DJYSRV

Why care about the browser "Acid Test?"

The Web Standards Project online Acid Test for web browser occasionally stirs up computer trade press interest, but few end-users understand what the topic means to them. The real issue less about the end-user experience and more about a cost savings campaign by developers who are frustrated over the lack of web site software standards. Also, some browser firms, like Opera, and their users, are frustrated by web sites that won't display properly because they are coded in closed proprietary formats.

As part of the campaign of opening the web, in April 2005 the Web Standards Project published a online test of the compliance of a web browser with software technologys standards. Any browser could match its software code agains the test and get instant results online whether it passed or not.

The test is really an effort to draw a line in the sand between compliance with open industry standards and exclusionary web sites based on closed proprietary formats. The team that prepared the Acid Test wrote, "Today, the Web Standards Project (WaSP) is putting the makers of Web browsers and Web design tools on notice by announcing Acid2, a test designed to expose flaws in the implementation of mature Web standards such as HTML, CSS, and PNG. By making sure their software adheres to the test, the creators of these products can be more confident that their software will display Web pages correctly.

Hakon Lie, chief technology officer for Opera, proposed the creation of the Acid2 test as a way to highlight the lack of support for some standard HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) features in Internet Explorer (IE) and other browsers. Lie is an expert in web standards. Opera develper Tim Altman has an update on progress with Opera 9, code named "merlin" and work on it to pass the Acid Test.

Fundamentally, the Acid test is about reducing developer costs. As a programmer, it is costly to develop multiple versions of a web site for a client because each browser has its own way of displaying the HTML code for each page. According to the Web Standards Project, the fractured browser market adds at least 25% to the cost of developing web sites. Some developers just give up and design to the lowest common denominator, but to the loss of competitive advantage for their customers because of less interesting websites and loss of key functions. Other developers load up their websites with multiple versions of code, one for each browser, and became bandwidth hogs. Finally, some designers give up on web standards altogether, and develop exclusively in proprietary environments. In response to these problems, The Web Standards Project (WaSP) was formed in 1998 with the goal of promoting core web standards and encouraging browser makers to do the same, thereby ensuring simple, affordable access for all.

The situation today isn't much better. According to the Web Standards Project,
Though today’s browsers support standards, tens of thousands of professional designers and developers continue to use outdated methods that yoke structure to presentation, in some cases entirely avoiding semantic structures and misusing (X)HTML as a design tool. Highly paid professionals continue to churn out invalid, inaccessible sites filled with structurally meaningless markup, huge image maps, excessively nested tables, and outdated detection scripts that cause the very usability problems they were originally intended to prevent.

Who passed the Acid Test?

Apple Computer's Safari was the first to pass the test last year. It took until March 2006, about a full year's worth of work, for Opera's developers to get to a point where it passed the test. The next question is "so what?" IDG, the trade press wire service, says that while that may earn the company bragging rights in the developer community, it's unlikely to convince more Web users to switch from Microsoft's Internet Explorer. They may be right.

If more browsers support the features in the test, designers will be able to create better sites. Developers often feel they can't use some available tools because they aren't supported in IE, the most widely used browser, Opera's Wie told IDG, "There's a reluctance for developers to use features that aren't widely supported. The least advanced browser holds things back," he said.

IDG reports that last year, Chris Wilson, a developer working for Microsoft on IE, wrote in a blog posting that Microsoft wasn't planning to ensure that IE7, the next version of IE that is currently available as a beta, could pass the Acid2 test. He describes the Acid2 test as a broad "wish list" of browser features that goes beyond standard CSS and HTML.

Will users switch browsers if it passes the Acid test? It isn't likely according to Iris Cremers, an analyst with Forrester Research who told IDG it is "a tough sell," adding, "that's not going to do the trick. There's really no novelty there," she said. A recent Forrester study showed that 59 percent of Web users in North America and 69 percent in Europe use IE. Despite the buzz around competitive browsers, last year just 13 percent of Web users in North America switched their browser, the study found.

Opera's support for the Acid Test is a clear message to developers that support for Opera on their web sites is less costly than support for other browsers. That's got to lead to competitive advantage for some of them, and it may make a difference in boosting market share for Opera.

Sidebar - The Acid Test Online

Guide to the Acid Test
http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/guide/

Reference page - no test

This is the reference page which shows the outcome of a successful test. This is what you should see.
http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/reference.html

Real Test Page

This is the page where you really test the browser for compliance.
http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html#top

Acid2 is a test page for web browsers published by The Web Standards Project (WaSP). It has been written to help browser vendors make sure their products correctly support features that web designers would like to use. These features are part of existing standards but haven’t been interoperably supported by major browsers. Acid2 tries to change this by challenging browsers to render Acid2 correctly before shipping.

Acid2 is a complex web page. It uses features that are not in common use yet, because of lack of support, and it crams many tests into one page. The aim has been to make it simple for developers and users to check if a browser passes the test. If it does, the smiley face on the left will appear. If something is wrong, the face will be distorted and/or shown partly in red.

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Internet shopping for information, home appliances, cars, clothes, records, and books is fueling the spectacular growth of the Mozilla open source software foundation and its signature product the Firefox browser. According to an Internet Week report, Mozilla gained a reported $72M of revenue in 2005 from click through searches on Google via the Firefox browser. By comparison, Opera had $23M in total revenues in 2005 according to its public financial report.

Mozilla's Revenues

The revenue number for Mozilla is in some dispute, but a spokesman for Mozilla said the estimate isn't off by much. Eventually, as a nonprofit corporation, Mozilla will have to file a revenue statement with the US government tax agency. That statement is a public filing which means the real number will come out sooner or later.

It should be lost on no one that Google strongly supports the Firefox browser through a free toolbar and the search giant pays programmers to work on developer of each new version. Google is using Firefox to drive searches, and click through advertising, to its search portal. Google reported that in 2005 it had revenues of $6.1B. More than half of that amount, $3.4B, came from search related advertising alone.

Opera's Revenues

Undoubtedly, Opera, which also has search revenue deals with Google for desktop and mobile device products, would love to have Mozilla's numbers. According to the public 4Q05 year-end report, Opera's year-end financials tell a story of a company speeding up its transition from licensing desktop browser software to end users to licensing its mobile technologies to Internet devices sold by telecommunuications giants. This month Opera inked a deal for Opera mini with T-Mobile to put the software on three new phones sold in Europe. This is the latest in a string of deals that put Opera's software on mobile devices marketed to millions by cell phone firms. The T-Mobile deal alone boosted Opera's stock price by 8%.

Opera made the desktop browser free in 3Q05, which resulted in a significant drop in those revenues. Previously, a desktop license cost $40. However, Opera made huge gains in revenues from Internet devices with an increase of $3.2M in revenue over 2004. Opera also inked search revenue deals with Google, Amazon, and other search engine portal sites for both the desktop browser and Opera mini, the firm's newest mobile device software.

Here are some additional highlights. Opera's financials are reported in NOK. I've converted the figures to USD.

* Total operating revenues $22.8M, down 18% from 2004 (-$4.9M)
* Total operating expenses $22.6M, up 45% from 2004 (+7.0M)
* Earnings after taxes dropped from $8.7M to $0.5M

Opera hired 69 staff during 2005 and revenue per employee dropped 39% from $142K to $86K. Payroll increased 42% from $3.5M to $4.9M.

These numbers clearly show Opera's significant investments in new product development and marketing. The company operates on a global basis with fewer than 300 paid employess. By comparison, Mozilla reportedly has fewer than 50 paid employees, but still depends on a worldwide network of volunteer developers who participate as part of the open source movement.

What we are talking about here is Internet commerce. A great roll'n roll song titled Money for Nothing by the group Dire Straits has lyrics that go like this . . .

Now look at them yo-yo’s that’s the way you do it
You play the guitar on the mtv
That ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it
Money for nothin’ and chicks for free
Now that ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it
Lemme tell ya them guys ain’t dumb

We gotta install microwave ovens
Custom kitchen deliveries
We gotta move these refrigerators
We gotta move these colour tv’s


And here is the rest of the story about Mozilla's millions . . .

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3590756

March 10, 2006
Mozilla's Millions?

By Sean Michael Kerner
Internet News

Thanks to Google, Mozilla is raking in millions of dollars of revenue, which is used to pay the employees of the recently formed Mozilla Corporation and fund project and infrastructure development.

Google, which makes its share of philanthropic and open source donations, also directly employs a few Firefox developers, including lead developer Ben Goodger.

Google isn't just paying Mozilla "millions" out of the kindness of its heart. It's more so based on the same basic principle which it pays other partners and affiliates, namely search.

The default start page for Firefox includes a Google search dialogue box. It also defaults to Google search in its engine option on the Search Bar within the browser navigational toolbar. Mozilla gets paid a publicly undisclosed amount for each Google search query made from Firefox by a user.

That Google pays content and search partners, as well as AdSense participants, is not new. What is interesting, however, is the amount that Mozilla earns from its users' Google queries.

"We are very fortunate in that the search feature in Firefox is both appreciated by our users and generates revenue in the tens of millions of dollars," Mozilla head Mitchell Baker wrote in a recent blog post.

One blogger has speculated that the figure is as high as $72 million in fact.

Mozilla Corporation board member Chris Blizzard said that the $72 million figure is not correct, "though not off by an order of magnitude."

The Mozilla Corporation uses the fund to pay its employees which currently number 40 full-time equivalents (FTE) according to Baker. Most of those FTE's reside in either Mountain View, Calif., or in and around Toronto, Canada.

Opera expanded its reach this week in terms of platforms which use the desktop browser. Opera is now available on the Nintendo DS WiFi enabled hand held game console in Japan with U.S. release expected later this year. The Opera browser, coupled with WiFi hot spots, will allow Nintendo users to play games online with other users. McDonald's is expected to co-market the device by providing wireless hot spots at over 6,000 locations. Embedding the browser in the game device, and linking it to a major fast food chain, is a clear push by Opera at gaining market share with teens and young adults. For these customers the placement could generate crossover branding opportunities for Opera. If as a teen or 20 something you've seen the browser on your game device, why not also have it on your cell phone? The branding image of Opera's browser could hitch a ride on big macs and pac man. Stranger things have happened :-)

By John Gaudiosi
Reuters
Thursday, February 16, 2006; 2:49 AM

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Nintendo is expanding the entertainment capabilities of its best-selling Nintendo DS, making it possible to watch live television and surf the Internet using the dual-screen portable game device.

Oslo, Norway-based Opera Software is creating a Web browser for the handheld that will work with the built-in Wi-Fi functionality of the Nintendo DS. Once gamers buy the browser, which will come on a standard cartridge, they will be able to surf the Web on both the touch-sensitive and regular screens using the stylus and on-screen keypad for input.

[snip]

Nintendo also is rolling out additional features for the Nintendo DS, which so far has sold more than 14.4 million units. Starting next month, gamers will be able to download game demos, trailers and other content via retail kiosks that send content over Wi-Fi. Nintendo is also introducing Voice-over-Internet-Protocol with new games that will allow players to use the built-in microphone to talk in real time before and after online matches of games like "Metroid Prime: Hunters."

In November, Nintendo partnered with Wayport to allow gamers free Wi-Fi hot spots at more than 6,000 McDonald's restaurants. When coupled with the new Opera software, gamers would be able to play online games or search the Web at these hot spots for free, or log into thousands of other hot spots around the country at the standard rate.

Opera is spreading out in a number of directions and the question is, for a small company with a global reach, whether it is trying to do too much?

I need to emphasize that my posts here are my own and do not reply on any "inside knowledge" about the company. That said my view is that most likely Opera has two main priorities. They are completion of development and release of version 9 of the desktop browser code named Merlin and the recently released Opera Mini for cell phone and mobile/wireless devices.

But wait there's a lot more.

Last Fall Opera deployed its community web pages with free social blogging services. The objective is to get people to use Opera's cell phone browser to blog and increase usage of the mobile product line.

Opera used the giant Consumer Electronics Show in January to showcase its TV set top browser software for home entertainment devices.

In 2004 Opera also released browser product offerings in the automative and airline industry. You can control your car or watch a movie while airborne using the Opera browser.

Overall, it isn't too hard to see that the company might be starting to spread itself a bit thin.

Opera's own statements to investors indicate in the third quarter of 2005 it earned $5.6M with a loss of $450,000 (coverted from TNOK). The firm now has over 250 employees worldwide with a hiring campaign well underway.

The big push for Opera in 2006 is expected to be revenue from licensing or marketing partnerships that put the Opera browser on mobile phones. Opera also expects to push the home entertainment product line and has a new executive in charge of that market. Selection of a VP for the desktop market is still pending. What could be coming in the future is whether the Opera mini will support the delivery of video to mobile devices. This could create linkages between these markets.

I doubt someone is ever going to walk into a home consumer electronics store and ask for a television and stereo music entertainment system specifically because Opera is the browser that controls it. Opera's success in selling the browser to home entertainment device manufacturers is going to be based on the brand name of the desktop browser plus performance and pricing of the licensing deal. The branding effect is the main reason Opera promotes the desktop browser. The desktop browser is a key to branding for sales of the browser where Opera earns its revenue, which is on mobile devices, entertainement devices, and embedded systems etc.

Interestingly, the desktop market is very active. The desktop is the most significant platform used by members of Opera's community web pages. Opera most likely sees the community blog pages as being a potential showcase for both desktop and mobile versions of the browser. Release of version 9, code named Merlin, may emphasize integration between desktop and mobile devices. As noted above, with version 9 being a significant priority for the firm, watch how the company promotes its across application spaces, e.g., desktop, mobile, TV, etc.

So what must Opera do for its community web pages to succeed?

This is one of the areas where Opera appears to be pursuing the theme that "a man's reach must exceed his grasp." Opera has both reliability problems and capacity problems. Access to this blog space is repeated interrupted due to server errors and slow performance is often the norm. My favorite error message is "bad upstream server."

My suggestion is that Opera deploy mirror servers outside of Norway for its community pages to avoid the now long standing performance and reliability issues that have continuously troubled the community web pages since their launch in September 2005. As it is now February 2006, it is no longer possible or relevant to assign these issues to "growing pains."

If Opera wants to play as a global company, it should consider how it will provision its community web pages with assured access by users. I've noted that other firms with global community blog services have offered users access to servers in Asia, Europe, and North America in an effort to avoid single points of failure with one server farm.

Blogging services that fail through technical shortfalls or mismanagement, or both, get negative computer trade press. See for instance this report from Computerworld on Typepad's service and access problems which resulted in significant outages in December 2005.

While Opera's web pages are free for now, and Typepad is a commercial service, I assume it is only a matter of time before Opera offers advertising on community pages perhaps even offers to share revenues with the best bloggers. This business model can succeed if Opera is able to execute its technical plan and management processes in ways that avoid the current access, reliability, and performance problems.

Users who invest heavily in blogs, with or without the expectation of revenue, will migrate quickly to other services if the ISP or blog service cannot perform in a reliable manner. The Computerworld article cited above cites others blog services' problems and the marketing hit they take in their brand value for "single points of failure."

Opera has less than half a million users on its community web blogs and Typepad claims 12 million users. Assuming Opera wants the page views needed to boost revenues from its search deals with Google, Amazon, etc., it has to take a lesson from Typepad's rough experience.

Does the desktop market matter to Opera?

The question now facing Opera is how much faster can it expand without busting the seams of its current capabilities to support the products and services it already has. The desktop market is mostly likely to lag since Opera's revenues from it are hardly significant compared to revenues from mobile devices.

Opera wants very much to reach "young, hip, and dynamic" users with its mobile device software and services either directly or through marketing partners and their devices running the Opera browser. Opera my be successful in many parts of the world, Asia, Europe, where the Internet is mostly accessed from mobile wireless devices rather than desktops.

In the U.S. where the desktop on broadband or wireless laptop are still the devices of choice for accessing the Internet, Opera may be less market penetration, but may not care, or at least not much. The desktop might be seen by Opera, especially in the U.S., as a necessary evil, but not as the main event. Interestingly, in email exchanges with mainstream media reporters at the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, the feedback they get is that what U.S. Opera users care about is primarily using the browser on the desktop. U.S. users, except for the most digitally "hip" just don't blog from their cell phones. They use text messaging from cell phones and instant messaging from desktops.

Now it may be that Opera can find a way to promote the Opera mini as a means to support text messaging and instant messaging on mobile devices. I don't know if social blogging alone will achieve that result. Websites that promote exchange of photos such as MySpace and Flickr include uploading of photos from cell phones. The so-called 20-something generation is the big user group. Can Opera use the desktop to build brand recognition for cell phones that use Opera mini and with this demographic? Will just viral marketing to one age group of end users be enough?

Neither Opera nor Mozilla's Firefox have overt enterprise strategies. A lot of the desktop marketing efforts by both firms are aimed directly at end users. So if you look at market share for browsers, Microsoft, which markets its PC operating system and Office suite globally to enterprises, is likely to continue to dominate the browser market. Indeed, after a noisy start Firefox is still hovering in the range of 10-15% market share depending on how you count and where. Opera's next version of its browser software will identify itself as Opera and this may bring an end to under counting of users. Even so, despite going free earlier in 2005, Opera's market share in the desktop arena is still so small it is almost an afterthought in the statistics. If Opera wants enterprise sales it has to find a way to deliver value to large organizations either directly or through partners without losing brand building momentum in the process. It also needs a resource package for deployment and support across a compnay's internal network. IBM may have promoted Firefox to hundreds of thousands of its employees, but you can be sure they didn't do it with downloads, employee-by-employee, from Mozilla's website.

So, there is a lot on Opera's plate, and the company cannot be faulted for its ambitions. That's good for investors. End users must be realistic about what the company is trying to do. If you want to use Opera on a mobile device chances are you will get your way.

More to come on this next week.

After a stealth release in Europe, Opera rolled out the global release of Opera mini, a cell phone application that makes hundreds of millions of cell phones potentially able to run the Opera browser and surf the net from a wireless device.

Mobile phones must support Java in order to use the new browser. Opera Mini compresses Web pages by up to 80 percent and reformats them using what Opera calls small-screen rendering for easier browsing on mobile screens.

Opera said using the software will lead to significantly faster browsing and reduced phone bills for users who pay per kilobit of data traffic. Opera Mini's start page integrates a Google search box.

Opera will soon offer customized versions of Mini to mobile phone operators and handset manufacturers.

The browser is available in English, German, Spanish, French, Russian, Polish, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Finnish. More languages will be added in the coming months. Download and installation is no more complicated than downloading a ringtone.

Opera announced this week a deal with Bytemobile to offer that firms technologies to speed up the operations of the browser on mobile devices. Bytemobile, based in Mountain View, Calif., markets a technology known as Optimization Services Node (OSN) that carriers use to speed mobile Internet performance.

Bytemobile claims that OSN has been deployed by 60 operators worldwide, including Willcom, serving a total of nearly 1 billion subscribers.

In a separate announcement Opera released Mobile 8.5 Web browser for Windows Mobile Pocket PC (PPC). Opera 8.5 beta runs on Windows Mobile 2003 and 5.0, offering Opera's fast Web surfing on the full range of Windows Mobile Pocket PC devices. Users should remind themselves this is a BETA product and expect the unexpected in terms of performance.

Opera is expected to launch its Opera Mini mobile browser, which is based on Opera Mobile but designed for even simpler handsets, sometime before the end of January. In June, the company launched Opera for Windows Mobile 2003.

The bulk of Opera's revenues come from non-desktop devices including mobile devices, set top boxes and portable media players, although Opera's desktop business continues to be important because it tends to drive innovation on the browser. Earlier this year Opera inked a deal with Google to share search revenues from Opera browser users. Updates to the deal with Google are specically targeted at mobile device applications. Opera was able to drop licensing fees for its desktop browser and passed the 100 million mark in downloads as a result due to the revenues expected to be coming in from search deals.

http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/03/147256&tid=95

Slashdot asked its readers to submit questions to Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner. The questions and his answers appear at the cited URL. It's great stuff all the way around.

Shashdot, the virtual coffeehouse for geeks, is asking its readers to suggest questions for an interview with Opera's CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner

According to Slashdot,

"Opera Software has gotten all kinds of media play lately, including rumors that both Google and Microsoft were buying the company. Whether you love or hate Opera, you've got to give them credit for building a decent browser and grabbing a small but noticeable market share in the face of competition from both MSIE and Firefox.

Co-founder/CEO Jon von Tetzchner is obviously reponsible for at least some of this success -- and for much of the company's high press profile, due not only to the Opera Browser itself but to at least one whacky PR stunt and at least one high-profile beef with Microsoft.

So who is this guy? Ask and find out. He's obviously not your typical software company CEO, so we don't expect typical CEO-type answers from him. We'll send him (direct, not through a PR person) 10 or 12 of your best questions Friday afternoon (US EST), and run his answers during the first week of 2006."

Slashdot readers are often advocates of open source software including Mozilla's Firefox browser. In the past moderators at the site have been lukewarm at best crediting the Opera's search deal with Google as the basis for the increase in downloads of the software. One moderator once commented that Opera was "off the table" for consideration because it is not open source.

So there it is folks. Log into Slashdot and submit your questions. Inquiring minds want to know! If you scroll down from the web link you can read some of the questions submitted so far.

Contrary to the rabid rumor mill, fed by CBS Marketwatch Columnnist John Dvorak, Opera was not bought out this month by Microsoft, Google, or anyone else. However, the firm did ink a search revenue deal with Google, which is a continuation of an existing business relationship.

It was strange and almost humorous to read the breathless prose of some Internet analysts about Opera's pending sale to one computer giant or another. Opera's CEO denied repeatedly that the firm was for sale to anyone who would listen. Both buyout rumor episodes seemed like a bad Halloween "Treat or Treat" joke gone wrong. Anyway, Opera continues to chart its own destiny, and that seems like a good way to start the new year.

Opera Software chooses Google for Search Revenue Deal

By Reuters
Story last modified Thu Dec 29 19:53:00 PST 2005

Norwegian Opera Software has agreed that Google will be the default partner for its mobile Internet browsers, Opera said on Thursday. "Google will be the default search partner for the mobile browsers: Opera Mobile and Opera Mini," Opera said in a statement. "Under the one-year contract, Opera will make Google Search a major part of the browsers home screen." Oslo-based Opera Software is a tiny competitor of Microsoft in the Internet browser market, but the fast-growing part of its business is in browsers for mobile phones and other mobile electronic devices.

The only reason I can think of that would compell Google to buy Opera is for the firm's mobile browser technologies and the fact that Opera recently released an AJAX API for mobile devices. Getting developers to sign up for Opera is one thing, but if the firm were owned by Google, developers would flock to build mobile AJAX enabled applications.

DY

Opera Could End If Google Sings
David A. Utter, WebPro News
Staff Writer
Published: 2005-12-14

When it comes to market capitalization, Google is definitely a prima donna of substantial girth; the next aria it sings could be a swan song for the Norwegian-made Opera browser.

Gary Price at Search Engine Watch brings attention to an interesting rumor that involves the Opera web browser. Google could be ready to announce it is acquiring the company.

Opera has a small following, less than that of Mozilla's Firefox, which is a distant second in market share to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Price cited it as the browser he uses all the time; I've become a fan of Opera as well. Until September, Opera was available in a free, ad-supported configuration as well as a paid product.

That changed with Opera's tenth anniversary, where the company gave away free license codes to remove the ad banners as part of a 24-hour celebration. Then, Opera announced the ad-free version of the browser would be free for anyone to download.

It was a surprising change for Opera to make, and it took some sleuthing from Om Malik to find the real reason for the offer: Google was paying Opera in exchange for being the default search option, as it does for the same placement in Firefox by paying Mozilla a reported $30 million annually.

Price conjectured that Opera's presence on mobile devices like smartphones could be a factor in Google's rumored interest. Also, Opera recently made an AJAX development kit for mobile developers available; Google services like Gmail and the personalized Google homepage make extensive use of AJAX programming today.