Got slapped on the wrist because a site didn't work on Opera

I believe it was a JS problem- What are Opera's bugs?

[martinibuster]

I noticed a mention of an Opera bug related to a dom problem.

Can anybody here please enlighten me about Opera bugs and other soap operas?

Thanks!

[toadhall]

The best source? Fire up Opera and go to:

news://news.opera.com/opera.page-authoring

[Mardi_Gras]

Ummm, who slapped you on the wrist? Did you tell them that whether or not Opera is a great browser (I don't know, I haven't used it in years) it commands an absolutely insignificant share of the market?

That is not a knock on Opera - it is just a fact. There are probably a lot of things you could do to make your site more effective than spend your time working for less than .1% of the market.

I know everybody here loves Opera. But if a web site is going to work to address shortcomings, I have a hard time imagining ANY shortcoming less significant than compatibility with less than .1% of the browsing public.

Okay, its soon to be the weekend. Flame me. I'll forget about it by Monday :) But don't flame me because you like Opera - flame me because you think that optimizing for Opera will result in significant ROI - and you have statistics to prove it. ROI is all that matters (morals and ethics aside, and i don't think ignoring Opera creates any ethical dilemmas).

Submit button pushed with trepidation...

Don

[starway]

>>...it commands an absolutely insignificant share of the market
"At this moment" - I have to add.
That's right, right now Opera's usage can't be compared with IE. But don't forget that it is already more popular that Netscape (including newest Mozilla) - at least in Europe. I don't want to add any stats here as I don't believe it so much and don't rely on them. But I know for sure that Opera is getting more and more popular in web world.

You can read about the latest Opera deals with software and hardware distributors and developers and see that it's moving faster and faster. All this will bring wider market share for Opera, and this will probably happen very soon.

Assuming all this I don't think that it is a wise step to ignore it, even if you don't like it. As a developer you have to be ready for it.

[delstar dotstar]

opera's like a girl who's got a great body and so you figure the face must be good too. but then you have a look and it looks just like WINSTON CHURCHILL'S.

in the above, let body==css support and face==dom support.

here's a meaty site [xs4all.nl] with lots of info re: dom support in opera.

[rewboss]

But don't forget that it is already more popular that Netscape (including newest Mozilla) - at least in Europe.

Not my impression at all. But then, since Opera can identify itself as MSIE or NS, who can say?

[Brett_Tabke]

>insignificant share of the market?

As high as 6% in some European countries and growing (they've been distributing the free version in magazines in Europe). Unfortunatly, it defaults to IE as an agent name so most counters miss it.

>Can anybody here please enlighten me about Opera

CSS is the most complete of any of the majors. Does some things Moz doesn't do, and quite a bit that IE doesn't do. Has a nifty presentation mode.

HTML4 - full support to spec. Not any major problems with pure html 4.0.

JS - ECMA script 1.3 - almost 100% compliant (closer than Moz I believe and certainly closer than ie).

DOM - lacking in several respects. If you need good Dom cross browser, try [cross-browser.com...]

Unicode - Good support for the standard international languages, but lacks BIDI needed for two way languages such as Arabic.(that may have recently changed - not kept up with it).

[starway]

>>But then, since Opera can identify itself as MSIE or NS, who can say?

Rewboss, you can easily define that you deal with Opera:

navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Opera")

This is available regardless identification that a user can set.

Here are some words I wrote about it:
[tek-tips.com...]
Maybe it can be useful for somebody.

[starway]

Sorry, you can't use that link.

Go to tek-tips.com > Forum Areas > Programmers > Languages > Javascript FAQ Index >
> 21. Opera browser: Opera browser identification

[moonbiter]

My $0.02:

Opera is a bit player right now. If you write ECMA/W3C DOM compliant javascript code and valid (X)HTML/CSS, you can safely ignore it. By the time it is popular enough to warrant worrying about (because of ROI), it should be another version or two down the road -- and by then the authors should have the DOM issues addressed. They seem to be a good crew.

[papabaer]

Trends worth noting: Opera leads in downloads (and user ranking) from a MAJOR download site... The momentum is building.

The DHTML crowd needs to keep in mind that 12% of the surfing public does not have javaqscript enabled on their browsers. Before a developer makes a commitment to flyout DHTML menus and other javascript "enhancements," the 12% figure should be considered. This far exceeds the 1% figure mentioned above.

[starway]

...and DHTML menus made using W3C DOM scripting aren't a problem for Opera at all!

By the way, are there any real stats about % of users with javascript disabled?
As far as I know, there's no direct way to detect it using client-side scripting.