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Opera cries foul against MSN--again | |
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| Time: 19:14 EST/00:14 GMT | News Source: CNET | Posted By: Bill Roach | ||
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Rendering glitches in Microsoft's flagship MSN.com site have sparked renewed criticism from a competitor that the software giant is undermining its browser. Opera Software on Wednesday said Microsoft has been sending its browser a faulty style sheet, which determines the presentation of graphics and text in a browser window. When people using Opera 7 browser software visit MSN.com, published by Microsoft, some of the site content is obscured, Opera Chief Technology Officer Hakon Lie wrote in a posting to the company's Web site. | ||
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| #26 By 2459 (24.170.151.19) at 2/6/2003 8:19:20 PM |
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SJ, I've come to expect you to regard relevant comments as blather, so I'm not surprised. If you really can't see the value in targeting multiple browsers, nor accept the fact that dispite this case, Opera does have bugs related to CSS, so be it. My comments were not only about this article. You asked why MS (or anyone) would use the full user agent string to target specific browsers (or classes of browsers). I provided an answer.
RE: Opera - The current version was a rewrite, so things could have changed between versions. Can you provide a link to tests done with older versions of Opera, or screenshots? If older versions render the page similarly, why was this only brought up now, and not when MS redesigned the MSN page? Besides being brought up, why all the stink over something that could occur on any site? I noticed your quickness to put down Opera when the oposition was Apple, even though they are doing more harm to 3rd party Mac development than MS could ever do on the PC. I'm not trying to change the subject, but I do notice more of the standard double-standard. |
| #27 By 2459 (24.170.151.19) at 2/6/2003 8:21:09 PM |
| And there goes the conspiracy... :-) |
| #28 By 1845 (12.209.152.69) at 2/6/2003 9:52:09 PM |
| Which Bob? |
| #29 By 1845 (12.209.152.69) at 2/6/2003 10:01:51 PM |
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Ah, that's what I get for skimming.
I'll jump in for a sec to say that the parenthetical portion of the user agent string is the most important part. The reason that Mozilla/x was included in IE's string way back when, was so that pages that parsed for Netscape would treat IE as Netscape. After folks became aware of IE's change, IE was already gaining significant market share. That portion of the string for IE has been maintained for backward compatibility. The only way to determine if a browser is IE, which version of IE it is, and on which OS the browser is running, is to parse the parenthetical portion of the user agent string. It is this portion of the string that the BrowserCap COM component used in ASP and it is the same portion the Page.Browser property users in ASP.NET. The COM component used browsercaps.ini, while the .NET version uses a section in the machine.config file. I might add, that even the latest official version of this section (while at least one month ago) had issues with detecting what was then Windows .NET Server. As for Opera. It wouldn't surprise me too much if this is an innocent mistake on Microsoft's part, if it was intentional on Microsoft's part, if Opera isn't as compatible as it think it is with the latest IE or some combination of the three. |
| #30 By 13030 (198.22.121.120) at 2/7/2003 9:10:05 AM |
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Opera has posted an explanation of the problem ("Why doesn't MSN work with Opera?") at http://deb.opera.com/howcome/2003/2/msn/
Summary: "The purpose of this page is to document, in technical terms, what is going on. Did the Opera programmers make grave mistakes? Or is it something wrong on the MSN site? If so, is the Opera browser targeted specifically? (Executive summary: no, yes, yes)" Interestingly, when the IE requested page is fed to Opera it renders properly. When the Opera requested page is fed to IE is renders incorrectly with the shifted text. More silly MS antics... |
| #31 By 3339 (65.198.47.10) at 2/7/2003 1:24:05 PM |
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enforcer, this is silly--you are telling me stuff we all know as if it could possibly be the porblem. We know for a fact that it is not the problem.
"...nor accept the fact that dispite this case, Opera does have bugs related to CSS, so be it." No, you are unwilling to accept that despite the fact that all browsers have problems with their CSS implementation, that that side note is completely irrelevent and unrelated in this matter. It isn't a bug, the CSS is rendering properly--MS is passing a bad style. "The current version was a rewrite, so things could have changed between versions. Can you provide a link to tests done with older versions of Opera, or screenshots?" I don't need to provide links--it's mentioned in the articles--yes, it is new, but so is this stylesheet. Yes, Opera displayed correctly before. That's why they didn't complain before. "I'm not trying to change the subject, but I do notice more of the standard double-standard." Yes, you are. It's an entirely unrelated issue. This is an issue between MS and Opera that goes back over a year. MS thinks they can manipulate web standards to block other software. I'm critical of MS in this case. As per Apple, Opera is pathetic to say that they are concerned. Safari is no more damaging than IE being the default browser for the Mac. "they are doing more harm to 3rd party Mac development than MS could ever do on the PC." That's a bunch of baloney: there are more and more developers for the Mac program. Mozilla isn't going away. Chimera isn't going away. OmniWeb isn't going away. iCab isn't going away. Phoenix will move to the Mac. Because Opera has chosen to support more platforms than is sustainable and has fallen a year behind on their Mac development (even when there are a lot of Opera fans on the Mac), makes me a hypocrite? Bullsh!t. I am not a hypocrite because I can separate different issues and not attack a company just because they are that company. There are good things and bad things about Opera. Simple. In the case we are discussing, I have a problem with MS and support Opera. |
| #32 By 2459 (24.170.151.19) at 2/7/2003 2:51:51 PM |
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SJ, the majority of those products are free, OSS products.
Since they make no money, who cares. However, there as even been an outcry from OSS devs about Apple taking away marketshare. More and more devs are moving away from Apple because Apple is pushing 3rd parties out of an already tiny market. When there's only 2.x% of the market (Apple's share of the PC market) to go around, and Apple is competing with you, you aren't left with much (We're talking fractions of a percent). With MS, there's at least 2+% of the market that will still buy your software despite Microsoft's dominance in a market. RE: Opera No, you are unwilling to accept that despite the fact that all browsers have problems with their CSS implementation, that that side note is completely irrelevent and unrelated in this matter. It isn't a bug, the CSS is rendering properly--MS is passing a bad style. Funny, I thought I accepted as much in post #29: "MS is doing no different than many other sites in looking at the full string for compatability. It just happens that there was a mistake in the style sheet (assuming that sheet wasn't pushed to other versions of Opera that may have had problems that required adjusting the text position)." Again, dispite the error in the CSS, there are still valid reasons for parsing the entire user agent string (as mentioned above). Looking again at the link you gave, I see that Opera 6 was shown rendering the msie6 css, however, it also shows why MS probably wanted to target the Opera browser and send it a different sheet. If you look at the ie sheet in Opera 6 and 7, the text is fine, but there are other issues like undisplayed images (Opera 6) and a padded nav menu (Opera 7). This would be a cridible case for sending separate sheets if you wanted to have comparable renderings of the page for all browsers. |
| #33 By 3339 (65.198.47.10) at 2/7/2003 3:06:10 PM |
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still avoiding the issue, enforcer, but I'm done with this topic.
As I have said, it 's normal and understood you would send different styles, but if you do, shouldn't they be to fix things, not break them. THey changed the stylesheet, they updated the string they were looking for, it didn't work. So why did they do it? Did they test at all? Did they test the default? The only way that I can accept it is if they said, we have a policy of not testing what we develop. |
| #34 By 2459 (24.170.151.19) at 2/7/2003 3:24:14 PM |
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I've not avoided the issue. THe issue was it was a mistake that was corrected. Instead of Opera going to MS with the mistake, they choose to take this as an opportunity for free press and propagation of conspiracy theories.
Personally, I don't think MS cares to purposely sabotage Opera. Opera is sabotaging itself by making the same mistakes Netscape did years ago. They built their business around one product, and are charging for what started as a free and widely available product (not Opera, the browser in general). Their main money is going to be made through licensing in the embedded space, however, it is still naieve to base your business model upon one product, especially one with much competition. |
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