Boston Globe to Blogger — "Stop Using Opera"

PetManimal writes "Mac Daniels of the Boston Globe weighed in on a prickly debate involving the updated local mass transit website. The Globe's advice to one complainer named 'derspatchel': Stop using Opera. Derspatchel's response is to go medieval on Daniels' ass, and ask the question: Why should Opera users give up their browser? Quoting: 'I don't give two whoops about the "percentage of the Internet population" or whatever. I don't care if a website works on someone else's choice of browser; I care if it works or not on my choice of browser. It's a modern browser, it's in active development, and it's free. Once dev stops on the Opera browser and the last version becomes outdated and unable to support newer Web innovations, then I'll "stop using it." How's that, Chuckles?'" After a day the transit authority took the new site offline to "improve performance," reverting to the old version.

Comments

Protected blog, full text of post

[TheSpoom]

I posted on his blog that he was about to be Slashdotted and he protected the post, probably so he wouldn't receive an assload of comments, which is fair. For context, though, here's the full post as I got there before it was protected:

Apparently my last post about the problems I experienced with the new MBTA web site punched some people in the goolies or something. Apparently my complaints about the site aren't valid because I like using the Opera browser. Apparently I shouldn't be using Opera because, as someone on the Universal Hub said, "Opera is only .6% of the internet population. Opera is also known for being buggy." (Firefox is known for memory leaks; IE is known for being susceptible to exploits. What's your point?)

And Mac Daniel, who apparently gets paid to blog for the Globe, has this apparently helpful pearl of wisdom for me, nicely writ up with the Imperial First Person Plural:

Then there's this guy who uses the Opera browser and doesn't like things one bit. Our suggestion? Stop using Opera.

Wow! Awesome! Thanks for that helpful nugget of advice there, chief! That kind of knee-jerk bullshit response is about as annoying as the zealots on certain tech boards who answer every question about a Windows problem with "INSTALL LINUX, PROBLEM SOLVED." Basically it means "I have nothing helpful to contribute, but I just thought I'd act like a douchebag anyway."

Not that I've ever had any experience with that before.

So, uh, got any more advice for me, Mac? You were so helpful with the technical problems I wonder if you can help me out with other things in my life. Should I wear the black pants, or the brown? Which Law & Order series should I follow? Should I put the 60-watt bulb in this lamp, or go for the 75-watt? What wine would you recommend with this steak? I have dropped my glass of water on the floor (I am terribly sorry), what should I do? Is that strange high-pitched buzz coming from the fluorescent lighting, or something outside?

I don't give two whoops about the "percentage of the Internet population" or whatever. I don't care if a website works on someone else's choice of browser; I care if it works or not on my choice of browser. It's a modern browser, it's in active development, and it's free. Once dev stops on the Opera browser and the last version becomes outdated and unable to support newer Web innovations, then I'll "stop using it." How's that, Chuckles?

I've been following the development of this browser since 2001. I found its interface clean, it was the first browser I saw that featured tabbed browsing, and I enjoy some of its more interesting navigational features (mouse gestures are somewhat helpful, but using mouse button combinations to move back or forward a page is just great.) I've tried Firefox before. I've tried it at several times during its development cycle, actually, from when it leaked memory like a sieve to when it merely dripped memory like a leaky faucet. It looked okay, but it wasn't for me. I didn't want to have to search through acres of plugins to find the ones that would make Firefox do what Opera already did out of the box.

Let's get back to the point: I think the MBTA website redesign has a lot of great new features. It's a far cry better than the version they had up before. The Google map integration is excellent, and I like the detailed information on the stations and stops (with all connections listed and stuff.)

The site just doesn't play well with all browsers. Sure, you can't guarantee your new website with up-to-date features will work well with every browser (You'll notice Adam Gaffin tried the site in lynx before I got the chance to) but I'm sorry. Opera is a valid, "modern" browser. Just because you don't use it doesn't mean nobody should.

Ron Newman has no problems with the site when he views it in Opera (are you using a Mac or PC, Ron?) so there's hope there. Maybe there's a problem with the XP version. Maybe there a

Re:Protected blog, full text of post

[Arker]

He's clearly ranting, and it doesn't all make sense.

If he doesn't care if pages work in someone else choice of browser why would anyone care if they work in his?

Personally, I do care that data which is presented as being a 'web page' should, in fact, be a web page. Web pages work in any browser, barring browser bugs.

So the question for me is, does this page not work in opera because the page is wrong, or because of a bug in Opera? I haven't used Opera in a long time, but it used to be a very solid browser with very few bugs when I used it, and I suspect it still is. Nonetheless, generalities don't solve the problem, specifics do. Is Opera correctly displaying a broken page, or is it displaying a good page improperly?

The page in question is far from a good web page, which reïnforces my suspicion, but still, does anyone know exactly the issue in question here?

Re:Protected blog, full text of post

[JoshJ]

I note from your W3C validator link that several bits of what look like code are commented out, notably items 16 and 18 on the W3C page. It seems possible that the problem lies there.

Re:Protected blog, full text of post

[shaitand]

Sorry but any web developer can tell you that the 'if it follows standards it should work' myth has been dead for a long time.

A 'good' webpage can be written in xhtml and include every scrap of CSS defined in the 2.0 standard. Unfortunately, the standards in question (including the older CSS specs) are ambiguous in some places and even if they weren't there is no browser that fully implements them. You can write a 100% standard and validated webpage that doesn't rendered properly (read according to standard) in any modern browser.

This is further complicated because the implementations are not just incomplete, but no two browsers implement the same parts. And if the browsers all implement a function, the ambiguity of the standard comes into play and you will often seen something rendered differently in each to a small or large degree. Depending on how critical the visual element in question is to your design, an unexpected difference in behavior can make a page unworkable or at least broken.

The result is that a web developer who is doing everything right (the site in question is obviously not, but I am not defending them, just setting the record straight) must do what he always has. He must test the page in an assortment of browsers and then work out the kinks for them. He must then hope that the resolution to those kinks will result in an implementation that will generally work in the browsers he has not tested.

Such is life. Even among those who do design according to standards and validate properly, there are those who only actually test and resolve issues in one browser. They know this will make most of the market work and following standards means that nobody can claim broken functionality is their fault.

Of course, accessibility standards for any government type site (city, county, state, federal, etc) should be required to work in all modern browsers. After all, I suspect that the blind do not constitute 0.6% of the browser market but those sites are required to be accessible to them. Are the blind somehow better than Opera users?

"If he doesn't care if pages work in someone else choice of browser why would anyone care if they work in his?"

Because Opera has support for features and technologies that rival any browser on the market (meaning it is as easy to support as any other browser) and 6 out of every thousand web users are using Opera. Considering that there are roughly 1,086,250,903 Internet users (per http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm) that means Opera's 0.6% of the browser market is about 6.5 million people. Using percentages immediately favors the biggest players and belittles the mid-sized and smaller players when you are referencing a sample the size of the browser market. When you are talking about nine zeros, reducing your figures to two zeros doesn't magically make for a clearer picture, it only serves to mask reality.

Re:Protected blog, full text of post

[TorKlingberg]

After all, I suspect that the blind do not constitute 0.6% of the browser market but those sites are required to be accessible to them. Are the blind somehow better than Opera users? I mostly agree with your comment, but the above argument is not good. Opera users can switch to an other browser. Blind users can't stop being blind.

Re:Protected blog, full text of post

[Isotopian]

Can too. Jesus did it for that one guy.

Re:Protected blog, full text of post

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

So says a witness who, conveniently, can't be questioned.

Re:Protected blog, full text of post

[schon]

any web developer can tell you that the 'if it follows standards it should work' myth has been dead for a long time That's not a myth. If it follows standards, then it should work. Period.

The myth would be "if it follows standards, then it will work."

Not Opera

[Southpaw018]

At least 3 other people using Opera 9.0+ comment on the complainer's blog to say they have no problems. Now, that's still no justification or reason for saying "don't use Opera," but I don't think this problem is really with Opera in the first place.

Sorry for the serious comment in an "It's funny. Laugh." story ;)

Re:Not Opera

[Shakrai]

Now, that's still no justification or reason for saying "don't use Opera,"

Really? 0.6% marketshare? Can I complain because it doesn't render properly in Lynx?

Take my comment as flamebait if you want to. But I have much bigger things to complain about on the web. Like webpages that won't work without Javascript. Or webpages that use stupid flash interfaces. Or how about webpages that aren't dialup friendly? I suspect there's more dialup users out there then Opera users. Don't see anybody on /. jumping up to defend them.

Re:Not Opera

[Salmar]

That's it. I've heard it 5 too many times only TODAY:

I've never used Opera and I couldn't care less if it exists. Fixed.

Re:Not Opera

[RAMMS EIN]

``Really? 0.6% marketshare?''

I don't know why people keep saying this is a market share issue. There are published, freely available standards that describe the languages used for creating web sites, and the way browsers should interpret these languages. Now, if a page doesn't work in a browser, there are two possibilities:

1. The website is doing something wrong
2. The browser is doing something wrong

In the first case, the website is broken, and people should complain to the webmaster, regardless of the market share of their browsers. In the second case, the browser is broken, and people should complain to the browser vendor, no matter the market share of their browsers.

``Can I complain because it doesn't render properly in Lynx?''

Yes, as long as you use the right definition of properly. Most importantly, rendering a page "properly" does not have anything to do with rendering it the same way another browser does. HTML and CSS were designed to be forward compatible: browsers are supposed to treat elements they don't understand in a specific way, which ensures that the elements are, at least, made available to users. JavaScript doesn't work that way, but, in the forward compatibility philosophy, scripts on pages should themselves be something that can be ignored, without rendering the page useless. Together, all these mean that Lynx, or any other browser, should at least render the basic elements like paragraphs, headings, and links in some way useful to the user. This could be anything from full support for a custom scripting language and lots of multimedia content embedded in the page, full support for the latest versions of CSS and HTML, etc. to speaking out the text on the page with some indication of which parts are links and how to activate them. As far as I can tell, Lynx does a good job at this, except when web pages are made in such a way as to not be compatible with all but a few chosen browsers.

You can argue market share all you want, but, in the end, it's not usually about the users of one specific browser being discriminated against, but about blatantly shutting out _all_ browsers, except a chosen few. That's ok; after all, if it's your own webpage, you can decide what you put on it and who can view it and what software they need, etc. (at least, as far as my sense of morals is concerned; US law disagrees) However, everybody who doesn't like that has the right to complain about it. And I will say the complaints have merit. Not that you have to care about the complaints, or about my opinion, of course. Still, you could make your page in such a way that it works in all (compliant) browsers; it's not hard. In fact, it's what you get if you don't do anything against it.

Re:Not Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an American thing - after WW2 or thereabouts the meaning of the phrase was inverted (more info on Google). You wanna talk standards compliance with a culture that swaps linguistic meaning for no good reason? Good luck!

Re:Not Opera

[gEvil (beta)]

Of course, we're not asking to have Google Maps working on Lynx, evidently.

No, but it would be pretty cool if somebody would mashup Google Maps with an ASCII converter.

Re:Weird response. Weird summary too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which browser are you using?

Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

To address the inevitable:

Yes, Firefox can be plugged up to do everything Opera does (password fill, voice browsing, mouse gestures, tab thumbnails, comprehensive download management, RSS/etc feeds, two-click privacy management/delete data, on-the-fly presentation modes (change styles, backgrounds, tables, links, images from toolbar in User/Author mode), image gallery jumpthrough, keyboard zoom, and all the rest.

However, Opera provides a standard setup out of the box, on any computer. I can download it and be up and running in seconds, without spending time configuring plugins, and no annoying autoinstalls. It will also look and behave the same on your XP laptop as on my *NIX box, as on your 98 workstation.

And unlike Firefox, Opera will not be using 2GB of swap if you leave it running overnight with Gmail open!

With that in mind, Opera is at the level, or better than Firefox, meaning that it is way better than Internet. Not supporting it is just idiocy.

Re:Firefox

[larry bagina]

Yes, Firefox can be plugged up to do everything Opera does

Whenever the subject of Opera's functionality comes up:

"Install 20 extensions to make Firefox mimic the functionality."

Whenever the subject of Firefox instability comes up:

"Firefox doesn't crash for me. It's probably those 20 extensions you have installed."

Re:I gotta agree

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"It is an adware-infested web browser that is actually slower than Firefox."

Wrong on both counts. I'd go into detail, but a cure for your ignorance is only 4.7 megabytes away.

What does this have to do with Free Software?

[Chris Tyler]

Why is it that everyone in the free software community has this automatic assumption that the rest of the world should go out of their way to support them?

Why are you bringing "the free software community" into this? Opera isn't free software*, and XP isn't free software, so what does this have to do with the free software community?!

(* Opera is free to download, but it is not Free Software in the sense of the phrase "free software community").

No...

[LWATCDR]

It is real simple answer to why. Opera supports publish standards. Those standards should be supported FIRST.
From a business point of view it is real simple do you want someone to not buy your product?
For Firefox that runs about 10% If you can support them you should.
finally this is a PUBLIC site run by as in run by the government! The government shouldn't require one to use a certain browser without a really good reason.

Unless you are doing a lot of Ajax it isn't hard to support Opera.
The only reason is because you are lazy.

Re:No...

[zxSpectrum]

Unless you are doing a lot of Ajax it isn't hard to support Opera. The only reason is because you are lazy.

I'll start with the disclaimer first: I work at Opera Software, with Web applications. Then I'll continue with an honest-to-god question, as I have more of an interest in understanding why people's sentiments are as they are:

Where does the misconception that Opera can't do "a lot of Ajax" come from? Because it clearly can, for instance, see Aida, the Ajax phone -- a rather massive Ajax framework and appplication running on top of Opera Platform (a runtime which provides access to certain aspects of the device, such as battery status, connectivity, message stores and such).

Re:another great site for opera (slightly OT)

[TheSpoom]

The baby Bells, for the most part, have reached the size I like to call the "fuck the customer" stage; the stage in which the company is large enough that the business will continue to generate enough profit even if they piss off a fifth of their customers, usually because the customers have few alternatives. I'm convinced that once a business gets above a certain size it's very difficult to stop it from getting to this stage.

So let me get this straight

[bunions]

1) Some government site changed their webpages
2) Guy A can't load it and assumes he's being blocked because he's using an oddball browser
3) Guy A complains and is told by Guy B to stop using his oddball browser and get over it
4) Guy A goes ballistic on his blog
5) Guys C, D and E respond to Guy A's blog and say "we're using opera and it works fine for us, must be something on your end"
6) Because it's blog drama, one man's fucked-up configuration problems ends up on slashdot

Do I have that right?

Re:So let me get this straight

[bunions]

> You'd think there would be some kind of a filter to prevent stuff like this from happening.

That's a pretty good idea, actually. I mean, we're never going to get something like actual human editors who could actually inspect the articles before they were posted, so some sort of automated solution to cull out the obvious crap would be a good first step.

Re:Get a life

[Dracos]

This isn't about Free Software, this is about Web Standards and freedom of choice.

if a business wants to reach people using the most modern hardware and software then they are going to have to go out of their way to support a wide variety of standards and browsers

As a developer, I can tell you that I don't have to go out of my way to support modern browsers. I have to go very far out of my way to support Internet Explorer which can't be considerd a modern browser (even IE7), whose standards support is abysmal compared to everything else on the market today. This is a side effect of my knowing how to do my job well.

Once again, an innocent suffers in the name of one of MS' shitty products.

Making a business decision is one thing, but telling your customers to fuck off because your business decision doesn't jive with their personal choices is downright rude.

As for games, it is a more similar issue than you probably realize, because the same people are meddling with the market. If game studios would stop developing against DirectX and start using OpenGL instead, it would be much easier for them to support platforms other than Windows.

The "business" is obligated to serve the public

[Anonymous Coward]

if a business wants to reach people

This isn't just any business. It is a government-subsidized organization set up to serve the public interest. They have an obligation to serve all people, not just the majority. If they decided to not allow wheelchairs on their vehicles because only 0.001% of the population uses them, the leaders of that organization would be testifying in front of congress within days.

If the site doesn't work with Opera there is a 99% chance it doesn't work with tools for the visually impaired either. Frankly, any government site should be required to use open, published standards.

Re:Get a life

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Opera follows open web standards, which are the goal for clean code on ALL web sites. So, in essence, unless someone is still dumb enough to code their site for IE and IE only, ALL web browsers work just fine with it.

I'm an Opera fanboy, but I don't think this is always a problem of coding specifically for IE. Opera works quite well on 98% of the sites I visit. Occassionally I bump into one that doesn't work in Opera, but works just fine in Firefox. Maybe Opera does 'support all the standards' and FF has a few IE-like nicities, as opposed to failing to implement an obscure feature that some sites use. I cannot really say I know. I do know that Google Maps works better in FF than Opera. Don't get me wrong, it's quite usable and useful in Opera, but in FF it's a little more interactive with the mouse. I don't think this is due to a lack of effort on Google's part to support Opera.

It's easy to make sites that work with both FF and Opera, but there are niggling issues here and there that still bring up a bit of trouble. I love Opera, but I cannot personally say it's as good at reaching all the sites on the web as FF is. It would be fair for me to say, though, that this is a problem I so rarely come across anymore that I agree with you that this is silliness on the side of the web developer. Getting their site to work with Opera would probably just require a couple of little tweaks. That is, of course, assuming that Opera 9 didn't already solve the problem. (I haven't exhaustively tested this yet, but a couple of sites I had trouble with in O8 worked beautifully in 9.)

I agree with the GP poster that it should make economic sense for them before they support Opera. I agree with you that better coding standards on their site would alleviate this problem with the added benefit of supporting other browsers like Safari. There's a happy medium in there somewhere. Honestly, I think the "have Opera and FF both installed" solution is that happy medium. That's what keeps me from sending nasty-grams twice a year when I hit a site Opera can't open.

Uh, hi there.

[Spatch]

I'm derspatchel. I took the entries and the pictures out of circulation. I don't need the comments and my admin doesn't need the bandwidth overages. I kept saying the last thing I wanted to do was start a goddamn browser war, but it looks as if I didn't really have any choice in that matter. I kicked a rock and it rolled downhill from there.

My original complaint was written as I was viewing the revamped website, and just couldn't believe the nav problem I had seen. Nearly half a million dollars went into the redesign and it seemed like they'd really goofed. The second complaint was written when Mac Daniel threw a little jab in his writeup on the debacle, while I was sussing out the nav problem with Ron Newman. Is it a coding thing? Is it an OS thing? Is it a configuration thing? Is it an enduser thing? I dunno. Then the MBTA reverted to the previous version so I couldn't play around with it any further. And then my knee-jerk reaction to Mac's knee-jerk reaction just led to more knee-jerk reactions. Okay, I gotta stop typing 'knee-jerk' because it's beginning to look weird.

I stand by my opinion that if a browser is in current development and it's W3C compliant, then it should by all rights be considered a supportable browser and a browser to be supported. That's all. If I had been crying that the MBTA site wasn't viewable on Netscape Navigator 4.0, say, then I could see why there'd be a problem and why the advice to change browsers would come pouring in.

All I wanted was to be able to use the website with a current, up-to-date, standards-compliant web browser. I also said I'd be happy to use another supported browser to view it, but it would be nice if I didn't have to, and it'd be much nicer if I weren't told to.

Re:I gotta agree

[Danga]

Opera should be deprecated. It is an adware-infested web browser that is actually slower than Firefox. The Internet will be better off if websites permanently ban this Scandinavian piece of shit.

You are an idiot. Opera has been ad free for a LONG time and it does not install any adware. Opera 9 is also faster than Firefox 2, it kicks Firefox's ass quite handily:

http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html

Why should a browser that is still being actively developed and used be deprecated? Please try to post something relevent next time.

His argument could be improved, but...

[msobkow]

His argument could be improved, but he is correct. W3C should be the fallback default for websites, not some IE variant. Too many websites default to IE if they don't recognize the browser id string, and that frells even W3C compliant browsers.

The other thing the bozo in transit forgets is that Opera is one of the most popular microbrowsers built into cell phones, PDAs, and other portable devices -- the very customer base that is most likely to need mobile access to information about the transit system.

The whole series of "browser wars" arguments are bull IMNSHO. W3C HTML first, W3C approved standards next (e.g. XHTML, XML documents), vendor-specific variants LAST. If developers would stop working around that godawful mess, Microsoft would be forced to fix IE by a deluge of customer complaints. Our own policy of appeasement in search of market share is what forces the entire web community to keep working around the incompatible platform-specific enhancements, costing the entire planet money.

Re:Call your self a browser? Support standards.

[vtcodger]

Did anyone like actually feed the new web page to the W3C HTML validator? The old web page is currently back up, and it's clear that the MBTA web site designers don't consider standards compliance to be a priority.

Result: Failed validation, 40 errors (This is just the home page, not the whole site.)

Address: www.mbta.com

Encoding: utf-8 (assumed, there is no encoding specification in the header)

Doctype: (no Doctype found) -- the 40 errors assumes HTML4.01 Transitional. My guess is if there is no Doctype line in the header, the Web site designers probably have no clue that there ARE standards for HTML documents.

It's true that not every site needs to be standards compliant. Google's home page doesn't validate either. But Google's HTML actually works in a diverse collection of browsers.

My opinion FWIW -- If the site doesn't validate, the first step is to fix the site. If the site still doesn't render then, and only then, does it become reasonable to question whether the browser might be a problem.

A painful subject

[Simprini]

I have been an opera fan, nay, fanatic since the 6.x days. I even paid for it, no joke. An integrated mail client plus browser plus rss reader AND it works on Windows and Linux!? These reasons kept me going up until this week, more or less. I realized that for years I've been making excuses and bitching about the way people write webpages (and me a web developer) and generally being irritated at -them- when I am forced to open up IE or Firefox to view a page. This very week, I snapped. It is ridiculous for a page to work in IE and Firefox and not Opera. And it's OPERAS FAULT. I know their excuses. I've used them myself time and time again and it just doesn't fly. As a application user I DON'T CARE. I should be able to go to a website and view it. If I can't then that browser is broken and needs a patch. It was easier to blame MS back in the day sites worked with it but not Mozilla or Opera. These days, I'm not sure I've ever seen something that works in IE only that Firefox can't handle. I've had it up to my eyebrows and as soon as I figure out how which rss reader to use, hopefuly something cross-platform for both Linux and Windows, I'm giving up.