General discussion about web site compatibility in Opera

General discussion about web site compatibility in Opera

This is a thread intended for general discussion about site compatibility in Opera, based on a suggestion by EricJH. For problems with specific sites, please follow the instructions in the following thread:

How to post about problems with specific sites

All other threads with general discussions on site compatibility will be closed, so as to keep this in one place and avoid endless duplications of threads. It is strongly recommended that you read through this post and as many other posts as possible before contributing.

As a start, this blog post offers some backround on Opera how Opera deals with site compatibility:

An inside look at how Opera works on site compatibility

It seems that the fact that Opera has been built from the ground up to deal with non-standard code is unknown to a lot of people. The following blog post in my blog talks about this and other things related to site compatibility:

Opera's stubbornness and terrible JavaScript support?

This forum thread in the Web design forum addresses the same issue:

Does Opera's standards compliance mean that it can't handle badly coded pages?

Opera Software's effort to "Open the Web":

Open the Web project

Here is some general information about site compatibility in Opera, partially reposted from other threads on the subject:

Site compatibility is a very complex problem. For some examples, see these posts in my blog:

• No content is served if you are using Opera
• Site uses parts of a standard no other browser supports, and that breaks Opera
• Opera identifies itself as Opera rather than Netscape. This causes the site to break

How would one deal with these? Make Opera identify itself as another browser permanenty, and break all the sites that have been tweaked to work in Opera? Remove support for standards and not implement anything until someone else has implemented it first? There is no simple solution. No silver bullet.

As one can imagine, a lot resources are spent on compatibility issues. Sadly, much of it is out of our hands. If it were only as simple as it all being a matter of bugs in Opera, the problem might have been solved by now. But sometimes, the only thing we can do a lot of the time is to contact webmasters that block Opera, asking them to stop doing so and/or offering solutions to any problems they may be having. That, or we can use site patches to work around it.

• More information on Opera's site patching
• Stay up to date on the latest patches at the Site Patching blog

Site patching and contacting Web sites directly is just one of many ways Opera Software is working on site compatibility. In addition to fixing bugs in Opera, we try to reach out to Web developers in general. For more information on the subject, please read the links above.

A quick summary of resources if you want to learn more about site compatibility, and how Opera is dealing with it:

• How to post about problems with specific sites on this forum
• A look at how Opera works on site compatibility
• Information on what Opera's site patching is all about, and how it works
• The Site Patching blog offers more details on the actual patches
• Opera was built from the ground up with compatibility in mind

Congrats with the start of this sticky topic. The mentioned articles give a good insight in the complexities and the extend of the problems of the standards challenged experience called the world wide web.

In one of your posts of the above dating in 2005 you state:

However, in my experience the single biggest cause of non-working sites in Opera today is browser sniffing.

Is that still very much the case?

The forum software being used at the Comodo forums has the possibility to merge multiple threads into one. May be that would be an additional idea in trying to handle compatibility related threads. But I have never seen merging happening here at the My Opera forums. So I assume that it may not be a possibility of the used software.

It seems that browser sniffing is usually involved when dealing with site issues, yes.

Merging is not possible with the current forum software. It was possible back when we used vBulletin, though.

"....sometimes, the only thing we can do a lot of the time is to contact webmasters that block Opera, asking them to stop doing so and/or offering solutions to any problems they may be having.... "

So, what is the situation on Google, Yahoo etc? The big guys?

That is beyond the scope of this thread, really. I recommend a forum search, as there are quite a few threads on the subject. But as I said, it is a complex problem. It is not made easier by the fact that these sites are a moving target, and that they keep breaking new things all the time. Even with Browser JS, that means that things will have to be fixed over and over and over again. And these site patches can't just be pushed out within the hour. The problems need to be analyzed, then the patch needs to be created, then tested properly, then it needs to be pushed out, and it can take up to a week to get it since the automatic update system currently only checks for updates once a week. That might change with Opera 10, though.

It is interesting to note that Microsoft is adding their equivalent of Opera's Browser JS in IE8. This goes to show just how difficult of a problem this is. Even Microsoft needs to resort to workarounds to get sites working in new versions of IE.

Quote from the blog post:

We reach out to those sites (beyond all the other outreach we’ve already done!) to make sure they know the experience their IE8 visitors have by default and what steps they (the sites) can take to make it better. We also tell them that in the meantime, we’re adding their site to this compatibility list and provide instructions on how the site can opt-out. (If a domain notifies Microsoft that it’s choosing to opt-out, we remove it from the list at the next scheduled list update.)

IE8 is not the first browser to consider making website compatibility fixes for specific highly trafficked sites. Opera has "a feature that allows Opera to automatically fix incompatible Web pages." It’s "automatically distributed by Opera Software ASA, and can be used to apply fixes to specific Web sites."

It seems to me there are three kinds of site "issues":
1) sites that simply make coding errors impacting certain browsers more than others
2) sites that seek to identify the specific browser being used, and either omit coding for Opera or seek to inhibit Opera from working at their site
3) sites that code everything fine, but expose a genuine bug within Opera

The third issue is one the Opera folks certainly want to get resolved when they hear of them, since they're real bugs that need fixing. And I believe Opera does a good job in this area.

The first two issues are ones Opera is often trying to "fix" external to the websites, within the Opera javascript, if direct appeals to the site operator prove unsuccessful. While that's certainly understandable and helpful to Opera users (and greatly appreciated!), would it also be beneficial in the long run for Opera to publish/maintain a public list of known incompatible/problem sites so that users could at least recognize whether certain sites they may visit have known problems, through no fault of Opera? They can then apply some of their own "customer heat" to certain of the listed site operators to get their act together, and especially to stop sniffing/blocking Opera in their code? In many cases, it might be of persuasive value for a site to begin actually seeing the number of customer 'hits' they're losing because of their nonconforming or discriminatory coding practices that block browsers like Opera.

Right now, it seems each user fights the battle in seeming lonely isolation... first blaming Opera for the site problems he encounters (and in too many cases, migrating away in frustration from the browser right at that point), then reporting a site problem to Opera via the Help option or even here in this Forum and next waiting in hopeful silence (just like for St.Nicholas and his gifts) until a tweak is designed and applied to javascript or until Opera manages to persuade the site operator to fix his code.

It would seem to me to be quite helpful to have a place for a user to go that listed known site incompatibilities, the date last reported, Opera version involved, the nature of the observation, the cause (if known), and the contact/reporting address for the website. I realize that compiling, vetting, and maintaining such a list represents an expense - and expenses are not a good thing, especially with regard to a free product. But it might do wonders for "goodwill" (especially among newer Opera adopters) if users could at least check problem sites in an up-to-date list and see what the problem causes actually were for a listed site - and lay additional, well-deserved complaints at their doorstep. And goodwill is something most products can never have too much of...

Most of the sniffing scripts are in fairly common use as they are copied blindly over and over again - the ones with IndexOf - and the more "sophisticated", checking for opera.window should be detectable and rewritable, too.

May be that my approach is a little bit naive, but, if browser sniffing is still a problem, why not add an optional button that, when pressed, reloads the page and changes the word Opera in the sites javascript code instead of masquerading Opera?

I'd like to be a proud Opera user whose site visit shows up in the server log files as Opera - not as IE or Fx.

An interesting story via OperaWatch: Google actually had to spoof as Safari for Hotmail to work.

The response from the Google representative is priceless. Maybe someone should remind him about Opera's constant battle through the years to fix Google's problems for them in order to get Opera working with their services.

Darn, that is a downright arrogant response from the Hotmail folks.

There's only one permanent solution: Core changes. Regarding my site problems continues years and years I can say no serious steps has been taken so far. In the end when an user see such bugs with Opera he will return to use his old browser. What if you guys test a mp3 player and it can't play some "badly encoded mp3" while others can play it. It's obvious that in the real web world there's some other methods than the standarts you accepted. It's time to wake up from the grief, desperation and "it's free" sleep.

@nizamx: Please read the articles linked to in haarvard's top post. Hallvord's blog also has lots of insight into various site issues. Try to at least understand the thing you're writing about before commenting.

PS. If you're having trouble with specific sites, start a new thread (or more than one) for them.

Microsoft’s IE 8 incompatibility list: 2,400 major sites (and counting)

This is apparently a list of more than two thousand major sites that don't render correctly in IE8.

Food for thought.

ZDNet also writes:

The Compatibility View list includes some major sites — Apple.com, CNN.com, eBay, Facebook, Google.com, NYTimes.com — even Microsoft.com (!) — and lots, lots more.

That said, there are a lot of sites I visit that aren’t on the list. And more often than not, they fail to render correctly with IE 8.

Compatibility issues aren't exclusive to Opera at all. There are still many sites that require older versions of IE to work, and even IE7 had numerous compatibility issues when it was released. However, Microsoft has the market power to force sites to adopt to IE. Opera does not have this power.

IE8: Standards Mode Opt-In is Back From the Dead

Should we worry about the way M$ handle those "broken" sites in IE8??? It sounds like IE8 is going to implant something similar to what Opera been doing for a very long time (fixing individual sites using browser.js), but worst...

The thread has been cleaned up a bit to remove off-topic comments, trolling and such. Remember to read the links in the first post and the existing post before commenting. It is a good idea to educate yourself on the subject before commenting. In the links above you can learn about different types of compatibility issues, what Opera Software is doing about it, and how it is a very complex issue with no simple and easy solutions.

Ok, I'm not sure if it's the best thread to post that in but some admin blocked my message in the forum so here it is:

I'm starting to use Oracle software.

With Opera:
Metalink (Oracle support site, 100% flash now) -> patch search doesn't work
Enterprise Manager -> visualizations don't work, I guess it's related to flash
Business Intelligence -> doesn't work at all, totally broken (this is a JS issue)

So basically nothing works in a usable way.This is by "masking as Firefox".

With Firefox:
Everything works perfect

So two questions :
- Are other people experiencing this, or having problem with this ? Is this topic discussed elsewhere ?
- This thread basically explains that supporting broken sites is difficult, that's ok with me . But then there is this question: how is it that FF devs seem able to do it ? What is their magic trick ? This is a legitimate question, I'm not trolling. I'd like to understand why Opera devs say they can't while FF devs seem to "just do it".

Regards,
Chris

A lot of web site compatibility (the most, IMHO) doesn't come from the browser developers but from the web site developers. They're the guys who test their code in the browsers they support and make sure it works before making it public. Or, if bugs slip through, fixing them quickly. Note my qualification "browsers they support". Opera is frequently not on that list.

IE is widely regarded as having the buggiest rendering engine, yet it's the browser most likely to work on any given site. More likely than Firefox! This is why. IE and FF get their "compatibility" effectively for free.

Hi guys, I'm new to Opera and just wanted to mention a couple things.
First off, I'd like to say so far I'm generally liking Opera

So, I often go to the evga.com forums, and the image links people post like [img]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/sinephase/empireTWss.jpg don't display at all. When I check the source for the page, the image is just a normal image src="blahblah" code, so it seems strange to me, especially since other pictures with the same code show up fine. These images display fine in FF and IE.

As a side note, I CTRL+scrollwheel zoom pages a lot and the graphics don't smooth like other browsers, and I was just wondering if there's a way to change this?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

@sinephase: This thread is to discuss web site compatibility in general, not specific examples. You should have created a thread with your specific question. I've made one for you, and answered your question. Further discussion should take place there:

http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=268008

Originally posted by chris3110:

how is it that FF devs seem able to do it ?

They don't. Firefox gets most compatibility for free because it's using the "Netscape engine", and all web designers know about Netscape and have learned from the start to support it. So webmasters actually test in Firefox ("Netscape").

Just to report it ... Verizon Wireless (US cellular provider) made some changes to their website, after a page saying that their prepay accounts would now use the updated My Verizon page (instead of the old My Prepay Account page) clicking the button to go to the new page results in a completely blank page. Identifying as Firefox and reloading gets me a usable page. Yes, I used their contact form to tell them to make it work in all browsers, we'll see what they do.

There's an interview with our Chief Web Opener at a Czech site. It's a good read if you want even more details on the Open the Web process.

Here's is a reply that's relevant to the eternal question of who you blame when sites break:

What is your strategy? Do you have to wait until the website is corrected or you can also change the browser behaviour?

If it's a browser bug, than our developers will fix it in a browser. If it's somewhat of a grey area, for instance error handling - the website is doing it incorrectly, but we are not handling the error correctly. So we make a fix in a browser, but we also ask if the website can fix the issues so they don't have an error in a markup, like misnested tables for instance.

We have also browser.js which is a patching mechanism. It's written in JavaScript and it will walk through the DOM tree of the site, so we can change the DOM. For instance if there is something in JavaScript which says if Opera do this otherwise do something else and code if Opera breaks something, we can step through the DOM and remove that code. That will fix the sites. These patches are distributed once a week when a browser checks for update.

Originally posted by GoJoeGo:

Originally posted by chris3110:

how is it that FF devs seem able to do it ?

They don't. Firefox gets most compatibility for free because it's using the "Netscape engine", and all web designers know about Netscape and have learned from the start to support it. So webmasters actually test in Firefox ("Netscape").

Ok but then if most or all pages render correctly in FF, is it not possible to create some kind of compatibility layer that would emulate the behavior of FF in a number of situations ? I mean, if I understand correcly, the part that differ most between JS engines are the handling of undefined/erroneous behaviours. I imagine that most of the situations that break Opera's engine must be related to a small number of such scenarios. For instance from the error console it looks like Oracle Enterprise Manager visualization breaks because "font-name" is not an valid keyword in CSS; however FF must be supporting it or ignoring it as the page displays correcly there. So is it not possible to handle this extra, possibly non-standard, or maybe deprecated keyword, or ignore it altogether ? There must not be thousands of such possible errors and I guess handling a limited number of them would improve comlpatibility a lot wouldn't it ?

Well anyway really this is just guessing since I'm not into Web design and I don't know much about modern HTML, CSS, JS or browers internals. However what I mean is that there are two possibilities here :
- either something can be done to improve a lot Opera's handling of defunct JS/Flash sites
- or the situation is grim because you'll never have the world improve their coding to support a browser with < 1% market share, and Opera's never gonna build above this market share as long as so many important sites are not rendered correctly with it.

Or in other words :
- either the Opera devs are not taking this issue seriously enough, or are not willing, or are reluctant to do what needs to be done to fix it, possibly because it might involve giving up some code purity or engineering quality or whatever; this is a common conception and mostly for instance what nizamx is expressing above, and also apparently mainly what the dev team is vehemently denying in this particular forum thread for instance;
- or they actually do everything that's humanly possible to fix it, I mean if this issue were crashing the helicopter they were in they still wouldn't be able to spit a single freaking additional line of code, in which case the whole story is quite sad, because I, as a long time Opera supported and former fanboy, am going like many others to FF which I hate, because what's the point in having two browsers opened at the same time ? I need to have one browser to do everything, and if I can't surf Oracle with Opera then Opera is going to not be fired in the morning because before clicking the icon I'll instinctively think "but I might need to open Oracle EM today" (or whatever broken site I need to browse).

Please gimme hope :-)

Chris

Hallvords latest blog Websites playing timing roulette may be an eye-opener. Heck, most of his articles are eye-openers. This latest one is showing that even if you match the functionality of other browsers, you also have to match their timing! That could even be down to byte-level buffer sizes. Basically, the respective developers have managed to craft web code that precisely matches the internals of their tested browsers, more or less by accident. No could could possibly set out to deliberately code what they've done.

As for your Oracle software, start a new thread and post some links. Without links and being able to see the problem, there is no way anyone can help you. I can say that "font-name" has a close to zero probability of being the source of the compatibility problems.

Well this post may be an eye-opener, but probably not in the sense that your meant; this last comment :

The W3C never told us that, I think.

seems to illustrate the point I and others may be trying to make, namely, that there are the official standards, like the ones provided by W3C and endorsed by the Opera dev team, and there are the de facto standards, basically, "the way f*ing FF does it", and Opera seems way too much bent on sticking with the former while trying to avoid as much as possible having to mess with the latter. Which is understandable, given the complexity of the stuff, the moving nature of the target, blah blah blah.

However this doesn't change the fact that currently, Opera is like the gorgeous sports car, slim and fast, that you'd like so much to take out to town, only you cannot because it doesn't run on those bumpy roads, so you have to take out the bulky pickup instead; it's not so fancy to drive, it's slower and more polluting, however it does the trick. Meanwhile the makers of the sports car are wishfully hoping that the construction workers flaten the roads any day soon, which probably isn't going to happen because now everybody is running around in pickups and nobody even remembers anything else. (Wow! My first car analogy ever!)

However all this is just empty talk as long as there are no facts behind it. An interesting study would be to try and estimate the number of broken sites that fall in each category :
1 - Sites sniffing the browser and providing junk to Opera (easily circumvented using spoofed UA string)
2 - Sites with totally brain-dead coding that only work in FF by mere luck, like the ones mentioned in the post above (probably good candidates for user.js)
3 - Sites that merely and correctly rely on FF functionalities and/or behavior, however different from W3C standards these might be.

The whole point revolves around this third category. I think I summarize it correctly when I say that many people feel that Opera should put more weight, possibly having a whole dedicated sub-team, adressing point #3. This might take the form of a compatibility layer, it might show a popup when fired, saying that Opera is now entering compatibility mode, performance/quality are going to suffer, it might even propose sending an email to the site admin explaining how coding to standards would benefit everybody including themselves, gosh I would love to send such emails to ignorant site owners, or whatever.

However this is a critical flaw with Opera today, it is not possible to propose Opera as an alternative for average Joe because some important sites are not usable, so Opera on the desktop is doomed, and it is sad, if it doesn't adress this issue, final dot.

Chris

"the way FF does it" is really easy to say (which is why so many people say it), but not so easy to do. The reason Opera relies on the W3C so much is that they have a documented specification to follow. Firefox does not. They have some API documentation (which is in no way a specification), but speaking from personal experience, it's often out of date and flat out wrong.

Opera's only option is to reverse engineer browser behavior. Obviously, reverse-engineering an entire browser is just not possible, so Opera need to target their efforts. They will target areas where the browsers are different, but they can only do that when those differences are known. i.e. after a broken web page is noticed that relies on the difference in question.

Originally posted by chris3110:

Sites that merely and correctly rely on FF functionalities and/or behavior, however different from W3C standards these might be

That's an oxymoron. Behavior different from the W3C specs is by definition incorrect. Go over to the Mozillazine forums and ask if they would recommend developing a web site using Firefox-only functionality. IMHO, it's not very relevant, anyway. The vast majority of compatibility issues are NOT down to Firefox-only functionality.

@chris3110: I wrote a respone, but it was probably longer than your attention span, so here's a summary. I'll post the full comment after this.

Your comments show that you haven't actually bothered to read anything. You try to make it out to be this simplistic scenario where there's a magic wand Opera can wave to fix the problem. You talk about "compatibility layers", ignoring the fact that Opera was built from scratch with this compatibility layer built in.

You even take a quote out of context to support the false assertion that Opera is "too much bent on sticking with" open standards to the detriment of site compatibility, which is just further evidence of your unwillingness to educate yourself by actually reading the thread before posting. If you had paid attention, you would have known that Opera doesn't cling to open standards as an excuse to not deal with compatibility.

And your "Opera is doomed" comment is almost too silly to comment on, but I'll definitely get back to it below.

Originally posted by chris3110:

Ok but then if most or all pages render correctly in FF, is it not possible to create some kind of compatibility layer that would emulate the behavior of FF in a number of situations ?

Did you even read the thread before commenting? Opera was written from scratch with this "compatibility layer" built in. But the whole point of this thread is that it isn't that simple!

I imagine that most of the situations that break Opera's engine must be related to a small number of such scenarios.

You would be wrong. Again, read the thread.

However what I mean is that there are two possibilities here :

NO! If you had bothered to read the thread you would have known that it is not that simple!

Originally posted by chris3110:

Well this post may be an eye-opener, but probably not in the sense that your meant; this last comment :

The W3C never told us that, I think.

seems to illustrate the point I and others may be trying to make, namely, that there are the official standards, like the ones provided by W3C and endorsed by the Opera dev team, and there are the de facto standards, basically, "the way f*ing FF does it", and Opera seems way too much bent on sticking with the former while trying to avoid as much as possible having to mess with the latter.

Wow, how clever of you. Taking a quote out of context to misrepresent the author's intentions, and then pretend that it supports your bogus assertions. If you had bothered to read the thread you would have known that Opera is specifically designed to handle non-standard code.

However this doesn't change the fact that

Considering that you are clearly not very informed about compatibility, a statement of "fact" from you is just silly. All you have is a bogus assertion.

Meanwhile the makers of the sports car are wishfully hoping that the construction workers flaten the roads any day soon

No. If you had bothered to read the thread you would have known that Opera is specifically designed to handle non-standard code.

However all this is just empty talk as long as there are no facts behind it.

There are. You would have known if you had actually bothered to read the thread.

The whole point revolves around this third category. I think I summarize it correctly when I say that many people feel that Opera should put more weight, possibly having a whole dedicated sub-team, adressing point #3.

If you had bothered to read the thread you would have known that Opera is specifically designed to handle non-standard code.

However this is a critical flaw with Opera today

No, this is a critical flaw with your understanding of the problem, an "understanding" which suffers from lack of knowledge, bogus assertions, and flat out misinformation.

Opera on the desktop is doomed, and it is sad, if it doesn't adress this issue, final dot.

If Opera on the desktop is doomed, how come Opera has doubled its desktop user base in 2 years? How come the revenue growth from the desktop version was more than 100% in Q4 last year? Again you are making stuff up. Instead of asking questions to educate yourself, you are simply throwing out bogus assertions based on your own lack of knowledge.

@Andrew: What I meant by "correctly" was "properly coded", i.e., free of bugs, unsafe behavior, etc, albeit relying on and coded against FF API. Now is this is large fraction of all the sites that don't render correctly in Opera ? I think that's important to know, this looks to me as the crux of the problem.

Now regarding my particular issues with Oracle, the problem is that two of them are applications, not websites, and the third one is only accessible after registration. I'd like to sumbit the problematic code but how can I do that ? Would a web archive be useful ?

@Joe: Wow, take it easy man :-) If beliteling my intellect and calling me names makes you feel better, go for it ! However your post can be summarize as "Me right, you wrong", and I humbly suggest you cool down a bit and try to read my post from a more balanced stand, maybe there's something to be gotten here about your users' feeling, if not then just forget it.

Thanks,
Chris

@chris3110: if someone is not being balanced, it's you. This is not a matter of "me right, you wrong", it's a matter of you making claims that are provably wrong. One example being the attitude you claim Opera has where only standards matter, which I explained is wrong. It isn't wrong because I said so, it's wrong because the fact that Opera already does what you are suggesting and was built from scratch to handle non-standard sites shows that you are wrong. It's wrong because everything in your post was already addressed by older posts in the thread, but somehow you chose to ignore that and post your false claims anyway.

I could have taken it easy, but when someone is basically ignoring what people are saying and spewing out the same old lies that have just been refuted, what do you expect? Do you really think people are just going to smile and nod when you post already refuted misinformation and claims?

Case in point:

Now is this is large fraction of all the sites that don't render correctly in Opera ? I think that's important to know, this looks to me as the crux of the problem.

I just explained to you how this is completely wrong, and a far too simplified view. And yet you just ignored it and reposted the same nonsense that had already been refuted?

And you wonder why you are pissing people off?

If you follow some of the links in the thread you will see how wrong your statements are. The examples clearly show how insanely complicated this thing is.

I mean, what do you expect Opera to do when a site breaks because Opera identifies itself as Opera and not Netscape? Should Opera change the default browser identification string to Netscape? What about all the sites that would break if Opera did that?

Should Opera remove support for standards? What happens when other browsers start supporting it properly and sites start breaking because of your clever suggestion?

Originally posted by chris3110:

What I meant by "correctly" was "properly coded", i.e., free of bugs, unsafe behavior, etc, albeit relying on and coded against FF API. Now is this is large fraction of all the sites that don't render correctly in Opera ? I think that's important to know, this looks to me as the crux of the problem.

Ah, but "free of bugs" ought to mean "conforms to standards", IMO anyway. If it's non-standard, then it's buggy. I can't really say what the majority of compatibility problems are. Javascript is the typical problem area, but that's because writing a program in any language is an unforgiving business. The vast majority of people doing Javascript coding obviously have no idea what they're doing. I know, I've read their code. It is really disappointing just how stupid some of the code out there really is. It's a wonder it works at all. I liken web developers to those mythical monkeys hammering away at typewriters one day producing the works of Shakespeare. They hammer away on their keyboards until one day they get some code that works in their browser, and publish that.

Javascript also covers an absolutely huge range of problem areas. Some of it is not documented *anywhere*. I think that's where a lot of the problems lie. Professional programmers know to avoid undocumented features. The typical web developer seems to seek them out. In short, most web sites are simply not programmed to work in multiple browsers. They were only ever intended to work in one or two, and so it really shouldn't be surprising when that turns out to be the case in fact.

Something else to ponder - if you pop over to the Mozillazine forums and peruse the Seamonkey and Camino forums, you'll see regular posts there regarding sites not working. That is in spite of the fact that both those browsers use the same rendering engine as Firefox. So you see, even if Opera were to include Firefox's rendering engine in their browser, they'd *still* have compatibility problems, simply because they wouldn't be "Firefox".

Originally posted by chris3110:

Now regarding my particular issues with Oracle, the problem is that two of them are applications, not websites, and the third one is only accessible after registration. I'd like to sumbit the problematic code but how can I do that ? Would a web archive be useful ?

Sorry, but web archives are almost never any use at troubleshooting. They'll include all the code and resources listed in the HTML and CSS, but won't include things dynamically loaded by Javascript, which is where the bulk of problems lie.

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I am just a simple user of web browsers, i have used them all ..and started using opera the other day, google chrome is awesomely fast, i have found opera has everything i want..its a bit slower and it doesnt load web pages correctly...this turns me off from it immediately, if it cant render webpages correctly its not doing its basic function. but i want to use it, i love the new features with unite i think they are ahead of the game there, but they dont work either, i hope in time somone sees this and takes it into consideration, i beleive this is whats important to alot of people.

Originally posted by abandonedastronaut:

if it cant render webpages correctly its not doing its basic function

Did you even read the thread before commenting? Evidently not.

How do you know that it's Opera that can't render pages? Have you analyzed every single problem out there?

i hope in time somone sees this

Sees what? Did you even read the thread? Opera is working on this stuff ALL THE TIME.

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A massively long post (apologies) but hope it is useful in some way and not rubbish (I'm pro-Opera btw - using v10). I think it is all still on-topic and not sure if it could have been split.

Re.: the two sides of the discussion specifically with chris3110, nizamx & abandonedastro on one side and Andrew Gregory, GoJoeGo & WayOfTheBastar on the other.

1. All of the parties appear to be fans of Opera.
2. chris3110, nizamx & abandonedastro are Opera users (not involved in the nitty-gritty).
3. Andrew Gregory, GoJoeGo & WayOfTheBastar may be involved in web development/Opera development or other (maybe experts?).
4. A lot of Opera users posting here do not read (the very lengthy but great) info about Opera issues with websites, its attempts at making them work, and adherence with web standards.
5. Some of the experts are willing to attack Opera users and not hear the underlying message the User is trying to convey to them.

What the users are trying to say (I think - as I am one) is that they wish they and others can use Opera rather than any other browser, but, they cannot. They are very frustrated by this and want Opera to fix it somehow (no-one else can), that is why they are posting. They are not involved in the details of browsers and that is why they may be ignorant (and why they did not read all the info). They might not have time to read all the stuff here, and probably got here in the first place because they have a frustrating problem they are trying to solve.

I assume this whole post was started off (a long time ago) basically because users were experiencing difficulty with Opera (and as a result people were saying Opera was rubbish compared to others). The experts have been aware for a long time of the problems that the users face, and of the great efforts Opera has made in trying to reduce those. So, users repeating the same claims (possibly ignorant) over and over again makes the experts impatient and quick to attack them. However, the comments of the experts makes it SEEM AS THOUGH they are over-keen to defend Opera and are ignorant of the bottom line (what the users are trying to tell them), that is: users will use software that gives them the least trouble in what they are trying to do. Users do not care about who or what causes the trouble. Firefox and IE (and now also Safari & Chrome) give them less trouble than Opera.

The Bottom Bottom Line (if I may use that term ;-))
FF, IE and others, seem to give users less trouble than Opera. The reason is that websites are designed to work specifically with FF or IE, sometimes they are poorly coded and cause trouble in any browser, and sometimes they are specifically designed to cause problems for other browsers (e.g. Windows Live). If Opera wants to continue increasing market share (and not lose it to the increasingly popular Google Chrome, or even to IE8) it may have to take big action.

Here are some of my (rubbish?) suggestions: a) mass propaganda (not to get more users but to counteract poor reputation - e.g. show how long Opera's been around, sell mouse gestures - only a matter of time before all others copy this function), b) come up with some clever way of easily/quickly solving user problems (not the forums)(e.g. click a button, identify symptom, see the fix, press button to implement fix), c) possibly identify in the browser when a website is not using web standards and suggest the user contact website to request they do, d) keep working on the IE mask to try to fool specifically Microsoft sites, e) provided a parallel cut down, faster, compact version of the browser, if nothing else, it should blow Chrome out of the water (call it Opera Chromium!)(if such a version already exists then maybe it needs more advertising), f) make Opera's fraud protection as fast as Chrome's phishing filter, g) maybe some other genius idea from the geniuses at Opera!

A bit about my experience:
I have been a fan of Opera since v6, started using because it was small and fast, and had nice features.
I have sometimes been very frustrated with Opera over the years (because of websites or my own stupidity, but also Opera itself).
It is now being caught up in terms of speed and features, by even IE, and there are others that are good: Safari, Chrome.

My reason for posting:
I have been on a consumer forum (tech-ignorant) discussing browsers, specifically IE8 upgrade, and came across different people saying Opera is rubbish, to avoid it and try Safari, Chrome or FF instead. This highlights Opera's poor reputation amongst users. When criticising other browsers they say it is slow, has a security problem, doesn't look good, doesn't have this function, or can do this function. With Opera, they say it has or causes problems, it does not work properly. What was worse was that I found that I could not recommend Opera to tech-ignorant or busy users myself. Although they will usually not have problems - the problems are there and when they have them they will be very annoying/time-consuming and tech-ignorant people will be stuck. They would have less problems with other browsers (I've used those too), and maybe with IE/FF its easier to fix problems as there is a bigger knowledge base on the Internet or experienced people nearby.

I did recommend Opera to users who would be willing to spend time trawling through Opera forums to find solutions to any issues they might have. I did also recommend the great features you can find in Opera that others don't have, and that I still use Opera because it is like an extension of my arm. Going to another browser was like losing that arm. (good marketing quotes or what ) Fortunately, there are other people out there that do recommend Opera and I am glad to see that it is doing well in the market (although still with a pathetic market share).

There was a time with v9.8 when I had had enough of the little problems, and browsing was also as slow as IE, when I did consider abandoning Opera (yes, its true). Just to give an example of one of those annoying little problems I had: some sites were squeezed into a narrow vertical strip and totally unusable. More commonly, the menus would not work properly on sites or would not fit the text properly. I had to go through forums and sift through loads of other things it could have been, requiring some technical ability, until I found the cause; it was that I had 'fit to window' enabled for all sites. Having to go through all of this for such a simple problem, an Opera problem, with nothing in any help file, is very annoying. It wasted a lot of my time and I was resentful. I was happy that Opera provided the great function that others did not, and jumped at using it, however, I would have preferred not to have the function than go through the annoyances/time wasting.

Final note: Opera 10, Opera Mobile - great work by the people at Opera, keep on improving, ignore the criticisms and the nasty web developers.

Thanks for your comment, aceChipping. It seems to be mostly on-topic, which is nice because there have been a lot of off-topic posts in this thread

Originally posted by aceChipping:

Re.: the two sides of the discussion specifically with

This is not a discussion about other members, so kindly refrain from doing that.

What the users are trying to say (I think - as I am one) is that they wish they and others can use Opera rather than any other browser, but, they cannot. They are very frustrated by this and want Opera to fix it somehow (no-one else can), that is why they are posting. They are not involved in the details of browsers and that is why they may be ignorant (and why they did not read all the info). They might not have time to read all the stuff here, and probably got here in the first place because they have a frustrating problem they are trying to solve.

The main message to take away from this is that compatibility is hugely complex, and there are no easy solutions. No silver bullets.

This thread was created to gather all discussions about general compatibility in one place, and in order to give people an opportunity to learn more about compatibility for participating in the discussion. And yes, if someone wants to participate, and comment on compatibility, they should learn as much as possible about it first. Otherwise the same misconceptions will continue to be repeated, and the responses will have to be repeated over and over again as well. It is much better to read up on the subject to avoid the Frequently Asked Questions, so to speak.

If Opera wants to continue increasing market share (and not lose it to the increasingly popular Google Chrome, or even to IE8) it may have to take big action.

Sadly, there is no silver bullet. The problem is extremely complex, and even companies like Google, and Microsoft(!) are being affected by it. It is by no means exclusive to Opera. Internet Explorer 8, for example, had a list of thousands of sites where it has to switch back the IE7 mode because the sites weren't working in the latest version. It basically had to fall back to the IE7 engine.

e) provided a parallel cut down, faster, compact version of the browser

We are constantly working on increasing performance, and Opera is already more compact than competing browsers, and can still hold its own when it comes to real-world performance (not just synthetic benchmarks).

Removing features will not make Opera faster, but that is a different discussion. This thread should be used for site compatibility related issues.

Thanks Haavard. Apologies for mentioning other members - I did not intend to criticise others (just to highlight that, for whatever reason, some people may have been a little too harsh/defensive and some a little too quick to comment, but all were pro-Opera - all friends ).

Originally posted by haavard:

Sadly, there is no silver bullet. The problem is extremely complex, and even companies like Google, and Microsoft(!) are being affected by it. It is by no means exclusive to Opera. Internet Explorer 8, for example, had a list of thousands of sites where it has to switch back the IE7 mode because the sites weren't working in the latest version. It basically had to fall back to the IE7 engine.

Mabe I shouldn't but I couldn't resist adding two interesting facts to this:

1. The IE8 incompatible sites list currently includes: 'microsoft.com', 'google.com', and 'yahoo.com'.
2. I could not even access my webmail with Google Chrome because the site is written for IE (works fine in Opera - as Opera) - and the solution is to make Chrome identify itself as IE which it cannot do without some detailed program file editing.

I recently complained to the web developers of a UK Government website about problems accessing it with Opera10. Here is part of their reply:

Unfortunately Opera 10 is not currently a supported browser for this application. This application has been designed and tested against the browser guidelines for Government web sites produced by COI, which states:

'all browsers with a share of 2% website accesses or greater should be supported as well as the two most popular browsers on the supported operating systems. Supported operating systems should include those used by 2% or more of users accessing the site and should include Mac and Linux. '

Consequently we currently support:
Operating System
Browsers

Windows XP
Internet Explorer 6 and 7

Windows Vista
Internet Explorer 7 and 8
Mac OS X
Safari 3 and Firefox 2

Linux
Firefox 3 and Opera 9

"COI" by the way is a UK Government department: Their own website describes it thus: "The Central Office of Information (COI) is the Government's centre of excellence for marketing and communications.

So, now you know the official UK Govt line on Opera ...

Opera has more thn 2% of market share - so you can technically sue them...
whos first to do it? and "website access"? its rekursio - if browser isnt supported, it will not be used to visit this site , so not supported.. damn burocrates...

all browsers with a share of 2% website accesses or greater should be supported

I wonder how they expect browsers with a smaller share to grow their share on that site if they don't work properly and people are forced to use other browsers. It's a catch-22, and they probably know it. As long as their site doesn't work, people will use the supported browsers instead.

Off-topic comment removed by moderator.

Mr. Moderator, Is this how you deal with question you can't answer, by removing the question?

Read the original post. This thread is not about problem, start a new thread and ask your question there.

I am new to this site but I have been a long time Opera browser user. Opera works fine for me. The reason I shifted from Internet Explorer to Opera is that the virus makers and spyware makers spend less time infecting Opera browsers because it affects only a small minority. This is exactly what I wanted - a browser with less viruses. Thanks Opera!

I already posted this but in the beta forum without answer (that was probably not the right forum).

Currently, Opera can maskerade as FF2 or IE6... which are not the most recent browsers.
Some sites blacklist these old browser or whitelist only a few modern ones, not including those 2 nor Opera, meaning we have no way to use them.
Is there any plan to upgrade the user agent strings used when idenfifying as / masking as?
Thanks

The spoofing strings have been updated in Opera 10.50.