Comments on: Opera demonstrates upcoming ‘Ice’ browser for tablets

By: Rafael

Rafael — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 16:08:00 +0000

I just wanted you to see that there are still problems in the code of the pages and browser sniffing, etc…

You’ll even find explanations for those kinds of problems also.

By: Esk

Esk — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 15:54:00 +0000

It seems a large amount of the patches are to fix either lack of support for something in Presto, or generic ‘doesn’t work’ problems which could be at either end.

If you’re involved in reporting these problems yourself, great – please don’t assume I’m trying to denigrate this work at all.

By: Rafael

Rafael — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 15:38:00 +0000

Follow this just a litte… You’ll see that really there are problems with the engine, but also in the pages: http://my.opera.com/sitepatching

By: Esk

Esk — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 14:27:00 +0000

Actually, yeah, I do keep up with browser development, though I’m not a dev myself. ‘IE or nothing’ was describing the period, up to about early IE8, where the primary target was one browser. At that time, I used Firefox, but had to keep an up-to-date IE to make some pages work, which was somewhat annoying.

These days, I use Firefox Aurora. Pages which won’t work properly? I can find one, sure (I haven’t been looking, I’ll admit), but it’d be due to lack of spec support rather than because the page was designed for, say, Chrome (which has excellent HTML5 support).

And on your final comment, I’ve already said I don’t want a monopoly! You can’t change my argument by saying it’s something else, you know.

By: Rafael

Rafael — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 00:59:00 +0000

YOU haven’t found a page? But what browser(s) do you use?

For how long do you really follow news about this, visit Opera and Mozilla’s community pages, etc? Are you a developer? Do you work with W3C or WHATWG? You’d know that there are still problems with many pages and the way specifications are treated by browser vendors. You’d see how many people report problems that end up being pages that support a specific set of browsers causing the errors.

You are very wrong to think IE6 is/was the only browser causing issues. Developers still aim specific browsers. Hey… Have you used IE6, 7 and 8 back in the day? At the time all the other browsers were faster and supported more technologies. Do you imagine a world where only Trident existed? A single vendor or organization ruling which technologies and how they’d be implemented, free to add technologies they made themselves, a single organization deciding how OUR web will work!

You may not know how different the browser engines are, but I certainly see. Luckily we have choice, I was able to choose instead of being ruled to use one you’ve chosen for me.

By: Esk

Esk — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 23:42:00 +0000

So what do you think web devs build their site to support, these days? It’s not like back when it was IE or nothing, there’s no browser which is obviously supported over any other. It’s been over a year since I last found a page which wouldn’t load on a specific desktop browser (mobile obviously happens more often).

It’s getting harder and harder to tell between what browser is rendering a page anyway – they’re all getting faster, and gaining better compatability. By this point, I seriously doubt I’d notice if someone swapped out the rendering engine in my browser. Therefore, I can’t really get too worried about a loss of competition.

By: Rafael

Rafael — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 22:35:00 +0000

1- IF web developers build to spec – yes the point is they don’t. Things don’t work as they’re supposed to on real world.

2- Presto works differently than WebKit, Gecko, Trident, etc. And my choice is to use Presto. WebKit works differently than Gecko and some people choose to use it, some people like to use IE’s engine for browsing. It’s not completely a matter of “two is enough”.

By: Esk

Esk — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 22:27:00 +0000

If web developers build to spec rather than to browsers (like everything did for IE6, unfortunately), there shouldn’t be any problem here. Provided there is at least one other browser which complies, things not working clearly become a browser problem rather than one with the website.

I’m not asking for a monopoly – they very rarely improve anything. There are still loads of competing engines out there, though, and not all of them are necessary.

By: Rafael

Rafael — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 20:00:00 +0000

http://blog.gsmarena.com/opera-demonstrates-upcoming-ice-browser-for-tablets/#comment-773324383

By: Rafael

Rafael — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 19:59:00 +0000

Because each “force” the others to follow as many the standards as possible to stay compatible with what web developers program. And developers are forced to make pages following the standards with compatibility to all the engines.
Otherwise each browser vendor could implement anything they want and if developers choose to develop for them they’d break the web for the users of other browsers – this already happens, but in a small scale. If there weren’t as many engines we’d also be stuck with let’s say, the standards Microsoft implement on Trident, or let’s say, Apple implements, we could be stuck with old technology on websites because they couldn’t care to update to support new HTML5 standards for example (hypothetically).

Of course it has a downside… The fragmentation force developers to also know which technology they can use that will work with all engines. But for me the downside is worth it, and make the competition even more necessary to balance search engines support to standards and push things forward.