I didn’t wake up today with the intent of revisiting old ground, but a motivated commenter rekindled the topic of Opera’s EU filing encouraging Microsoft to be forced to adhere to a series of guidelines for web standards, and my bold statements that both Microsoft and Opera needed to work on adhering to those guidelines.

As I was crafting a response, I discovered that I had more to say on the topic than could be rationally contained in a simple comment.

First, some facts: I don’t dislike Opera. I dislike hypocrisy. Also, I don’t like Internet Explorer. I hate Internet Explorer, and I would prefer to see Microsoft adhere to modern web standards with the same fervor as the other major browser makers.

However, the responses to my earlier posts made by Opera employees and by others on behalf of the browser maker, amount to the following two statements.

1. Microsoft needs to adhere to Mr. Lie’s list of rules they should play by because Microsoft is a monopoly. Opera does not need to do this because it is not.

2. Opera is justified in delaying implementations of “new” features because they’re focusing on backwards compatibility and not breaking the web.

Each is interesting, but ultimately unconvincing.

First, I don’t believe that implementing web standards and new site features is solely the responsibility of a company that is a monopoly. In his well publicized list of rules for Microsoft, Mr. Lie agrees with me. I’ve already quoted the fifth point (relating to adding a new standards-related feature to a browser if two major browsers have already implemented it), and have pointed out useful features that at least two browsers have implemented that aren’t live yet on Opera. I want to emphasize where Mr. Lie states these rules aren’t just for Opera:

“Microsoft will surely claim that it’s impossible for them to develop a browser that complies with the proposed requirements. However, other browsers have played by these rules for years. If Microsoft can’t live up to the standards of the web, I suggest they leave the browser business.”

His assertions are twofold, first that other browser makers do play by these rules (including Opera I presume, which exclusively makes a browser), and that failure to adhere by these rules is enough reason for a company to leave the browser business.

I agree with him completely. I find it comical that some of Opera’s employees apparently do not, and have yet to hear a compelling argument as to why they should be disregarding their CTO’s wisdom. This ties directly into point #2, which is that implementation of new features must be delayed as a necessary sacrifice to maintain backwards compatibility and not break the old web.

Backwards compatibility with the soccer mom-built sites of the world is the same boogeyman that Microsoft has been waving on a flagpole since at least Internet Explorer 6. The world of web developers have yet to give Microsoft any mercy for that, and often cry for blood when feature implementation or standards compatibility is sacrificed on that altar (such as the well documented IE8 meta-tag explosion). I’ve yet to hear a compelling argument as to why any smaller browser maker can justify their own delays at implementing “new” stuff with the same smoke and mirrors and not deserve the same treatment.

In the end, the simple fact is this: I expect better of Opera. I expect them to be better than Microsoft. This means I’m not going to accept Opera using the same excuses as Microsoft, and somehow get away with it due to their size.

So, chop chop. Back to the grindstone, boys.

As I’ve mentioned a couple times by now, I’m a strong believer in the fact that you never stop learning in this industy (the web [insert noun here] industry). Well, at least if you want to stay relevant and keep finding work. This is why I’m always excited by the various web design/development conferences out there, and especially love the endless deep pool of tutorials that exist online for any Joe or Sally to read.

As much as I’ve teased Opera in this site’s comics, I really have to hand it to them. Recently Opera revealed a website that’s devoted to the very concept of web education: the Opera Web Standards Curriculum. It’s got about twenty articles devoted to web design and development, and there’s the promise of more on the way. These aren’t quickly written tutorial blog posts, but polished well written articles that are meant to give a good foundation for anyone interested in web standards and development.

The majority of the articles contained there thus far are mostly about history of the web, the concepts of web standards, basic web design theory, and HTML. Which I think is brilliant, since this is the area that most online tutorial sites skip right past, and thus there’s the most immediate need for. Discussions of things like CSS I’m sure are in the near future, and I’m excited to see their take on it.

As a response to the last comic that featured Opera (right here), viking descendant and Opera Software web opener David Storey simultaneously did three things at once:

1. He left a comment. Which I love. Feedback of any sort is appreciated, especially when it includes the phrase “funny comic”.

2. He defended his company’s product’s implementations of standards by pointing out that one of the three CSS properties I mentioned is in 9.5 (which is now launched), one is only experimentally implemented, and the third is as he puts it “not in a stable spec”. I’ll give him the first two, but I don’t think word-wrap is unstable enough to justify not implementing it.

3. Lastly, he threatened to attack me with the SVGorilla.

The idea of a smoothly scaling primate collided with my recent CSS3 rgba colors experimentation in my head, and spawned this week’s comic.

Opera’s been doing a fine job with their browser, and 9.5 is actually pretty slick. Will I use it day to day? No. It’s feature set does not offer enough to draw me away from Firefox, which is officially launching version 3.0 in mere hours. If addons became a big thing with Opera, I think it’d have a fighting chance in sucking me in, though. As a rule, I prefer browsers made by browser software companies, not operating system software companies.

That said… although the properties I’ve mentioned earlier (word-wrap, border-radius, and outline-offset, aren’t exactly going to see a lot of use by me. However, CSS3 rgba colors? I’m all over that. I especially enjoy the ability to set an element’s opacity without it affecting all of its children. I don’t think it was a good call for Opera to skip adding this into 9.5, as it means it may be a while yet before we see it in an official Opera release.

Well, on the plus side, it let me escape the vicious SVGorilla.

When it comes to browsers, Firefox is my primary choice. It’s combination of strong standards support and large addons library makes it not only desirable, but indispensable in how I browse and work on the Net. I know I can do web development without Firebug, but I certainly don’t know why I’d want to.

Although I’ve been running the beta (then later the release candidates) for some time now, I’m excited for the upcoming official release of Firefox 3 tomorrow. Although I hadn’t planned out a release party like Mozilla has encouraged as part of their Download Day 2008 event, I’ll definitely be upgrading to the release version to help with their “most downloads in one day” goal.

In related news, while I’ve made it clear how much I dislike their tendancy to swing at IE without checking if their own zipper is up, I am also glad to see Opera 9.5 has been officially released, bringing with it a slick upgraded interface, more speed, and overall better standards support (but still no CSS3 rgba color support yet.) Between those two and Safari, a lot more CSS3 and other standards-related features are becoming available in 2008.

Now if only Microsoft would get off it’s lazy rear and announce a general target for when they plan to release IE8. Preferably this year…

Let’s get the disclaimers out of the way.

This week’s comic is not about Microsoft. The history of Internet Explorer’s many issues with standards compliance is well documented elsewhere, including various frustrations listed in this blog and in many of my posts over at Mindfly.

This week’s comic is about expecting a certain standard from someone when you are not living up to those standards yourself. In this case, of course, I’m discussing web standards and the big flap they cause in the development/design world due to the various browsers’ speeds at implementing them.

If you’re a designer, and you’ve ever had to make a website trying to find out how to make a website look correct in Internet Explorer, than you understand how important web standards are. It saves us time, which means it saves businesses money, and ultimately all the happy little people surfing the web get to see their favorite website about cute puppies the way that the site’s designer intended it.

So when someone says: “Hey, browser makers, get on board with styles already,” I’m going to be right there holding a sign and trying to pretend that protesting in the middle of winter in Seattle isn’t cold and demoralizing.

Everything in moderation, though. When Opera went to the European Commision to try to force another browser maker to change it’s feature set through legal actions, we start to muddy the line between “good activism” and “bad business behavior”. When Håkon Wium Lie, Opera’s CTO, then at several different points (including in this article/rant at The Register) outlines a very specific, detailed list of what Microsoft needs to do in order to be compliant to Opera’s view of a browser maker’s responsibility, things go from bad business to hypocrisy.

Why hypocrisy? Simple. Mr. Lie’s little list is incredibly specific, as expected of a programmer, and includes several points that must (his word) be adhered to. The one of most interest to me at the moment is the closing one:

“5. Commit to interoperability. It is important to ensure that Microsoft remains committed to supporting web standards, even beyond Acid2 and Acid3. If two or more major web browsers, in official shipping versions, add standards-related functionality that’s generally considered useful to the progress of the web, and described in a publicly available specification, Microsoft must add the same functionality.”

Is this a good idea? Why yes, yes it is! Nothing frustrates me more than finding a good CSS3 property (or CSS 2.1 property) that would solve a design issue I have with a website, only to discover that a couple of the leading browsers don’t have it, thereby making it of limited use. This is something I experience on a weekly basis (if not more frequently), and probably the largest source of frustration with my job.

However, Microsoft isn’t the only browser that needs to do this. After all, what good is it if only IE was keeping up with standards? Yes, it has the dominant share in browser usage, but there’s a good 25%-30% of users who are using other browsers like Firefox, Safari, and Opera. We wouldn’t want them suffering because their browsers aren’t keeping pace.

Generally, of the four browsers, IE is in fact the one that typically is behind the game. But while going through several CSS3 properties last week, I found myself looking at three that Opera was not yet using, but that were in use by at least two other browsers.

What’s that? Is Opera not living up to the standards it’s expecting of others? Why… that would be very hypocritical of them, wouldn’t it? They’d NEVER do that!

Well, as it turns out, yes they would.

The properties in question (and this isn’t a complete list, I’m sure, just one that came up from only an hour or so of looking) are as follows: border-radius, outline-offset, and word-wrap. The first two are implemented in Firefox and Safari. The last one is implemented in Firefox and (gasp!) Internet Explorer. All three are documented in publicly available specifications.

Opera can’t render any of them.

Now, granted, outline-offset will appear in Opera 9.5. As of yet, though, I’ve seen nary a peep about those other two, and I doubt that’ll change before 9.5 goes gold.

Frankly, Opera, you need to stop focusing on legal action against your competition. This kind of behavior is belittling, and ultimately serves as little more than a PR stunt as long as you’re failing to actually keep your own browser living up to the standards you’re yelling at others for failing to uphold.

We get it already. Microsoft sucks. Now stop poking the big dog with a stick and go grab a larger share of the market by showing everyone how cool Opera really is.