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Jon Chappell

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Opera sues Microsoft over Internet Explorer

Opera Software is suing Microsoft over Internet Explorer, claiming that it is anti-competitive to integrate the browser with the operating system. That claim has been made many a time. However, they are also claiming that Microsoft deliberately flouted web standards in order to discourage interoperability. I would agree with this. Firefox is my primary browser so I generally design for that, but the site is near-identical in standards-compliant browsers such as Safari. Try it in Internet Explorer and it looks completely different.

The access logs for the site say that the majority of visitors are on a Mac, so wouldn't be able to use IE anyway - no bad thing, and the majority of visits come from Safari, with Firefox at second place and IE at third. I don't feel that it is a worthwhile use of my time to create code that will detect IE and offer a site specifically tailored for only the third popular browser used to navigate to this site, especially as the incompatibilities are entirely Microsoft's fault.

Opera says that it would like the European Commission to force MS to comply with standards. I don't know if that is possible but then again, European courts takes a sterner stance on Microsoft than their US counterparts, so it is possible. Either way, I am hoping that this will generate negative press for IE and alert people to the fact that there are alternatives.

I would personally recommend Firefox for speed, stability, standards compliance, ease of use (I find IE7's interface really confusing) and above all, extensions. Extensions are small pieces of software that perform tasks. For example, I have extensions for removing ads, displaying page ranks and for counting words in text areas (very useful when filling data into forms with minimum or maximum character limits). There are extensions for pretty much anything.

I also recommend Safari. Safari is VERY fast. It doesn't support extensions unfortunately but it's an Apple product so there is a lot of attention to detail. It's mainly the small details that cause people to like it so much, like the fact that you can resize text boxes in forms so that you can see what you're typing, Snapback mode that lets you easily return to your search results, and an advanced RSS reader that lets you filter and re-order the posts in the list.

I have also heard good things about Camino but have never used it myself. Firefox and Safari are compatible with both Mac and Windows but Camino is Mac-only.

Internet Explorer users: you might think your current browser offers you everything you could want but give one of the browsers listed above a try and you will find a lot of things that you can't live without.

[via BBC News]

Categories: Off-Topic
Post ID: 108Posted Monday December 17 2007 1:30 PM

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