Slashdot Mirror
Opera Claims Microsoft Has Poor Interoperability
Noksagt writes "Opera CTO Hakon Lie has countered the claims that Bill Gates made regarding Microsoft's superior interoperability last week. He points out their invalid webpages, MS's unwillingness to serve the same content to different browsers, IE's poor CSS support, tardy documentation and limitations of their XML format, and more." From the article: "You say you believe in interoperability. Why then, did you terminate the Web Core Fonts initiative you started in 1996? You deserve credit for starting it, but why close down a project which could have given you yet much good will? (Verdana sucks, but Georgia is beautiful!)"
Verdana rocks
Sunny Dubey
(not a technical font person etc etc)
They're the best spin doctors in town, you have to admit that much...
Maybe verdana does suck, but reading serif fonts on a computer screen causes a lot more eye strain than reading sans serif fonts. Of course, serif fonts like Georgia look good on paper, but on a computer screen, I think sans-serif fonts are much better.
That is simply not true. From a customer perspective, I would rather have one good proprietary solution that serves my needs than a dozen mediocre but interoperable ones. I only need one at once!
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"thats why proprietary software is bad. there is no way for the consumer to benefit from the software."
It's also why ambiguous standards are bad. Anybody else read the little blurb a few years ago about how no browser (Netscape, IE, etc....) passed the standards test completely?
"Derp de derp."
mods on slashdot have gone downmarket as of late, same with the editors and quality of the comments. its become quite frankly little more then a " we hate ms " club , caring very little about anything else. its like 12 yr olds have taken over and are very very angry with the world
How about we stop trying to attach Microsoft to every Slashdot article? Dear god this is getting old. It is a form of flattery to need to mention that company all the time.
It was previously commented that Microsoft is going down the tubes because of several factors, like IE not being updated in years (except for security patches), and Longhorn being way late. This is just another example. The smell of rot from the direction of Redmond is getting stronger.
I'm quite frustrated when people hardcode in fonts - even linuxsites code in font's that really look awful on a (my, at least :p) linux system. Use the css attribute font-family: sans-serif instead of font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif! Then we (who actually browse the pages) can choose our favourite fonts. I like Bitstream Vera Sans for sans-serif fonts.
Lucida Grande is the new Verdana.
Right... until one day your favourite proprietor goes out of business or simply decides there's not enough money to be made on your piece of software. Soon after you're going to need to move your data to some other piece of software because it has this new killer feature. That day you will start wishing you opted for something just a little more interoperable.
but that's understandable. He still has a lot of valid points, and does a *fine* job of raking Bill G. over the coals :-)
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
With the increasing popularity of Firefox, Opera needed to do something to try to reverse its shrinking marketshare of the browser market. It is good to see Opera getting a little of the publicity it so desparately needs.
Last time i checked maps.google.com doesn't work in opera. I don't see the guys from opera or anyone else complaining about this.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
It is the other way around. Google should use standards, so it will display good in all browsers. HttpXmlRequest is not standard. XSL/XSLT and XML should be used on the server side. Browsers should only have to deal with XHTML, CSS, and ECMAScript. Not only that the new Google producs are not standard compliant, they are also not accessible under 508.
Considering you only list MS and Sun products, companies that traditionally use their marketing departments to hype their products above their real qualities it seems about right someone uses similar methods to get them back to the ground.
Linux is not Windows
The only major problem I have with using Mozilla with Hotmail is Microsft recoding the interface based on what browser you are using. They do no want you to use tab browsing on other brosers to open email content. Hence your links are all javascript. However when you use IE. they are normal hypertext links. Why the difference? Only to fustrate people using Mozilla or Opera when they try to hope multiple tabs to read, write mail multaskingly.
It is a low underhanded trick. But MicroBS gets away with it. Plus why use hotmail? It is the most limited email service out there....
You can't get "more valid". An HTML document is either valid or it isn't. Neither Slashdot's HTML nor MSN's HTML is valid.
You can say that MSN's markup contains less errors, but that doesn't mean MSN is "more valid" than Slashdot.
Look, I'm a big fan of the concept behind CSS, but it completely fucking sucks and IE has done everyone a service by allowing people to make web pages that look the way they want them to, rather than tying them to a standard that's been written with contradictory ideals in mind. Microsoft picked one: make it possible to make things that look however you want on their specific browser. There's nothing evil about letting people make pages that look good, even if it does shut out people who choose to work for openness and ease of implimentation instead of actually trying to let people display what they want.
I expect CSS will be truely wonderful by the time version 4 or 5 comes around, but in the mean time, you dont get to complain when the big companies refuse to impliment that thing you made up. If MS thought 100% correct CSS implimentation would make their product work better, they would do it. I expect they will do it in the future, but simply making something "open" doesnt mean "and everyone who doesnt think it's the best way to do something is evil and being anti-competative"
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
It obviously won't repeat itself verbatim, but MS has other ways to do the same thing. There was, for example, the case when Word on OS-X didn't properly support Hebrew. The Microsoft Rep said that it just wasn't worth their time to upgrade it. They still refused when Israel offered to pay for the programmers to do the fix and promise a minimum number of sales to boot.
"Sorry -- No dice. Move to Windows
It wasn't untill Israel awarded a grant to port Open Office to OS-X and seriously threatened to cut off Microsoft's standing PO for the entire government that Microsoft relented and suddenly started negotiating in good faith.
Microsoft is a company that you can trust as far as you can throw them -- and they're big.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.