Opera CTO Thinks IE Will Be Forced To Support SVG 411
Julie188 writes "Opera Software is, as expected, preening over the forthcoming browser ballot box feature in Windows 7. It will put the Opera name in front of millions of users who probably never heard of it. But that's not the only reason Opera is gloating. CTO Håkon Wium Lie feels that today's decision will force Microsoft to make Internet Explorer do a better job of supporting standards, particularly the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). Lie would also like to see Apple and Linux makers follow suit with browser ballot boxes of their own."
Re:Apple and Linux, too? (Score:3, Informative)
You seem to be under the impression there's only one browser on Linux?
If you RTFA, it sounds like Lie suggested it because it's a Good Ideaâ rather than because he wanted to see Opera on it.
Q: In your opinion, should Apple also be expected to offer a ballot box for its computers? Should Ubunto?
The Microsoft case is based on antitrust law, something that only applies to monopolies. Apple and Ubuntu are not monopolies as per the legal definition of a monopoly. Still, it may be a good idea to offer it; the browser is the most important tool for most of us, and having access to better browsers is a good thing.
1) Ubunto?
2) I don't see him specifically saying Opera should be on it. There's many good linux browsers, for different purposes.
Firefox, Konquerer, Chrome (getting there; it's really fast compared to the rest), Lynx. ;)
I find Firefox to be bloated and slow on Ubuntu. It runs slower on a 2.6ghz Athlon X2 than Firefox does on a 2.0ghz Athlon XP, in Windows 2000.
Re:Apple and Linux, too? (Score:2, Informative)
Many linux distributions have been known to ship with non-free but gratis software packages such as Pine, Pico, GNUplot, Affero Ghostscript.
Linux itself is free, but not necessarily everything distributed with it.
Nothing really prevents Linux distributions such as SuSE or Redhat from including closed source software, so long as the vendor of the software allows them to distribute it with Linux.
Enterprise for-pay Linux distributions have even been known to include commercial software that is not even available free of charge.
It's mostly the Free-software leaning community projects like Debian that have a "pure free software policy" and so reject non-free packages from being distributed with it.
Re:Apple and Linux, too? (Score:3, Informative)
® -- Close enough?
Here's a handy, dandy reference page [ascii.cl]. Have fun...
Re:It doesn't really matter (Score:5, Informative)
Fuck you, Opera.
What are you, 12? What is it with all the Opera hate on Slashdot?
If market share is what's important (and ignoring that the market share stats are very dubious, and unfairly biased against Opera, which until recently identified as IE, and even now some users have to identify as IE due to poorly written websites, not to mention that browsers that don't cache as often will get more hits), by your logic we should all be using IE.
It's not about media formats (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft hasn't been able to leverage any of its encoding formats through their browser. MP3 and AAC have completely outstripped WMA and I'm not aware of any major player utilizing WMV on the video side.
Media formats are pretty orthgonal to the browser; most playback is via plugins, and there are WMV playback plugins available for all major browsers. Microsoft has a NSAPI implementation for Firefox, Distributes Flp4Mac for free. And of course Silverlight supports WMV (along with MP4 and MP3), and is supported in the codec pack for Moonlight.
WMV is quite widely used for premium content where the studios require DRM, as Windows Media DRM and PlayReady is the only widely deployed DRM available for license (Apple's FairPlay is only available to Apple as a publisher and Apple as a device vendor). So WMV is used for Netflix, Blockbuster, and other services in the USA, and it's used even more widely in Europe and Asia's video services.
But again, nothing to do with the browser.
With Silverlight supporting H.264 and AAC now, the actual codecs and media formats aren't the interesting point of competition. The big differences between Silverlight and Flash today are much more systems layer stuff like adaptive streaming and rich presentation layers. HTML5 is interesting, but even the proposals are well behind what Flash and Silverlight have already deployed for complex players.
Re:A browser ballot is stupid (Score:4, Informative)
Yes.
Step 1) Download Firefox using FTP: instructions [boutell.com].
Step 2) Use Firefox to download Opera.
(you can probably use the method above to directly download Opera, but I'm too lazy to figure out how right now)
Re:Preening? (Score:4, Informative)
Main Entry:
preen [merriam-webster.com]
Function:
verb
Etymology:
Middle English prenen, alteration of proynen, prunen, from Anglo-French puroindre, proindre, from pur- thoroughly + uindre, oindre to anoint, rub, from Latin unguere -- more at purchase, ointment
Date:
14th century
transitive verb
...
3: to pride or congratulate (oneself) for achievement
Signed,
Merriam-Webster
Re:HTML 5 Canvas tag (Score:5, Informative)
[Canvas] is already supported on Firefox and Webkit-based browsers. This is the most practical advantage it has -- availability in the field.
Except SVG is already supported on Opera, Firefox and Webkit, too, and even in IE via plugins.
The killer app for SVG would be if someone developed an artist-centric development tool like Flash.
Gloating? Really? (Score:4, Informative)
That's funny, because I actually had to deploy some SVG-based webapp last week. Specifically, it was outputting scatter plots with some few thousand data points. I tested SVG performance in Opera, Safari, Chrome Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer with Adobe SVG Viewer 3.03, 6 (alpha? pre-alpha? No one knows...), and the RENESIS plugin for IE.
Here are the results:
Opera - Easily the slowest of the bunch. Took about 15 seconds to render the graph.
Safari - Got confused about the app's filetype and kept trying to save it.
Chrome - Pretty fast, took about 2 seconds to render the graph but strangely starts rendering the datapoints in small chunks after (it'd draw the first half of one series, the the next half, then the next series, etc).
Firefox - Not much faster than Opera.
Adobe SVG 3.03 - About as fast as Chrome but was missing some features, like changing the cursor display when you hover over interactivity points.
Adobe SVG 6 - The snappiest of the lot, and supports the cursor changing feature, but likes to draw erroneous datapoints. Too bad Adobe dropped development on this.
RENESIS - A little faster than Chrome but not as fast as SVG Viewer 6. No errors and wasn't missing any features as far as I could tell. This is what I ended up going with.
So, why is Opera "gloating" over IE when they themselves has a LOT of work to do on their own SVG support, to say the least, while there are free plugins for IE that pretty much trounce the competition? Does IE really need built-in SVG support when this is the case? Maybe it needs built-in flash support too?
To me, this just looks like another case of unwarranted smugness over "omg IE doesn't conform to standards!!1".
Re:Apple and Linux, too? (Score:5, Informative)
Apple certainly won't be doing it anytime soon, since they emphasize integration between programs so much.
On my Mac, if I click on the "Apple" menu (Note for Windows users: its a bit like the "Start" menu) and choose "Mac OS X Software" I go to an Apple-run software catalog website. Number 7 on the "Most Popular Downloads" list is currently Firefox [apple.com]. Number 1 if you go to the Internet Utilities section - Opera is down at 14. You have to dig a bit to find Camino, Flock, Omniweb and Seamonkey, but they're there.
Not exactly a "browser ballot", but all on an official Apple site one click away from the desktop, so its hardly a Safari lock in.
Re:Will a ballot really be that effective? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, and the one with "Internet" in the name is guaranteed to be chosen by the clueless, 100% of the time.
After all, they don't want to go to the Opera, they want to go to the Internet.
Re:Gloating? Really? (Score:2, Informative)
I know I'll be moderated down for saying this, but this is the exact reason Flash [blashpemy!] is still the choice for this kind of stuff. You can do it in SVG, something that kinda works across browsers and often requires a plugin anyway, or you can do it in Flash, which is rendered faster, works the same across browsers and platforms and it's already installed!
The same goes for HTML5/Video (how many content providers will want to encode to both H264 and OGG rather than just to H264 and use a flash player?) and web fonts? (TTF vs. EOT).
But this is Slashdot. Microsoft is the devil, Adobe/Flash is evil, Opera is slightly less evil, Apple is good and Google is a saint.
Re:A browser ballot is stupid (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft isn't forcing anyone to use Internet Explorer.
Har! That's a joke, right?
Nope. It's a troll, a distraction, from the old troll Bonch.
The illegal part in the EU and the US comes in by MS illegal bundling MSIE [usdoj.gov] with its desktop OS monopoly. MS executives have been illegally leveraging the desktop monopoly to cause problems in the audio/video markets, then productivity software markets and the browser markets. Adding a second, third or fourth browser to the mix does nothing to address the bundling or illegal tying. Only removing MSIE from the OEM distributions of desktop systems will do that. And that's something Bill's astroturfers try to distract from.
M$ boosters and users are causing harm to your nation, your economy. Where is your national defense? How many have to lose their jobs first?