Slightly ajar

Fyrd writes:

The question is, will the mailing list be faster than the blagocube? I've subscribed to several Opera-related feeds already, so I wouldn't be surprised if I get my info from there first.

Also, good to see the Opera 9.5 alpha title got fixed.

Now, to ponder those latest hints...

Whoops, forgot to log in.

Just my variation of the blogosphere.

See also: http://xkcd.com/181/

rosh1182 writes:

It sounds like dragonfly is a bug tracking system.

You didn't like mine? *sniff* *sniff*

I'll go cry in my corner.

Haha just joking. Oleg's great .

When Oleg was discussing the idea for doing something to do with Dragonfly I thought it was a great idea. Maybe I'll do a Dr. Dragonfly to go with OperaMan and Speed Dial.

See you in San Diego!

Drogonfly ~= Firebug.
What do I win?

I love the name, it fits perfectly

Would "great distances" mean mobile?

Would "great distances" mean mobile?

I'm shure it is!

With the new description, I'm tempted to say that it's a software to validate webpages against standards and against different types of browsers.

The text in dragonfly.opera.com is unreadable

Okay, just wanted to tel that Dragonfly is definitely linked to the PC Opera: when you suscribe to the Opera Dragonfly mailing list, you get an email from "Opera desktop team".

So I still think Dragonfly is the Web Dev tools.

New guess: online developer tools, like what Opera already has on dev.opera.com . "Great distances" could be traveled to test sites across different browsers. It would help both Opera and any other browser out there that isn't represented very well. Testing and fixing bugs would be easy if the site at hand was stored online for developing.

Seems like Opera also might want to take a ride against Google and Microsoft since they have tools that disregard standards (e.g. Silverlight or Google's website creator).

Anonymous writes:

silverlight does not "disregards standards" it is plugin, just like flash/java. it doesnt work in opera (silverlight 2 beta 1), but it in no way "disregards standards"

@anonymous

Does that mean everyone should start writing websites using silverlight now?

Anonymous writes:

why?

it is just another option, that has some strong advantages over flash (tight integration with widely known c#/.net, excelent IDE for development). these advantages are going to make it hugely popular, basicaly all pages already written in .net 2.0 can be EASILY enchanced with Silverlight animations/gizmos. only browser that Silverlight 2 beta 1 does not work is Opera. does it make Silverlight bad? or should be a signal for Opera to fix that problem?

bashing it on the sole fact that it is 'by MS' is rather.. immature.

do you have any reasons why you hate Silverlight so much? if you are going to mention 'standards' better do it in elaborate way, because it is as standard as flash/java.

If it is a plugin, and cannot work unless a browser vendor specifically decides to support it on top of the standards already created, then it disregards those standards already in use. The standards in use provide a major advantage because they are not dictated by one company's rules--things like CSS are created by standards bodies to allow for widespread use and development. Microsoft is trying to create its own standard to get everybody to use it, and could therefore determine where the market goes by itself.

It should be noted that plugins like Flash and Java are standards based on the fact that they have already got a hold on the plugin market. They both do have their problems, but at least they do try to offer a cross-platform way of development. (Java is better at this task due to its coding methods, but Flash can still be partially used on cutting-edge technology, like phones.) We will have to see if Microsoft will be so facilitative to doing the same.

Also, Opera is against the entire plug-in as a standard way of development from what I have seen. The company doesn't want new players restricted in the browser and technology market if they will not be listened to by plug-in makers, simply because they are not big enough yet.

@anonymous

It further breaks the web as a whole, what if one developer decided to write his entire site in a combination of java, flash and silverlight?

First problem would be that browsers would need the plugins for those to work, and not all browsers would be allowed access to them, for example mobile phone browsers, mobile phones in general, have you seen a site that uses java that worked in a mobile browser yet? Or a full fledged flash site?

Theres more to the web than accessing it from a PC, you know.

Anonymous writes:

yeah right. but I can't stop thinking, that if Silverlight worked in Opera that would be whole other story.

Microsoft released the plugin that works for 95-98% browser users out there. Even linux users will be able to use it soon and develop for it (mono project [moonlight] is quite mature). That leaves Opera users, and some mobile phones - but I think that MS will provide solution to that problem, at first for iPhone (55% of mobile usage in US is from iPhone) then for other platforms.

Second, it is webmaster' free choice what he wants to achieve, if he decides to ignore few percents of the market to serve the majority what he thinks is the best, it is his decision - it is called free market. If the market deemes that approach bad, it will fail, and webaster will bancrupt.

Third - mobile users are used to having problems with certain sites, and they are often served with stripped down versions - it is a fair and commonly accepted deal. As mobile browsers envolve and mobiles gain in computing power it will even out.

Fourth - all browsers can install Silverlight (it uses very old plugin mechanism that works in very old IE6, FF, Safari and others (why id doesnt work in Opera it is a mystery for me)). Just like they can install flash, java or other gizmos (for online maps, for your banking account etc - it is common that certain technologies does not work in some minor set of software-hardware confguration - tough, but world spins around regardles)

"If it is a plugin, and cannot work unless a browser vendor specifically decides to support it on top of the standards already created, then it disregards those standards already in use."

Khem, what? There is no standard saying 'you cant create new plugins'. There is no standard saying that you cant move parts of your website to technology that you think can do the job done better. 'Standards' is quite amusing excuse, because everybody use them as a weapon, but when it comes to producing facts, there arent any. What standard Sivlerlight breaks? Standard as in 'created by independant bodies'? Provide me to a link to that standard, then.

Or as in 'industry standard'? Then well, you are hypocrite.

"It further breaks the web as a whole, what if one developer decided to write his entire site in a combination of java, flash and silverlight?"

Then it would be his decision. With all good and bad consequences. Most probably majority of users would not even notice that it is written in plugins entirely. What is your problem with that? Dont like it, dont use it.

"Theres more to the web than accessing it from a PC, you know."

There is more to the web than HTML+JS, you know.

If it so bad, it wont catch up, right?

Problem is, that it will because .net is much easier than flash, tools for .net are MUCH better and some things, no matter how would one want to be 'with standards' cannot be done in html/js. There plugins come, like it or not, it is 2008, not 1999.

Anonymous writes:

One more comment about standards (like in independant bodies etc)

count how many years it took w3c to create css2, css2.1 and css3. how many bugs, misdefinitions, white areas, grey areas and verz stupid areas there are in these 'standards'. with straight face tell me, that these standards are perfect or even good.

way w3c works (slow and without top quality) is an anchor for web as a whole. sure, MS is also to blame, for taking its own way in many ocasions, and not repsecting already set standards. but some of these standards were incredibly stupid (my favourite is mouse buttons numbering - compare MS way and 'standard' way) or there were no standards to violate because w3c was still discussing what should be the default border color... there are also too many things left for 'vendor's decision'. fine if it is css default, not so fine if it javscript data format or something. that causes troubles. all this combined to flash being so popular, not only animations, but flash gave webdevelopers certainity and stability and real cross-browser reach. Slverlight will provide the same qualities with a bonus of 'normal' programming language and easy to use IDE.

The standards are not supposed to be perfect, and they aren't. They give generally agreed-upon guidelines for people to follow. This way things will work better together when everyone is trying to go in his/her own direction. It is up to a developer to decide whether he/she supports certain standards, yes, but following most of them causes less problems for a lot more people in the end.

This is why we have systems of measurement, instead of saying "two of my feet" then "three of her feet" to the entrance of the building. We defined a new way of thinking to allow more people to understand what we said, and problems began to decrease while innovation moved forward. Take a look at our greatest engineering feats.

Microsoft sees the advantage of creating a new standard by pushing a "great" product like Silverlight onto people. I don't deny that what it can do is spectacular, but if it becomes a new norm, Microsoft would have near total control on where to go--not the web developers.

BTW, even though a small percentage of web users might be using a mobile phone to browse, the large number of people who are represented by this percentage is still significant. They may depend on this technology for very important parts of their career and life, and the connections made through this browsing may have extreme effects on the world. The free market cannot completely account for problems like these. But that is a completely different topic and I don't think I have enough time to explain to you here.

Anonymous writes:

"The standards are not supposed to be perfect, and they aren't. They give generally agreed-upon guidelines for people to follow."

I feel confused. So standards arent really standards? Well, I'm msc of electronics and we have standards here. Standards that are strict, well written and in most cases make perfect sense. I dont want to think how would the world electric supply look like, if our standards were so bad as that w3c craft. Sorry, no w3c documentation I've read so far (and believe me, there was a time in my life when I wanted to read it all) was even remotely close to being a 'standard'.

There are many cases that w3c simply says 'well, do it whatever you want, but good'. And vendors do. Problem is, that that ruins the whole concept of standarised web. Also w3c is so far behind what is called state-of-art.. it is an epic topic to rant about.

"This is why we have systems of measurement, instead of saying "two of my feet" then "three of her feet" to the entrance of the building."

Well, not so quite, I still dont know what yard, pint (sp?) or galon is. I measure world in meters, liters and kilograms. There are limits of speed in miles per hour and in kilometers per hour. It really is confusing at times. Anglo-americans seem to not are about iso metric system.. this is a situation where industry standard (yards in us) is different than standards standards. It leads to trouble. Just like fogy w3c standards.

"but if it becomes a new norm, Microsoft would have near total control on where to go--not the web developers."

It is free market again. MS offers a product. If it is bad - it is going to be rejected. It it is good - it will catch up. 'Good' as in 'good for practicing web developers - not armchairs standard-praisers'. Any company can offer a product, market judges it. Market adopts it, or drops it. If anyone/any company thinks that it is so easy, go ahead, provide your product. MS starts from scratch now - they never had technology like this. Web devs are in control - they can use it, or ignore it. They can use flash, they can try to carve their way in html+js (that leads to more problems than doing it in flash).

If providing a technology that eases the life of developer is bad, be sure, that most developers will want to be treated 'badly'. Please punish me with another time saving tool.. oh please..

As for the mobiles. Market sees percents, not absolute numbers. If there are 20mil users you are ignoring, but they equal to only 1%.. then tere are 2bilions that you are serving. Always percents. It is tough and brutal, but there is no place for sentiments in business. Sorry. Flling the niches is a also a way of doing business, so finaly someone is going to fill it.

To sum it up, I still dont see what standard Silverlight breaks. Provide link to it please.

Anonymous, technologies like Silverlight and Flash break the openness of Web when used in obtrusive way. Period.
And I don't care if Silverlight works in Opera or not, because I just don't use these sites that depend on this plug-in. Also I would also trash Flash plug-in completly if only we have something to substitute Flash video (this is great that Safari 3.1 supports VIDEO tag, but we need more browsers to follow).

Basically what I mean is, a plugin based web, makes trying to debug errors very difficult to do. As code isn't always there available to the public.

The implementations don't allow for debugging of code, and most of the time there is no idea what is being scripted within flash/silverlight/java, for example the plugin could very well be taking your browser cookies and posting them to another server, without anyway to debug it at all.

@Anonymous,

About the free market: I will simply say there may be long-term opportunity costs of ignoring a louder yet smaller community, and instead simply paying attention to the larger but silent groups.

I feel confused. So standards arent really standards?...

There is a difference in the type of standards across industries. That is probably the difficulty you are seeing. In engineering (Electrical I'm assuming in your case?) there are standards in place that make so much sense because they work so well. The Internet is not so direct and simple because there is much more leniency in what people can do with a webpage.

Well, not so quite, I still dont know what yard, pint (sp?) or galon is...

The standards for measurement are created for different situations and for different people. We have US/British customary here because the US is very stubborn and will not move to another system.* However, as an engineering major (environmental) in college I am taught both US customary and the SI systems to understand both systems. This is probably the same for coding webpages. A person should have a good hold of the coding languages used in order to understand how to code a good webpage. The easy developing tool provided by Silverlight is like candy to lure developers in and cage them in after they have made their decision to use the product. The developer could break down the walls, but it would be very difficult and might cost a lot of money to adapt to another system.

*Like Microsoft not wanting to move to standards for IE over a long-term period.

All this talk reminds me of POC "the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules". You all can read this really good blog by Joel Spolsky on 'standards'.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html

Coming back to dragonfly. If it is a javascript debugger, I am waiting for it. Would love to have trace and watch and step by step execution and ...

Originally posted by dstorey:

Please get back on topic guys.

Hey, we can't say anything else on topic. Simply because we don't know...

What's the topic again, something about a bug and a web developing tool? Isn't that right David?

In opera:config, you already can find the section
"Developer Tools" with the options
Enable Debugging, Enable Script Debugging, Proxy Host (127.0.0.1), and Proxy Port (7001).

IIRC, this was earlier (in the first 9.0 snapshots) called "Remote Debugger".

So it looks like Dragonfly will be a remote debugger which can run on the same computer as the browser, but which can also be attached to an Opera instance on another system (e.g. with a different OS) / device (e.g. a mobile, a Wii ...).

That would also fit the "great distances" part.

Hi Dragonfly busters ,

In opera:config, you already can find the section
"Developer Tools" with the options
Enable Debugging, Enable Script Debugging, Proxy Host (127.0.0.1), and Proxy Port (7001).

These items disappears in WinGogi (Acid3 compliant) release... hum... voluntarily hidden or bad clue ?
@+
--
Pierre

Wingogi is only for testing purpose and does not include all of Opera components, so I think, it doesn't mena anything concerning these items.