E-Musings Mon Immorata

Which Way to Go? Silly Putty or Web Standards Is success spelled by pulling in many different directions or by implementing a common approach. The gloves are off and the stakes just got higher. Plus more on what makes Opera such a great browser. And why Apple's Safari is not. A ream is a measure of 100 sheets used to count paper. And there are reams of paper (and its virtual equivalent: hundreds of thousands of web pages) extolling why Microsoft products are utter failures. At the height of the US Government-led antitrust lawsuit against the software giant one phrase stood out from all the chatter. Microsoft doesn't (necessarily) play to win. But it does ensure it doesn't lose. Ever. So why the hoopla over what the next avatar of Internet Explorer will? Or won't include? Or for that matter why Windows seems to get ever complex but not faster. Requires ever-increasing computing power to just get up and running. Yet each successive version seems to introduce new security vulnerabilities and issues. Yes, Microsoft could probably throw all existing code into the Pacific Ocean. Or shoot it into space on top of a massive rocket to join other space debris there. But that's not an intelligent solution. If the company did so (although we know it can't afford to and so won't) it would need a "Back To The Future" type of solution. To go back to the early-1990s and redo all those man hours spent re-developing with hindsight an operating system. So the company winds up being pulled in several different directions at the same time. Will it sucked in a developing and releasing a reasonably good product on schedule? I think it will because us Geeks, techies, anoraks and assorted brethren are not interested in browsers. Or operating systems with too many bells and whistles that they'll never use (aka the rule where 80% of all consumers at max use just 20% of available features). What they want is something that does what its supposed to do: maximize productivity. Or like Blake and gang put it: something Mom can use with ease. And that's what existing Internet Explorer does quite well. Yes, you can have lots of windows cluttering your toolbar. But my current boss is a great example of most older computer users(the largest demographic for at least another 20 years). Although I've managed to make him change to Maxthon (on account of its more 'advanced' features like pop-up blocking), he still opens multiple instances of the browser: one for each site visited. But after lots of banging on walls that left me with bruising and a bad headache, I gave up! Which brings us to Opera. What exactly does this browser want to become? Not be mind you, but become. Right now its trying to be the compleat (sic) web suite and bundles a (reasonably) standards compliant web browser, an email and news server client (M2) that's also as an RSS feed reader. Plus an IRC chat client. And did you know there's also a pretty great presentation module buried among the features. Opera Show lets you create a presentation as an HTML document; complete with images and sub-texts. Then run this just like an interactive PowerPoint presentation!

Not so long ago, the Opera Browser proudly announced it also (besides Mozilla, but not Firefox) supported the somewhat odd "LINK rel" tag. That lets web developers insert a page-specific navigation system that also be extended to pre-load linked sub-pages. However, outside of the Opera portal and a few fan site's I haven't see this one HTML 4.01-compatible tag much in evidence. But still missing is a set of very important keyboard shortcuts. First introduced in MyIE2, available in Maxthon and co-opted by Mozilla Firefox. I really miss not being able to prefix "http://" and suffix ".com", ".net" or ".org" via Ctrl+Enter, Shift+Enter and Ctrl+Shift+Enter respectively. Opera likes to search all defined sets for the right match. And often delivers the strangest results. And the small-screen rendering feature is just right for web developers reviewing if web sites are compatible with mobile platforms. This re-arranges pages just as they would display on a tablet PC or mobile phone. And the results can vary from the sublime to the ridiculous. Begin your journey by downloading the latest Opera 8.01 Preview 1 Build 7583 then compare the My Opera portal with the Microsoft web site). Hey! Say you. Opera 8 was released just last week. So how come there's an update available already? Well, this was needed to fix some rather nasty bugs. Like a crash that occurred when clicking links. Resolving a memory leak related to XMLHttpRequest (which prevented me from accessing the GMail home page). An ability to disable SVG animations from the pop-up Control Panel. Several SVG-related problems. Better handling of the HTTP 204 status code. And an annoying UTF-8 BOM character glitch that prevented setup files from installing. In 30 Days To Becoming An Opera Lover, author Tim Luoma introduces the many facets of Opera in an easy to assimilate style for lay persons. The articles so far cover General Preferences, Wand Preferences, Web page preferences, Advanced Preferences I, II, III & IV, Fit to Window Width, Advanced Control with UA.INI, User JavaScript, Opera Mail (M2) and RSS and Atom. Tim's on vacation but will continue the series after May 12, 2005 And while discussing web standards, the very company that pioneered the GUI- (gooey) controlled operating system has developed a browser that only conforms to standards in its developer's mind. Apple's Safari browser doesn't support several useful HTML tags, CSS formatting or even JavaScripting. Of course, the support seems to exist according to the documentation. But unlike open-source where available features are often far ahead of the written specifications, here its the opposite. My web development company discovered this gem the hard away after a client complained rather vociferously that the web site we'd developed plain didn't work on their Mac. Instance #1 was an elaborate addiction recovery tracking solution developed in ASP.Net. It seems that there are several .Net controls that won't work in Safari because of supposed security issues with the underlying JavaScripting used. And this data nugget was contained in a support group. Not in the browser's documentation. Instance #2 is more recent. A motel web site with several tourism images needed explanatory text visible on roll over that could also be spidered by search engine bots. The site was created using pure CSS which was a first for my company where aforementioned boss is quite set in his ways; and tends to influence web development direction. The site validated. And the rollovers appeared on every browser. Except Safari. Much gnashing of teeth and wails (mostly from client followed). It was then I discovered that Safari explicitly supports the IMG ALT tag. But to ensure the page validates according to W3C.org, you are supposed to replace all ALT with TITLE tags. Bah! What hum bug! And while researching the tag issue before putting this column to bed. I discovered there are several interesting discussions about how Safari's developers are attempting to rewrite web standards. Instead of ensuring their product delivers on existing standards. The Firefox nightlies are coming along nicely. And the latest crop not only support SVG, but also improve web page cacheing with an Opera-like Fast Forwards and Rewind feature. I'm really looking forward to the forthcoming Firefox 1.1 version. There's also a new Maxthon 1.2.5 that fixes a a bug in the Web Dialog blocker and add language support. There's also a new Total Commander 6.52 that adds IPv6 support and "fixes some other issues" that's developer double speak for closing out a warez Key file crack that's pretty hot on the Internet. That's it from me. See you next time. Until then stay safe! Click Here To Send Feedback