Opera's Developer Relations Team - Open the Web update: Google, Facebook, Apple, eBay

Open the Web update: Google, Facebook, Apple, eBay

By dstorey. Friday, 22. August 2008, 11:13:59

A number of high profile sites have been fixed or are in the process of being fixed this week and last. Many users noticed that Orkut broke in Opera Mini. We were snowed under with bug reports on this issue. The issue was with a malformed meta refresh that was sent to Opera Mini. We’ve been in touch with the Orkut team and they’ve kindly fixed the issue. Orkut especially has many Opera Mini users, as we both share two markets that we are both very strong in–Brazil and India. All those users can get back to having a mobile social life now.

On the subject of Google, Google Docs removed the block on Opera a while ago, but the Spreadsheets and Presentation components still blocked Opera at the door. We’ve been talking to the Spreadsheets team, and that block should be removed shortly. Now we just need to get Google Presentations working and the suite will fully support Opera.

Next up, Apple.com had a number of issues with embedding videos in their pages with Opera. These have now been fixed. One site that has caused Opera headaches for a long time is eBay. We had both spoofs and browser.js patches for this site. We’ve been in touch with eBay for a while now, and we just got informed now that they’ve been working on fixes and eBay now supports Opera. Big thanks for the people at eBay that worked to make sure that long standing Opera issues were fixed.

Finally, the last major site I want to highlight is the new Facebook. When releasing the new version, there was issues in Facebook.JS that caused Opera to not work with the friends list. We’ve been in touch with Facebook and they fixed the issue this week.

With Google Docs compatibility issues slowing winding down, one of the main issues we’d like to fix in the Open the Web team is the compatibility with Yahoo! Mail. This is one of our main blockers, and while Yahoo! in general are very responsive to fixing issue, Yahoo! Mail has always remained allusive. Another issue with Yahoo! is Yahoo! Maps India, which in their own words from the blocking page sucks. I’m not sure if this version of Maps is used in different territories as, taking a random sampling of UK, USA, Germany and Brazil, all of their Maps sites work in Opera.

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Comments

fearphage # 22. August 2008, 11:26

Great news!

We’ve been in touch with eBay for a while now, and we just got informed now that they’ve been working on fixes and eBay now supports Opera.

I filed an ebay related bug back in June that is still an issue:
bug #336610 - malformed notices with missing information and functionality
Opera's view / Safari's view

Does that mean the userjs for ebay is now rendered unnecessary?

User Javascript thread
Opera has modified the JavaScript on feedback.ebay.com (eBay: IFRAME expands forever
eBay: speed up back+forward navigation
eBay tries to communicate with...). See browser.js for details

dstorey # 22. August 2008, 11:30

That issue hasn't been fixed yet. This isn't an issue I reported to eBay as we just report the issues that are eBay bugs and not Opera bugs. It hasn't been confirmed yet which of these your bug is. I'll chase it up. Many other issues have been fixed however.

dstorey # 22. August 2008, 11:32

I believe the browser.js is not needed now. Hallvord smoke tested the site without Browser.js after eBay fixed issues and he reported it worked now. It may take a while for the path to be removed. We've already removed the UA spoof.

babox # 22. August 2008, 13:02

The new Facebook version had problems with AJAX tabs too, but now everything works fine!!

Anonymous # 24. August 2008, 23:21

Anonymous writes:

Hi guys.. can you implement __proto__ please.. that would be the single best thing you can do for the future of the web.

Thanks.

philry4n # 25. August 2008, 02:27

how about the friendster guys?

dstorey # 25. August 2008, 12:35

Philry4n: Which issue do you refer to on Friendster? If you mean giving Opera Mini the mobile site, they have refused to fix that issue, and demanded we remove the spoof in our UA database.

philry4n # 25. August 2008, 15:04

Yep i was talking about that. Well they're closing the door then..

dstorey # 25. August 2008, 15:07

You can actually change to the desktop version, but it is buried in the help option.

philry4n # 25. August 2008, 22:29

I know about it. Does the Opera Mobile got hard redirected too there? I met a guy in mobile monday using safari on an iphone, and he got redirected too

dstorey # 25. August 2008, 23:05

Probably, but I've not checked personally. They probably have a different advertising deal for mobile ads. Problem is that even if they make more money, users don't like their mobile site, and it'll end up driving their users away.

Darken # 25. October 2008, 18:38

Good news!

Anonymous # 26. October 2008, 17:31

Voicemark writes:

Regarding ebay now supports Opera, I would have to beg to differ. I don't know if anybody else has experienced this problem since your announcment, but I for one, was still not able to complete a purchase via my account on ebay/PayPal. In order to get in on the purchase before the stock of items was gone, I had to resort to going back to my previous browser (Camino) in order to complete the purchase. Has there been any other follow-up to this issue, anywhere?