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."
Apple and Linux, too? (Score:4, Insightful)
MS has to do this because of monopoly concerns... Apple certainly won't be doing it anytime soon, since they emphasize integration between programs so much. Linux? Sorry, Opera, but your software isn't open source.
It doesn't really matter (Score:5, Insightful)
It will put the Opera name in front of millions of users who probably never heard of it
And the majority of users will simply ignore it and click on a name they've heard of. If Opera doesn't come up with some sort of educational advertising campaign, having this choice in Windows 7 won't make a damned bit of difference in the usage of their browser.
Re:HTML 5 Canvas tag (Score:2, Insightful)
Canvas will probably see more use for interactive stuff, but I don't think vector graphics programs are going to start storing images as a series of javascript instructions.
Re:It doesn't really matter (Score:4, Insightful)
It will put the Opera name in front of millions of users who probably never heard of it
And the majority of users will simply ignore it and click on a name they've heard of.
Ahh, but some small number of users will choose Opera for one reason or another and that benefits Opera. And some other subset of users will choose anything other than IE which means they'll be running a standards compliant browser that is mostly interoperable with Opera and thus Web developers are more likely to use said standards which means users who do use Opera will have a better Web experience. Further, every user who isn't using IE is learning they have choices, which might mean they actually look into other browsers and start to decide which to use based upon actual merits of the browser.
Microsoft should just fork Firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
1) They can spend a lot less money developing their own competing product that's slowly hemorrhaging market-share regardless of what they do. There's not much money in the browser market anyway and they can make a few modifications to point the default search at Bing instead of Google.
2) They get all of the wonderful extensions that Firefox already has. In fact, they could have a few of the really nice ones enabled by default and claim that their browser offers more protection out of the box.
3) They can use it as an excuse to get the EU off of their back. It's not longer so much their browser as it is a rebranding of some other popular browser. Hell they could even include a version of Opera that defaults its searches to Bing.
4) If there's some horrible exploit released it will hit both Firefox and IE users so it can't be said that one is more secure than the other. This even gives Microsoft the added benefit of railing against the problems of Open Source software and claiming that their own closed source solution would be better, even though that's probably not true.
5) They can stop worrying about the browser market and actually focus on something that actually matters. If all browsers are standards compliant and have similar performance, does it really matter which browser a person actually uses? 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. That battle has been lost for Microsoft and to carry it on any further is futile and counter-productive.
6) They get to talk about how they're embracing open standards and open source so that they can appear like good guys when in reality the move would give them plenty of angles to play in the future and several ways to deride open source software.
Maybe it's just me, but I can't see a reason for Microsoft not to make this transition. Formats are going to slowly slip through their fingers and they'll only end up loosing market share to superior browsers. If they would fork Firefox and toss their own interface on it so that it looks more like IE, then there's no real reason to use Firefox instead of IE. Neither is more or less secure and both would offer the exact same opportunities for customization and extension. Hell, a move like this could really hurt Mozilla which makes most of its money through their partnership with Google. Any exploits would also affect Firefox and someone is likely to have a decent patch available long before Microsoft would generally make one available. They would have to do a minimal amount of work and stay completely caught up with the Joneses.
Re:How the ballot box will work (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Will a ballot really be that effective? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, if the EU is smart, they will impose some basic rules on the ballot screen:
1) No default selection
2) Random order of displayed browser choices
3) No MS propaganda on the screen.
That should do it.
Re:How the ballot box will work (Score:2, Insightful)
Preening? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think that word means what you think it means. Given the context, I expect "gloating" or "crowing" or "celebrating" would've been a better fit.
Signed,
Your eight-grade English teacher
Re:Microsoft should just fork Firefox (Score:3, Insightful)
A browser ballot is stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Forcing a company to ship its competitors with its own product is ridiculous and anti-capitalism. Microsoft isn't forcing anyone to use Internet Explorer. People are free to download Opera on their own, and if Opera's CTO wants more people to know about Opera, they should do what a business is supposed to do and get the word out about their product, not plead to the government for assistance. If that still doesn't get more people using Opera, then that's just life.
Some people have adopted this crazy idea that there is supposed to be balanced competition at all times, enforceable by the government. The point of competition is that someone is going to end up on top, and the others have to fight to compete. The government should only be stepping in when the competitor on top is illegally affecting the market in some way, but that's not the case here. You can download Opera the moment you start up your Windows PC for the first time.
Re:Apple and Linux, too? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, Opera, but your software isn't open source.
Wait... are you implying that an OS provider should have a choice as to which browsers are included in their distribution? It's a close call, but if I had to choose between MS and the government controlling things, I wouldn't choose the government.
Irrespective for any individual's hatred of MS, this decision reeks.
Re:A browser ballot is stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft isn't forcing anyone to use Internet Explorer.
Har! That's a joke, right?
If you don't think so, then I could suggest some reading for you that would show you that Microsoft pretty much does everything it can to force people to use IE.
AFA TFA, if this ballot box can make IE + MS even more standards compliant, I say go for it. It's been the other way for far too long.
Re:Apple and Linux, too? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Will a ballot really be that effective? (Score:2, Insightful)
Please do suggest said reading... (Score:3, Insightful)
I know I might be forced as an employee at DumbCorp to use IE because they rely on ActiveX elements. But that's not Microsoft forcing me, that's DumbCorp forcing me by not hiring coders to re-write the things.
I know I might be forced by StupidBleedingCustomersBank to use IE because -they- rely on ActiveX elements. But, again, not Microsoft. Dumbass bank and most likely I'd tell them the reason I'm leaving them for another bank.
But, please, do go ahead and post a list. I'm genuinely curious.
Just to note - please prune any and all arguments regarding the -engine- (Trident etc.) being used by, say, help files or in-app browser screens. That's -not- IE the browser (and on top of that, the help file / app authors -could- have chosen to use a different format (PDF) or even html rendering engine. Just 'cos they found the one readily available on Windows easy to implement doesn't make it that Microsoft is forcing them to use it, or -me- to be subjected to it.
Thank you.
Re:It doesn't really matter (Score:1, Insightful)
The hate is due to their sense of entitlement, and the fact that for all their talk their browser still hasn't managed to attract any more than a token market share in over 12 years, whilst multiple competing browsers have out-performed it in much shorter time periods.
In any case, the "market share = we all should be using IE" argument is a red herring. IE is the de facto browser that obtains its market share purely from the fact that it's bundled. Only the alternatives to IE actually compete on quality (ie, they need to be a sufficiently better alternative for most to bother), and it's that competition which Opera fails at.
Re:It doesn't really matter (Score:1, Insightful)
On what basis do you argue that Opera would warrant inclusion in the list? After listing IE and Firefox (it's large share means inclusion is practically a given), why would Opera be given a spot on the screen over more popular alternatives like Chrome and Safari?
Re:A browser ballot is stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Step 1) Download Firefox using FTP
100 million typical PC users just heard you say "Download Firefox by re-routing warp power through the starboard deflector array and initiating an inverse tetrion pulse".
Re:A browser ballot is stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
Step 1) Download Firefox using FTP: instructions [boutell.com].
So you need to know of FTP to use anything but Explorer? So basically, anyone that doesn't already know about FTP is forced to use Explorer just because they run Windows. Is it now Microsoft's responsibility to educate the user about FTP? Of course you would say not. Me too.
Microsoft's mode of operation hinges on the strategy that the best way to win and be competitive and capitalist is to keep the customer ignorant of the options, even if those options *might* be superior. That is not winning with a superior product. That is using an *overwhelmingly* dominant market position to suppress competition by limiting (passively or not) marketplace knowledge.
To me, that is not healthy for capitalism, in fact, I don't consider it capitalism at all. It's market manipulation. Microsoft can manipulate the market in this way precisely because they are so dominant. That is why laws that enforce competition exist.
Re:SVG is GOOD for mobile and other devices ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you talking about SVG 1.2 Tiny, or SVG 1.1 Tyny? Firefox supports SVG 1.1 Tiny as well as or better than it does SVG 1.1 full. As for SVG 1.2 Tiny, parts of it conflict with CSS or the W3C DOM (as in, either impossible or very difficult to support those and SVG 1.2 Tiny at once). Still other parts are completely off-the-wall bonkers for a graphics language (an incompatible XHR replacement? A setTimeout/setInterval replacement? An incompatible window.location definition? Thankfully, the socket access APIs seem to have gotten cut at some point after all.).
Those parts of SVG Tiny 1.2 will likely never get implemented in Firefox, or any other SVG UA that actually has to deal with web content.
Re:Apple and Linux, too? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just to clarify:
* ATT, Verizon using the court system to increase profits = bad
* SCO using the court system to increase profits = bad
* Opera using the court system to increase profits = good
Re:A browser ballot is stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow there's a lot of MS supporters on this article marking everything anti MS a troll. I guess the US and the EU findings of MS being a monopoly doesn't matter to those people. Besides, your car analogy was spot on.
I'm mostly a hands off as much red tape as possible for companies but monopolies are horrid things. I spent 10 years with an ISP fighting the hassles of monopolies in the telco world. It slows innovation and it hinders the entrepreneurs of the world. Microsoft finally getting slapped for their anti-competitive behavior is good news. Just maybe the web can start improving if we're not locked into whatever MS ships as the most common denominator (Such as IE6 still being used by 15% of web users)
Re:Apple and Linux, too? (Score:4, Insightful)
That should be corrected to
Government mandated telco monopolies AT&T/Verizon using courts to get even more profit = bad
Desperate company (SCO) filing bullshit claims in a failed attempt to make money, in the process potentially hurting innovation and open source = bad
Decent IT company (Opera) that makes innovative products fighting against a recognized monopoly (MS) = good
Making money isn't a problem. MS did a lot of things right and should rake in as much as legally possible. Being a monopoly and/or stifling innovation is bad
Re:A browser ballot is stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow there's a lot of MS supporters on this article marking everything anti MS a troll. I guess the US and the EU findings of MS being a monopoly doesn't matter to those people. Besides, your car analogy was spot on.
This has been plaguing Slashdot (and a few other sites) lately, which smacks of an astro-turfing campaign.
The ratio of pro-MS moddings to anti-MS moddings is seriously out of whack with people's perception of MS as a company (most people *buy* MS products, but few actually *like* MS). This is doubly true for a site like Slashdot with its natural Linux and Apple (i.e., geek) demographics.
I'm mildly curious as to how this post will fare. This isn't a troll, nor is it flamebait. It might be insightful (but far be it for me to say so), at the very least it ought to be interesting.
Re:Ballots and ballets (Score:3, Insightful)
Assuming browser manufacturers would get the last say in how their browser is named in the list, this is trivial to correct - just list it as "Opera Web Browser".
Re:A browser ballot is stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
I think there's mainly a prevailing view that two wrongs don't make a right and that Microsoft's worst behaviour (e.g. messing up Javascript standards, etc.) is in the past (for now, at least). IE8 appears to be a pretty good browser and to handle web-standards quite well. And there are problems with not including a default browser with the OS that make the "cure" a problem in itself. Not to mention the double standard of other Operating Systems coming with default browsers of their choice (Macs, Ubuntu both do). I guess also that people no longer feel Microsoft is the unshakeable monopoly that it was. Macs keep sneaking in for a start, so people are more sympathetic to what seems mere witch-hunting.
I don't think it's a case of being pro or anti- Microsoft. I think it's just a general feeling of an old battle not justifying present wrongs.