One of my friends downloaded to see what the hype was about. If there had been a demo, he would have DL that instead.
I can't even play FPS games, becaue of the motion sickness they cause me, and I still thought of DL the real version. But I decided to wait for the Demo to slake my curiousity.
But really if there were a demo first some who bought the game, might have just DL the demo to see what is up instead and it would have been lower sales. So this is really not in Id's best interest.
Certainly if there were a demo on the same day vast amounts of the "piracy" would have disappeared as well. But I am not sure this would be in Id's best interest either. This gives the the BSA and thier ilk more ammo.
"I can tell from page 2 that the authors are biased towards this AMD solution for some reason."
Ummm. It is an article largely about the rather Unique Soundstorm technology. Nvidia didn't have an Intel chipset licence. So it only exists in an AMD chipset and the Xbox BTW. It is not AMD bias.
"These guys actually try and claim that a $149 add-on card cannot provide 5.1 (6-channel) sound."
Nope, No where in the article do they state that. they are talking about Encoding. No card under $200 does realtime Dolby Digital encoding. Soundstorm is the only solution I am aware of.
" is the hardware AC3 encoding really going to be much of an issue for most people?"
It is for anyone who wants to connect with the AC3 capable receiver. I would be part of that group. My computer and home entertainment systems are integrated. This will is the wave of the future IMO.
They should have never did the mix and match and had some Nforce with and some without soundstorm. It confused the issue.
But still it would have been hard. I think many of those who wanted the specific unique feature (Dolby Digital encoding) figured out this was the chipset to have. I picked an Nforce soley because of this feature and I love it. Hooked up to my Denon my computer serves as a media center delivering fantastic sound for music, 5.1 movies and gaming all through 1 digital connection.
But I think the market for that feature may be somewhat small. And marketing may not have saved them. They were fighting an uphill battle against the misconception that onboard sound must be terrible.
Hey, Creative, Crystal, Turtle Beach, etc...: I'll pay $150-200 for a true 5.1 audio card. I want that card to have DIGITAL 5.1 OUTPUT for ALL Computer generated audio."
You appear to be the perfect target customer for Soundstorm. Did you buy one? For under $100 you can get those capabilities in a motherboard, so why would you want to pay $150 for a soundcard that does the same???
I am just curious. I really don't understand why someone would willingly pay large amounts for something they could have had for next to no cost (perhaps $10 more than your current MB).
They are talking about Dolby 5.1 encoding(not decoding) in real time. There are no other solutions to do this for the home user that I am aware of. Care to cite some?
All the misconceptions about on-board sound must have done them in. Because slashdotters are repeating them a lot here ( on board sound is poor quality).
When I heard about Nforce, it became my motherboard of choice. For about 10$ more than a competing solution I could get a sound solution equal to a $100 card thrown in. To me I just saved $90.
Now I expected the enthusiast community to embrace this solution like there was no tomorrow. But they didn't. Creative seems to have worked a miracle of brainwashing to convince the majority that on board sound sucks.
I don't know how else to explain people shelling out $100+ on redundant sound cards.
The Soundstorm solution has equal processing power with the best cards out there and its relative cost is 90% less. Other than the misconception that onboard sound is flawed, what is leading folks to spend 10 times as much as they had to on sound?
My soundstorm is connected to my Denon receiver via SPDIF out. Sound quality is Superb. Beyond reproach.
I will keep using my Soundstorm board for another couple of years in hopes of some resurgence in this kind of technology. I will actually delay upgrading, since this aspect of future motherboards is actually a step backward for the short term future.
Big deal for those of us with HT recievers connected to our computers.
By connecting digitally, you leave all the analog interference in the case of the PC. Also I now use all the Digital/Analog stages of my Denon HT reciever, which are better quality than any reasonably priced sound card.
Try to do the same with any other sound card and you only get stereo through digital. Soundstorm lets you get 5.1 channels through digital.
While I welcome an increase in precision as I nearly returned my MX-700 and went back to a ball mouse because the ball handles small movements more precisely, I don't like the Lithium battery solution.
The current batteries work well and imporantly are ubiquitous and easily replaceable. Do yo see a door on the Lithium model?
What happens when the expensive Laser mouse has a battery failure. Lithiums do have a limited lifespan (Warranty +10 days usually).
I hadn't played NWN in a while (my copy is out on loan for months now) so I hadn't been visiting the great Bioware forums,and hadn't heard of DA. I had heard they were going to do there own thing. Good for them. Never liked them having to clear everything through the Wotc and having Atari as a distrubuter. Atari really didn't seem to care about customers at all.
As big a DnD fan as I am, I am a bigger fan of Bioware. These guys rock IMO. Go DA go!
Fueled by hype and its obvious availability I thought about DL'ing Doom3 to see what all the fuss was about.
I will never purchase this game, but I may have "pirated" it out of curiosity. So I go with they aren't losing any money on me arguement. Yeah you heard that one before, but there is a reason I would never buy it. I can't play FPS games as they give me motion sickness. So if I DL it just to have a look, am I a "Pirate", am I costing ID money? I don't think so...
In the end I didn't download it, not because of some sense of moral quandry, but because I figure there will be a much smaller demo in the offing that will tie up my connection for a shorter time and be easier to install.
I wonder how many would not DL the game if the demo was available. Couldn't have that though, you wouldn't be able to raise the "Piracy" hue and cry if 90% of the people DL'd the demo and 10% the "Pirate" version of the game...
If those shares represent 100% ownership of the company I agree. If that represents the 10% share of the company they are selling at the moment, then not so much.
So does anyone know what Percent of the company this represents. I assume the CEO and Co, plus venture capatilist backing them will retain a large percentage of ownership in the company. Where is that reflected?
"Yeah, except Opera is identified as IE by default, and Firefox does not have any easy way to spoof the useragent string out of the box."
Let me get this straight. You are arguing against my call for better spoofing features in Opera. And the one site you show as having a problem in Firefox, only works better in Opera because of spoofing. Ironic?
Or are you now agreeing with me that Spoofing is a good thing?
Bottom line Points.
1: There are thousands upon thousands of broken pages unacessable to opera because of browser sniffing.
2: This is not changing. I have contacted many and so have others. The web masters could care less. This is the world we must function in.
Now is where choice enters the picture.
A: Implement better spoofing to get other code served that may work.
B: use a different browser. Optionally complaining for the sake of complaining because it certainly change nothing.
Now doing A will win Opera more converts. If as list based implementation will not cost page counts.
Doing B, will limit growth and even cause defections to browsers that now offer the features of Opera without as many incompatability Woes.
Naturally you favor complain to all the web page admins of the world regardless of the futility. I favor recognizing the futiliy and improving Opera. But I will also soon recognize that futility and switch to Firefox.
For years I have been a fan, and have tried to influence many to use Opera (I think I only succeded with 2 people), but I may bail on it soon and I will tell those two of my change....
"The menus on Starbucks.com doesn't work in Firefox. But what difference does it make? I don't keep track of pages like these. I use Opera most of the time anyway."
Somewhere above you claimed FF fails on more pages than Opera, so it matters when you make such claims. I use both and Opera fails more because of the simple fact that Firefox essentially identifies as a Navigator version and most pages have support for IE and Navigator.
FTR: The startbuck page works exactly the same in Opera and FF. Unless you spoof. Spoof IE with either browser and then the menus start cascading.
"If anyone is whining here it's you. I have simply shown you that claiming that Opera has poor JS support is a load of rubbish."
I made that mistake buy using the info from the original article. I acknowledged it readily and immediately. Were you not paying attention. You would have to go back ten messages to find where I said someting about JS.
Since you have pointed out the true source of the problem. I have been arguing that opera requires true UA spoofing in order to get around the bad pages serving improper scripts to Opera. Regardless of a few zealots this will be happening for years to come so Opera needs a method for dealing with it.
"Opera generally works with more sites than Firefox for my use."
Well care to show some examples of where Firefox doesn't work and Opera does?? I wonder how our experience could be so different.
I have been using both and my experience is that all of the sites that Opera failed at worked in Firefox. I have yet to see the reverse on even one page! Now, no doubt you can find a site coded by some opera zealot to block other browsers, but I would like to see the real page that works with Opera and not firefox.
And please no more whining about poor coding of web pages. The end user choosing the browser doesn't care why it doesn't work, just that it doesn't.
Just off the top of my head. These work with FF but not Opera:
My Bank and webbroker (Toronto Dominion) My intranet at work. www.trader.ca car searches. Gmail.
You would be surprised as to how many webmasters have said that they know about Opera but can't be bothered to support it (even if "support" means removing stupid browser sniffing scripts) because it makes up less than five per cent of their visitors.
I thought I was clear. If you need to use a different browser to access the site, then Opera will essentially counting ZERO. So why not have a black list and spoof these sites if you are only going to have to use another browser anyway?
Since I have to fire up firefox to do my banking, and read my Gmail, or get accurate results at other sites (for the record I sent email to all the webmasters originally to no avail), I am starting to think why not just use Firefox full time.
To think the world is going to change to accomodate a browser with ~1% market share is losing touch with the reality of things.
I think I will have much better luck getting fast caching in Firefox (the final missing piece) than compatability with Opera. Anyway. This is getting old. My email is available if you want to continue.
The bottom line as I see it is irrellevant where the "Fault" lies. When new browsers like Firefox are much more compatible in Beta than mature Opera is. I am thinking from the perspective of potential new users.
BTW Gmail supports Safari, so your sig is out of date.
Philosophically I have to wonder why you need to identify something intended to be compatible?
And there are technical options. You could have a black list of sites that don't work, only enable real spoofing on those. It is not like they are recording opera usage, because after you go there you are going to use an alternate browser in the future anyway.
The big issue now, is most people I convince to try Opera usually give up on it because they can't load favorite page X. Shouting that the world needs to change is not helping the market share. Some interim solution is needed to work with more pages. Most of my geek friends have gone Mox/FF and are not looking back. FF is now my default browser at work and I may head that direction at home if Opera's only answer to broken pages is to suggest I fight to have them changed. Newsflash people are lazy. Much easier to just go with FF and be done with it.
"Screw Google for not supporting Safari and Opera in GMail."
BTW Safari is listed as supported:
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/browser_requireme nt s.html Our software suggests that you're using a browser incompatible with Gmail. Gmail currently supports the following: Microsoft IE 5.5 and newer (download: Windows) Netscape 7.1 and newer (download: Windows Macintosh Linux ) Mozilla 1.4 and newer (download: Windows Macintosh Linux ) Mozilla Firefox 0.8 and newer (download: Windows Macintosh Linux ) Safari 1.2.1 and newer (download: Macintosh )
Ok I checked, it is poor coding. On the car Make, it has a code block for if_ie and if_nav, there is no else, if it is neither of these it does nothing.
Nothing malicious from what I can tell, which almost seems to be what you are saying. It is not like they are serving broken code to Opera on purpose. I think only microsoft did that.:-)
So why don't the Opera folks do real spoofing, that would seem to be a tenable solution. Heck I might buy Opera if it did this. But it is frustrating requiring another browser to get stuff done.
I guess to a certain extent they want Opera usage tracked, but I think that is somewhat irrelevant at this stage, when the majority of Opera complaints stems from its low compatability with many webpages. Who is at fault is not even the issue. If real spoofing gives more compatability then Opera market share would grow and more Opera users would buy it.
Sorry my mistake. I had heard before that Opera had good standard Javascript, but MS had extended it for their own use. Then pages designed with IE in mind don't function well with Opera. But IMO whatever is in greatest use is standard. So opera should attempt to better emulate IE JS if this is true.
I have to wonder why all these sites crap on Opera but work with FF/Moz. Should they have the same issues as Opera with compatability?
Another example: www.trader.ca. Select autotrader, search for a car, select a region (all of Ont).
Now try to select the make of the car. Works in FF, doesn't work in Opera. Why?? I really doubt it is sending specific code to Opera at this point. It appears that again Opera just can't handle some JS or something. This happens too often. If FF can handle this why can't Opera?
Don't get me wrong I love opera and am addicted to the speed but I need another browser around to open a percentage of my web pages and that is frustrating.
Opera is best browser by far if you ignore the fact that it is the least compatible on the market.
"When you use Opera regularly you get used to how fast it is and don't think twice about using back/forward all the time. With IE I want to gouge my eyes out because it resubmits forms, talks to the server, etc, and with FF it takes quite a bit longer."
I love this comment because it is exacly how I feel. Speed is addictive. No other browser comes close. I have MX700 mouse with built in forward/back buttons and I regularly click though multipages/second. I choke with frustration trying this on other browsers.
With the extensions, I think FF will win the features race, but Opera is the speek king.
Slashdot Mirror
One of my friends downloaded to see what the hype was about. If there had been a demo, he would have DL that instead.
I can't even play FPS games, becaue of the motion sickness they cause me, and I still thought of DL the real version. But I decided to wait for the Demo to slake my curiousity.
But really if there were a demo first some who bought the game, might have just DL the demo to see what is up instead and it would have been lower sales. So this is really not in Id's best interest.
Certainly if there were a demo on the same day vast amounts of the "piracy" would have disappeared as well. But I am not sure this would be in Id's best interest either. This gives the the BSA and thier ilk more ammo.
I would rather have Sony.
Microsofts Codec is mandatory on both Blue Ray and HD-DVD players now.
Microsoft is happy either way, they get their tax on every Next generation DVD player whoever wins.
Ahem,
"I can tell from page 2 that the authors are biased towards this AMD solution for some reason."
Ummm. It is an article largely about the rather Unique Soundstorm technology. Nvidia didn't have an Intel chipset licence. So it only exists in an AMD chipset and the Xbox BTW. It is not AMD bias.
"These guys actually try and claim that a $149 add-on card cannot provide 5.1 (6-channel) sound."
Nope, No where in the article do they state that. they are talking about Encoding. No card under $200 does realtime Dolby Digital encoding. Soundstorm is the only solution I am aware of.
" is the hardware AC3 encoding really going to be much of an issue for most people?"
It is for anyone who wants to connect with the AC3 capable receiver. I would be part of that group. My computer and home entertainment systems are integrated. This will is the wave of the future IMO.
I agree for the most part.
They should have never did the mix and match and had some Nforce with and some without soundstorm. It confused the issue.
But still it would have been hard. I think many of those who wanted the specific unique feature (Dolby Digital encoding) figured out this was the chipset to have. I picked an Nforce soley because of this feature and I love it. Hooked up to my Denon my computer serves as a media center delivering fantastic sound for music, 5.1 movies and gaming all through 1 digital connection.
But I think the market for that feature may be somewhat small. And marketing may not have saved them. They were fighting an uphill battle against the misconception that onboard sound must be terrible.
Peter
"Audio is expensive. "
That still doesn't explain why a solution that offers high quality and is cheap would fail.
Soundstorm boards are maybe $10 more than a comparative board without it.
"1 AC-3 Encoding is the next big step.
Hey, Creative, Crystal, Turtle Beach, etc...: I'll pay $150-200 for a true 5.1 audio card. I want that card to have DIGITAL 5.1 OUTPUT for ALL Computer generated audio."
You appear to be the perfect target customer for Soundstorm. Did you buy one? For under $100 you can get those capabilities in a motherboard, so why would you want to pay $150 for a soundcard that does the same???
I am just curious. I really don't understand why someone would willingly pay large amounts for something they could have had for next to no cost (perhaps $10 more than your current MB).
"Btw I am an audio engineer."
For who? Creative?
"AC3 can ONLY be "done on the fly""
They are talking about Dolby 5.1 encoding(not decoding) in real time. There are no other solutions to do this for the home user that I am aware of. Care to cite some?
All the misconceptions about on-board sound must have done them in. Because slashdotters are repeating them a lot here ( on board sound is poor quality).
When I heard about Nforce, it became my motherboard of choice. For about 10$ more than a competing solution I could get a sound solution equal to a $100 card thrown in. To me I just saved $90.
Now I expected the enthusiast community to embrace this solution like there was no tomorrow. But they didn't. Creative seems to have worked a miracle of brainwashing to convince the majority that on board sound sucks.
I don't know how else to explain people shelling out $100+ on redundant sound cards.
The Soundstorm solution has equal processing power with the best cards out there and its relative cost is 90% less. Other than the misconception that onboard sound is flawed, what is leading folks to spend 10 times as much as they had to on sound?
My soundstorm is connected to my Denon receiver via SPDIF out. Sound quality is Superb. Beyond reproach.
I will keep using my Soundstorm board for another couple of years in hopes of some resurgence in this kind of technology. I will actually delay upgrading, since this aspect of future motherboards is actually a step backward for the short term future.
Big deal for those of us with HT recievers connected to our computers.
By connecting digitally, you leave all the analog interference in the case of the PC. Also I now use all the Digital/Analog stages of my Denon HT reciever, which are better quality than any reasonably priced sound card.
Try to do the same with any other sound card and you only get stereo through digital. Soundstorm lets you get 5.1 channels through digital.
While I welcome an increase in precision as I nearly returned my MX-700 and went back to a ball mouse because the ball handles small movements more precisely, I don't like the Lithium battery solution.
The current batteries work well and imporantly are ubiquitous and easily replaceable. Do yo see a door on the Lithium model?
What happens when the expensive Laser mouse has a battery failure. Lithiums do have a limited lifespan (Warranty +10 days usually).
I hadn't played NWN in a while (my copy is out on loan for months now) so I hadn't been visiting the great Bioware forums,and hadn't heard of DA. I had heard they were going to do there own thing. Good for them. Never liked them having to clear everything through the Wotc and having Atari as a distrubuter. Atari really didn't seem to care about customers at all.
As big a DnD fan as I am, I am a bigger fan of Bioware. These guys rock IMO. Go DA go!
Now I have to go read the previews...
Fueled by hype and its obvious availability I thought about DL'ing Doom3 to see what all the fuss was about.
I will never purchase this game, but I may have "pirated" it out of curiosity. So I go with they aren't losing any money on me arguement. Yeah you heard that one before, but there is a reason I would never buy it. I can't play FPS games as they give me motion sickness. So if I DL it just to have a look, am I a "Pirate", am I costing ID money? I don't think so...
In the end I didn't download it, not because of some sense of moral quandry, but because I figure there will be a much smaller demo in the offing that will tie up my connection for a shorter time and be easier to install.
I wonder how many would not DL the game if the demo was available. Couldn't have that though, you wouldn't be able to raise the "Piracy" hue and cry if 90% of the people DL'd the demo and 10% the "Pirate" version of the game...
"In fact, in a decent onboard audio controller (like, say, nForce), the only real advantage you get from an audio card is a lower noise floor."
I use my Nforce through the SPDIF out to my Denon reciever. One simple digital hookup and lower noise floor than an analog setup.
If you look at CPU usage, the Nforce is neck and neck or better than the latest creative stuff as well.
Only if you are a positional audio junky and must have EAX3/HD do you need to pay your "Creative" tax.
In the midst of a game is it really going to matter if you have EAX 2 or 3????
Peter
If those shares represent 100% ownership of the company I agree. If that represents the 10% share of the company they are selling at the moment, then not so much.
So does anyone know what Percent of the company this represents. I assume the CEO and Co, plus venture capatilist backing them will retain a large percentage of ownership in the company. Where is that reflected?
Well that and some TDF coverage. Go Lance!
Is there a TVAA?
"Yeah, except Opera is identified as IE by default, and Firefox does not have any easy way to spoof the useragent string out of the box."
Let me get this straight. You are arguing against my call for better spoofing features in Opera. And the one site you show as having a problem in Firefox, only works better in Opera because of spoofing. Ironic?
Or are you now agreeing with me that Spoofing is a good thing?
Bottom line Points.
1: There are thousands upon thousands of broken pages unacessable to opera because of browser sniffing.
2: This is not changing. I have contacted many and so have others. The web masters could care less. This is the world we must function in.
Now is where choice enters the picture.
A: Implement better spoofing to get other code served that may work.
B: use a different browser. Optionally complaining for the sake of complaining because it certainly change nothing.
Now doing A will win Opera more converts. If as list based implementation will not cost page counts.
Doing B, will limit growth and even cause defections to browsers that now offer the features of Opera without as many incompatability Woes.
Naturally you favor complain to all the web page admins of the world regardless of the futility. I favor recognizing the futiliy and improving Opera. But I will also soon recognize that futility and switch to Firefox.
For years I have been a fan, and have tried to influence many to use Opera (I think I only succeded with 2 people), but I may bail on it soon and I will tell those two of my change....
Anyway this dead horse is well and truley beaten.
"The menus on Starbucks.com doesn't work in Firefox. But what difference does it make? I don't keep track of pages like these. I use Opera most of the time anyway."
Somewhere above you claimed FF fails on more pages than Opera, so it matters when you make such claims. I use both and Opera fails more because of the simple fact that Firefox essentially identifies as a Navigator version and most pages have support for IE and Navigator.
FTR: The startbuck page works exactly the same in Opera and FF. Unless you spoof. Spoof IE with either browser and then the menus start cascading.
"If anyone is whining here it's you. I have simply shown you that claiming that Opera has poor JS support is a load of rubbish."
I made that mistake buy using the info from the original article. I acknowledged it readily and immediately. Were you not paying attention. You would have to go back ten messages to find where I said someting about JS.
Since you have pointed out the true source of the problem. I have been arguing that opera requires true UA spoofing in order to get around the bad pages serving improper scripts to Opera. Regardless of a few zealots this will be happening for years to come so Opera needs a method for dealing with it.
Opera needs list based Spoofing.
"Opera generally works with more sites than Firefox for my use."
Well care to show some examples of where Firefox doesn't work and Opera does?? I wonder how our experience could be so different.
I have been using both and my experience is that all of the sites that Opera failed at worked in Firefox. I have yet to see the reverse on even one page! Now, no doubt you can find a site coded by some opera zealot to block other browsers, but I would like to see the real page that works with Opera and not firefox.
And please no more whining about poor coding of web pages. The end user choosing the browser doesn't care why it doesn't work, just that it doesn't.
Just off the top of my head. These work with FF but not Opera:
My Bank and webbroker (Toronto Dominion)
My intranet at work.
www.trader.ca car searches.
Gmail.
And these are all significant to me.
You would be surprised as to how many webmasters have said that they know about Opera but can't be bothered to support it (even if "support" means removing stupid browser sniffing scripts) because it makes up less than five per cent of their visitors.
I thought I was clear. If you need to use a different browser to access the site, then Opera will essentially counting ZERO. So why not have a black list and spoof these sites if you are only going to have to use another browser anyway?
Since I have to fire up firefox to do my banking, and read my Gmail, or get accurate results at other sites (for the record I sent email to all the webmasters originally to no avail), I am starting to think why not just use Firefox full time.
To think the world is going to change to accomodate a browser with ~1% market share is losing touch with the reality of things.
I think I will have much better luck getting fast caching in Firefox (the final missing piece) than compatability with Opera. Anyway. This is getting old. My email is available if you want to continue.
The bottom line as I see it is irrellevant where the "Fault" lies. When new browsers like Firefox are much more compatible in Beta than mature Opera is. I am thinking from the perspective of potential new users.
BTW Gmail supports Safari, so your sig is out of date.
"No, but seriously. That is the wrong approach."
e nt s.html
Philosophically I have to wonder why you need to identify something intended to be compatible?
And there are technical options. You could have a black list of sites that don't work, only enable real spoofing on those. It is not like they are recording opera usage, because after you go there you are going to use an alternate browser in the future anyway.
The big issue now, is most people I convince to try Opera usually give up on it because they can't load favorite page X. Shouting that the world needs to change is not helping the market share. Some interim solution is needed to work with more pages. Most of my geek friends have gone Mox/FF and are not looking back. FF is now my default browser at work and I may head that direction at home if Opera's only answer to broken pages is to suggest I fight to have them changed. Newsflash people are lazy. Much easier to just go with FF and be done with it.
"Screw Google for not supporting Safari and Opera in GMail."
BTW Safari is listed as supported:
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/browser_requirem
Our software suggests that you're using a browser incompatible with Gmail. Gmail currently supports the following:
Microsoft IE 5.5 and newer (download: Windows)
Netscape 7.1 and newer (download: Windows Macintosh Linux )
Mozilla 1.4 and newer (download: Windows Macintosh Linux )
Mozilla Firefox 0.8 and newer (download: Windows Macintosh Linux )
Safari 1.2.1 and newer (download: Macintosh )
Ok I checked, it is poor coding. On the car Make, it has a code block for if_ie and if_nav, there is no else, if it is neither of these it does nothing.
:-)
Nothing malicious from what I can tell, which almost seems to be what you are saying. It is not like they are serving broken code to Opera on purpose. I think only microsoft did that.
So why don't the Opera folks do real spoofing, that would seem to be a tenable solution. Heck I might buy Opera if it did this. But it is frustrating requiring another browser to get stuff done.
I guess to a certain extent they want Opera usage tracked, but I think that is somewhat irrelevant at this stage, when the majority of Opera complaints stems from its low compatability with many webpages. Who is at fault is not even the issue. If real spoofing gives more compatability then Opera market share would grow and more Opera users would buy it.
Sorry my mistake. I had heard before that Opera had good standard Javascript, but MS had extended it for their own use. Then pages designed with IE in mind don't function well with Opera. But IMO whatever is in greatest use is standard. So opera should attempt to better emulate IE JS if this is true.
I have to wonder why all these sites crap on Opera but work with FF/Moz. Should they have the same issues as Opera with compatability?
Another example: www.trader.ca. Select autotrader, search for a car, select a region (all of Ont).
Now try to select the make of the car. Works in FF, doesn't work in Opera. Why?? I really doubt it is sending specific code to Opera at this point. It appears that again Opera just can't handle some JS or something. This happens too often. If FF can handle this why can't Opera?
Don't get me wrong I love opera and am addicted to the speed but I need another browser around to open a percentage of my web pages and that is frustrating.
Opera is best browser by far if you ignore the fact that it is the least compatible on the market.
"When you use Opera regularly you get used to how fast it is and don't think twice about using back/forward all the time. With IE I want to gouge my eyes out because it resubmits forms, talks to the server, etc, and with FF it takes quite a bit longer."
I love this comment because it is exacly how I feel. Speed is addictive. No other browser comes close. I have MX700 mouse with built in forward/back buttons and I regularly click though multipages/second. I choke with frustration trying this on other browsers.
With the extensions, I think FF will win the features race, but Opera is the speek king.
On my home machine now. Again no issue. AMD 2500/512MB/Win2k. Opera 7.52.
Just as a point of interest, that page rendered pretty much instantly for me on Opera 7.50/Win2k on a fast machine with 1G of memory.
Maybe some fresh installing is needed.