clever blog title

This is something I think I should write a blog post about, if only so that people running into this problem can easily find a solution if they use Google to search for help and stumble across this.

One of the most commonly reported issues with Gmail in Opera is that the left column is rendered too wide, forcing you to scroll left and right to read your mail. Here's a screenshot of what the problem looks like:


Here's how to fix it:

Step 1: Login to your Gmail account in Opera.

Step 2: With the Gmail tab open, press the [F12] key (Windows/UNIX) or [Option]+[F12] (Mac OS X). This opens the Quick Preferences menu. Choose "Edit Site Preferences" in this menu.


Step 3: Click on the "Network" tab. Under "Browser identification", choose "Identify as Opera".


Step 4: Click on "OK" and then press [Ctrl]+[R] (Windows/UNIX) or [Cmd]+[R] (Mac OS X) to reload Gmail. (If that doesn't work, try restarting Opera)

Hopefully this makes it possible for you to use Gmail in Opera without having to spend all your time scrolling back and forth . If you still see the issue where Gmail's left column is too wide, please post a comment and include your "Browser:" information from www.ipchicken.com, and I'll see what I can figure out!

Well, someone had to find one eventually...:-)

IE8 Standards-Mode Only:

.test { color /*\**/: blue\9 }

All IE versions, including IE8 Standards Mode:

.test { color: blue\9 }

You should probably use conditional comments instead, but sometimes a good old-fashioned CSS hack can get you out of a bind (especially when you don't want to have to grab another external stylesheet).

edit: Hmm, paul.irish in the comments mentions that this also affects IE7. I could have sworn I tested it in IE7...anyway, keep that in mind if you use it. I'll try to figure out what's up.

Firefox 3.0 RC3:

Opera 9.50 final:


See how Opera 9.5 gets the rich, AJAX-ish experience, and Firefox 3 doesn't? Hmm...

It is pretty common for reviewers to say that Opera has compatibility problems with websites, and is thus not a suitable browser for day-to-day use...but that argument is not as valid as it used to be. Opera's behavior has become much more similar to that of Firefox and Safari lately, and technologies like browser.js help to bridge the remaining gap.

In Firefox's defense, it is more compatible with the banner ad than Opera

Edit: Turns out this doesn't work for some native functions such as window.alert in IE. It fails exactly where the typeof operator fails :-P.

A lot of scripts rely on Function.prototype.toString to determine if an object is a function in Javascript. This is not compatible with many mobile browsers, which don't support function decompile (optional according to ECMA-262) for performance reasons.

According to page 103 of ECMA-262 3rd Edition:

15.2.4.2 Object.prototype.toString ( )
When the toString method is called, the following steps are taken:
1. Get the [[Class]] property of this object.
2. Compute a string value by concatenating the three strings "[object ", Result(1), and "]".
3. Return Result(2).

This gives us a really easy way to know if something is a function in any ECMA-262 compliant browser (including IE, Firefox, Safari, and Opera):

function isFunction(x) {
  return Object.prototype.toString.call(x) == '[object Function]';
};

After I saw this in my Google Reader, I decided to try it for myself...

Yep, works in Opera 9.5 too :-)