Most Expensive JavaScript Ever? 405
ekran writes "A while ago Opera Software needed more servers. Not just a few servers either — they were planning Opera Mini's growth, implementing Opera Link, and My Opera was also growing quickly.
Most of the major hardware vendors grabbed their specs and came back with offers and sample servers shipped all the way to Oslo for testing. One of the biggest vendors, however, did not do their homework. They shipped the server, but when the Opera sysadmins started up the web-admin interface, they were met with a JavaScript statement that managed to piss off the whole company including the CTO. The script, apparently, locked out the Opera web-browser."
So who was it ?? (Score:4, Interesting)
I browsed the comments on the Opera blog and I could not find any definitive answer although HP and Dell are mentioned as possible culprits.
So who was the culprit company ??
Now that it is on /., I am sure that a member of the Slashdot intelligence community could come up with the answer. I offer a reward that will be paid in SMP currency, not in NOK. Sorry about that but I do not have any NOK at my disposal.
currencies:
NOK = Norwegian krone
SMP = Slashdot Mod Points
Re:So who was it ?? not (Score:5, Informative)
it's not HP as the link to what they actually buy shows they bought HP blades (http://www.digi.no/504306/her-kjores-egentlig-opera-mini&bid=6)
my money is going on Dell.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
var detect = navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
var ie = detect.match(/msie ([\d\.]+)/);
var moz = detect.match(/rv:([\d\.]+)/);
var fire = detect.match(/firefox\/([\d\.]+)/);
if(
( ie!=null && ie[1] >= "6.0" ) ||
( fire!=null && fire[1] >= "1.0.2" ) ||
( moz!=null && moz[1] >= "1.6" )
) {
} else {
alert( "Integrated Lights-Out 2 supports Microsoft Internet Explorer ve
Re:So who was it ?? not (Score:4, Insightful)
Stupid practice.
The reason for standards isn't to keep companies like Microsoft in check, though it has that result, and that is good for the marketplace. Standards are supposed to reduce costs. In this particular example, the way your iLO team *should* do the job is to first check for html compliance, then check for IE6 - as the largest-share noncompliant browser, then check for any other non-compliant browsers you can't afford to ignore. At that point, you have 3 ways to branch in your code - compliant, IE6, and unsupported.
The software industry is pretty nearly hopelessly fouled up, because of the lack of clear and properly used standards. A large part of this is Microsoft's fault, though not all, by any means. Unfortunately, rather than software getting better, other industries are getting worse. Customer lock-in is an addictive drug, and in the long term is probably as wise, even from a business sense.
Re:So who was it ?? not (Score:5, Informative)
Browser detection is almost always the wrong way to do things anyway. Test for existence of specific JavaScript properties/methods on objects to find out if they exist. You can generally check for IE-specific behavior just by testing for the presence or absence of JavaScript properties/methods.
if (document.getElementsByClassName) {
/* IE and old browser version */
elts = document.getElementsByClassName("resulttablerow");
} else {
}
By doing this, you won't have to do a browser check at all and your page will "just work" for any browser that implements either the standards-compliant behavior, the IE behavior, or both. You can do the same thing for CSS properties by trying to add the property, then going and trying to read it back for verification. If it isn't there when you go back and check for it, the browser doesn't support the CSS property.
I'm not familiar with Opera's behavior, but in my experience, roughly 99.5% of CSS and JavaScript that works with FireFox also works with Safari and vice versa (as long as you don't try to use bleeding edge HTML5 or CSS3 features). Any browser check that only tests for FireFox is almost always just guaranteed to make a bunch of users mad for no reason.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Does this really work? For the given example, does "if (document.gelElementsByClassName)" really mean that it will work the way you expect, for any and every implementation? That's the other part of standards - there's following the standard, and then there's "following the standard", which aren't necessarily interoperable... like Kerberos and a certain unnamed implementation.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It mostly works. It's possible, but not likely, that IE's version of getElementsByClassName does something differently than Firefox's version, but the odds are if they implemented it at all, it's correct.
There are lots of places where a check like this won't help you at all, though. For example, try to figure out which mouse button is pressed when an event occurs-- IE and Firefox/DOM use different methods: http://www.quirksmode.org/js/events_properties.html#button [quirksmode.org]
Now here comes the place where I get modded
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Then use a library like jQuery or Mootools. The overhead is low (30-50kb) and the gains in speed, cross-browser support and extra functionality (jQuery's CSS3 selectors in IE!) is enormous.
Even if you're a veteran who knows how to code your way around all the different inconsistencies, it's so much nicer to let a library handle that and focus on what you really need to get done.
You'll eventually run into something or even find that the library maybe working against you in some way. But I want to say that 99
Re: (Score:2)
Re:So who was it ?? not (Score:5, Informative)
Ah yes, Dell Remote Access Controllers have a shitty as hell web interface that only seems to work in IE. I think it's supposed to work in firefox but it never has for me.
Re:So who was it ?? not (Score:5, Informative)
Some of their ethernet switches block non-IE browsers as well. I forget which is which, but I think the PowerConnect 6000s warn about the browser but let you through, and the 5000s just refuse to let you in when running firefox on linux.
My experience is from a few years ago and perhaps they have fixed their firmware since then, I know I filed a complaint.
Re:So who was it ?? not (Score:5, Insightful)
Except the Cadillac doesn't specifically forbid Ford executives from riding in it, nor does Airborne refuse to deliver to UPS clients.
Re:So who was it ?? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So who was it ?? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So who was it ?? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So who was it ?? (Score:5, Funny)
That's what cubic football stadiums are for.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Remind me, exactly how many cubic footballs fit into one stadium?
Re:So who was it ?? (Score:5, Funny)
volkswagen beetles are a measure of volume
football stadiums are a measure of area
round trips to the moon is a measure of lenght
parsecs are a measure of time
shitloads are a mesure of weight
bajillions are a dimensionless quantity
and the measure of power is a universal constant: 1.21 jigawatts
ATD (Score:5, Funny)
What's the current SMP/NOK exchange rate?
The same as the current SMP/ATD (Alterian Dollar) exchange rate. The problem here is the Vogons mod everything down except their own poetry.
Vogon Poetry (Score:5, Insightful)
You asked for it, ladeees and gentlemen! It may not be that grand masterpiece, Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in my Armpit One Midsummer Morning, but I think this little joy from Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz should be enough to warm your hearts:
Oh freddled gruntbuggly, ...[drowned out by moaning and screaming]
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits
On a lurgid bee
That mordiously hath bitled out
Its earted jurtles
Into a rancid festering
Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustles
Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrurts
And living glupules frart and slipulate
Like jowling meated liverslime
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes
And hooptiously drangle me
With crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon
See if I don't.
Cheers!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Good thing you had that key at the end. I thought I would be payed in time on your server farm, not some silly mod points.
I'm not answering you now :-P
For those new here... (Score:5, Funny)
currencies:
NOK = Norwegian krone
SMP = Slashdot Mod Points
The uncyclopedia will explain:
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The biggest failing of Slashdot Karma is the resolution is so low its effectively useless. Most people's Karma immediately shoots to Excellent and stays there for eternity or to "shitty troll" or whatever is the lowest rung of ./ Karma.
Cmdr Taco made an enormous strategic blunder not making Karma a numeric value with no upper or lower limit cuz then it would be a ginormous horse race among karma whores to be #1 and trolls to be dead last. Comments from the #1 karma whore would be godlike in their powers.
Re:So who was it ?? (Score:5, Interesting)
I browsed the comments on the Opera blog and I could not find any definitive answer although HP and Dell are mentioned as possible culprits.
Funny story. I have a large Dell LTO tape array, and it has a web-based management tool. Part of the management web pages generate on-the-fly images in XBM [74.125.47.132] format. IE had a security flaw in the parsing of XBM images, and since XBM images are so rare, Microsoft simply disabled XBM images entirely.
So, I am forced to use firefox to manage the tape array.
Re:So who was it ?? (Score:5, Funny)
That must be terrible, being forced to use a non-broken browser. I'm so sorry!
Re: (Score:2)
What is the NOK (norwegian krone)/NOK (Nokia shares) exchange ratio?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So who was it ?? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If it uses a plugin (active X / nsplugin ) to do some of the work. Think of the linux complaint about flash not being 64bit (there is an 'alpha' version now, but there wasn't for a long time.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
How else are they going to make the cool intro screen with flying text and their logo that links to main.htm?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh.
Norwegian GDP (PPP) per capita: $55,200 (2008 est.)
US GDP (PPP) per capita: $47,000 (2008 est.)
There's much more to an economy than net output.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah. Like huge oil production for a country with a small population. Rumor has it, if every Norwegian were given their "fair share" of the oil production when they hit 18, every single one of them would be a millionaire. If this is true or not, I don't know. But just comparing GDP from two so different economies is almost as pointless as comparing net output.
As a Swede though, I ask myself, what would their GDP be if it wasn't for the oil (and, erm, cod) and would they again be 'little brother'? =)
More servers (Score:5, Funny)
I think they still do.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Why do you think they put a server into every Opera browser?
HP probably (Score:4, Interesting)
Had the same thing on the webadmin interface for one of their ILO's. Or more precise, it wouldn't work on anything but IE. Hadn't seen that for quite a while.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Why "fire" and "moz", not "gecko"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If it is intentional, then my question becomes as follows: Why would a reasonable site owner only want to support Firefox?
You're assuming "reasonable."
The thought process (if it may be dignified with such a term) goes something like this, I suspect. These are sites which, until fairly recently, only supported IE. The developers only ever use IE, it's all they know, and they don't really want to know about anything else. As far as they're concerned, the big blue E is the internet. Yes, there are Windows
I'm more curious who did their QA (Score:3, Insightful)
And if it was outsourced.
Re:I'm more curious who did their QA (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget this was demo hardware from companies responding to a tender. At this point Opera was still evaluating the hardware. Two things seem to have happened:
- the software was implemented with an abort for Opera, either because QA was not done for Opera.
- the vendor didn't appear to know what the primary product of Opera was, and what the browser requirements of their admin interface were.
While the first scenario is bad enough, the second is just unforgivable, since it shows to the customer that the vendor apparently made no attempt to know who their customer was.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Third answer, they ran into opera bugs and didnÂt have the finding to spend the necessary time to work around them.
I recently had to do a degrated version of a site for opera because I ran into bugs and speedbumps not easily fixable and fixed
by opera already in their alpha version of version 10.
Sorry to say that while opera in its 9.x incarnation does not have many bugs it has some and some of them are really severe and not easy to bypass
because opera does not allow conditional css includes like ie doe
let me take a guess (Score:4, Interesting)
Remember kids, IBM Hardware = Good. IBM Software = Kill it with fire.
Re: (Score:2)
"Storage Configuration Manager" sounds like something from their hardware division.
Re:let me take a guess (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm going to take a stab in the dark and guess it was IBM.
The IBM Blade Chassis management software works perfectly fine in Opera with no popups or warnings at all. It's actually nicer to use in Opera than Firefox.
From TFA, the actual code... (Score:5, Informative)
if (is.opera)
{
window.location.href="config/error.htm";
}
Conspiracy theorists unite!
Re:Warn and continue (Score:4, Informative)
Got a file stuck? Open a cmd prompt, run 'handle filename' to get a list of file handles for that file. then 'handle -c <HEXHANDLE> -p <PID>'. There ya go, file is forced closed and you can delete it.
Re:Warn and continue (Score:4, Informative)
Or just use Unlocker: http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/ [ccollomb.free.fr] , it catches failed attempts to delete/move files and pops up a window showing you what's locking the file.
Like every other Opera user (Score:5, Funny)
I'm going to go out on a limb, and say.... (Score:5, Funny)
Not that Opera doesn't have serious funding... but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this javascript would be more expensive, most of the time
.
.
if (is.explorer)
{
window.location.href="config/error.htm";
}
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not that Opera doesn't have serious funding... but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this javascript would be more expensive, most of the time . .
if (is.explorer) { window.location.href="config/error.htm"; }
It would cut our UI development time by at least half!
It typically comes down to developing the UI once for IE, and once for all others.
At least someone knew what Opera was. (Score:5, Funny)
The British cartoonist Giles is said to have made himself practically sacking proof by one of his cartoons. The Duke of Edinburgh remarked that "The [Daily, owned by Beaverbrook] Express is a bloody awful newspaper."
Giles promptly did a cartoon of his employer being led off in chains by Yeoman Warders, watched by the Duke, with the caption
If large corporations would only use common sense, (Score:5, Insightful)
This nonsense would never happen.
I started as a web developer in the mid-90s. I know how hard it is to develop for multiple browsers and versions. When Netscape and Internet Explorer 4.0 came out, they quickly gained the majority of market share. Many colleagues did not want to keep their sites compatible with 3.x browsers because they felt it was a pain. I would always hear the sentence, "They only have a 5% market share."
To me this was and still is a ridiculous attitude. You're OK randomly raising your middle finger to 1 in 20 potential customers visiting your site? What if that 1 in 20 is the wrong person? Obviously, in this case, they definitely raised their middle finger to the wrong people.
But this gets even worse, because Opera is not obsolete and is fairly standards-compliant. To top it off, the vendor specifically broke the web site for the browser they were too lazy to design for, rather than doing something that makes sense -- like investing time and money to reach a small but tech-savvy segment of the population.
All told -- shamefully -- it makes me feel a little Schadenfreude that it bit them in the rear.
You think the code is bad? Take a look at page 5! (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.digi.no/504306/her-kjores-egentlig-opera-mini&bid=5 [www.digi.no]
Notice anything odd about the large 48v DC power cables? Like the '+' and '-'... on the wrong lines...
Forget a javascript issue, that there is a pretty huge installation issue.
-Rick
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe that's why the page is in this weird language...
Re:You think the code is bad? Take a look at page (Score:5, Informative)
48V DC is an odd beast, with odd standards going back to the early days of the Bell System.
In a 48V DC system, the positive side is grounded. This is to prevent corrosion on phone lines in the ground that happens more readily if the system is negative ground.
Since positive is ground, the "live" wire is negative, or -48VDC. Since this is the wire you don't want to lick, or allow to touch the chassis when powered, it is colored red in many deployments. The black wire is ground, you can lick* it all you want.
* -48V DC won't really sting you much if you just touch it unless your hands are wet or you touch it with a wet part of you like your tongue.
Well I learned something new today (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks for that, now I feel kinda like an idiot. At least I am now a smarter idiot than I was half an hour ago.
-Rick
Don't do it like this, please, outside telecoms (Score:4, Informative)
(b)If deploying a system like this, IEC says the positive wire should be BLUE and the negative should be GREY. If the wires are completely isolated (i.e. neither is grounded or connected to PE) the positive wire should be BROWN. In the US (Opera isn't in the US) the wiring convention is WHITE for the return and BLACK for the negative wire. Just DON'T ever use red and black and reverse their normal functions. 48V can make very impressive arcs.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, that's correct. Black indicates ground, and red indicates power (which is -48V). This is a -48V system, so it's backwards from what you're used to looking at.
Old browser == old PC == miser (Score:2, Insightful)
[Old versions of popular browsers] "only have a 5% market share."
To me this was and still is a ridiculous attitude. You're OK randomly raising your middle finger to 1 in 20 potential customers visiting your site?
They probably did a business decision that people in the last 5 percent to upgrade their web browsers buy less. You see, older browser versions tend to run better on obsolete PCs, and people who don't replace an obsolete PC are probably misers [wikipedia.org]: people who stretch their dollar so far that they are less likely to demand your luxury product. Case in point: PCs running IE 6 or Firefox 2 are likely to be at least eight years old.
Re: 5% (Score:3, Interesting)
In general, not supporting a 5% market segment because it would cost too much development effort may be a reasonable decision.
In this case, the real WTF was submitting the product in a bid for the vendor of said 5% market segment. And simply throwing an error if Opera is detected. That's like opening a business in a black neighborhood and putting up a sign that says "Niggers not allowed" ;-)
I want to know who the vendor was! (Score:2)
I've been a Dell user for a long time but I have never used one that shipped with a web interface. But the specs probably called for some pretty special stuff and it may not have been loaded with Windows at all. So I just have to know. Who was it? Was it my Dell? I could sort of believe it if it was Dell... sometimes the people there leave me scratching my head wondering what they were thinking and if they listened to me at all. But my preference for Dell is due in large part to my experience with HP
Headline (Score:2, Insightful)
Heh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Classic case of a company not knowing what their product is used for.
Opera != Work Browser.
Opera == Bestest P0rn Browser ! Swift image resizing, superior mouse gestures, and remaining responsive even after a gazillion tabs are opened.
It's like turning up with your purpose-built race car at the city center, and whining about speed humps.
Ah, memories of days past.... (Score:5, Funny)
Am I the only one... (Score:2, Insightful)
I just visited opera.com with Firefox (Score:4, Funny)
... and it worked. It displays just fine. Are they trying to make their competitors look good or something?
Re:I just visited opera.com with Firefox (Score:4, Informative)
Opera web site is actually a pretty impressive piece of code. It has all that nifty stuff like drop-down menus, and yet it also renders perfectly in Lynx (with menus as lists) - disable CSS and JavaScript in your browser, and you'll see. Meanwhile, it validates to XHTML 1.0 Strict [w3.org].
It shouldn't be surprising, however, given that Opera guys are pretty keen on all Web-related standardization efforts - they've played a big role in initiating HTML5 effort (and are still very active in its development), before that they've participated in past W3C HTML/CSS standardization efforts, and they push for open standards (such as SVG) otherwise.
Technically it's correct behaviour (Score:3, Interesting)
I've seen Opera do some funny things with some RIA's I've written, the same code works on webkit, trident, and gecko with no problems, but Opera does some funny things. My code is probably wrong(it's a hack job on some badly designed pre-existing code, not a clean rewrite), but nevertheless it works fine on everything else.
Seeing that I basically have 3 options.
Any of these three options can be correct, depending on the needs of the business and the severity of the problem. In all reality, no matter how big this guy thinks there server order was, it was probably only a drop in the bucket overall, and in all reality no one was fired and nothing really happened, they lost a sale. They lost it on something stupid, but it's only one sale no matter how big it is(and it likely wasn't really all that big).
Opera is not infallible, they've come up with a few fairly innovative design ideas, but they've always been crippled to a certain extent by ideology. Part of why Opera was and is so fast, and so light is that it is basically incredibly anal about exactly correct HTML syntax. In theory this is a good idea, but in practice it means that Opera has been plagued by pages which don't render correctly for it's entire lifespan. A lot of the web is sort of kludged together because the standards defining how to do things properly are always 2-3 years behind what people are actually doing, a lot of WYSIWYG editors spit out bad code, hand coders make mistakes. All these things happen, and Opera has never been even the remotest bit forgiving(oddly enough firefox is by far the most forgiving, substantially more so than IE) of any of it, which is one of the prime reasons IMO why it never really gets much market penetration despite generally speaking having most of the innovative web ideas before the competition. The fact that until fairly recently it was ad driven or cost money, isn't open source, and doesn't come installed on anyone's PC are of course others. There's really no need to switch to another browser which results in more broken pages, isn't free as in speech, and until very recently wasn't even free as in beer, no mater how innovative it is.
Re:Technically it's correct behaviour (Score:4, Insightful)
So basically, you admit your code is probably wrong, but you can't be bothered to fix it? Fine, but don't complain when your code stops working or fails in someone's browser and you lose business as a result.
The way I see it, this is only incidentally a story about stupidity. Not working in a standards-compliant web browser is a good indicator of poor web application quality. The cited behavior of deliberately failing in Opera would make me unlikely to pick the product, even though I'm a Firefox user.
Re:ok so the company lost money... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ok so the company lost money... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:ok so the company lost money... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Tying up a loose end so you don't have to test for compatibility?
Re: (Score:2)
So that you never get users attempting to use an unsupported browser, and subsequently gaining a bad opinion of your software when it fails to run smoothly.
Not that I'm condoning any company refusing to support one of the major standards-compliant browsers - but if they're going to, this is probably the safest way to do it.
Re:ok so the company lost money... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is common to deliberately add a check that breaks the whole stuff when some 'unexpected' condition happens. You know, assertions.
Which one is better? Not working at all, or seems like working but a not-so-commonly-used-some-sort-of-admin-command somehow gets screwed and the web browser fires a do-not-touch-this-unless-you-want-complete-meltdown-command because there was some minor difference on the javscript engine parsing some parameters? Yeah, can be extremely rare, but if it isn't tested, nobody can be sure.
Obviously, the best thing to do would be to test all possible conditions. However, if you can't, then there can be three choices:
1) Leave it to the users, Nah, I'm not gonna test it.
2) Launch a big warning message and blame the users if something goes wrong, or
3) Make it never work when some unknown condition is reached.
Number 1 is perfectly reasonable when the worst consequence isn't so bad. For example, a web forum interface, or things like Facebook. Maybe number 2 would be better in most cases. But, if an untested scenario may cause huge, irrecoverable damage, number 3 may be the best choice. (You should remember that the product in question was the server management console, which can bring the whole datacenter down when things go wrong.)
My opinion is that, deliberately excluding Opera was a quite reasonable idea. Trying to sell a product that deliberately excludes Opera (web browser) to Opera (the company) was the stupid idea.
Re:ok so the company lost money... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're missing one obvious factor. There are a lot of great browsers written using pre-existing code. Omniweb is a great Mac browser that uses Webkit for HTML, and Spidermonkey for Javascript. The behavior of that javascript is known, but browser detection routines for every minor browser made of major software is ridiculous. You write based on standards, and test in a few major browsers. #2 is the only option. NEVER BLOCK A USER.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The device we are currently releasing deliberately checks for and disables MSIE.
The reason is the code uses live embedded SVG visualization of the process which MSIE is simply not capable of.
There are no easy and simple alternatives (don't get me started on Flash), and the visualization part is an essential part of the user interface, with various modules clickable to change their state in real time. Also, the SVG files can be directly used as images in the documentation, being 100% valid pictures of projec
Re:ok so the company lost money... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As Opera has been complaint to most standards for years, while it took other browsers years to do the same, it is the websites that have the incompatibilities, not Opera.
Driving your nice little environment degrading Toyota Prius to Germany and finding out they have trimmed all branches of trees so that only VW, BMW, Merc and Audi can pass through without being scratched would probably upset you just as much as your statement would to any Opera supporters. And you would not be blaming Toyota, you'd be blami
OT: Slashdot Achievement (Score:3, Funny)
Fantastic! I nominate yours for a Slashdot Achievement (which if they don't have then they certainly *should* have!)
Most Tortured Car Analogy of the Year ;)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
since they are insignificant in the browser market I'd probably do the same thing.
Then you're a fucking moron.
If you were running a store with a physical presence, would you also ban customers who drove Toyotas, telling them "Toyota is insignificant, and therefore you are not allowed to shop at my store. Come back when you have a Ford or GM"?
Re: (Score:2)
If you were running a store with a physical presence, would you also ban customers who drove Toyotas, telling them "Toyota is insignificant, and therefore you are not allowed to shop at my store. Come back when you have a Ford or GM"?
If your store sells parts for Ford or GM vehicles but doesn't carry any for Toyota, and a Toyota needs special parking provisions, such a policy might appear reasonable at first glance.
Re: (Score:2)
But no one driving a Toyota would need spare parts anyway - especially not from Ford or GM...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, couldn't resist
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If I'm working on a project with a limited budget and you were going to tell me that enabling support for Opera was going to add even 5% to my total costs, I'd cut it in a heartbeat, becau
Re: (Score:2)
OK, let's assume that you would want to rent out parking space to a local shop. It might make sense to ban brand X cars, if they would require extra wide and long spaces. But if you really want to sell your parking spaces to a brand X car shop, this strategy would be full of fail.
Re:ok so the company lost money... (Score:4, Insightful)
Though to be fair, if you're the kind of person who a) ows a Rolls Royce Phantom (or a Bugatti Veyron, or a Mercedes-MacLaren F1, or...) and b) shops at 7-11, you probably qualify for the Disabled spaces... Mentally.
Re:ok so the company lost money... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you hire a good developer your site should work for all browsers. It's not fucking rocket science.
Re:ok so the company lost money... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you hire a good developer your site should work for all browsers. It's not fucking rocket science.
more to the point, try doing less 'fancy schmancy stuff' and you'll find that simple web forms and UI's work JUST FINE with all browsers. even lynx.
I am not a fulltime web devel (I write software, not web pages) but I have been able to get some web sites up and running that use the form/cgi paradigm and they work across ALL browsers. what's not to work?
oh, you want flash and blinking and 'as you type' stuff that happens?
go elsewhere, then. go write some stupid windows program if you want to 'act that way'.
but that crap does not belong on serious web apps. 'web masters' (what a joke..) have ruined the web with all the blink/fancy crap they try to pull off.
the web was designed so that you would NOT have to check (!) what browser you are sending data to.
why the hell SHOULD a server-side program care how you render data? you've done your job, you tagged paragraphs as paragraphs, lists as lists, images as images. you did what html was designed to do!
just annoys the hell out of me that the web was NOT designed for 'making remote word processors'. it just was never meant for such things. we have twisted this nice interoperable (key term that has lost its meaning, sadly) web into some overly complex beast that 'needs' to know how you render data. or worse, wants to TAKE PART in the font sizing, spacing, colors and so on. what a huge mistake; and its already too late to fix the web at this point; too many idiots are trying to make web programming just another bloated GUI.
in a way, I wish we didn't have such fat pipes or such fast processors. maybe then we'd see a return to sanity and some level of minimalism. that's what web UI's were *supposed* to be. tag the elements and stay the hell away from FORMATING.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So much wrong - I don't even know where to start.
Stuff happening "as you type" is extremely useful in some circumstances. Excluding that functionality because it might not work is a terrible idea. Updates to small portions of the page instead of waiting for a page reload is a good way to make the site work better and faster.
you don't need a windows program to make it "act that way". You just need proper feature testing and graceful fallback. Unfortunately, that takes a while to test. If a browser has o
Re: (Score:2)
The exception to this rule is my wife's office, which mandates Opera use... but it's only because they manage classical musicians and they like the name... it causes them all kinds of problems.
Dumbest reason to use a certain piece of software. ever!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
* Except Opera for devices (Score:3, Informative)
anyone that is using Opera can just switch over to another browser to perform the task at hand*.
Except Opera has a significant exclusive presence on appliances. For instance, I don't know of any other web browser that can be installed on a Wii or Nintendo DS system without a jailbreak, and there are plenty of phones for which Opera Mini or Opera Mobile is the best web browser. Or was this your * ?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
But since they are insignificant in the browser market
Opera is only insignificant in U.S. and Asia. It's much more noticeable in Europe in general, and very prominent in Eastern Europe and especially in ex-USSR / CIS countries [opera.com], topping at about 40% there (and yes, it does overtake Firefox there). Which is still a fairly large market - you might not care about it, but for a lot of companies, it would be silly to ignore it.
Re:From +1 INFORMATIVE now down to 0 INFORMATIVE? (Score:4, Funny)
I'd mod you "-1, Annoying as hell typing syntax".
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem there is that not all browsers follow the standards. Specifically the one that most people still use. Especially in Corporate environments. I know that we make sure out stuff works on IE first, Safari second, firefox third, and then Opera. Because our traffic breaks down to 88% MSIE, 8% Safari/Safari Mobile, 3% FireFox, 1% other.
We've written standards complaint code before that works in everything but MSIE. The previous guy at my post held the opinion "They should upgrade to a real browser