web:config

Note: I'm not in any way affiliated to Opera Software or Google Inc. The opinions expressed here are my own only .

After having gained some notoriety, both in this community, and outside, I feel like I should announce probably the most useful user script I've made. Unlike what you may think it's not an enhancement, but a unified patch from some of the most awful discrimination on the web: Google services.
Unlike what many not-so-techie-people think, Google is not superman.
quiris asked me:

Originally posted by quiris:

Many Fx zealots complains in comments that it's Opera fault, not Google's. So xErath, could you explain the all patched problems in Google services are necessary because of bugs in Opera or rather because of Firefox/IE-centric code?

Here's the answer for you all. No software is flawless, all have problems, quirks and bugs to workaround. I not saying Opera is bug ridden. Much on the contrary, IE has some of the worst DOM support ever, and Mozilla too has it's quirks and mis-behaviours. As consequence, developers make their applications against browser behaviours instead of the specification. This eventually breaks Opera which gets some workaround for one of those browsers bugs, which misbehaves, or too hits a bug which needs a workaround. So it's a bit of all issues, browser specific code, Opera quirk, or bad object detection.
For many of those Google services to work, the compatibility would be ensured by fixing problems on both sides. Guess what? Opera is doing its job, but Google isn't because they probably feel like 1% of the market and the Wii users aren't worth it. Google definitely doesn't like you.
So I avenged many Opera users, and did a patch for many Google services to work in Opera, mainly because I use Google too a lot.

Where's a description of what the script does:

• Google spreadsheets - nothing much to fix. Simply reverses the mousewheel, so when you roll it down, the pages goes down. It's a known quirk. Then it warns the user to Mask as IE, if it's not, which is the only way for the site to work. If the browser is Masked as IE, the page tries to use IE's css filters to display transparent PNGs. So there's a workaround for this one too.
• Google Calender - simply makes the "browser not compatible" notification to go way, and for the create event date popups to work.
• Google Picassa Web - simply overrides bad browser sniffing. Now the website works just fine, including the slideshow (shame on them )
• Google Docs - this is more complicated. The writely team, which built the editor you see thrived to have their application working in the 4 major browsers: IE, Moz, Opera and Saf/Konq. The word Safari is scattered all over the code, to workaround it's problems (Safari's DOM was weak at that time). But then Google ate writely, and all efforts for interoperability were squashed. The patches fixes many issues related to bad object detection, and overrides a few quirks in Opera.

I hope you put this script to good use, and have more fun using it, than I have writing it .

Here you go:
fix-google-services.js

Next stop for me might be Google Page Creator, because it seems to share components with the new Google Groups beta. Refer to this post for updates.

Edit: BtEO worded wonderfully mine and other Opera's power users sentiments.

Edit 2 (21-april-2007): I have no intentions of bad mouthing Writely's developers, which previously showed interest for Opera. It seems after all, that one of the major blockers for Safari, are bugs related to selections and designMode, although the current Safari 3 nightlies seem promising. In the mean time, there was a little update to google docs javascript code a bit more Opera friendly. Thanks to them.
I've done some heavy work with google pages, but it's a nut terribly hard to crack. Google pages developers really only care for 2 browsers, which flooded the code with a enormous amount of browser quirks usage, or using Mozilla or IE's bugs as features.
I'm aware that spreadsheets isn't working fine. IT seems a bit unstable: most of the time it works, but them all the sudden is seems broken. I have no intention of debugging more. If you want a real spreadsheets application try EditGrid.
Currently I have little time to improve the script, so contributions are welcome.

Edit 3 (11-april-2009): the script was updated, which was simply removing deprecated code. Currently, docs, spreadsheets and the calendar work very well. kudos to Google. picassa is the odd one left.

Note: script updated 11-April-2009