Unsung Opera
In the March 22nd edition of the Guardian’s Technology supplement, some guy called Andrew Brown wrote a piece on the apparent impending demise of the Opera browser. I responded with a letter (Guardian.co.uk links may require registration to view) expressing my objections to the points he makes.
It was interesting to see which bit they published, as really it was only the most minor of the points I made that they chose to quote. Here is the thing in full:
Dear Sir/Madam,
In response to Andrew Brown’s recent article in the Guardian’s Technology supplement on Opera, as an evangelistic user of the application I feel I must object to his premature notions that the browser is on its way out. Mr Brown misrepresents Opera as a purely PC-based piece of software. Opera is also one of the most accomplished browsers in the mobile device and embedded systems market. It is shipped as standard on millions of mobile phones across the world, and is available as a download for most modern Java-supporting handsets. It is also the platform used by Nintendo’s DS and Wii videogame consoles for web browsing.
Mr Brown makes the very controversial claim that web standards bodies are now largely defunct. I feel I must remind him that without these bodies, the web would be much worse off, especially when it comes to accessibility. AJAX applications are very nice for those who can see and are able-bodied, but few take into consideration the needs of the disabled by providing accessible alternatives to fancy JavaScript and Flash functions. We need organisations such as the W3C to promote accessible design, and Opera is a triumph when it comes to the implementation of their standards. I ask that Mr Brown forgets his selfish needs and impatience for a moment, and consider those who are often left behind and let down by the likes of Google and Yahoo. These are not the organisations that should be considered as the driving forces behind web standards.
Finally, Mr Brown lists Flickr and GMail as examples of AJAX sites which “don’t work quite right” within Opera. As you may have noticed from my email address, I have written this email using GMail, which functions perfectly in Opera on my machine. I’m also a big fan of Flickr, and despite having run into the odd “you are using an unsupported browser” warning, have proceeded with no difficulty whatsoever. May I suggest that Mr Brown checks that he is using the latest version of Opera?
Regards,
David Edwards
I was also surprised by the low quality markup used by the Guardian’s website. For an award-winning site, it was pretty bad. Come on guys, <b> tags for headings?! It’s not 1994 anymore.