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Dvorak Says MS Should Buy Opera
patro writes "Should MS beef up cranky old Internet Explorer for today's standards? Dvorak thinks buying Opera would be a smarter move. It works on all the major platforms including the Mac which IE won't support anymore and $400 million for it is pocket money for Microsoft."
But it would be a terrible move from a PR perpective. It would be like admitting they're not able to program a decent browser; they'd look like they're buying the small guy, which many less-than-rational people think is a very bad thing to do; and the user experience would be so much different than what they're used to. Let's not forget Opera has always been years in advance of the competition - heck, they were teh cool way back in version 3.
Global warming is a cube.
I'm pretty sure the point is that if MS buys Opera, it would not be to add a browser to the financial portfolio, but to have a more secure browser. MSOpera would form the basis of the next gen of IE, which would still be given away for free.
Opera also introduced tabbed browsing and other cool features since adopted by Firefox but not, as yet, implemented by Microsoft.
I'm not sure if it is his poor sentence structure or if he is trying to imply that Opera copied Firefox's tabs. Opera was the first to have tabs in Opera 6.0 (many years ago).
Curiously, Opera is already designed to appear to Web sites as Internet Explorer. This feature was added to prevent sites from blocking non-Microsoft browsers from capturing data and downloading.
Dvorak, do your homework; Opera 9.0 (soon to be released) identifies as Opera.
Furthermore, Google is supposed to buy Opera, not Microsoft, and personally, I would preffer if Google buys it. If Microsoft buys it, they'll have to strip it dry and take only the rendering engine because they have Outlook Express and Outlook. They can't show that Opera and Gmail (Google copied Opera) have a better eMail client.
Opera has been completely free (as in Beer http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/20/121723 2&from=rss) with no ads for a while now... I am really surprised how few people actually use it.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
Dvorak claims that IE doesn't support tabbed browsing, but he doesn't allude to the very well-known features that are being included in IE 7. IE 7 supports tabbed browsing and is available in a private beta. (I'm using it right now.) Microsoft also is creating a Phishing filter. (I don't know what kind of anti-phishing effort Opera is making.)
Personally, I see a browser as something like a car stereo. IE and Safari are "stock"; Opera and Firefox are "aftermarket". Creating a Mac version of IE is a considerable effort that won't bring any revenue to Microsoft. It will also hinder a browser-neutral web as web developers can just tell Mac users to "Download IE".
In addition, Dvorak's statement about Microsoft waiting for the x86 Mac to port IE shows that he really doesn't understand the difference between computer platforms today. Computer programs, especially GUI intensive ones like web browsers, are easily ported among many CPUs because they are written in high-level languages. They are difficult to port among different operating systems because the GUI APIs are very different.
No, I will not work for your startup
Exactly why I like Opera. Incompatibility with such gems as ActiveX is, to me, a Feature.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
Well now that you mention it, I occasionally need to run IE at work. Instead of booting into Windows, I run IE using Wine under Fedora Core 4.
I wish I could say it worked great. It doesn't. But it works well enough that I can modify server side rule in exchange by using the Web interface. Yes, the web interface works in non-ie browsers, but doesn't handle enhanced mode -- so you can't do things like make rules. And, evolution doesn't implement exchange server side rules.
I also need to use ie to enter my vacation time. Sigh.
IE works under wine. Most of the functionality works. Occasionally something doesn't. The window flashes a lot. It does crash regularly.
Where law ends, tyranny begins -- William Pitt
Extract of a chat with Jon held earlier this year:
Q: Hi I've been using opera from Opera 4 . And after four years I still have it - in fact I can't live without it! If Bill Gates wanted to buy Opera, do you accept it ?
Jon S. von Tetzchner: Hi Shima, thank you for using the best browser year after year! The answer to your question is simple: No. We would never sell Opera to Microsoft in a million years. Best regards, Jon.
Disclaimer: Yeah, I'm an Opera fanboi! What's it to ya?
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
It's either an Apple, a Platypus, or a dogcow. Depending on the Mac.
Hell, I'd pay money to see Dvorak being beaten up by a platypus.
Shall I start with the bit about how Microsoft has no reason to develop Mac programs anymore becuse they can just use the Intel-based versions? He seems to have forgotten that fact that the platform is more than just a processer archtecture, there's the OS API as well. It takes a lot of glue code to get an x86 Windows app to run on x86 Linux (and even then it's rarely perfect), and the same would be true on x86 Mac.
.NET CLR 1.1.4322)"
Then he goes off on the whole "Opera identifies itself as IE so we don't know how many people use it" bull that's been debunked over and over and over again. Opera IDs itself as IE in the same way that IE identifies itself as Netscape -- and for the same reason. If you're paying any attention at all, you can tell the difference.
Some examples:
Netscape 4: "Mozilla/4.7 [en] (WinNT; U)"
IE 6: "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;
Opera 7: "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.50 [en]"
You'll note that IE spoofs Netscape, that Opera spoofs IE (including the Netscape spoof), and that all three are easily distinguishable if you're looking in the right place.
Does this guy have a clue what he's talking about?
1. Different APIs - Lots of rewriting and adjusting to get it to work. 2. Huge time setback for future OS and browser release (like Vista). 3. IE is a good browser - Since XP SP2 much (naturally not all) of its security weaknesses have been dealth with, and its fast. And IE7 stands a good chance of being much more secure than IE6. 4. Antitrust lawsuits - Opera is someone MS can point at and say "See! We have competition! So don't sue us!"
Hotmail is NOT a Microsoft product. I have a hotmail account from back before Microsoft bought it and turned it into the spam infested app it is today.
I also quite like C# except that object.ToString() doesn't return the object contents but details about the class which annoys me.
http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?option=conte nt&task=view&id=2108
Please please please tell me this is wrong.