Opera to Stop Spoofing User Agent as IE 360
Anonymous reader writes "The Opera browser will stop spoofing its User Agent (UA) as Internet Explorer. Currently Opera, by default, spoofs its UA to identify itself as Internet Explorer. This is seen, by some, as a move that will bring up Opera's usage stats a bit higher, and will hopefully make webmasters, who develop IE centric sites, more aware of Opera."
Re:Good (Score:1, Informative)
Trying to compete against something given away FREELY as FireFox is (which is incredibly TOUGH to compete with)???
Some facts anyone here is welcome to dispute about FireFox vs. Opera (& vice-a-versa):
Opera: It's THE "good stuff"!
IMO, but also solely based on facts, for a triumvirate of VERY SOLID reasons vs. IE, &/or FireFox:
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1.) It wins in speed, everytime, in the online tests/analysis I have seen out there for years now at numerous sites in most ALL categories run in said tests!
E.G.-> http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html#wi
SUMMARY:
"So overall, Opera seems to be the fastest browser for windows. Firefox is not faster than Internet Explorer, except for scripting, but for standards support, security and features, it is a better choice. However, it is still not as fast as Opera, and Opera also offers a high level of standards support, security and features.
On Linux, Konqueror is the fastest for starting and viewing basic pages on KDE, but as soon as script or images are involved, or you want to use the back or forward buttons, or if you use Gnome, Opera is a faster choice, even though on KDE it will take a few seconds longer to start. Mozilla and Firefox give an overall good performance, but their script, cache handling and image-based page speed still cannot compare with Opera.
On Mac OS X, Opera and Safari are both very fast, with Safari 2 being faster at starting and rendering CSS, but with Opera still being distinguishably faster for rendering tables, scripting and history (especially compared with the much slower Safari 1.2). Camino is fast to start, but then it joins its sisters Mozilla and Firefox further down the list. Neither Mozilla, Firefox nor IE perform very well on Mac, being generally slower than on other operating systems"
(On the Windows Platform, in THAT test alone, it took 4 of 7 total categories... nuff said on that account! Considering 90% of the world's computers run Windows based Os' (hopefully Windows NT-based ones by now)? That's saying a HELL of a LOT!)
Opera (as you may read for yourselves above) even did great on the OTHER platforms too!
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2.) Opera is definitely the "least attacked/most secure" of the "big 3" browers'-wise (IE, FireFox/Mozilla/Opera) out there...
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3.) It is MASSSIVELY "multi-platform" & afaik? NOT just restricted to PC's either - there is a large body of handhelds out there which use Opera as their browser tool such as the Symbian 60 series handphone & most all OS' (including FreeBSD, Linux, etc. & more + Windows).
*
So, unless somebody can show us otherwise here, I will stick by those statements!
(They ARE why I like Opera better than the others in the "big 3" of web-browsers & I am mostly a "Pro-Win32" guy & admit it... though I like & finally respect Linux 2.6x core with KDE on the desktop, & really do respect what MacOS X has become as well!)
APK
P.S.=> The ONLY thing FireFox has (and don't get me wrong, I like FireFox, & FAR better than IE 6.x) over Opera?
Is that FireFox is FREEBIE-WARE!
However, some of its freeware model unfortunately (as evidenced by the recent XUL 3rd party addons like GreaseMonkey having to be fixed for security holes) may jeopardize it as did ActiveX DLL extensions to IE!
(E.G.-> ActiveX DLL extensions to IE were initially meant to be for "the good", but one bad apple(s) were all it took to make this featureset for IE a detriment rather than an asset)...
BOTTOM-LINE - Compared head-to-head/mano-a-mano, you see the results above as proofs, Opera's just the best! apk
Re:Screwed both ways (Score:2, Informative)
That's what they currently do.
Re:Screwed both ways (Score:5, Informative)
They've always had Opera and the version in the useragent string - they just have the MSIE bit in there as well.
this fools the lame IE-only stuff, but lets any sensible software detect that really it is Opera.
more info here: http://www.opera.com/support/search/supsearch.dml
Re:It's about darn time, but not really... (Score:5, Informative)
Eh, (Score:1, Informative)
*ducks*
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Sparked in part by Eric Meyer? (Score:5, Informative)
As a test Eric disabled the Opera-validation code, changed Opera to properly identify itself and ran the default S5 slideshow...
So is it possible that Opera took this as a slap in the face and maybe are starting to change their opinion of their place in the world, i.e. "if I can't easily detect your browser I can't begin to fix my code"? Are they trying to stand up against the PR machine that Firefox has behind it to say that they're still in the running, and maybe also make life easier for web developers who'll finally be able to easily identify their browser?
No matter what the reasons, its a good decision IMHO.
Damien
Well, kinda... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Firefox needs US Spoofing (Score:4, Informative)
Necessary evil... (Score:3, Informative)
Opera makes it easy to change the browser identification (via "Quick preferences"), but still, it can be annoying. Specially for non-technical users.
Re:Firefox needs US Spoofing (Score:3, Informative)
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.ph
Firefox is more multi-platform (Score:1, Informative)
Re:It doesn't say just IE (Score:3, Informative)
Exactly. Only really really braindead software actually misidentifies Opera, so its usage stats will likely not shoot up any significant amount. What will happen though is webpages from 1998 will have to be updated to stop checking for IE vs NS4 with silly useragent checks and start using object existance checks.
Re:Not likely (Score:3, Informative)
Doesn't that tell you that the "supposedly" above might be wrong? Most people agree that (even with today's flawed browser stats), Opera has at least closer to one per cent globally.
Actually it reinforces my opinion that "flawed stats" are an excuse that allows Opera Fans over-estimate their marketshare by dismissing any emprical evidence that runs counter to their assumptions (just what you did). Quite frankly, Opera's issue with stat packages are their problem, not mine, and one I'm glad to hear they are addressing.
Regardless, it's site-dependant, so it's quite possible Opera has 1% marketshare somewhere else, but on this (large, consumer, CSS2) site it's 0.2%.
remember.. its CVS the pharmacie, not the software (Score:1, Informative)
Confirmed. (Score:2, Informative)
I will give them props for at least supporting Firefox and Safari, but not supporting Opera specifically is just...wrong. Has anyone got Opera to render the page anyways? Does it look horrible? Looked fine in Firefox...
Re:Whining? (Score:3, Informative)
Not in my experience. I've written lots of code to produce lots of web pages, and I routinely try them in every browser I can get my hands on (including several PDA browsers). In my experience, my code only really needs to distinguish two cases: IE and everything else.
And even this usually isn't technically necessary. Without the tests, the HTML that I generate will "work" everywhere, in the obvious sense that what's on the screen is usable (though not necessarily exactly the same to the pixel) with any browser.
Usually the reason for the test is that the people I'm working for insist that it do something very precisely defined and very peculiar on IE. That's what they use, and they want things exact to the pixel. They don't know or care what it looks like in other browsers, because they don't have any other on their desk, and will never see anything but the rendering with their version of IE.
So my code can send standard, general-purpose HTML to all browsers except IE. Silly things like WIDTH= attributes can be dropped, allowing the browser to resize things to fit the actual window. But special code is needed for IE, to make it look "right" on the boss's screen.
In my experience, that's what the so-called "real world" is actually like.
Of course, after everything is working and approved, I can often silently make the code default for no IE test, making the pages even work with an IE window that's not the same size as the boss's screen. The boss never looks at it again, and doesn't notice that it now works better on his other employees' screens than it did before when his silly demands were still enabled.
The "real world" can be a funny place sometimes.
(I'm not kidding here; I really have been told things like "The window must be exactly 800 pixels wide". There are many managers around that think this is a good way to specify things.
Re:Confirmed. (Score:3, Informative)