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

why is it so hard?

[z-j-y]

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

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.

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

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 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.'

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.

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: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)

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.