The world through a Google

Tuesday, 2. January 2007, 18:33:08

user javascript, discrimination, site patching, google, opera

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 wellcome.

Note: script updated last 14th of March

Developer tools unleashed

Comments

Thank you for the explanation

By quiris, # 2. January 2007, 19:18:01

Hi João!
You are watched

http://operawatch.com/news/2007/01/how-to-make-google-services-opera-friendly.html

By the way - your script and your explanations sound very great. Thanks and keep up the good work.
Christian

By ResearchWizard, # 2. January 2007, 21:34:09

xErath, thanks for doing what the giant Google cant do for us! ;-(

Please add a line with the script version so we can know when you update it!

By flitz, # 2. January 2007, 23:53:35

Originally posted by flitz:

Please add a line with the script version so we can know when you update it!

Will do. Thanks

By xErath, # 3. January 2007, 01:33:58

I would love to see a GPC (Page Creator) JS, it's the only app from Google that I use =\

Suscribed.

By Stahn, # 3. January 2007, 01:55:24

Thank you for helping Opera/Google users all over the world!

By TreeGo, # 3. January 2007, 05:29:33

Thanks!

By FataL, # 3. January 2007, 06:06:23

Google pages! lol

By paginabrasileira, # 4. January 2007, 13:21:19

LoL Thanks!

By moises-l, # 4. January 2007, 18:42:00

Any chance you can find a fix for Google contacts?
Se explanation there: http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/show.dml/681582?startidx=150#comment2463174
Also I have two friend who use FF for Gmail just because their contact list doesn't update.

By FataL, # 18. January 2007, 07:46:51

just wanted to say THANKS

By masihaa, # 14. February 2007, 02:13:23

Thank you very much for the script!!!

By Contrid, # 17. February 2007, 21:43:33

Up to today the script worked very fine.

But today in the Google Docs all buttons and the editor field are inactive .

By vinczej, # 26. February 2007, 15:45:33

Up to today the script worked very fine.

But today in the Google Docs all buttons and the editor field are inactive .

Works fine here...

By Contrid, # 26. February 2007, 15:58:17

Thanks a lot for the script.
Do you know anything how to fix that on google´s personalized homepage mostly only one line from the RSS feeds is appears?
Thanks!

By Mankai, # 18. March 2007, 22:35:11

Thanks for this good script, useful for me!!

By alan0098, # 21. March 2007, 08:39:18

Opera 9.1 - Win XP

Google spreadsheets is absolutely *not* fixed by this script. Had to mask as Firefox to even open it. Cell highlighting is off. Attempts to change column widths were very seldom successful. It is still *very* buggy.

By dixonge, # 4. April 2007, 14:29:51

Hi all,
Seems good according to what other people say but... I can't manage to get it working.
I've put the JS in a personal folder, then specified this folder in the "user JavaScripts" line in the JavaScript advanced options, but Google Calendar still displays the annoying popup at startup...

By Heitu, # 20. April 2007, 17:27:31

thx for your work

By boyu, # 20. April 2007, 23:27:22

Thx for this, João...very nice! Good tweak for slideshows! Works great for Mac Opera.

By kamalesh, # 21. April 2007, 02:17:56

When people ask me why I don't want a GMail account, I always laugh. Any company that can't take the time to test in my favorite browser isn't worth my time. Google doesn't want to make it all work in Opera, then I'll use something else.

Anyway, it's good to know that there are people out there making fixes for Google's code. I'll keep a link on my Personal Bar so that when people start complaining about Opera not supporting Google, I can show them the guy that made Google's code work without the need to rewrite Opera.

Great work xErath.

By GT500, # 21. April 2007, 04:25:13

xEarth
Just wanted to say...you are the man! When will we come to a day when GIANTS aren't flat-out jerks to the rest of us? Working great!

By kyleabaker, # 21. April 2007, 06:11:06

I use Google Docs frequently. It works fine, no relevant error for me.

Spreadsheets doesn't work right, but for me is only Docs important, so the UserJs is very useful! Thanks xErath!

But indeed, it would be a minimum, that Google make Google programs Opera-compliant.

By vinczej, # 21. April 2007, 13:18:30

Thank you so much for the script, João.

By Liberalist, # 21. April 2007, 17:11:34

Obrigado!

By neutrolio, # 11. May 2007, 10:00:39

Thank You for code.

Its shame that Google cant make their service more Opera indley.. of course - they are giant compared to opera.

Google should buy opera, they already hired many of Mozilla coders. I am sore soon there would be opera release 9.5 whit google beta support, and Opera 10 (aka Gbrowser 1.0) whit full google support.

- ONLY thing i like on Mozilla is that i can integrate scripts to Mozilla, this can be bad thing also if the addons are buggy.. (opera widgets are not just doing it all..). And second thing is the integrated speller to Mozilla - i can do spellcheck not automatically in every comment i write.

By Waffa, # 12. May 2007, 17:26:37

Originally posted by Waffa:

Google should buy opera,

Please don't make such a foolish statement.

By xErath, # 13. May 2007, 02:32:32

Im sorry for the noob question, but how do I install the file?

By Snazy_Shua, # 28. May 2007, 02:43:31

how do I install the file

http://userjs.org/help/installation

By fearphage, # 28. May 2007, 09:16:00

Unfortunately, Google Notebook doesn't work.

By srdjan, # 30. May 2007, 22:49:04

thanks

By chris34, # 31. May 2007, 14:28:30

Great job!

By ondrab, # 25. June 2007, 05:22:21

Dude, you ROCK!

By Kite Geek, # 26. June 2007, 16:31:56

OMG You're rock, Opera's rock :x
I just like Google docs :)
nXqd

By Nxqd3051990, # 29. June 2007, 01:03:51

I love this script but it doesnt make picasa work for me:s

By Sn3ipen, # 23. July 2007, 23:24:57

Hey,

great app. I always thought the issue was more on Google's than Opera's side based on my knowledge of JS.
Thanks a lot, any chance you could post a new comment every time you update, since that is what the RSS feed reacts to?

By GeeZuS, # 26. July 2007, 05:22:05

Hey,

i tried this UserJS, but spreadsheets isn't working. Can anybody help my on this problem? Can the URL in the UserJS be a problem? Eg. spreadsheets1.google.com?

best regards,

Martin

By HyperY2K, # 26. July 2007, 12:23:45

Hmm, after using this and setting spreadsheets to mask as IE (had to set for every single spreadsheet#.google)
It displays them fine in basic HTML, but once I switch to that I just get 404 errors.

By GeeZuS, # 28. July 2007, 01:56:50

OMG I can uninstall that stupid slow Firefox... Thanx...

By Real_quark, # 3. August 2007, 19:06:23

Thanks allot:)

@srdjan: I use Zoho Planner instead of google notebook. Works great in Opera and is even more future rich:)

http://www.planner.zoho.com

By Sn3ipen, # 5. September 2007, 12:55:30

Hi,after then Google Reader and Google Calendar has been updated today it's not work in Opera

By Deeoni$, # 6. September 2007, 13:51:50

1. Congratulations, nice idea!
2. For me as well, Spreadsheet does not work. Once I got a "404" error, but now it's simply not showing anything (blank page).
3. One more integration of GMail and GDocs: if you get a mail with a .doc or .xls file, in FF you have one more option: Open in Google Docs. You don't have that in Opera. I can guess why...

Keep it up!

By taconsta, # 13. September 2007, 17:24:17

3. One more integration of GMail and GDocs: if you get a mail with a .doc or .xls file, in FF you have one more option: Open in Google Docs. You don't have that in Opera. I can guess why...

You can ask at the forum for the menu entries to do so.

By xErath, # 13. September 2007, 19:06:18

Spreadsheets fails on trying to add a chart (in 9.2x and 9.5), though the preview displays the chart just fine. Also in 9.5 masking as Firefox seemed to work without needing any userjs.

By MacDev_ed, # 19. November 2007, 09:08:02

Great effort.

By operafan2006, # 24. December 2007, 08:37:10

could you fix the script so it makes google spreadsheets work in opera? I get a 404 not found error, as someone pointed out before.

thanks.

By aurreco, # 28. February 2008, 04:00:59

Also, I wonder if this actually allows google notebook to work?

google freaks me out the way they refuse to make these things work with Opera. Its terrorism !

Thx for this tho.

By dapxin, # 3. July 2008, 09:17:16

Good effort. Shame its only for hackers because it is so messy to install for normal people.

By Clear Wine, # 6. August 2008, 20:58:35

Saving a file to a directory is messy?

By xErath, # 8. August 2008, 13:55:57

Hi João!
Thank You for Your work!
Is there an update of the "fix-google-services.js" ?
I'm in trouble with google calendar in opera 9.52 since few days.
First it worked in opera, while I masked as internet explorer.
But now that doesn't help.

Also Your .js didn't help. I put it into the opera-profile-folder and wrote the path into preferences .... UserJavaSript Data.

Any suggestions?

Ciao

By rainerwendland, # 22. August 2008, 21:11:53

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