to the heart of the matter here: the real bugaboo is pathetic web standards compliance, industry wide. I'd love to see the W3C start using the time-honored tactic of creating trademarked certification names and logos usable only by browser versions that pass a rigorous and public compliance suite. Then web developers could start a) targetting standards as they should and b) righteously flaming sites that do stupid non-standards based things (like serving up different content for different browsers as a workaround for standards non-compliance).
Perhaps an old version of the document read:But they tried to change the last value to a zero?
My question is what stylesheet does it send to Opera6? Opera's argument begins to hint at my question:
Q: Isn't this just a problem with the newly released Opera7?
A: You mean, perhaps MSN had to write special versions of the page for the older Opera6? No. Opera6 handles the pages sent to MSIE6 just fine. Here is a screenshot: [snip]
Ok, Opera6 handles the page sent to MSIE6 perfectly... but does Opera6 also display the messed up stylesheet correctly? Does MSN send the same stylesheet to both Opera versions? There are all kinds of semi-reasonable explanations due to the version differences that have not been ruled out.
Of course, I don't doubt that MS is being malicious, but I'm not sure.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I did a little bit of research on this, and tested if any versions of Opera actually needed the stylesheet Microsoft is serving. Not even Opera 3.62 benefits from the stylesheet MSN wants to serve.
I don't for one second believe that MS is doing this for any other purpose than making Opera look bad. Why? Because in the mobile / Small-screen-market, Opera is definetly their biggest threat. The mobile market is the only browser market that still has a great potential for growth. Microsofts want to own that market. Currently, they don't. Microsoft won't own that market with Opera around. But they know they can't beat Opera in that market without first killing off Opera on the desktop.
http://virtuelvis.com/
This is because the Mozilla quirks mode seems to mimic Netscape 4.x rather than IE4/5. This is not because Mozilla is a better quirks renderer than Opera.
As I've said in another reply and on my personal site, Microsoft seems to be specifically targetting Opera for a non-accessible version.
http://virtuelvis.com/
Opera users would surely find this annoying:
Web Browser Software Limitations
Your Current Software Will Limit Your Ability to Use Hotmail You are using a web browser that Hotmail does not support. If you continue to use your current browser software we cannot guarantee that Hotmail will work properly for you.
Hotmail supports the following web browsers:
Microsoft Internet Explorer - version 4.0 or higher.
Netscape Navigator versions 4.70 and higher.
We recommend that you upgrade your web browsing software and invite you to download the latest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
There's an Opera 6 bug regarding the margin (hence the -30)
I've coded against Opera for a long time now and never encountered this. Is that astroturf I smell?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"