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May 27, 2005

Opera: Won't Fuck Things Up Like Netscape Will

A great selling point if I ever. I saw it first on OperaWatch but it was everywhere. All the articles lead back to this post on the IE bog. Basically once you install Net'sCrap 8 (or the even more popular 8.01 - now *with* security), you can no longer use IE, or any part of its rendering engine, to view XML files. Which for me wouldn't be a big issue except that it means that I can't view histories in MSN Messenger - which are basically XML files rendered using IE. Who would have thought.

Conspiracy theories regarding AOL wanting to sabotage MSN Messenger users on the advent of the new AIM beta: transform and roll out. Oh, and a number of job vacancies opened up at Netscape - I wonder if it's related. (Could that have *been* a lamer joke?)

But yes, I've never known Opera to fuck things up in any way shape or form - but then it can't use IE's rendering engine. More features, more problems. For those that don't know, you can run a different version of Opera as simply as installing it into another folder - I'm honestly not even sure if it adds anything to the registry other than perhaps things that make it default browser (if you tell it to, not before), place it in the start menu etc.

Posted by subtitles at May 27, 2005 8:08 AM | Opera Boggling

Comments

Netscape 8.x is a joke.. one thing both Gecko (Mozilla/Firefox/Camino/Epiphany) and Opera users could safely agree on!

I should point out that AOL's.. err.. Time Warner-AOL's .. Netscape division no longer employs any engineers previously at Netscape; they've all been moved to the Mozilla Foundation and then cut loose. Charming.

Good thing Red Hat bought Netscape's LDAP server from them last year. Everything that stays there seems to be bitrotting.

Posted by: Michel [TypeKey Profile Page] at May 27, 2005 4:12 PM

Personally I don't actually have a problem with Netscape - I think the idea of multiple rending engines is fine - it'd just be nice not to break things in the process.

That said the implementation in Netscape was pretty bewildering - I can't quite figure out what's what and how to do any fuck thing about switching engines. I wouldn't say no to Opera being able to use multiple engines - I'm sure there'd be a market for people who want a proper UI applied to Gecko, and there are plenty of sites that are still duopoly driven. And either IE for just MSNBC, or a big bork where it used to be.

But Opera would probably give the gift of spears before doing that.

Posted by: subtitles [TypeKey Profile Page] at May 27, 2005 7:31 PM