opera, harnessing blog power

the opera browser recently came out with version 9.0, and is working towards the release of a 9.01 updated release. they are using this blog i link to, to test new beta versions every week. they have been employing this strategy since february 13th of this year, about 5 months ago. and their browser is not only the only browser that runs on windows and passes the acid2 test, but it is now working on the vast majority of websites. i have been trying it out. of course, firefox and internet explorer still both work on more web sites than opera, but it used to be that like, half the websites on the internet didn’t work in opera. that fraction is steadily decreasing. and practically everything works in firefox now, as well as internet explorer 7. and it would be ridiculous for something to not work in internet explorer 6, since that is what the majority of people still use. anyway, all of the websites i regularly use work perfectly in opera now, except for one, which is a real dramatic turnaround from a year or two ago. and since opera is the fastest browser, that is another selling point. but what is really amazing now is how fast they are innovating, because of this new blog. of course, the people working on internet explorer 7 have had a blog longer, but do they post new beta versions every week? nope. they only post one every few months, and they are not at all as good at responding to user feedback as the folks at opera. the folks at opera actually listen to their customers and what people comment, and do what the people ask. what do the folks making internet explorer do? see for yourself. people complain about the same things again and again, and they never get fixed. like the new-looking user interface that nobody likes, and its inability to be customized at all. nothing but complaints about it, but do they fix it? hell no. that is not the way to do software development. i just wish blogger.com worked in opera... writing this blog in opera is such a pain, since nothing works right. this is really more the fault of the people who run blogger.com than the opera browser’s software developers. i think perhaps this is because google has chosen the side of mozilla firefox in the latest round of the browser wars, and google might not want opera to be undermining firefox, perhaps. who knows? but it is a shame opera still cannot be used for blogger.com, because blogger.com still uses browser-specific code (though, in their defense, at least they support both internet explorer and mozilla firefox, instead of just 1). i would really like to be able to use opera as a general-purpose browser. oh, and i have uninstalled internet explorer 7 beta 3, and am back to internet explorer 6 sp2, which i never use. it turns out internet explorer is very tightly integrated into the operating system, with some .dll files used by both internet explorer and the rest of the operating system, and a part of both of them. so if you upgrade internet explorer, it upgrades those .dll files. which is kind of bad, because then your system is unstable and it can break other applications. and it messes up stuff in the registry. i found out how messed up this was when i tried to run a standalone version of internet explorer 6. internet explorer 7 beta 3 had screwed up all the settings so prior versions don’t work anymore! so i got rid of that crap. it simply does not make any sense to have any part of your operating system be a beta version. that shit is too important to leave to chance. and as for internet explorer 6? it’s almost as ancient as internet explorer 5, or netscape 4. does anyone use netscape 4 anymore? no, so why should anyone use internet explorer 6? seriously... we just need to get these blogger.com folks on the team. i would like to have a viable alternative to firefox, but it seems opera is not quite there yet. not because it is opera’s fault... it is the webmasters’. but opera is doing its best to catch up, with this blog. and when it comes to features, of course opera is ahead of the pack, and everyone else is copying features opera had for years. opera needed those features to compensate for the fact that it could not display a large percentage of webpages correctly. now, everyone is starting to have the same features, in all the different browsers, and the webpages are starting to all be made to work in any of the modern browsers. so these web browsers, which were once so completely different, are now converging towards something similar. all of the old oddities about opera’s font rendering that i used to notice are now gone, and the websites that used to look totally messed up because of this are now finally working! i don’t know exactly when they fixed that stuff, but i think it might have to do with the fact that my computer and my parents’ computer both have over a thousand fonts, including many that were converted from mac fonts to pc fonts. the ones that were converted from mac fonts to pc fonts looked messed up in opera, but not in internet explorer or firefox, until recently. now they are working just as well in opera. pretty amazing stuff. the reason i converted all the mac fonts to pc fonts was, my dad wanted a font called palatino on all the pc’s he used, but that font only comes with macs, so i got a program to convert fonts, and i figured, i might as well go for it and convert all of them, since some of those mac fonts are pretty neat and might be cool to use on a pc. and they worked in every program except opera... well, they mostly worked... actually they do not work too well in microsoft word, at least not on the screen, but they print out correctly at least. microsoft word was the only other program besides opera to screw these mac fonts up, and it still screws them up, but i am not expecting anything to change in that regard. i mean come on, it’s microsoft. microsoft is releasing a whole lot of beta software to the public these days, and having blogs and such, and trying to be hip to the new changes, and they are even getting totally serious about security and stuff. but like, ok... they are still way too big and corporate to really innovate efficiently, like small companies such as opera software can do. microsoft has just become too big for its own good, and found out how economies of scale do not really apply to the software industry. they just get to stay #1 because of market rigidity, caused by practical concerns about backwards compatibility, as well as the stubbornness of consumers who only know one thing (windows/internet explorer/ms office/etc.). but ok... who uses napster, now that it is the new corporate sellout napster that costs money to get downloads? nobody. who uses netscape 8, aol’s corporate knockoff of mozilla firefox? nobody. see, nobody is interested in using inferior products. now maybe there is an exception for norton antivirus... but that is because norton antivirus used to be the best, back in the day, and developed quite a good reputation, and it takes awhile to lose a good reputation and get a bad one. microsoft is mainly just coasting along on the inertia of being #1 for so long, and they delayed the release of windows vista for 3 years, doubling the amount of time, while only getting half the work done that they originally said they were going to do. a good portion of that delay had to do with making windows xp service pack 2, which proved to be quite a diversion for microsoft, but something which they actually did remarkably well, almost perfectly. but why? why pour new life into windows xp, 3 years after it comes out, with better security, even though everybody already has it? and not even charge money for the update? and this new windows vista will have very high system requirements, and not run on most existing computers. how do they plan on making money? meanwhile, ubuntu linux is like, the next big thing, and maybe everyone with old computers might end up using it instead of windows xp. yeah, microsoft still makes money by selling a new copy of windows on every new pc, but for how long will that last? there are already lots of computers being sold without windows by major companies, and even dell is doing it now. and if mit succeeds with its $100 laptop initiative, this would weaken microsoft more than anything. but opera is there to show that there is a real alternative to large corporate software producers and to the open-source community, and that small companies can be quite competitive as well. i think that is a very powerful lesson, and perhaps if a company like microsoft became more decentralized and operated more like a coalition of small businesses that are strategic partners, rather than like a giant behemoth, maybe it could be more efficient. until that day, opera will catch up with firefox in terms of website compatibility, while firefox catches up with internet explorer. all 3 will continue to try to copy each others’ features. firefox will copy opera to pass acid2, and internet explorer will do that last of all. opera and internet explorer will both develop alternatives to firefox extensions, and internet explorer will develop something akin to opera skins or firefox themes. opera will copy internet explorer and firefox to have a phishing filter, and firefox will try to pack as many awesome new features into version 3.0 as possible, having been unable to do so with version 2.0. and firefox will have to do something about its excessive memory usage, while internet explorer will need to finish fixing its implementations of xhtml and css. and, the developers of all the browsers will probably eventually all be using blogs to put out new beta versions all the time. and what about safari, apple’s browser for macs, which was first to pass the acid2 test? it will keep up with firefox and opera for the mac, as they get better. but new versions of safari will require new versions of mac os x. so, less and less people will want to use web browsers that are integrated with their operating systems. and more and more people will use opera and firefox.