Of course, now that non-IE browsers are used three times as much as then, the extra profit should be three times greater and probably now outweighs the cost. Making the site compliant with non-IE browsers now will probably only cost more than it would have to support them to begin with, and the profit the site could have been making all this time from users of those browsers is now lost. It would have been more profitable to support non-IE browsers from the start, rather than reverse the decision to support IE.
Now it's time to replace all government suppliers with people who would work for free!
Most of the programmers who work on OpenOffice don't work for free. They're full-time Sun and Novell employees who are paid to work on OpenOffice as part of their jobs. The author of the article was incorrect in assuming that free software means software made by people who work for free.
It's nice to have another browser to use when a website you want to visit doesn't work in your browser of choice. Many sites that don't work in Mozilla do work in Opera, and vice versa.
That may be what our most current theories say, but theories can always be wrong. We actually don't know if there's an absolute speed limit on information transfer. Remember, science can never absolutely prove any fact about the real world, only come up with models that attempt to describe the phenomena we've seen so far.
This is a major theme of the book and PBS series The Day the Universe Changed. It's all to easy to look back in history and think that our ancestors had ridiculous beliefs. But it's also easy to forget what we perceive isn't reality, but our own interpretation of what we get from our senses, which is filtered by our personal beliefs and biases. What we think is real is often an elaborate hallucination that often has little or no bearing to actual reality.
I don't see where support for Safari is planned. I think it's worth asking them to support that browser, since it's been the default browser on Mac OS X for years. It also has 1-2% usage share, comparable to Mozilla and Netscape, both of which they're also planning on supporting. Not supporting Safari encourages the use of IE for Mac, which used to be the default browser on the Mac and has several serious unpatched security holes.
First, they get most of their revenue (about two-thirds) from the mobile market, so they don't get all of the money from ads. Second, Opera users constantly claim they don't notice the ads, so they're not "putting up" with ads, just ignoring them.
Only a small fraction (about 1% of Internet users) seem to prefer Opera, as opposed to about 10% of users who use Mozilla browsers. Certainly Opera has a core of dedicated zealots^Wfanatics^Wusers, but most people tend to prefer Firefox. If Opera's really so great, why don't more people use it?
Opera's yearly earnings are a testament to how badass the browser is. People are willing to pay for something in that niche ( the browser market ) that they could easily get for free ( Firefox / IE ) Thats a testament to how great Opera is.
Actually only about 100,000 users per year pay for Opera. Millions download the free version each month. Opera's earnings mainly come from software for mobile devices and the ads in the free version. They couldn't possibly pay their hundreds of employees from the $3,900,000 US revenue they make from people paying for the desktop software each year. Yep, that's how great Opera is.
Let's stick to complaining when browsers don't display "standards compliant" pages correctly.
Luckily, Mozilla (and Opera and Safari) developers don't share this opinion. They realize that 99% or more of pages on the web don't fully comply to web standards, and yet browsers must be able to display the vast majority of them the way the web developer intended them to be displayed.
I'm all for complying to web standards, but any browser that is going to be used by more then 0.1% of the population needs to handle the "tag soup" that is so common on web pages.
Firefox can't show the images because of Bugzilla bug 160261. There's nothing wrong with the images on the web site, it's just that Firefox can't display TIFF images.
While the Mozilla Corporation will be a for-profit, the Mozilla Foundation is keen to stress that it is not selling out. The Mozilla Foundation will ultimately control the activities of the Mozilla Corporation and will retain its 100 percent ownership of the new subsidiary. Any profits made by the Mozilla Corporation will be invested back into the Mozilla project. There will be no shareholders, no stock options will be issued and no dividends will be paid. The Mozilla Corporation will not be floating on the stock market and it will be impossible for any company to take over or buy a stake in the subsidiary. The Mozilla Foundation will continue to own the Mozilla trademarks and other intellectual property and will license them to the Mozilla Corporation. The Foundation will also continue to govern the source code repository and control who is allowed to check in.
There's no public stock, so the problem you mention cannot happen.
You don't get it do you? The CEO was interviewed and asked about usage stats. What do you expect him to do? Suck up to Firefox fans and pretend like stats give an accurate picture of the browser market?
He could have said that browser stats are possibly not accurate without making trying make Opera look good and others look bad. That would have been factual and not whining at all. Opera would have gained a lot of respect in my eyes if they had done that instead.
I don't put Opera down. I in fact use it and find it to be a good browser, although I prefer Mozilla. The problem is that Opera fanatics can't stand criticism, and any time someone makes noises like their browser isn't the best in the world, or the company's employees don't walk on water, they get all defensive and claiming to be unfairly treated by others. That doesn't come across well to people not clearly in the Opera camp.
Don't get me started on Firefox users (such as yourself), who constantly flame Opera, Opera Software, its users, and so on. No wonder Firefox fans have a terrible reputation.
I'm not a Firefox fan. I've used the Mozilla Suite and Opera (shock!) for the past several years. And when have I flamed Opera? You asked a question and I answered it, and I am flaming? Nice.
This is all typical behavior of Opera users -- putting down everyone else and accusing them of "flaming" Opera. It's just still more whining from the Opera camp.
Opera certainly does recognize lots of IE constructs (for example, , , and document.all) and most of the time it doesn't conflict with complying to the standards. But the article has to do with the user agent string Opera sends in HTTP requests, which has nothing to do with recognizing IE-only code.
And that's just the company itself. Don't even get me started on how Opera's users whine (Hey, Opera had that feature first! They stole it from us!). Damn, I already got started.
I was just pointing out there are in fact browsers that do render Acid2 properly. Whether they're publicly released versions doesn't matter -- there do exist three separate browsers that pass the test.
They're putting some effort into supporting more standards, but seemingly just enough to keep only a few years behind the other browsers. They have very little incentive to support standards better. As long as web designers keep working around their bugs and lacking features, the vast majority of users won't know how bad the layout engine is compared to what other browsers have. They're probably putting most of their efforts into UI features and security issues, which users have a better chance of seeing.
It fails the Acid2 Test pretty spectacularly - but then what doesn't!
Safari, Konqueror, and iCab all render Acid2 correctly. Also, Firefox and Opera do much better than IE -- they at least render something that's recognizably a face, and not just a jumble of yellow and black blocks.
Can anyone tell if IE 7 does any better than IE 6 at all? Then renderings look nearly identical to me. So much for improved standards support in IE 7, as if anyone thought that would actually happen
Exactly. This is how MS makes money with IE. It's not free -- you need to buy the OS to get it. As sites are created that require IE7, many users will mistakenly think they need to part with their hard earned money to get sites to work again. Well, at least a few enlightened users will realize that free alternatives exist.
Switching to IE means that tens of millions will have to switch to Windows, and that means buying new computers for all those people. Congratulations. Now your plan costs an order of magnitude more than before. Glad you've got the money to foot the bill, Bill!;-)
My solution is for sites to follow the standards. They're the ones with the incentive to get the visitors.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, now that non-IE browsers are used three times as much as then, the extra profit should be three times greater and probably now outweighs the cost. Making the site compliant with non-IE browsers now will probably only cost more than it would have to support them to begin with, and the profit the site could have been making all this time from users of those browsers is now lost. It would have been more profitable to support non-IE browsers from the start, rather than reverse the decision to support IE.
It's nice to have another browser to use when a website you want to visit doesn't work in your browser of choice. Many sites that don't work in Mozilla do work in Opera, and vice versa.
This is a major theme of the book and PBS series The Day the Universe Changed. It's all to easy to look back in history and think that our ancestors had ridiculous beliefs. But it's also easy to forget what we perceive isn't reality, but our own interpretation of what we get from our senses, which is filtered by our personal beliefs and biases. What we think is real is often an elaborate hallucination that often has little or no bearing to actual reality.
I don't see where support for Safari is planned. I think it's worth asking them to support that browser, since it's been the default browser on Mac OS X for years. It also has 1-2% usage share, comparable to Mozilla and Netscape, both of which they're also planning on supporting. Not supporting Safari encourages the use of IE for Mac, which used to be the default browser on the Mac and has several serious unpatched security holes.
Only a small fraction (about 1% of Internet users) seem to prefer Opera, as opposed to about 10% of users who use Mozilla browsers. Certainly Opera has a core of dedicated zealots^Wfanatics^Wusers, but most people tend to prefer Firefox. If Opera's really so great, why don't more people use it?
I'm all for complying to web standards, but any browser that is going to be used by more then 0.1% of the population needs to handle the "tag soup" that is so common on web pages.
Firefox can't show the images because of Bugzilla bug 160261. There's nothing wrong with the images on the web site, it's just that Firefox can't display TIFF images.
I don't put Opera down. I in fact use it and find it to be a good browser, although I prefer Mozilla. The problem is that Opera fanatics can't stand criticism, and any time someone makes noises like their browser isn't the best in the world, or the company's employees don't walk on water, they get all defensive and claiming to be unfairly treated by others. That doesn't come across well to people not clearly in the Opera camp.
This is all typical behavior of Opera users -- putting down everyone else and accusing them of "flaming" Opera. It's just still more whining from the Opera camp.
Stating facts isn't bitching. Trying to make yourself look good and at the same time blaming others for your problems is bitching, however.
Opera certainly does recognize lots of IE constructs (for example, , , and document.all) and most of the time it doesn't conflict with complying to the standards. But the article has to do with the user agent string Opera sends in HTTP requests, which has nothing to do with recognizing IE-only code.
And that's just the company itself. Don't even get me started on how Opera's users whine (Hey, Opera had that feature first! They stole it from us!). Damn, I already got started.
There are a few stats services that can mistake Opera for IE, but not many. I doubt this move will help Opera's stats much. Even taking into account under-reporting of Opera, Chuck Upsdell estimates Opera usgae at about 1-2%.
I was just pointing out there are in fact browsers that do render Acid2 properly. Whether they're publicly released versions doesn't matter -- there do exist three separate browsers that pass the test.
They're putting some effort into supporting more standards, but seemingly just enough to keep only a few years behind the other browsers. They have very little incentive to support standards better. As long as web designers keep working around their bugs and lacking features, the vast majority of users won't know how bad the layout engine is compared to what other browsers have. They're probably putting most of their efforts into UI features and security issues, which users have a better chance of seeing.
And, by the way, what phrase is Acid an acronym for?
So you mean that Safari, Konqueror, and iCab aren't browsers, and soon Firefox and Opera won't be, either? Weird.
IE 7 rendering Acid2
IE 6 rendering Acid2
Can anyone tell if IE 7 does any better than IE 6 at all? Then renderings look nearly identical to me. So much for improved standards support in IE 7, as if anyone thought that would actually happen
Exactly. This is how MS makes money with IE. It's not free -- you need to buy the OS to get it. As sites are created that require IE7, many users will mistakenly think they need to part with their hard earned money to get sites to work again. Well, at least a few enlightened users will realize that free alternatives exist.
My solution is for sites to follow the standards. They're the ones with the incentive to get the visitors.