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Comments: 411 +- Technology: Opera CTO Thinks IE Will Be Forced To Support SVG on Sunday July 26 2009, @03:42PM
Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday July 26 2009, @03:42PM
from the even-paternalism-has-the-occasional-perq dept.
from the even-paternalism-has-the-occasional-perq dept.
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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."
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Ballots and ballets (Score:3, Funny)
It's an official opera now!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It is your regulation, Sire. No ballet in your opera.
Re:Ballots and ballets (Score:4, Interesting)
It's weird, but unless they add some kind of description along with the browser name (that is displayed by default, not after a click or mouse-over), the layperson will think it's a multiple choice test to pick the browser from the list, not which browser to use.
Because from these names (and only the names), which of these would 'seem' to be a browser:
Internet Explorer
Safari
Opera
FireFox
Chrome
From these names, the only one that people would read and link with the internet/web would be Internet Explorer.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
From these names, the only one that people would read and link with the internet/web would be Internet Explorer.
especially if they have been living on the moon for the last five years.
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.
Parent
Re: (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.
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
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Can you do it without using Internet Explorer?
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)
Parent
Re:A browser ballot is stupid (Score:4, Funny)
OK. How do I read the instructions? Lynx?
Parent
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".
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (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
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.
Parent
Re:A browser ballot is stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because there's a lot of Libertarians and free market junkies that don't understand the system they're opining about does not mean that the assumptions work. A market run in that fashion will never serve the customers well because quite frankly it's not in the best interest of a company to serve its customers well. It's always more profitable to monopolize the market space and deliver the sheer minimum quality necessary to maintain. Theoretical arguments to the contrary just don't bear out in any sort of consistent or reliable fashion.
In this case, they're not being required to ship a competitors product, they're being forced to provide a fair playing field between the different web browsers. Having dealt with the consequences of MS' incompetent browser business for some time, I think that it's naive to say the least to suggest that it's been in the interest of really anybody else. As long as there are serious constraints to switching based upon the tying of IE into the OS, there's going to be a legitimate reason to demand that MS knock it off and level the playing field.
Parent
Re:A browser ballot is stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
What does capitalism have to do with the free market?
Parent
Capitalism != Market Economy (Score:5, Interesting)
Thank you. I am so happy to see you write this, and to see Slashdot moderators recognize it as an important point.
Obviously there is significant tension between capital and the market: capitalists always want to circumvent or break the market in order to stave off competitions' downward pressure on profits. But until reading Fernand Braudel's fascinating Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century (I haven't yet finished), I was unaware how far back this antagonism went. Illegal international monopolies on vital goods were a problem in the 17th century just as they are today. In fact, opposition to the market was baked right in to the birth of capitalism.
Capitalism arose where there was a need for capital and a potential for large profits. Originally, this was in long-distance trade, where large outlays of money (for ships and goods) and long turn-around times meant both significant risk and huge profits (hundreds of percent in many cases). Capitalists were traders. They simply weren't interested in other areas: for a long time they did not expand significantly beyond a few specialized activities making up a small part of the overall economy.
The market, on the other hand, actually existed in physical marketplaces. This was where producers of goods (e.g. peasants from the countryside) came to sell them. Then traders started to interfere. These traders would go out of the city and buy up the goods directly from producers. These they would bring them into the city, where they could charge a higher price because they had consolidated the supply and thus were less vulnerable to market competition. This practice was actually illegal: governments banned it in order to protect consumers. (In those days spending over half your income on food - and still starving - was not unusual, so one can imagine why even pre-democratic monarchies would want to make sure people could afford bread.)
So yeah, capitalism is one thing. The market is another. And there is great tension between them.
The pinnacle of capitalism then, as now, was finance. As soon as they could, these early capitalists got out of trade. It was too risky, and it was socially looked down upon. They insisted on a distinction between ordinary merchants, who actually did the work, and more prestigious deal-makers who only provided money. The moment they could, they placed themselves in the second group where they could make tremendous low-risk profits in finance, and pretend that neither they nor their ancestors had ever been merchants at all.
Parent
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.
Re: (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 Firefo
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
® -- Close enough?
Here's a handy, dandy reference page [ascii.cl]. Have fun...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What are you talking about? I use Unicode all the æ±åOE--å...çSæ-ç'åå¦ããï¼OE2åæãRubyã'ç"ããYåYæoeçsããf--ãfããf©ãfYãfãã'å...ä®ç'ç®ãã--ã¦ãããèç®--æ©YæSè"è...ã'ç®æOEã(TM)ãYãã®èç¾
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.
Parent
Re:Apple and Linux, too? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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.
Parent
Re: (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: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
Parent
Re:Apple and Linux, too? (Score:4, Interesting)
True, but Apple takes a different approach. It's never going to be truly dominant because its business model, or maybe I should say "company culture", is that of a fashion company. They're selling a brand that people buy and identify with, not unlike clothing brands (I'd cite a few, but I go around in shorts and flip-flops). They don't allow anything into their walled garden that they haven't personally approved -- see iPhone/iPod software/hardware. I'd go so far as to say that they're not *interested* in replacing Microsoft, nor getting into large corporations. Fundamentally, they're (and this will get me modded "troll") elitists. They like to have a large crowd of people to look down upon with scorn. They don't *want* to go mainstream, not in the "Windows XP" sense of mainstream.
Now go ahead, flame me to bits.
Parent
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: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.
Parent
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.
Parent
How the ballot box will work (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Windows Setup, Screen 25:
As per litigation by the European Union, please select your internet browser:
[ ] (large IE logo here) MICROSOFT(tm) INTERNET EXPLORER(tm) 8(tm) — The NEWEST, most FASTEST web browser from MICROSOFT(tm)! See all your favorite web pages load up to fourteen hojillion percent faster than ever before with brand new MICROSOFT(tm) SUPERFAST WEB(tm) technology! Browse in the utmost of safety with the latest and bestest of MICROSOFT(tm) security! Witness the splendor of MICROSOFT(tm) STANDARDS(tm) in webpages worldwide! All available as soon as your MICROSOFT(tm) WINDOWS(tm) 7(tm) computer is set up!
[ ] Other — You will be prompted for a URL to download an executable installer for your browser.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Version numbers are especially important - users will use the one with the highest version, i.e. IE 8.
You mean Opera 9.6, right?
Ubuntu (Score:3, Funny)
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.
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 (Ap
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
5) They can stop worrying about the browser market and actually focus on something that actually matters.
There is no browser market. There are two markets that Microsoft sells to: Average home users and businesses. They build IE to cater to both of these markets, and if you are honest with yourself, you will see that they have done a pretty good job of augmenting their platform with IE. They have always been focused on "something that actually matters", which is giving their customers what works for them. Whether or not those customers are making decisions that have a positive result or negative result in
SVG is GOOD for mobile and other devices ! (Score:3, Interesting)
SVG tiny is a great thing for the whole of the web to actually support !
it enables mobile web browsers to show content regardless of the screen size and thats a GOOD THING
firefox just needs to support SVG tiny...
regards
John Jones
Re: (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 acce
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: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
Parent
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: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.
Parent
Re:Will a ballot really be that effective? (Score:5, Interesting)
but now Dell can legally add Firefox, Opera, or Chrome right to the desktop and Microsoft can't sanction them for it! That's the REAL winner, because you are correct, people tend to use what's working and OEMS are basically banned from including anything pre-installed and on the desktop except IE.
For example my Acer Aspire One shipped with the full dock of Google apps preinstalled... Desktop, Gadgets, Earth, Picassa but under Microsoft's current iron fist they can't include Chrome without backlash. In another example IBM seems to like Opera for many of it's Linux/workstation machines as it's cross-architecture/platform embedded reader... again, they could "encourage" Leneovo to add that to thinkpads for their in-house teams. HP has pretty good ties with Apple still, they could ship PCs with iTunes/Safari ready to go and connect to their home servers for backup, etc, etc.
Parent
Re:HTML 5 Canvas tag (Score:4, Interesting)
the real problem with SVG is that it's a "kitchen sink" Committee made spec. When Adobe didn't own Flash, they wanted a spec that was a "flash killer" so threw all sorts of garbage in SVG that doesn't belong there. We're in the situation where most browsers support "most" SVG, but they're all at different stages of unique implementations and don't do the SAME things right in the SAME way. I like how another poster mentioned SVG tiny and that's probably what should have been done first to make the tool usable on as many platforms as possible and to make pages compatible between browsers.
Even with HTML5 the big companies like Apple and Google are pushing how THEY want things done and have them already done, versus the guys like Opera and Firefox that want clean specs first, then implementation.
The sooner we get all the other parties supporting things is when web developers can just start ignoring IE, especially at non-work sites where people should be accessing pages from home. When people start using HTML5 at home.. then it will push into workplaces.
Parent
Not quite the same (Score:3, Interesting)
SVG is file format, where Canvas is an API. The difference is important, since without Javascript Canvas won't do anything. You can add Javascript to SVG, but that is like adding Javascript to HTML.
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
[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.
I have no idea why you aren't marked as Informative. WebKit of course has SVG built-in. Apple isn't suspending SVG with Canvas.The canvas element represents a resolution-dependent bitmap canvas, which can be used for rendering graphs, game graphics, or other visual images on the fly; and threaten SVG or any other vector based graphics, but most certainly gives a shot in the ass for bitmap'd graphics used for texture fills and more, on the fly, that could add something useful to the Web.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
According to this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_(HTML_element)#Intellectual_property_over_canvas [wikipedia.org] once canvas becomes a W3C recommendation it is licensed for HTML usage.