Opera 9.5 To Fully Support CSS?

Albert Sandberg writes "According to a developer blog, it looks like Opera 9.5 (which has been code-named Kestrel) will be the first browser to fully support the CSS selector test (test is here). Finally! Weekly builds should start being available in a few weeks."

Comments

Safari Beta 3

[WrongSizeGlass]

From the 43 selectors 25 have passed, 9 are buggy and 9 are unsupported (Passed 346 out of 578 tests) Not great, but a lot better than I ever did in school. ;-)

Re:Safari Beta 3

[Ajehals]

For the record...

Iceweasel 2.0.0.4

From the 43 selectors 26 have passed, 10 are buggy and 7 are unsupported (Passed 357 out of 578 tests)

Konqueror 3.5.7

From the 43 selectors 43 have passed, 0 are buggy and 0 are unsupported (Passed 578 out of 578 tests)

So konqueror (which I thought shared source with safari?) is 100% compliant at least as of version 3.5.7 (I don't have an earlier version to test.).

Re:Safari Beta 3

[DECS]

Konquerer uses KHTML, and Safari's WebKit was built from that as a starting point, but is really a fork. Apple worked on it for a year before notifying KHTML, and there were troubles in merging the changes Apple submitted.

There has been some effort to get KDE to adopt WebKit.

--

Cuckoo for Cocoa: Is Safari on Windows the next iTunes?
Will Apple be able to achieve the same level of success with Safari as it has with iTunes, or are the circumstances completely different? Apple is betting on a handful of reasons why Windows users who already have a favorite web browser might want to use Safari. Here's a look at those reasons, what Safari shares in common with Apple's existing offerings--and in particular iTunes--and how it all relates to interesting possibilities in Apple's future strategies.

The Future of the Web: Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer
Imagine jumping back in time to 1993 and rescuing the world from fifteen years of enslavement to proprietary technologies that held up innovation and put development decisions in the hands of a few salesmen.

Re:Safari Beta 3

[prockcore]

There has been some effort to get KDE to adopt WebKit.

That would be a step backwards.. KHTML is more compliant than webkit in both javascript and css3.

Re:Safari Beta 3

[AvitarX]

Lynx and Links to both get no results :(

Re:Safari Beta 3

[Asztal_]

From the 43 selectors 32 have passed, 4 are buggy and 7 are unsupported (Passed 369 out of 578 tests) Gecko/20070622 Minefield/3.0a6pre

Re:Safari Beta 3

[great throwdini]

KHTML is more compliant than webkit in both javascript and css3.

As a spec, and on the whole, CSS 3 doesn't appear to be anywhere close to completion, so I'm not sure what to make of half the above claim if it were to be true.

Re:Safari Beta 3

[etheranger]

No idea why, but my (release) build of Konqueror 3.5:

From the 43 selectors 13 have passed, 0 are buggy and 30 are unsupported (Passed 308 out of 578 tests)

Apparently including the basic E, .class and #id . Something is amiss.... :/

Re:Safari Beta 3

[jZnat]

Well, CSS 3 selectors is done, so it should be supported by all web browsers (or at least the GUI ones) by now. At least two of the main renderring engines do now...

Re:Safari Beta 3

[great throwdini]

Well, CSS 3 selectors is done, so it should be supported by all web browsers.

No, it's not. It's been flagged for "Last Call" since the end of 2005 and is still aways from full recommendation status. CSS 2.1 (farther along, but similarly mired) to date is patchily implemented by all — some moreso than others, for various reasons — so why should one expect full support for this CSS3 Working Draft?

(Some do say the W3C is a bit byzantine, and yes, they are cranky about it. You, too, can be the judge of that.)

Re:Safari Beta 3

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, I got "From the 43 selectors 43 have passed, 0 are buggy and 0 are unsupported (Passed 578 out of 578 tests)" on Konqueror 3.5.5.

Re:Safari Beta 3

[Anonymous Coward]

Konqueror 3.5.7 certainly passes the test.
You might want to upgrade your KDE installation.

- pflakes

Re:Safari Beta 3

[jack_csk]

My Knoqueror is 3.5.5 (release 45.4), and it passed all 578 tests as well.

Re:Safari Beta 3

[IllForgetMyNickSoonA]

It seems I should update my KDE - here are the results of the Konqueror 3.5.2 (kubuntu 6.06.1-LTS): From the 43 selectors 13 have passed, 0 are buggy and 30 are unsupported (Passed 309 out of 578 tests) 0 buggy, but only 13 passed... :-(

Re:Safari Beta 3

[Anonymous Coward]

On Konqueror 3.5.5 (as shipped with Debian Etch), I got:

From the 43 selectors 37 have passed, 6 are buggy and 0 are unsupported (Passed 570 out of 578 tests)

The 6 that were buggy were all case sensitivity issues in unusual corner cases.

Re:Safari Beta 3

[Anonymous Coward]

Konqueror 3.5.7 From the 43 selectors 43 have passed, 0 are buggy and 0 are unsupported (Passed 578 out of 578 tests) So konqueror (which I thought shared source with safari?) is 100% compliant at least as of version 3.5.7

So KDE is better than GNOME, again.

Re:Safari Beta 3

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the Debian Etch install of Konqueror. Konqueror 3.5.5 (Using KDE 3.5.5) in the About->Konqueror section, and QT 3.3.7 from the konqueror --version commandline output

From the 43 selectors 37 have passed, 6 are buggy and 0 are unsupported (Passed 570 out of 578 tests)

So it looks like it may be dependent on which build of 3.5.5 is being used. It may have been compiled with different flags. I am not sure, but it did do better than my Firefox 2.0.0.4, which I downloaded from Mozilla.com and installed on Debian Etch. I removed IceWeasel so I cannot check that. But here is Firefox 2.0.0.4 on my Etch box.

From the 43 selectors 26 have passed, 10 are buggy and 7 are unsupported (Passed 357 out of 578 tests)

Re:Safari Beta 3

[Ant P.]

Seeing as nothing interesting survives the W3C's bureaucracy black hole any more, I'm inclined to agree with him. They have a level of inefficiency and incompetence that most governments can only dream of achieving.

I for one would welcome anyone as the new web overlords at this point (even MS) as long as they DO something instead of just being a private mailing list hosting service for pretentious wankers.

Re:Safari Beta 3

[cong06]

ok, so Konqueror apparently passes more "css3 tests" then Firefox. (firefox: From the 43 selectors 26 have passed, 10 are buggy and 7 are unsupported (Passed 357 out of 578 tests)) So why does Konqueror look like crap on that page, as opposed to Firefox that seems to smooth out the shadows?

Re:Safari Beta 3

[Ajehals]

Differences in the rendering engine not withstanding and looking at Firefox and Konqueror on Linux I often see very little if any discernible difference on pages that are written with valid mark-up. Javascript sometimes seems to cause aesthetic issues between the two - but I tend to find that if it works and looks good in konqueror you are safe everywhere else (Although I still tend to check everywhere else...).

The most striking differences still seem to be between IE5/IE6 and everything else, hell I can get Safari, Konqueror, Firefox, Opera, Epiphany and even IE7 to display a page exactly how I want it, but I then I need to add hacks for IE5/IE6. To be honest I am now simply making sure that the results in IE5/IE6 are good enough, i.e. they look different but still nice (obviously all code needs to be standards compliant), rather than trying to get an identical page, it is much easier and reduces the amount of time spent messing with the CSS templates, not to mention the fact that most people will look at the site in one browser or another and are unlikely to determine or be bothered by the differences between browsers.

I should point out though that those people who simply decide that IE support or now Safari support can be ignored or that a link to get Firefox is sufficient (Egged on by the goggle referral program) are mistaken. Anyone who tries to bar access to their site to certain browsers, either by user agent or by using more in depth checks, should not be responsible for maintaining websites.

uhh the 'selector test' is slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

does that mean i fail it? (not the first post..)

Progress is made

[Anonymous Coward]

...but there are still 40% IE6 users out there. That browser can't even select on two classes in one element...

Re:Progress is made

[rapazza]

Time will clear them , opera offers real good details that helps for a better web experience.

why is it so hard?

[z-j-y]

is it a problem of CSS spec if nobody can support it easily?

Re:why is it so hard?

[daeg]

Part of the issue arises from the fact that much of browser rendering code is ancient. Much of the basic rendering pieces weren't built to handle some of the CSS properties. For instance, many advanced selectors break when you are dynamically adding content or changing/adding stylesheets.

Expect Internet Explorer to lag again unless they completely replace large parts of their HTML rendering engine for standard-compliant sites. There is simply too much legacy code running against the Internet Explorer control, unfortunately.

Re:why is it so hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and they were vague about the spec in the beginning, so old browsers have box model bugs, so you have to work around that, but most people don't, so pages look like crap in v 5 browsers. It's a big f up. I think people should just use tables, and put a class = layout. Google can figure that out.

Opera allows me to do great things

[the_kanzure]

Really, the Opera web browser has allowed me to do great things throughout the internet, with hundreds of tabs open, and consequently more bookmarking being done, and session management, I do not know how productive I would be with Firefox alone. Commonly, when stranded on Firefox-only systems, I am burdened with odd tab loading impairments and generally limited to acting like I am doing literally one thing and one thing only-- no queuing up content or strands of thought, etc. Even with the hierarchical vertical tabbing enhancements through the TBE extension akin to iRider, my productivity seems to drop. So, I am glad to see more (good) publicity for Opera.

Re:Opera allows me to do great things

[reanjr]

Unfortunately, I've been having similar problems (though not as severe) with Opera for Linux since version 9. Looks like 9.5 will fix alot of that, though.

Re:Opera allows me to do great things

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, that would have meant sticking with Netscape or (OMG) Opera?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_timeline

Re:Opera allows me to do great things

[Anonymous Coward]

It's great to know that real soon now a test build of Opera will be as standards compliant as release versions of Konqueror has been for months now. Yay proprietary closed source!

Re:Opera allows me to do great things

[hkmwbz]

Yes, because Firefox has already passed. And it also passed Acid2 before the proprietary closed source Opera. Hey, wait a minute!

Not Even Close!

[Anonymous Coward]

This post is fanboyism at its worst. Opera is going to fully support CSS selectors, not CSS. Selectors are just one structure in the CSS language. There are still many other parts of the CSS standard that are not supported by Opera and are not yet planned for any future release.

Re:Not Even Close!

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that like it's a bad thing.. It's not like Opera has a bad css support to begin with. It was the 2nd browser to pass Acid2 test... now if they come out with all css3 selectors implemented, dude, I'd become a fanboy and write a post on my blog like the one above. Believe me.

Re:Not Even Close!

[poopdeville]

Third. Depending on how you want to rank them, either Safari or Konq came in first and second. (The issue is debatable because the first browser to pass was a beta version of Safari. Konq passed next, and a passing version of Safari was released soon after.)

Re:Not Even Close!

[BZ]

> Opera is going to fully support CSS selectors

Or more precisely, fully pass this test. Which is not the same thing -- the test is not exactly exhaustive.

Re:Not Even Close!

[HeroreV]

Also, release builds of Konqueror have been passing this test for months, so saying it "will be the first browser to fully support the CSS selector test" is also completely wrong.

Weekly builds of a proprietary closed source program is about to catch up to stable releases of a free/libre open source program. Why is this on Slashdot?

Re:Not Even Close!

[Anonymous Coward]

Safari does not pass this test. Perhaps you are thinking about ACID2?

Re:Not Even Close!

[Haeleth]

It's not like Opera has a bad css support to begin with. It was the 2nd browser to pass Acid2 test...

Third. Depending on how you want to rank them, either Safari or Konq came in first and second.

Safari does not pass this test. Perhaps you are thinking about ACID2?

Ahh, another fine display of reading comprehension, Slashdot style.

Re:Not Even Close!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, your parent was referring to ACID2. That's because what your GP was talking about. Reading comprehension ftw!

Re:Not Even Close!

[hkmwbz]

Opera was the second browser to pass Acid2. The other ones didn't really pass after all, as they had misinterpreted the test.

Re:Not Even Close!

[Albert Sandberg]

I'm the OP, I'm not an opera fanboy, I just think this kind of features should be noticed, and noticed big, becauses it drives the industry in the right direction. I'm sorry for not specifying selectors. Kthx.

Re:Not Even Close!

[poopdeville]

Heh, I dig your quoting style. ;-)

Re:Not Even Close!

[poopdeville]

Fine. I'll grant that Konq got a point off. Still, coming in second because the guy in the lead got a point knocked off isn't particularly impressive. Especially a month after he got that point knocked off. Konq's bug was trivial.

Re:Not Even Close!

[hkmwbz]

It's the result that counts ;)

The Internet-Age-Old PITA...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Do I use a fully compliant browser in which half the pages out there won't display properly because they've been coded by lazy, clueless hacks with MCSE...or do I use the shit that is Internet Explorer because almost all pages will display semi-properly, even though the code - and IE - is totally fucked up?

I use Opera exclusively, and I know that one day everybody will create compliant webpages. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Sigh...

Re:The Internet-Age-Old PITA...

[xtieburn]

'Apart from being the best standard compliant browser, Opera 9.5 will also display even more webpages with bad coding.'

Seems to indicate that its improving in both directions, though as an Opera user it is already very rare for me to need IE for sites. (Usually only happens with convoluted crappy menu systems.)

What does it matter?

[msauve]

I use Opera, which is already known to support existing HTML standards pretty completely and accurately.

I still frequently run into web sites built by clueless authors who feel a need to do a browser check, and finding it's not IE or Firefox (or sometimes Netscape!), think it is their duty to inform me that their sites only work with "modern" or "updated" browsers. Feh. By and large, that immediately sends me to the site of a competitor if it's a commercial site I'm visiting.

When will web authors get a clue, and start coding to standards and not implementations. (fuck it if IE breaks because they don't do things correctly)? A properly written web site should never need to do a browser check.

Re:What does it matter?

[Jugalator]

Well, I use to think of it like this... If Firefox wouldn't have got so common (really it is pretty common today -- seems like especially in Europe), Microsoft wouldn't have as much pressure on making an IE 7, and now that they did, they took the opportunity to update some of its worst CSS problems at least. MS has more or less announced there'll be an IE 8 in their blogs, so I think this competition is good for the web as a whole. It probably doesn't matter in the short perspective, but could in a longer one. Without Firefox, I fear the development of web standards could have stalled actually, so we have much to thank the success of that one. At least those of us who want a prettier and more interactive web without relying on closed standards.

Re:What does it matter?

[Kjella]

When will web authors get a clue, and start coding to standards and not implementations. (fuck it if IE breaks because they don't do things correctly)? A properly written web site should never need to do a browser check.

I'm sorry, but you don't say "fuck it" to 80%+ of your visitors. I believe you meant to say "A properly written web site should do a browser check, and assume that any non-IE browser is standards compliant". Oh yeah and "We know it doesn't work with this old version, please upgrade" is also fine IMO as long as it's a known broken version. Basicly it boils down to a positive or negative look on the unknown: "We don't know your browser, so we assume it's ok" as opposed to "We don't know your browser, so you must change to one we know".

Re:What does it matter?

[Daverd]

Oh, you use IE? That's okay, we didn't want your money anyway.

Wait, what's that? ... Yeah, we didn't want 80% of everybody else's money either.

Re:What does it matter?

[aichpvee]

If every website told IE users to fuck off and come back with a real web browser the world would be a much better place.

Re:What does it matter?

[WrongSizeGlass]

If every website told IE users to fuck off and come back with a real web browser the world would be a much better place. Please replace IE with Windows and web browser with operating system and repost.

Thanks,
The Intertubes Fairy

Re:What does it matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Throw "body > div.aclass.bclass { color: #aaaaaa; }" at IE6, which many people still use. That should cure you. There are many more issues just like that, and also in other browsers, but since the story is about CSS selectors, I picked an example with some particularly useful selectors which simply must be avoided unless you don't care about losing half your audience.

Re:What does it matter?

[r_jensen11]

I use Opera, which is already known to support existing HTML standards pretty completely and accurately.

I tried checking out my school's Business Career Center's website yesterday because I've begun to look for jobs once I probably* finish school this coming school year. I haven't tried the site with IE because I refuse to use that program, but it functions properly with Firefox. When using the latest stable version of Opera, I am able to select a menu called Jobs, which then messes up by providing a dropdown scroll box. When I click my selection (BCCnet Jobs,), the selection is highlighted with Opera but does not actually follow through with the link. When doing this under Firefox, the browser advances and I can view job listings.

Opera is fast and all, don't get me wrong. I love it more than Firefox. But that doesn't change the fact that it's broken.

Re:What does it matter?

[aichpvee]

If every website told windows users to fuck off and come back with a real operating system the world would be a much better place.

Re:What does it matter?

[brusk]

Yes, because kneejerk reactionaries of the sort trolling through this thread would be off in their little corner of the web and the rest of us sane people would be able to talk civilly. Telling the majority of your users (including, for example, poor people who don't own a computer and use whatever is installed on the computer in the public library) to fuck off is like a shoe store refusing to sell shoes to anyone with uncool socks. Much better to sell someone a nice pair of shoes, and say, "By the way, you could try these really nice socks to go with them. The don't have holes in them like the ones you're wearing."

Re:What does it matter?

[friedman101]

fuck it if IE breaks because they don't do things correctly

so you must live in the idealistic world where ignoring 92% of the market is acceptable. if i have to choose between putting food on the table and following standards i'll gladly cater to microsoft any day of the week.

Re:What does it matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that website is totally broken.

Re:What does it matter?

[BorgHunter]

A properly written web site should never need to do a browser check.

My site implements a (sort of) browser check, but only through .htaccess. Any browser that supports application/xhtml+xml gets that MIME type for my pages, and any browser that doesn't support it gets text/html. There are indeed legitimate uses to checking browsers, or at the very least browser capabilities. This is the underlying idea behind a legitimate use of XSLT, too. It's not bad web design to create different versions of a site for different browsers; it's merely bad design to either not deliver or cripple a web site based on what browser is being used.

Re:What does it matter?

[FunWithKnives]

Opera is a standards-compliant browser. It's not Opera that is "broken." Whoever built that website didn't code to standards.

Re:What does it matter?

[MajinBlayze]

That still isn't a browser check. The point here is that ideally, the browser's _name_ doesn't matter. just what the browser says it can handle (compression methods, MIME, etc._

Re:What does it matter?

[Deliveranc3]

Well I'd say it should do a check for early versions of IE. Everyone else knows how to upgrade.

Re:What does it matter?

[Hal_Porter]

Telling the majority of your users (including, for example, poor people who don't own a computer and use whatever is installed on the computer in the public library) to fuck off is like a shoe store refusing to sell shoes to anyone with uncool socks. Much better to sell someone a nice pair of shoes, and say, "By the way, you could try these really nice socks to go with them. The don't have holes in them like the ones you're wearing."

It's better, but I'd still cockpunch someone who mentioned my socks have holes in them.

Re:What does it matter?

[bvimo]

Great foot/sock analogy, it certainly beats the tired old car comparisons. Thank you.

Re:What does it matter?

[Chandon Seldon]

So requiring a web user to use FireFox is like a shoe store saying "In order to try on our shoes, you need to wear this free pair of clean socks"?

Somehow, I'm not seeing the problem there.

Re:What does it matter?

[Chandon Seldon]

Opera is fast and all, don't get me wrong. I love it more than Firefox. But that doesn't change the fact that it's broken.

You'd think that Opera is broken... at least until you actually try to make a JavaScript enabled web page. At that point you'll realise that it's actually IE that's painfully broken and Firefox that's only somewhat less broken. Oh, and the standards? They're poorly designed and occasionally nonsensical.

If there are three ways to do something, the standard will specify the dumbest way and IE will implement the second-dumbest way as an "improvement". 5/6ths of the time Firefox will follow the standard, and the rest of the time it will implement the third (least stupid) option... that disagrees with both the standard *and* the way IE does it.

Re:What does it matter?

[stang]

So requiring a web user to use FireFox is like a shoe store saying "In order to try on our shoes, you need to wear this free pair of clean socks"?

Somehow, I'm not seeing the problem there.

No, requring a web user to use Firefox is like a shoe saying "in order to even look through the window at our shoes, you need to stop strolling, go sit on that bench over there, take your old shoes and socks off, then put these nice new free socks on. Then you may come into our store and see if there's anything you like."

Sure you can do it, and you get a nice new pair of clean socks, but is it worth the hassle? Frankly, unless I know that the store has exactly what I'm looking for, I'm probably just gonna keep on walking.

Re:What does it matter?

[toddestan]

If every website told IE users to fuck off and come back with a real web browser the world would be a much better place.

Actually, that was tried, and Microsoft responded by modifying their User Agent string. That's the reason that even today, the User Agent string in Internet Explorer 7 has the word "Mozilla" in it.

Re:Who in their mind....

[Aminion]

Right. Opera has been completely free since 2005.

Re:Who in their mind....

[Tim C]

Opera is free, and has been for a while now.

Re:Who in their mind....

[jlarocco]

Um, yeah... maybe you didn't get the memo, but Opera's been free of charge and advertisements for like 2 years now.

Re:Who in their mind....

[Jonas Meller]

Opera doesn't cost money or contain any ads anymore.

Re:Hey this is great news.

[Tim C]

It stands for Cascading Style Sheets.

(That link was the first hit on google for a search on CSS, incidentally...)

Still no icon

[TenBrothers]

Despite Opera showing its superiority as a browser over and over again and on multiple platforms, from desktop to mobile to game systems, ther eis still no Slashdot Icon to mark Opera news stories.

Re:Still no icon

[Kjella]

They need to change their icon, so slashdot can use the old one.

Re:Still no icon

[jesser]

Be careful what you ask for. Slashdot might use the "Power Ranger" from a recent version of the opera.com web site as the icon representing the browser.

Re:Still no icon

[RonnyJ]

It's not suprising, unfortunately. Whereas there's numerous stories on Slashdot about reviews of Firefox alphas, comparisons to IE, etc. and even lists of extensions, I remember being a bit surprised that there wasn't even a story on Slashdot when the last release (9.2) of Opera came out (granted, I've seen stories about the Wii versions, etc).

I understand that there's likely a lot more submissions about Firefox (and the stories probably get a lot more page views), but in many peoples view Opera is a better browser (and the quality of other browsers like Firefox can only benefit by having decent competition).

Re:Who in their mind....

[Anonymous Coward]

Oops.

Re:Who in their mind....

[Jugalator]

OK, so it's a troll then. (see the related user names)

I hope some mod will get it and mod accordingly.

It makes sense too -- I couldn't believe someone would have missed these news.

Impressed, because ...

[Tribbin]

I'm really impressed if they dare to follow the standard.

Because with their good example, pages will render differently in opera than the author wanted it too as the pages are probably tuned for IE/Mozilla/Konqueror.

Re:Impressed, because ...

[FlipmodePlaya]

http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/kestrel-is-co minga>

"As a result, Opera 9.5 contains more than a year of improvements on the rendering engine. This includes improved CSS3 support (text-shadow anyone ), superior SVG support and a brand new javascript engine with support for ECMAScript 4 'getters' and 'setters'. Apart from being the best standard compliant browser, Opera 9.5 will also display even more webpages with bad coding."

They've always been aggressive about making sure websites work in the browser.

Re:Impressed, because ...

[compro01]

i believe Konqueror is also fully-complient in this regard.

latest version of firefox is slightly better than IE7 (357 for FF vs. 330 for IE), but that isn't much differance.

Re:Impressed, because ...

[jesser]

Adding support for new CSS selectors usually doesn't cause web pages to break. Especially if you're the first browser to implement them, so very few web sites try to use those selectors.

Re:Impressed, because ...

[dvice_null]

The goal of the Firefox is to support standards also and they are improving on that area with ener new Gecko release. In the current versions Firefox already has better html/xhtml and css3 support than Opera. IE is far behind in everything:

http://www.webdevout.net/browser-support-summary

Re:Hey this is great news.

[Jugalator]

Cascading Style Sheets.

But if you don't know what it means, you're probably not too affected by it anyway. I don't think that CSS3 compliance will matter for "average users" soon, because far from all browsers will support it at the time Opera 9.5 will. It's a step in the right direction for sure, but it'll only be of interest at first to geeks keeping up to date with the latest web browser developments. It may not matter in reality until a few years ahead, or whenever IE 8/9 or whatever gets this far.

Re:Hey this is great news.

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

It would be even better knews if I had a clue as to what means "CSS". Seriously? I mean really? For true?

OK, fine. It stands for Cascading Style Sheets. Welcome to the Internets.

Go Opera!

[Aminion]

Very nice news but somehow not surprising by the constant underdog. It truly is a shame that Opera only has 2% of the market considering how great it is in comparison to its competitors regarding speed, features, innovation and security. Imagine a browser so great that people actually paid for it as late as 2005 (these days, Opera is 100% free).

Re:Go Opera!

[rapidweather]

Opera used to have an advertisement area on the right side of the toolbar, now a blank area. All of the control buttons are still over on the left side. I wonder when they will fix that. Opera is a very good browser, and I have placed it in my Knoppix remaster for a long time now. I have it loaded up with a bunch of RSS feeds. Opera handles these better than Firefox 2.0.0.4, you get a summary of the story in Opera, in Firefox you only get the title of the story, and sometimes that is shortened. Much better in Opera. Also, Opera continues to notify you when new stories are downloaded, using a pop-up notice on the right-bottom of whatever desktop you are on. I have 4 in IceWM, my default WM.

- Rapidweather

Re:Go Opera!

[mgiuca]

(these days, Opera is 100% free). ...as in beer.

Re:Go Opera!

[jgrahn]

Opera used to have an advertisement area on the right side of the toolbar, now a blank area.

When I paid them $$ back in 2000 or so, I could use that former ad-area immediately. It used to be at the top right for me. You may have a problem with your preferences: dragging around the toolbars and hotlists and whatnot, plus taking Opera a few slightly incompatible upgrades, may mess up those preferences. What happens if you rename your ~/.opera directory temporarily while restarting Opera? Do you still have a blank area?

Re:Go Opera!

[smoker2]

(these days, Opera is 100% free).

Er, not quite - It is a free download for a desktop OS, but not for other devices.
Buy Opera

Re:Go Opera!

[Misagon]

It is not that fast. Try using it with multiple Opera windows open (I wrote "windows", not "tabs") and watch it grind to a halt every so often. Have a network monitor open at the same time, and witness how Opera halts loading in all windows until it receives a new packet for one of its windows.

Re:Go Opera!

[hkmwbz]

No such problems here.

Re:Go Opera!

[mdwh2]

Opera used to have an advertisement area on the right side of the toolbar, now a blank area. All of the control buttons are still over on the left side. I wonder when they will fix that.

There's no blank area at all on my Opera, and it was set up that way when I installed it (v9.02). If you want to customise an existing version, try switching off the Main Bar (which is the one which leaves the blank space), and move buttons you want into the Address Bar, that way you have a row of buttons, with the remaining space taken up by the URL field. (Annoying that you can't just rearrange the address bar onto the same row as the main bar, though.)

Re:Go Opera!

[dreemernj]

As a long time user of Opera and a person that typically opens multiple windows with multiple tabs on each, I have to point out that what you are experiencing is not a common trait of Opera. It sounds like an issue with your computer specifically.

Mileage will always vary so I'm sure others will have issues like this as well. But I can say I've never experienced them with the computers I use Opera on:

Athlon 64 3200+, 1GB RAM, Win2k
Pentium M 1.66ghz, 1GB RAM, WinXP MCE
Pentium 4 2.8ghz, 256MB RAM, WinXP Pro SP2

The typical workload I place on Opera is 5 to 10 tabs in 4 or 5 windows. But sometimes I'll end up with 20 windows open, and sometimes a window may have 20 or 30 tabs.

This is usually the result of a power search for information where I'll search for a handful of sites, open each in it's own window and then mow through the links on the first page opening each one in a separate tab. Doing that with mouse gestures takes pretty much no time, and gestures also makes sorting through and closing out the tabs extremely fast as well.

It's definately unusual use for a browser. It's usually to figure out some idiotically obfuscated detail in a procedure (for instance non-profit bulk mailing procedures, which can get pretty annoying sometimes) and when I am not searching like this I can use any browser and not really notice the difference as most browsers perform almost the same. The differences are typically quite small if you are just browsing mainly text based pages for info, which I spend a lot of time doing.

But when it comes to plowing through a ton of pages at once, Opera is the fastest and easiest to use in my experience. But, as always, YMMV ;-)

Re:Who in their mind....

[Anonymous Coward]

it worked the last time I did it. My responses were 200+.... 2/3 of the whole article itself.

Figured id try it again... but forgot that opera went 100% free. whoops.

Test results

[achillean]

Firefox 2.0.0.4 for Windows Results:
From the 43 selectors 26 have passed, 10 are buggy and 7 are unsupported (Passed 357 out of 578 tests)

Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.11:
From the 43 selectors 13 have passed, 4 are buggy and 26 are unsupported (Passed 330 out of 578 tests)

Any other tests to report?

Re:Test results

[dark-br]

Safari Version 2.0.4 (419.3)

From the 43 selectors 21 have passed, 7 are buggy and 15 are unsupported (Passed 336 out of 578 tests)

Re:Test results

[frogstar_robot]

Konqueror 3.5.6 Results:
From the 43 selectors 43 have passed, 0 are buggy and 0 are unsupported (Passed 578 out of 578 tests)

This release of Konqueror has been their stable release since last January was supplanted by 3.5.7 last week. So Opera isn't the first. A stable released browser has been able to pass this test for at least 6 months. I don't know how 3.5.5 and before would have done on it.

All that said, Firefox tends to do better with the javascript heavy sites and has extensions I can't live without. If I were going to use something else it would probably be Konq though. When KDE4 comes out, Konq will be easily installed on Windows and OS X. That might get a bit more momentum behind it.

Re:Test results

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox 2.0.0.4 for Mac OS X 10.4.10 (hehe, .10 == .1)
From the 43 selectors 24 have passed, 10 are buggy and 9 are unsupported (Passed 355 out of 578 tests)

Re:Test results

[VGPowerlord]

Safari 3.0.1 beta for Windows Results:
From the 43 selectors 25 have passed, 9 are buggy and 9 are unsupported (Passed 346 out of 578 tests)

Re:Test results

[Anonymous Coward]

Results from Konqueror 3.5.5:

From the 43 selectors 37 have passed, 6 are buggy and 0 are unsupported (Passed 570 out of 578 tests)

Re:Test results

[ASBands]

Most Significantly, perhaps is:
Firefox 3.0 Alpha 5 (Gran Paradiso)

From the 43 selectors 32 have passed, 4 are buggy and 7 are unsupported (Passed 369 out of 578 tests)

Get Firefox 3.0 Alpha 5 here: Mozilla's Public FTP

Yes, it is technically alpha software, although it is no less reliable than Firefox 2.0, from what I have found.

Konqueror FTW

[Reorax]

I'm using Konqueror 3.5.7 on Kubuntu right now, and it passes completely. I don't know how long it's been able to pass, since I just found out about the test now. Firefox 2.0.0.4 fails pretty badly, but this version of Konqueror says that it passes all the tests. Yet Opera claims that it is the first browser to pass? Objection! At least one browser has passed before it, and that Opera version is not even out yet, it's in the weekly builds. This is the stable version of Konqueror

Re:Konqueror FTW

[Bralkein]

A quick check of the KDE changelogs shows that Konqueror was brought into compliance with the tests with the release of KDE 3.5.6. Linky.

3.5.6 was released in January.

Re:Konqueror FTW

[Wordsmith]

No, you didn't test Konqueror 3.5.7 unitl AFTER Opera apparently passed. So Konqueror passed after Opera. Sure, it may have been ABLE to pass before, but it never took the initiative.

Re:Konqueror FTW

[Lemming Mark]

Yep, confirmed - I just tried this and was surprised to see it worked fine.

Re:Konqueror FTW

[MtHuurne]

The claim that Opera is first does not occur in the blog entry. It is probably something the submitter added.

Re:Konqueror FTW

[Anonymous Coward]

Konqueror may pass that test, but it doesn't render many of the CSS3 demos correctly.

Re:Konqueror FTW

[anton_kg]

may be you/he didn't test it. But I'm sure developers of kde spent hours to be able to anononce this: http://www.kde.org/announcements/changelogs/change log3_5_5to3_5_6.php Treat specific attribute values case-insensitively during style matching. With these changes, KHTML becomes the first rendering engine to thoroughly pass the 578 tests of the excellent Automated CSS3 Selectors Testsuite (http://www.css3.info/selectors-test). Fixes bug 135505. See SVN commits 595962 and 597587.

Re:Konqueror FTW

[Wordsmith]

Unfortunately, they forgot to test for HuMor3 at http://www.itwasajoke.com./

Re:Konqueror FTW

[root_42]

> No, you didn't test Konqueror 3.5.7 unitl AFTER Opera apparently passed.
> So Konqueror passed after Opera. Sure, it may have been ABLE to pass
> before, but it never took the initiative.

Damn, you're right! I checked the changelog, and the konq developers wrote: "Dudes, we, like, made Konqueror css selector test compatible, but I am, like, totally wasted to try it." And so the fact went unnoticed! Oh no!

Re:Konqueror FTW

[Luchio]

Opera is not claiming to be the first, the post is.

Re:Konqueror FTW

[Albert Sandberg]

yeah, sorry about that, I tried some browsers here and failed miserably so I was under the impression that it was the first. still good news!

Konqueror

[Jason Straight]

I just ran it in konqueror

From the 43 selectors 43 have passed, 0 are buggy and 0 are unsupported (Passed 578 out of 578 tests)

So I guess opera isn't the first.

Re:Konqueror

[modicr]

Hello!

> I just ran it in konqueror
> From the 43 selectors 43 have passed, 0 are buggy and 0 are unsupported (Passed 578 out of 578 tests)

In both Windows and Linux?

> So I guess opera isn't the first.

Cheers, ROman

Re:Hey this is great news.

[Shulai]

Since 1999 or so, the preferred way of putting style on web pages ("how this part of looks") is not mixed into the content structure ("what kind of information this part contains"), but in a separate place, the style sheet.
The style sheet Selectors say what parts of a page must carry it associated style, e.g. 2nd level headers (selector) must be blue and use a 14 point, bold, sans serif font (style).
The CSS stylesheet standard allows lots of complex kinds of selectors, and so browsers used to support only a small subset of selectors.

Internet Explorer 7

[drivel]

From the 43 selectors 13 have passed, 4 are buggy and 26 are unsupported (Passed 330 out of 578 tests) That is for IE 7.0.6000.16473 under Windows Vista x64

Re:Internet Explorer 7

[anilg]

Me?? I dont use CSS.. I'm a low-tech-guy

Re:Hey this is great news.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure there some ascii art to represent this scenario.

Re:Hey this is great news.

[smittyoneeach]

For you, "Confederate States Ship".

Re:Hey this is great news.

[Spy der Mann]

Welcome to the Internets.

It's called the interWEB, you fool!

But...

[jlarocco]

I used Opera exclusively on Windows, Linux, and BSD for several years, but recently switched to Konqueror. I finally got fed up with a few things in Opera.

My first complaint is their lack of 64-bit support. I'm running the AMD64 version of Debian, and Opera is (was) the only 32-bit program I had to run, making it a pain to keep a bunch of 32-bit compatibility libraries around for one program. I think 64-bit is popular enough now that it'd be worth the time to compile for it. Given the large number of platforms Opera runs on, it should be pretty easy to port.

The second big complaint was that it doesn't support more than 9 mouse buttons. I spent $100 on a fancy mouse, hoping I could control most of my GUI programs with only the mouse. Much to my surprise, any shortcuts after Button9 simply don't work. This was quite disappointing, because Konqueror (and KDE in general) doesn't support mouse shortcuts, so I had to go with xbindkeys. It works well, but seems like a hack.

Also, since at least the 9.0 release tabs have been broken. I had to stop using it after 9.0 because switching between tabs was incredibly laggy. With more than a couple tabs open, there would be a very noticeable pause switching between them. I'd say it was up to 5 seconds or more on some occasions.

I really hope Opera can fix those issues, because I was really sad to switch. IMHO, Opera is the only browser to do tabs correctly, with a full MDI. Yeah, yeah, Firefox has a plug-in, I'm sure. But when it works, it works 10x better in Opera, right out of the box.

Re:But...

[SpectreBlofeld]

The second big complaint was that it doesn't support more than 9 mouse buttons. I spent $100 on a fancy mouse, hoping I could control most of my GUI programs with only the mouse. Much to my surprise, any shortcuts after Button9 simply don't work. This was quite disappointing

  I'm trying to figure out if that's a joke. Nine mouse buttons?

  Any Mac user will tell you that one mouse button, when used in conjunction with seven funny-looking keyboard keys should be enough for anybody!

Re:But...

[jlarocco]

Oops, should have RTFA :-)

Looks like they're fixing the tab issue and releasing a 64-bit Linux version. As a bonus, they're releasing a version using Qt4! Maybe I'll get lucky and supporting mouse buttons above Button9 will be one of the UI tweaks they mentioned.

Re:But...

[WrongSizeGlass]

Nine mouse buttons? Must be one of those new fangled two-handed mice. That's a button for each finger (a la Twister) with one thumb leftover for the traditional "thumbs up" when you finally complete that complicated multi-mouse buttoned maneuver in Duke Nukem Forever.

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

A 10+ button mouse? Do you not have a keyboard?

Re:But...

[jlarocco]

I'm trying to figure out if that's a joke. Nine mouse buttons?

No, not a joke. It's one of these.

Newegg says 7 buttons, which is technically true, but it's a little more complicated setting it up in X. The main scroll wheel goes forward, backward, left, right, and can be clicked, so that counts as 5 as far as X is concerned. The wheel on the right thumb goes forward, backward, and can also be clicked, so that's 3. To make it more confusing, the little button on top, behind the scroll wheel gets sent as a key press.

In addition, for whatever reason, there are a few numbers skipped, so xev reports some of the buttons as being 15, 16, 17 and 18.

Other than the price and the weird button numbers, the mouse is awesome.

Re:But...

[StarsAreAlsoFire]

You probably shouldn't be annoyed with Opera, because IIRC there ARE only 9 mouse buttons.... as per the USB HID spec.

I won't swear that this is true, but I'm pretty sure. Totally from memory here.

I prefer mouse gestures over mouse button shortcuts any day. Personally I use StrokeIt ( http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/ ) on my windows boxes so that I can use gestures in any prog, but whatever floats your boat. I have a 10 button mouse with scroll wheel, all mapped to custom features in my IDE... so it isn't like I've never tried the button route before.

Not being fan boy or flaming you. I like Opera a lot, I use it everyday, I would be pissed if I had to switch to Firefox or IE for my daily needs, but it wouldn't be the end of the world.

And as a dev, I don't code for Opera. I want to, but the sad fact is that you have to pick your browsers; there is a standard, but nobody (NOBODY) implements it in full. Worse, everybody implements a different subset of the standard. So ALL web coding (of any significance) is customized to the browsers that the developers chose to focus on.

Re:But...

[Kjella]

Well, if I remember last time I dicked around with it, the scroll wheel counts as two "buttons", so for my mouse I have seven:

Left
Right
Side-Left
Side-Right
Scrollwheel-click
Scrollwheel-up
Scrollwheel-down

I know there are some mouses that register pushing the scrollwheel left and right, that'd make it nine. Not sure where you'd fit the 10th one though...

Re:But...

[edschurr]

While these sorts of programs are being mentioned, I'll mention another: AutoHotkey (.com) for Windows can intercept keyboard/mouse commands and then run scripts. You could add chording to the mouse, i.e. shift+button type functionality, make the Caps Lock key do something useful, or cheat in WoW (one of the neater uses, albeit against the rules). The AutoHotkey language, however, is bizarre.

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Amateur. I'm still using my 15 button (by your standards of what are considered "buttons") MediaPlay mouse. I love it.

Re:But...

[jgrahn]

My first complaint is their lack of 64-bit support. I'm running the AMD64 version of Debian, and Opera is (was) the only 32-bit program I had to run, making it a pain to keep a bunch of 32-bit compatibility libraries around for one program.

I hate that, too.

I think 64-bit is popular enough now that it'd be worth the time to compile for it. Given the large number of platforms Opera runs on, it should be pretty easy to port.

When asked on news:opera.linux, one Opera developer claimed they had problems with the renderer on 64-bit. Maybe the Sparc and PPC ports are 32-bit?

Anyway, they are supposedly planning to release an AMD64 port now. I forget exactly when, but there are rumors of alpha builds. And yes, it is a couple of years late -- but better late than never.

Re:But...

[sqldr]

can I just say "NINE MOUSE BUTTONS?" one more time for the sake of emphasis?

NINE MOUSE BUTTONS?
NINE FUCKING MOUSE BUTTONS?
What in the name of jesus christ in a spacesuit could you possibly use NINE MOUSE BUTTONS (?) for?!

Call me old fashioned, but I'm one of those regular guys with four fingers and a thumb on each hand.

Re:But...

[Fweeky]

"I had to stop using it after 9.0 because switching between tabs was incredibly laggy. With more than a couple tabs open, there would be a very noticeable pause switching between them"

*glances at his list of 90 tabs*

*flicks between half a dozen*

Nope. Tried turning off plugins?

Re:But...

[Fweeky]

I count 10 on my MX518's; Left, Right, Middle, Scrollwheel Up, Scrollwheel Down, Back, Forward, +, - (think these are hardcoded to setting the mouse resolution though) and.. um, another one which going by the glyph is meant for something to do with window stacking.

Re:But...

[mdwh2]

Also, since at least the 9.0 release tabs have been broken. I had to stop using it after 9.0 because switching between tabs was incredibly laggy. With more than a couple tabs open, there would be a very noticeable pause switching between them. I'd say it was up to 5 seconds or more on some occasions.

Working fine for me though... (not saying your experience is wrong of course, but I don't think this is the normal behaviour).

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

> What in the name of jesus christ in a spacesuit could you possibly use NINE MOUSE BUTTONS (?) for?!

How about awesome sex?

> Call me old fashioned, but I'm one of those regular guys with four fingers and a thumb on each hand.

You are not having much fun, are you?

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nine mouse buttons? Any Mac user will tell you that one mouse button...

Hey, some people have more than one finger on their hand!

Re:But...

[jlarocco]

Bah, Opera fans are getting almost as bad as Firefox's.

First of all, even if plugins were turned on, taking 5 seconds to switch tabs would still be broken.

Second, until very recently I had been using Opera as my only browser for over 6 years. Going on 6 years of data, I'm pretty comfortable saying the tab switching in the 9.0 release for Linux changed for the worse. Even the opera.com article points out that tab switching on Unix is being fixed for 9.5.

It's wonderful that you haven't experienced the problem, but that doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.

Re:But...

[Fweeky]

Yes, of course it would be broken either way, that would just be the first thing I'd look at if I were seeing such behavior. Sorry if my vague attempt to be slightly helpful upset you so :P

Personally my most pressing performance issue with Opera is the rather clunky RSS/Atom support. 5 second delays prior to "oi, your feeds have been updated" is somewhat distracting. Well, that and the somewhat extended load times with 40+ tabs...

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Windows + Opera and am definetely happy with the combination. IOW Opera on Windows works fine and I don't see lag regarding tabs whatsoever. However, I use Windows, and they said on the blog post they will fix the tab issue for UNIX. So I suppose it only happens on... UNIX (or *NIX).

Re:But...

[jlarocco]

So I suppose it only happens on... UNIX (or *NIX)

Did you miss the part where I specifically stated that I'm using Debian? I have no idea if the problem shows up in Windows, and I don't really care.

Re:But...

[sqldr]

well.. I've never tried to shove a mouse up someone's arse.. maybe i'm not using enough imagination.

Different Browser Ratings

[The MAZZTer]

Firefox 2.0.0.4 on Windows Vista:

From the 43 selectors 26 have passed, 10 are buggy and 7 are unsupported (Passed 357 out of 578 tests)

Internet Explorer 7.0.6000.16473 on Windows Vista:

From the 43 selectors 13 have passed, 4 are buggy and 26 are unsupported (Passed 289 out of 534 tests)

Lynx 2.8.3dev17 on Windows Vista:

No JavaScript == No tests. :(

Opera 8.5 on Nintendo DS:

From the 43 selectors 14 have passed, 3 are buggy and 26 are unsupported (Passed 313 out of 578 tests)

Opera 9.1 on Nintendo Wii:

From the 43 selectors 30 have passed, 2 are buggy and 11 are unsupported (Passed 450 out of 578 tests)

Opera 9.21 on Windows Vista:

From the 43 selectors 25 have passed, 3 are buggy and 15 are unsupported (Passed 346 out of 578 tests)

Safari 3.0.1 Beta on Windows Vista:

From the 43 selectors 25 have passed, 9 are buggy and 9 are unsupported (Passed 346 out of 578 tests)

Oddly enough, the Wii with an OLDER Opera wins in the Most Completely Working category, while Firefox wins in the Most They At Least Tried category (least unsupported).

Re:Different Browser Ratings

[The MAZZTer]

Amusing addendum while looking for other browsers:

Internet Explorer 3 16-bit on Windows Vista:

No JavaScript, and doesn't even recognize the CSS on msn.com or on the test page.

Newer versions of IE, except for 7 of course, won't run on Vista at all (maybe I'm missing a version-specific DLL for those. Oh well).

Re:Different Browser Ratings

[prockcore]

Firefox 2.0.0.4 on Windows Vista:

From the 43 selectors 26 have passed, 10 are buggy and 7 are unsupported (Passed 357 out of 578 tests)

Firefox 3.0alpha6pre on Windows Vista:

From the 43 selectors 32 have passed, 4 are buggy and 7 are unsupported (Passed 369 out of 578 tests)

Re:Different Browser Ratings

[KlomDark]

IE7 x64 on Windows XP Professional x64 Edition:

From the 43 selectors 13 have passed, 4 are buggy and 26 are unsupported (Passed 330 out of 578 tests)

FF 1.5.0.12 and oldish IE 6

[Anonymous Coward]

Good idea...

Firefox (1.5.0.12) using Gecko/20070508
From the 43 selectors 26 have passed, 10 are buggy and 7 are unsupported (Passed 357 out of 578 tests)

IE 6 (6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519 [Dell version, dated around 2004, and probably not updated, at this job site])
From the 43 selectors 10 have passed, 1 are buggy and 32 are unsupported (Passed 276 out of 578 tests)

Internet Explorer 6

[Datasage]

From the 43 selectors 10 have passed, 1 are buggy and 32 are unsupported (Passed 276 out of 578 tests)

IE6 still makes up for 40-45% of the users on the site I maintain for work. Opera is less than .5%, So its cool that it will support it, but it doesn't do me any good.

Re:Internet Explorer 6

[TheRaven64]

Depends on how you use it. I like using the text-shadow attribute on headings to give a little drop shadow to the text. Last time I checked, Safari was the only browser that renders the drop shadows (presumably Opera supports them now, if it supports 100% of CSS). This means that sites using them look nicer on Safari, but users of other browsers don't lose anything other than aesthetics.

If web developers used CSS features like this then it would start to be more of a selling point for alternative browsers. 'Sure, the site works in IE, but see how much nicer it looks in Opera/Safari/FireFox' would be more of a selling point than 'use this browser because it supports more of some specification that you have no interest in understanding.'

Re:Internet Explorer 6

[Anonymous Coward]

But what about poor developers who try to make it work for IE?

http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/A-Plea-from-t he-Heart.aspx

Re:Internet Explorer 6

[NightLamp]

It's nice to code for yourself, but when the reality distortion field is not in effect things become much less simple.

<Trimp> Wait, you coded this site so it looked good to you and 10 of your warcraft buddies?
<Simp> yep
<Trimp> Well, that certainly is an interesting approach, what about the 93 percent of the rest of the world?
<Simp> Errrrm.... but it's how it SHOULD be, gah! Open Standards, baaaa, superior layout and perfomance, baaaa
<Trimp> You're fired!

Alas, the day of the single-browser coder has faded, welcome to 1998.

Re:Internet Explorer 6

[Myen]

Umm, the title is buggy; the summary says it passes the CSS3 selectors test, not all of CSS3. It's impossible to support all of CSS3, there's chunks not even started - e.g. scoping. TFA does mention text-shadow will work with Opera 9.5 though.

Re:Internet Explorer 6

[bhtooefr]

Except, this is different.

Using features that are unsupported in the mainstream browser, but don't break functionality, is a whole different can of worms from using features that break functionality when they're not supported.

Re:Internet Explorer 6

[madprof]

It still is a waste of useful time. When you're coding up your lovely drop shadows for 1% of your viewers you could be polishing the site off for the other 99%.

Why not Firefox?

[erroneus]

Mark me flamebait if ya like. If there's some way to tag my user agent data, you'd see I'm running Linux and Firefox 1.5.0.12. But I have to wonder why Firefox hasn't been all over the idea of 100% compliance.

It's slick, it's fast, it's effective and it's very compatible. I also love the plugins. But it's not much of a 'selling point' that it's not 100% compliant with whatever standards there are out there. It's especially damning when the same demographic often cite that MSIE isn't compliant with standards and often breaks things to the detriment of the use of standards on the internet. Firefox should be the alternative and the recommended benchmark for all web developers out there.

Re:Why not Firefox?

[heinousjay]

Gecko tries to walk a razor-thin line of supporting standards (which are essentially defined in a vacuum) and working with the web as it actually exists.

Re:Why not Firefox?

[Dan Ost]

There is no browser out there that is 100% compliant with all the standards that describe web content.

One of the primary goals behind Firefox/Gecko is standards compliance and, as far as I know, Firefox is the most compliant browser out there, categorically speaking. The problem is that there are several standards (and several versions of each standard) and each standard is large enough that they have to be implemented piecemeal. Each browser team prioritizes what they think are the most important elements of each standard and implement them accordingly (presumably also implementing the easier elements as opportunity allows even if they're not important). Since each dev team has slightly different priorities (and each architecture has its own set of low hanging elements), a browser that is mostly compliant might not implement standard elements that a less compliant browser has.

If each dev team continues to work on standards compliance, eventually all browsers will be 100% compliant (that assumes that standards are not released faster than dev teams can catch up...sadly, this is not what history predicts). Realistically, some teams will never implement edge cases unless a big public relations fuss is made (like Acid 2 compliance).

So take heart that your beloved Firefox is doing better than most other browsers out there. However, make as much fuss about it as you can so that the dev teams stay focused.

Re:Why not Firefox?

[MMC Monster]

The assumption is, of course, that 100% compliance with all the standards is even possible; that the standards don't contradict each other in some edge cases.

Of course, in addition to being 100% compliant with all the standards, the browser should be able to render pages that already exist, many of which do not follow the standards.

Re:Why not Firefox?

[VGPowerlord]

Now that you've said that, I'm going to point out that Firefox is the reason that I have to assign an align to every td in a table rather than just applying it to a col element.

Side notes:
Now that I can test Safari on Windows, it doesn't support it either.

Another side note:
IE6 and IE7 are the only browsers to support the CSS text-align on a element. By definition, this also means that Firefox, Opera, and Safari still don't support all of HTML4 and CSS1.

Re:Why not Firefox?

[VGPowerlord]

Oops, forgot to escape in the last sentence. It should read:

IE6 and IE7 are the only browsers to support the CSS text-align on a <col> element. By definition, this also means that Firefox, Opera, and Safari still don't support all of HTML4 and CSS1.

Re:Why not Firefox?

[POWRSURG]

Actually the spec says that the only properties that apply to columns are border, background, width, and visibility. The fact that IE6/7 support for other properties (e.g. text-align, and color) on this element is a bug.

Re:Why not Firefox?

[Kjella]

One of the primary goals behind Firefox/Gecko is standards compliance and, as far as I know, Firefox is the most compliant browser out there, categorically speaking.

Adverb: categorically `katu'górik(u)lee
In an unqualified manner
- flatly, unconditionally

I hardly think that's called for. As you can read in this discussion, Konqueror has supported this for six months, Opera will, Firefox won't for a while. And if you look at the summary table here, you'll see that while Firefox wins by 5% in HTML and CSS3, Opera wins by 3% in CSS2 and 5% in DOM. That's hardly an unconditional win for Firefox. Gecko is nothing unique, it's one of three very standards compliant engines together with KHTML (konq and safari) and Opera. Yes, it beats IE by far but IE belongs in the special olympics.

Re:Why not Firefox?

[great throwdini]

Actually the [CSS 2.1] spec says that the only properties that apply to columns are border, background, width, and visibility. The fact that IE6/7 support ... other properties ... is a bug.

Such support is not "a bug", as the recommendation you reference applies only to CSS (2.1).

COL elements are defined to include both "align" and "valign" atrributes for HTML 4 and XHTML 1.

The choice to accept the limitations of one recommendation (CSS) when applied to a document written in accord with another ([X]HTML) rests with the author. Clearly, there is a choice to be made here with respect to alignment attributes on COL elements.

The CSS recommendations, as written, do not abrogate the [X]HTML recommendations.

Re:Why not Firefox?

[Dan Ost]

Perhaps I used the wrong word. What I meant was that as long as you're speaking about standards compliance in a general way (not comparing specific standards or examining a specific set of standard elements), Firefox is probably the most standards compliant browser currently available.

I agree that once you start comparing specific standards or parts of standards, Firefox may, in fact, do worse compliance-wise than other browsers...that was kind of the point of my original post.

OH MY GOD, COPYRIGHT VIOLATION!

[Frenchman113]

Opera 9.5 To Fully Support CSS?

Someone phone the AACS-LA! Opera is going to distribute pirated player keys!

Fix streaming media instead!

[OberonX]

Having CSS working is great and all, but I still dont understand how streaming media (You Tube, etc) still stops once the window where its playing is in the background. Its the main reason why I switched from Opera to Firefox, it seems so basic to fix that Im still wondering if its only my versions of Opera that dont work...

Re:Fix streaming media instead!

[nxtw]

??

I don't think this is an Opera problem, or if it was, it seems to be fixed. This happened to me in Firefox quite some time ago, and I haven't experienced it in Opera or Firefox since.

Re:Fix streaming media instead!

[chembro84]

I believe it's a feature not a bug, if you notice Opera is much easier on the CPU because it "pauses" all Flash when not on the active tab OR even "scrolled passed".

Re:Fix streaming media instead!

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is a feature it seems some users would like to put it on. At least in some situations. Like say you hear a flash video and are not interested in the video, but do wish to hear the audio. You wish to combine it while browsing and... oops. No Opera for you. Might be rare, but certainly possible. So could be included in about:config or sth like that. I still have not figured out how to unbind Opera from .torrent... *sigh*.

In that case...

[msauve]

the proper behavior is to still code to standards, but avoid constructs which IE is known to gag on. If you have to check which browser is visiting, you're not writing good code. If you can't use a site with Lynx, it's poorly written.

Re:In that case...

[Kjella]

the proper behavior is to still code to standards, but avoid constructs which IE is known to gag on.

Whoever writes that, hasn't tried much if at all. Try doing a basic three column-layout (left bar, main, right bar) with header and footer in IE. Trust me you'll be ready to strangle something long before you get it working in IE. I'd actually much rather try to do it in Lynx, not that anyone gives a fuck about Lynx... Even the most longbearded "you can pry the command line from my cold dead fingers" linux hippie is running Firefox or Konqueror today.

Re:In that case...

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy enough to do if you're using tables. A hack, yes. But sometimes you have to stray from the path. Doesn't mean you shouldn't attempt to code everything as pure as possible, however.

That being said, I think I can actually do what you ask, but since I threw out my last Windows computer from the house a year ago I can't test it. The trick?

<div id="header">Header</div>
<div id="content">
    <div id="right">Right column</div>
    <div id="left">Left column</div>
</div>
<div id="footer">Footer</div>

CSS:

#content { position : relative; margin : 0 30em; }
#right { width : 30em; position : absolute; left : 100%; }
#left { width : 30em; position : absolute; right : 100%; }

Might require some tweaking of margins/paddings to get it working properly. This should work for everything but IE5, and if anyone is still running that ancient browser they deserve what they get.

(Brought to you by "develop" CAPTCHA)

Re:In that case...

[Christophotron]

umm excuse me, but i give a fuck about lynx. and I'm not a longbearded linux geek either.. I just happen to like browsing websites with a text-only browser once in a while. mainly when i am using a slow ass dial-up connection to connect to my linux server over ssh. in those cases, its faster to load the pages up in lynx than it is to wait for either opera or firefox to display them. when pages work decently in lynx, i can appreciate it.

Re:In that case...

[MajinBlayze]

or, in my case, I'm in the command line looking for the hack I need in xorg.cfg to bring x back up :)

Re:In that case...

[Hal_Porter]

Try doing a basic three column-layout (left bar, main, right bar) with header and footer in IE.

Use frames.

Re:In that case...

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't forget about people who are vision impared.

I think it's very strange that people are very keen on supporting graphical browsers, when at least 2% of the population may have problems with their fancy web pages. And don't forget their families who might go to your competitor because they make accessible sites. There's a lot of web sites that want their attention, so why not support those who try to do the right thing?

Re:In that case...

[slaingod]

Yep, THAT's exactly the problem :P

Re:In that case...

[soliptic]

Try doing a basic three column-layout (left bar, main, right bar) with header and footer in IE. Trust me you'll be ready to strangle something long before you get it working in IE.

Well, why are you re-inventing the wheel, anyway?

"All layouts use valid markup and CSS, and have been tested successfully on Internet Explorer/win 5.0, 5.5, 6 and beta 2 preview of version 7; Opera 8.5, Firefox 1.5 and Safari 2."

Safari 2.0.4 (OS X 10.4.10 PPC)

[Anonymous Coward]

From the 43 selectors 21 have passed, 7 are buggy and 15 are unsupported (Passed 336 out of 578 tests)

Re:Who in their mind....

[poopdeville]

I did miss the news. But who cares? Opera isn't even worth the download.

RTFA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Where does TFA state that Opera will be the _first_ to fully support CSS? That's right. Nowhere.
Slashdot summaries are like Microsoft products...

Re:RTFA!

[Albert Sandberg]

Hello there coward anonymous, OP here. Which other browser do you know to support CSS selectors fully? Exactly.

Re:RTFA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Konqueror.

Re:RTFA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha, moron. Go back to MySpace. You can even use Opera, if you must.

Opera mention is fanboy-ism

[megaditto]

But every incremental Firefox upgrade or a plugin tweak making it to the front page is Stuff that Matters?

Re:Hey this is great news.

[TheRaven64]

Actually, it's probably a lot more important for Opera than anyone else. Opera make a desktop browser, but the market they really own is mobile browsers. CSS3 has a lot of nice features aimed at alternative display types, and so this is probably very useful to their target market.

Re:Hey this is great news.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're in the wrong place.

Re:Who in their mind....

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what did cause your 2+ year coma? Car accident?

Looks like Konqueror's already got full support

[Anonymous Coward]

http://bayimg.com/CabbmAabg

Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686l en-US;rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20061201 Firefox/2.0.0.4 (Ubuntu-feisty)

From the 43 selectors 26 have passed, 10 are buggy and 7 are unsupported (Passed 357 out of 578 tests)

Thy Parchment bear Good tidings!

[Domo-Sun]

Since the 99 of the great 1900's, ways of preferred stoning, and styling leafs of thy webbing, ("imparts of the face of thy brows") Is not structure forged with contentment? ("What manner of entrails subsume thy tiding parts?")

But in thou'ists separate standings, the sheeted of the stylets suffice.

Upon thy Selectors of the Sheet Stylets' dictate: ("What parts of this beast ought carry thy consorts!") E.G. Archfiend the 2nd, Level of the Headers, Lord of the Blue, and Bold user of the Fourteen-Pointed Seraphim") Indeed, it is but I, Sir Salvor of the Cataclysm. Eternal Barron of Travelers and appointed ruler of his Majesty's canonical archetypes.

GO FORTH IN GODS' GLORY VENERABLE SOLDIERS!

hmm..

[voidy]

Well, here are my results in Firefox 2.0.0.3 From the 43 selectors 42 have passed, 0 are buggy and 1 are unsupported (Passed 577 out of 578 tests) I'm not entirely sure which the unsupported one is.

mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is the answer. The CSS2 spec is an example of how not to run a standards committee. Clearly, they had no working model (such as Amaya) that implemented the whole thing. Instead, they kept the suggestions pipeline open far too long and let in the kitchen sink, probably including all the stuff that was on the cut list from the CSS1.

Re:mod parent up

[gerrysteele]

Yes, but then you could easily fall into the Reference by Implementation, which is fine for something that doesn't need to be implemented by different people... but is a disaster for something called a standard

I am not a web author, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was obvious why web authors code to implementations rather than standards: IE and Firefox dominate the browser market.

As long as that remains true, what company can afford to build a website that doesn't work on both of those browsers? You honestly expect any company to say "Screw MS and their non-standards-compliant browser! We're gonna just write to such-and-such standard, and so what if that means xx percent of users won't be able to see our site?"

Yeah right.

And Besides, So What???

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't make a lick of difference if Opera really did fully support CSS anyway. As long as IE and Firefox continue to dominate the browser market, web site will continue to be written to support both browsers, which means the resulting code most likely will not be standards-compliant CSS (or standards-compliant anything else, for that matter).

You think Internet users are going to be switching over to Opera in droves because it supports CSS? Of course not! The tiny fraction of people who even care that much about full CSS support won't even make a dent in the market share standings.

Re:And Besides, So What???

[Ant P.]

If someone writes websites to only work in a particular browser, they're usually the type of moron who writes for IE6 only. Firefox's market share wouldn't make a bit of difference with these creatures.

Re:And Besides, So What???

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't call 10% o Firefox market share a "market domination". Only and the only browser that dominates the browser market is IE, end of story.

Reject bad code!

[Omega Blue]

Maybe it's just me, but I personally have a problem with browsers that are proud to "render badly coded websites correctly."

Why? Because it will just encourage bad code. Granted, Opera doesn't have much of a market share and the problem is with MSIE, still, it is a good start. Just reject badly coded websites. Browsers are compilers and interpreters in a way, and I have never seen any compilers that are proud to compile badly written code.

You forgot Linux

[xSacha]

Konqueror on Linux From the 43 selectors 43 have passed, 0 are buggy and 0 are unsupported (Passed 578 out of 578 tests) Beats them all?

Explain to me this

[billcopc]

I never quite understood Opera's raison d'etre. They've always been the underdog, and they've always boasted better standards compliance, but does the common user care about compliance ? I think not. In fact, even if a web site looks like ass in their browser, as long as the clicky things work, they will put up with all sorts of mediocrity.

I switched over to Firefox around the same time that IE7 was released, mostly because I was royally underwhelmed. Then I fell in love with the many development add-ons that helped me debug my web pages and javascript, and now there is no turning back. We all know IE isn't going anywhere, but it would be nice if Opera and Firefox could pool together and release one uber browser to rule them all.

Re:Explain to me this

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, remember that most of their income is derived from (initially) use on mobile devices, and later supplemented by a deal with google regarding default search settings etc. Their presence on the desktop is probably complex, but at least partly because "Hey, we're already managing a browser designed with a portable core system, so we may as well have a desktop presence while we're at it..."

My strategy is to use Opera except when I am specifically seeking to debug a page. Then I start FireFox with some of the various web developer toolbars etc.

Now, that may or may not change as things go on, since Opera does have some stuff like this:
http://dev.opera.com/tools/

So I don't need to switch to Firefox for some stuff, like a DOM snapshot from memory (which includes changes just made by Javascript, etc.) and checking through JS properties. And I can read the X-Bender header quotes. I'd still go to FF for it's javascript console and DIV outlining plugins, however.

But for casual use, FF just doesn't seem as nice to me. (Highly technical answer there, eh?)

Re:Explain to me this

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera has a more responsive UI, you never have to wait to see if the browser got your mouseclick or pressed key. The layout of pages stay mostly the same when they are loading so you don't have to try to click on links that is moving around. You can have thousands of tabs open simultaniusly without a hassle. You can load thousands of tabs simultaniusly without a hassle. Tabs are automaticly saved even if your browser has a forced termination. It's easy to customise. Most Opera versions have been more stable than contemporary versions of other browsers.

I been using Firefox exclusivly for two years because there haven't been a x86-64 version of Opera. Firefox sucks in comparission to Opera. It uses a lot of system resourses. It's UI is unresponsive and buggy. You can't read text on a page before it is fully loaded because the text is moving around. The browser crashes regulary and you can't open it again and continue reading because it doesn't save what you where doing properly (I've tried some extensions that claims to add this funtionality). And if you wan't the same functionality as in Opera you have to have install lots of extensions that make the browser even more unresponsive and bug ridden.

Re:Explain to me this

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's the only browser that does not suck. Firefox, when you see through all the hype, does. And don't get me started on IE.

Software freedom means more.

[jbn-o]

I favor mentioning a browser that respects my software freedom over those that don't (Opera, MSIE). This is the chief reason why I'll continue to run Firefox and Konqueror even if Opera flawlessly implements all CSS3 selectors.

Re:Software freedom means more.

[mikkelm]

You don't have any "software freedoms" that anyone needs to respect. Some developers just let you mess around in their code. Labeling it a "freedom" with all the connotations that word has is just a cheap marketing ploy.

Don't fool yourself into delusions of entitlement just because a group of people with unrealistic ideologies want to force theirs onto others by appealing to the lowest common denominator.

Re:Software freedom means more.

[jgrahn]

I favor mentioning a browser that respects my software freedom over those that don't (Opera, MSIE). This is the chief reason why I'll continue to run Firefox and Konqueror even if Opera flawlessly implements all CSS3 selectors.

I took the RMS Kool-Aid too, but in this case I make an exception. Opera and John Bradley's xv are the only two non-free applications I ever use at home.

Firefox feels like an alpha test release of something that might eventually become a web browser one day. Possibly I would become used to it over time, but ... well. And Konqueror depends on ~60 other packages which I don't intend to install. ("kdemultimedia-kio-plugins"?)

Re:Software freedom means more.

[ultranova]

You don't have any "software freedoms" that anyone needs to respect.

Maybe, but the FSF, Apache guys, BSD guys and other free software providers respect them nonetheless, so I for one would rather do business with them than with the guys who won't.

Some developers just let you mess around in their code. Labeling it a "freedom" with all the connotations that word has is just a cheap marketing ploy.

Seems to me that I have the freedom to mess around with the code of these programs, then. The word fits perfectly, with all the connotations it has.

Don't fool yourself into delusions of entitlement just because a group of people with unrealistic ideologies want to force theirs onto others by appealing to the lowest common denominator.

First of all, the freedom to tinker with your possessions is the natural state of affairs. It is the copyright lobby with their "do not reverse engineer or modify" EULAs, CD checks, invasive installation programs - which may attempt to disable legitimate software, such as Daemon Tools, in your computer - and sometimes outright malware distribution - I'm referring to Sony, of course - who have delusions of entitlement.

Second, since the GNU project - as well as numerous other free software providers - not only still exists but is in fact gaining popularity all the time, it seems to me that the ideologue works perfectly fine in reality, so please explain what makes them "unrealistic" ?

Third, please explain your statement concerning force - has Stallman sent hit squads to break peoples kneecaps if they don't release under the GPL ? Or is this another case of someone thinking they should be able to use GPL'd code without adhering to the licensing terms of the GPL ?

Fourth, if you truly think that freedom is the lowest common denominator... You are in for a very rude awakening ;(.

Re:Software freedom means more.

[mikkelm]

Maybe, but the FSF, Apache guys, BSD guys and other free software providers respect them nonetheless, so I for one would rather do business with them than with the guys who won't.

I don't think you understood what I said. You have no "software freedom", so there's nothing to "respect". They could grant you the freedom of being able to mess with their code, but it is not a general freedom ensured by any sort of authority, so they can't "respect" it.

Seems to me that I have the freedom to mess around with the code of these programs, then. The word fits perfectly, with all the connotations it has.

You have been granted the right to mess around with the code. "Freedom" when expected connotes that something is, well, an established and ensured freedom that you have, which it is not. When you say "respecting software freedom", it connotes the same as "respecting freedom of speech" does, which is that not respecting it is a Bad Thing(tm). I'm sure whoever comes up with these absurd statements would like things to be that way, but things just are not like that.

First of all, the freedom to tinker with your possessions is the natural state of affairs. It is the copyright lobby with their "do not reverse engineer or modify" EULAs, CD checks, invasive installation programs - which may attempt to disable legitimate software, such as Daemon Tools, in your computer - and sometimes outright malware distribution - I'm referring to Sony, of course - who have delusions of entitlement.

No, it is not a natural state of affairs. I may lend you an item, but if you tinker with it and modify it, you're liable in the case that I do not agree with the changes you made. Likewise, software developers lend you their code, but if you tinker with it and modify it, you're liable for any damages they may demand. The only difference between these two scenarios is that one of the contracts is expressive, and the other is implied. They're both legally binding. It doesn't matter if the code was "just a copy". My item was "just a copy" of a blueprint that the manufacturer developed, too.

Second, since the GNU project - as well as numerous other free software providers - not only still exists but is in fact gaining popularity all the time, it seems to me that the ideologue works perfectly fine in reality, so please explain what makes them "unrealistic" ?

Because "free software" accounts for a minimal part of a software market dominated by closed source applications. Perhaps in ten years, trying to make "software freedom" ubiquitous through verbal propaganda might actually be successful, but trying to change a multi-billion dollar industry by introducing that kind of drivel is just ridiculous.

Third, please explain your statement concerning force - has Stallman sent hit squads to break peoples kneecaps if they don't release under the GPL ? Or is this another case of someone thinking they should be able to use GPL'd code without adhering to the licensing terms of the GPL ?

I think you wholly misunderstand the meaning of "force" in this context. That, or you're very narrow-minded.

Fourth, if you truly think that freedom is the lowest common denominator... You are in for a very rude awakening ;(.

Freedom is the absolute lowest common denominator. It is the basis for human rights. Appealing to people's desire for freedom is appealing to the lowest common denominator. If you think that this isn't so, then I'm afraid that you're sheltered from reality, and that you're the one who's in for a rude awakening.

Re:Software freedom means more.

[Chandon Seldon]

No, it is not a natural state of affairs. I may lend you an item, but if you tinker with it and modify it, you're liable in the case that I do not agree with the changes you made. Likewise, software developers lend you their code, but if you tinker with it and modify it, you're liable for any damages they may demand. The only difference between these two scenarios is that one of the contracts is expressive, and the other is implied. They're both legally binding. It doesn't matter if the code was "just a copy". My item was "just a copy" of a blueprint that the manufacturer developed, too.

Don't confuse physical objects with data, and don't confuse property rights with any of the laws limiting the use of data. If I own a physical object, I have the right to tinker with it. If I borrow your physical object, I'm expected to return it undamaged. If you give me your data, you still have a copy - you have no reason to expect me to return either the copy you gave me or any other copies I may make of that data. If the data is a computer program, then it will be stored on a hard disk that I own and executed on a computer that I own - tinkering with the software is an extension of my right to tinker with my computer (a physical object that I own).

Re:Software freedom means more.

[mikkelm]

I thought this had been debated to death already.

You do not own most of the software you have. You own a license to use it, but you don't own the software. If I lend you something, I give you a license to use it, but you don't own it. Don't confuse buying a license with owning an object. Don't confuse property rights with laws limiting the use of data, either. This has nothing to do with any law limiting the use of data. It has to do with intellectual property, meaning property laws apply.

Physical manifestation is not a prerequisite for licensing, and even if it was, the software still has a physical manifestation on your storage media. If there was no physical manifestation, there would be no software. It's irrelevant to the contract you sign into when you buy a license for a particular piece of software, however, but some people seem to refuse to accept that that's how the law works, and think that laws only govern tangible objects. That is not the case.

If you had bought your software, you would be free to tinker with it. Naturally. That's your right. You don't buy most software, though, so your argument is completely invalid, inapplicable, and, I'm sorry to say, frankly quite inane.

Re:Software freedom means more.

[Chandon Seldon]

It has to do with intellectual property, meaning property laws apply.

You've been confused by the term intellectual property. That's why the term was created: to confuse you.

The exact details of copyright law (the law that applies to data protected by copyright) are somewhat complex. The laws and legal rulings applying to software licensing are also complex. But neither of those have anything to do with physical property laws, and if you try to reason about them by comparing them to your understanding of physical property you'll probably end up coming to an incorrect conclusion.

Physical property laws have developed in reaction to the natural properties of physical objects, most importantly the fact that if I'm using a physical object (say, driving my car to work), you can't use the same physical object at the same time. Data does not have that property - although frequently people receiving commercial software are forced to enter a contract agreeing to pretend that it does. Even in those cases, the software still isn't physical property nor protected by physical property laws - it's just data with it's use by a specific person constrained by a contract.

Re:Software freedom means more.

[mikkelm]

The only confusion here is yours.

You assume that legal property can only be of a tangible nature. That is a hugely incorrect assumption. The money I have in the bank are bits in a database somewhere. It is, however, still my legal property.

It has been proven time and time again that arguing that you have the right to modify software because of some wrongful perception that legal property has to be tangible is completely wrong. Not that it's relevant though. The point is that you don't own the required license to alter the software, so it doesn't matter how many times you apply your remarkably astute powers of deduction to the comparison of a car and bits and bytes on a storage media and come to the stunning conclusion that they don't share any considerable physical traits. Legally, it's completely, wholly and entirely irrelevant.

Re:Software freedom means more.

[Chandon Seldon]

Did you even actually read what I said? Did you understand it?

I never once said that anyone has a legally recognized right to modify proprietary software. In fact, copyright law most likely prohibits modifying copyrighted stuff - it absolutely prohibits distributing modified versions of copyrighted software.

All I'm arguing is that copyright law (as well as software licensing) is completely and wholly different and separate from physical property law. I also began the argument that current copyright law is in conflict with the philosophical basis for physical property, but I don't think I'm going to get very far with that because you're having trouble grasping the easy part of my statements.

Re:Software freedom means more.

[mikkelm]

Actually, I'm not at all having trouble with grasping any of your statements. What's wrong here is apparently that I assumed that you were arguing on topic, and replied to it as such, when you were in reality just chiming in with irrelevant noise. Oh well.

I'd tell you about how you can't enforce licensing on something that isn't your legal property, but you seem to be having trouble understanding what legal property actually is.

Re:Software freedom means more.

[mdwh2]

I favor mentioning a browser that respects my software freedom over those that don't (Opera, MSIE).

Yeah, this is why Mac OS X is so unpopular on Slashdot!

(I don't know why Opera seems so disliked here despite the fact that alternative, non-Microsoft products are normally loved, when Opera was the first decent alternative to IE to fill the gap after Netscape died. Not being open source is the reason often given, but that doesn't make sense, given the popularity OS X has compared with Linux - obviously not being open source isn't an issue.)

IE 7.0.5730.11 x64 (WinXP Pro x64)

[KlomDark]

Should have put that in the subject instead.

If you read this first, see parent message.

Minefield (FireFox x64) v3.0a6pre (WinXPPro x64)

[KlomDark]

From the 43 selectors 32 have passed, 4 are buggy and 7 are unsupported (Passed 369 out of 578 tests)

Re:Hey this is great news.

[etheranger]

Memo from Ted Stevens:

As a more fitting name, it's now called the intertubes.

Re:Er ... I just ran Konqueror 3.5.7

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah for some reason it passes the test, but have you tried running the CSS3 demos... hardly any of them work, while with firefox almost all of them do.

so it passes that test just fails at displaying CSS3 correctly.

Re:Hey this is great news.

[baomike]

>
Not really, I just get tired of some of the acromyn laden crap.
Sending morse code, things like this made sense, this is just lazy writing.

73

NB: It was not a troll. IT WAS A SARCASTIC COMMENT.

"Google it" not helpful.

[Short Circuit]

(That link was the first hit on google for a search on CSS, incidentally...) Pardon my rant, but hints at using Google for questions really are endemic, yet not helpul. While Google is very good at returning hits for the savvy user, it actually does very poor at returning hits for people who don't know much about the field of the search terms they're looking for.

Often, this is because a certain art is required to figure out an effective set of keywords to get decent results (I frequently have to try three or four different keyword combinations and orders to get good results), but even for CSS, as per your example, it's not necessarily helpful for those "not in the know."

Your link, w3schools, is great for someone who already knows something about graphics design, or at least knows what it is. It wouldn't be helpful at all to, say, my gamer cousin who spends most of his time on BF2 and WoW, or my grandmother who only uses the Internet to stay in contact with family members across the country.

If you were to argue that w3schools isn't intended for them, then you're necessarily demonstrating my point that googling for something, e.g. "CSS", isn't necessarily going to help someone who doesn't already know what it is.

Your best link for that search, BTW, is the Wikipedia entry four links down, and that's only because Wikipedia is specifically written for laymen. If PageRank had put the Wikipedia entry two or three positions farther down, then there wouldn't have been any results for the layperson on the first page of results.

Typically, the best answer to the lay question, (e.g. "What's that?") isn't a Google search, it's a custom response by someone who knows about it. And if you're not willing to write that response, don't waste time--both yours and the questioner's--telling them to Google it. It's not your responsibility to make sure they don't ask that type of question; Your responses alone won't prevent that.

Re:"Google it" not helpful.

[robaal]

IMO providing a link to a source* where one could find answers to similar questions in the future can be more useful than a response without one.

* personally, I usually turn to wikipedia, acronym finder or urban dictionary depending on the information; having "keywords" in FF for those makes searching less troublesome

Oooops, big mistake

[John Jamieson]

You dissed Firefox on /. , major karma mistake (Score:0, Offtopic)

Yes, Opera is second to none overall, but don't let anyone know, OK? Yes, most of the good features of the new IE and Firefox actually came from Opera, but they don't know that, and as long as you keep getting modded into karma hell, they never will.

(Yes, I do use Firefox and Konqurer and Opera and I want them all, but please don't take my opera away... It is the ONE closed source tool I REALLY like, and since it does not threaten anyone please indulge us Opera users)

Re:Er ... I just ran Konqueror 3.5.7

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Yeah for some reason it passes the test, but have you tried running the CSS3 demos... hardly any of them work, while with firefox almost all of them do.

so it passes that test just fails at displaying CSS3 correctly.

Mostly the demos seems to be written specifically to firefox and safari. The -moz-* and the -webkit-* bits are sort of giveaways. Or are there some true css3 demos, that uses css3 ?

Full support for... a test suite

[NanoServ]

Passing a single test suite isn't exactly the same thing as supporting the whole standard perfectly. Test suites, by their very nature, only test select subsets of the standard. A single general test suite cannot expose every possible bug in every feature. On top of that, this test suite only covers the selectors, which is a fairly simple and straight-forward part of the spec. Heck, even Internet Explorer supports a bunch of CSS 3 selectors. It's one thing to claim full support for selectors; it's quite different to claim that pseudo-elements with table display values in nested floats with negative margins always work correctly. It's great to see progress, and Firefox and Opera are both impressively close to full support for the current CSS 2.1 specification, but let's not exaggerate the situation. They both still have a lot of work to do (as does Safari, which was clearly behind overall in version 2.x and is likely still a bit so in version 3).

Re:RTFA please, the word 'first' does not exist

[Anonymous Coward]

Self-censoring on /.? What's going on?
Go troll somewhere else, you fucking cunt.

Mouse gestures ARE supported in Konqueror

[Anonymous Coward]

See this page for example, there's a brief explanation of how to enable them. It's not intuitively obvious, I'll grant you, but the capability is there...

Re:Mouse gestures ARE supported in Konqueror

[jlarocco]

I know that, but I don't want gestures, I want shortcuts. So when I click a button, Konqueror does something.

For a better explanation, go to "Configure Shortcuts" in the "Settings" menu in Konqueror. I want to use the mouse for those shortcuts. So, for example, button press 7 will go back. I spent a few hours trying to set it up, but in the end couldn't get it working, so I have to use xbindkeys and xvkbd. Like I said, it works well, but seems like a hack.

I can't believe...

[MrNemesis]

...that no-one has mentioned some of the other gems from TFA, especially in relation to the *nix builds:

64bit Linux builds
Qt4 builds
Faster tab switching (my only gripe with the current Opera under Linux)

I've been using Opera since 2001, and on Linux since 2004, and it's great to see a vendor maintaining feature parity across different platforms.

The improvements to CSS et al are always welcome, but as some other users have pointed out it's almost always crappily coded sites that give "alternative" browsers a hard time, so it's also good to see they're apparently factoring in better support for error-ridden sites.

Re:for 3.5.5

[SolitaryMan]

Konqueror 3.5.7 on Kubuntu right now, and it passes completely. I don't know how long it's been able to pass, since I just found out about the test now.

Konqueror 3.5.5a has the only bug: attribute values are matched in case-insensitive way (FF has the same bug)

Opera CTO Father of CSS

[sverrehu]

For the record: The CTO of Opera Software, Håkon "howcome" Wium Lie, is the father of CSS.

Re:Opera CTO Father of CSS

[Ant P.]

That gives them even less excuse for lagging half a year behind KHTML.

Re:Er ... I just ran Konqueror 3.5.7

[porneL]

"From the 43 selectors 43 have passed, 0 are buggy and 0 are unsupported (Passed 578 out of 578 tests)" I assume this is what Opera is suppose to get?

No, Opera 1-ups this with: "From the 43 selectors 65 have passed, -15 are buggy and -7 are unsupported (Passed 614 out of 578 tests)"

Twisted Logic shows author has government skills.

[ourcraft]

So silly almost tortured use of logic to prove the opposite of the truth. Do you work for the Bush administration?

Re:Who in their mind....

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it was just Firefox's standard memory handling slowing down his system.

A correct fact modded as flamebait?

[ThiagoHP]

I just don't get some Slashdot moderators sometimes . . .

Re:Who in their mind....

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Right. Opera has been completely free since 2005."

Erm... This is a true statement. Why was it modded as flamebait? Opera has been free since 2005, and before that it was ad supported. (At least since version 5, which goes back to ... oh I want to say 2000'ish.) It's been a long time (if ever) that you had to 'buy' Opera, and the ad supported argument died not all that recently. This isn't flamebait.

Re:Safari Beta 3,0,2

[olafva]

Just tested the new Safari update (3.0.2 on Mac) which gives the same results:

"From the 43 selectors 25 have passed, 9 are buggy and 9 are unsupported (Passed 346 out of 578 tests)"

Anyone know if Safari 3.0.2 gives identical results on Windows?

or statusbar shows "Page contains 237 erros..."

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO it would already suffice if Opera or Mozilla started to give some visual clue that the current page uses broken HTML. Right now all browsers keep quiet about it, pretend nothing was wrong. That's why nobody cares to work on valid HTML.

Safari Surpasses current Opera 9.21

[olafva]

CSS test results for latest downloadable Opera (not quite up to Safari 3 Beta):

From the 43 selectors 25 have passed, 3 are buggy and 15 are unsupported (Passed 346 out of 578 tests) - Opera9.21
From the 43 selectors 25 have passed, 9 are buggy and 9 are unsupported (Passed 346 out of 578 tests) - Safari3

"About Opera" states System: MacOSX 10.4.9, even though I'm running 10.4.10?

Re:Opera...great things-Please tel me how it works

[ZERO1ZERO]

For me it is Opera that has weird tab loading 'impairments'

Consider this:

Firefox:
1. open slashdot main page, middle click all links that look interesting to load in background,
2. click on last tab opened and read story, middle click on tab to close. or Ctrl-W
3. next last opened tab appears, rinse and repeat.
4. finally ending up at main page, ready to click 'yesterday's stories' or whatever.

Opera:
1. open slashdot main page, middle click all links that look interesting to load in background,
2. click on last tab opened and read story, middle click on tab to close. or Ctrl-W
3. Return to slashdot main page. Click back onto a tab you haven't read yet. 4. Read tab, close, Return to slashdot. main page. ARGGHHHHH WHAT'S THE POINT OF TABS IF YOU KEEP GOING BACK TO THE SAME PAGE??
5. Might as well open one tab, read it close it, return to main page, open next tab. Rinse and reapeat.

Maybe someone can tell me the logic of this, or where I am going wrong. AFAICT there is NO way to change this behaviour in Opera. It's the thing that stops me from using it daily. Otherwise it's a great browser.

Re:Opera...great things-Please tel me how it works

[the_kanzure]

For me it is Opera that has weird tab loading 'impairments' Firefox:
1. open slashdot main page, middle click all links that look interesting to load in background,

No, Firefox does not "load in background" anything. It specifically loads the page immediately meaning you are unable to continue working on the page that you have assigned focus. And your problem sounds trivial, have you tried searching for tab focus ordering parameters, or clicking on the tabs you want via the vertical sidepanel list of tabs?

Re:Opera...great things-Please tel me how it works

[ZERO1ZERO]

No, Firefox does not "load in background" anything. It specifically loads the page immediately meaning you are unable to continue working on the page that you have assigned focus.

Yes I know that. It's one of the most annoying things about Firefox. Pdf loading as well, because of this locks the system up bad until it's loaded. One of the reasons I'd really like to use Opera more - it's so smooth compared to Clunky Firefox, which lets face it, is getting on a bit in terms of where things like opera and Konquerer are now. Hopefully FF3 will address some of this stuff but probably not.

And your problem sounds trivial, have you tried searching for tab focus ordering parameters, or clicking on the tabs you want via the vertical sidepanel list of tabs?

I know it sounds trivial, but it's a major PITA. There's nothing in settings. There's nothing in help. 'Vertical sidepanel list of tabs' - I guess you mean the panel at the left of the screen, but after adding windows it doesn't do what I want . My point is I don't want to have to keep selecting the tabs (or windows) it should select the next tab along, not the last viewed tab.

I have googled for this as well. And the generel opinion is "Yeah we know it's different, but Opera's tab operation is better, and you have to get used it. Sucks to be a Firefox convert. Too bad."

I am however for the first time checking out if there's a widget that may hold the key. Will let you know.

Re:Opera...great things-Please tel me how it works

[Pomyk]

Don't close the tab, just go to next one using for example 1 / 2 keys. You can close them later ;)