Opera CTO Thinks IE Will Be Forced To Support SVG

Julie188 writes "Opera Software is, as expected, preening over the forthcoming browser ballot box feature in Windows 7. It will put the Opera name in front of millions of users who probably never heard of it. But that's not the only reason Opera is gloating. CTO Håkon Wium Lie feels that today's decision will force Microsoft to make Internet Explorer do a better job of supporting standards, particularly the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). Lie would also like to see Apple and Linux makers follow suit with browser ballot boxes of their own."

Comments

Re:Apple and Linux, too?

[countertrolling]

® -- Close enough?

Here's a handy, dandy reference page. Have fun...

Re:It doesn't really matter

[mdwh2]

Fuck you, Opera.

What are you, 12? What is it with all the Opera hate on Slashdot?

If market share is what's important (and ignoring that the market share stats are very dubious, and unfairly biased against Opera, which until recently identified as IE, and even now some users have to identify as IE due to poorly written websites, not to mention that browsers that don't cache as often will get more hits), by your logic we should all be using IE.

Re:A browser ballot is stupid

[derGoldstein]

Yes.

Step 1) Download Firefox using FTP: instructions.

Step 2) Use Firefox to download Opera.

(you can probably use the method above to directly download Opera, but I'm too lazy to figure out how right now)

Re:Preening?

[VGPowerlord]

I don't think that word means what you think it means. Given the context, I expect "gloating" or "crowing" or "celebrating" would've been a better fit.

Signed,
Your eight-grade English teacher

Main Entry:
        preen
Function:
        verb
Etymology:
        Middle English prenen, alteration of proynen, prunen, from Anglo-French puroindre, proindre, from pur- thoroughly + uindre, oindre to anoint, rub, from Latin unguere -- more at purchase, ointment
Date:
        14th century

transitive verb
...
3: to pride or congratulate (oneself) for achievement

Signed,
Merriam-Webster

Re:HTML 5 Canvas tag

[itsdapead]

[Canvas] is already supported on Firefox and Webkit-based browsers. This is the most practical advantage it has -- availability in the field.

Except SVG is already supported on Opera, Firefox and Webkit, too, and even in IE via plugins.

The killer app for SVG would be if someone developed an artist-centric development tool like Flash.

Gloating? Really?

[Sinbios]

That's funny, because I actually had to deploy some SVG-based webapp last week. Specifically, it was outputting scatter plots with some few thousand data points. I tested SVG performance in Opera, Safari, Chrome Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer with Adobe SVG Viewer 3.03, 6 (alpha? pre-alpha? No one knows...), and the RENESIS plugin for IE.

Here are the results:

Opera - Easily the slowest of the bunch. Took about 15 seconds to render the graph.
Safari - Got confused about the app's filetype and kept trying to save it.
Chrome - Pretty fast, took about 2 seconds to render the graph but strangely starts rendering the datapoints in small chunks after (it'd draw the first half of one series, the the next half, then the next series, etc).
Firefox - Not much faster than Opera.
Adobe SVG 3.03 - About as fast as Chrome but was missing some features, like changing the cursor display when you hover over interactivity points.
Adobe SVG 6 - The snappiest of the lot, and supports the cursor changing feature, but likes to draw erroneous datapoints. Too bad Adobe dropped development on this.
RENESIS - A little faster than Chrome but not as fast as SVG Viewer 6. No errors and wasn't missing any features as far as I could tell. This is what I ended up going with.

So, why is Opera "gloating" over IE when they themselves has a LOT of work to do on their own SVG support, to say the least, while there are free plugins for IE that pretty much trounce the competition? Does IE really need built-in SVG support when this is the case? Maybe it needs built-in flash support too?

To me, this just looks like another case of unwarranted smugness over "omg IE doesn't conform to standards!!1".

Re:Apple and Linux, too?

[itsdapead]

Apple certainly won't be doing it anytime soon, since they emphasize integration between programs so much.

On my Mac, if I click on the "Apple" menu (Note for Windows users: its a bit like the "Start" menu) and choose "Mac OS X Software" I go to an Apple-run software catalog website. Number 7 on the "Most Popular Downloads" list is currently Firefox. Number 1 if you go to the Internet Utilities section - Opera is down at 14. You have to dig a bit to find Camino, Flock, Omniweb and Seamonkey, but they're there.

Not exactly a "browser ballot", but all on an official Apple site one click away from the desktop, so its hardly a Safari lock in.