Opera Settles $12.75m Lawsuit, But with Whom?

An anonymous reader writes "According to a press release from Opera Software ASA, they have settled legal claims with an international corporation resulting in payment to Opera of net USD 12.75 million. The interesting bit is that the international corporation is unknown. Dagbladet speculates that Microsoft is paying up. They reason it has something to do with this."

Great

[Karamchand]

..because even if they don't get enough paying customers they have more money again to continue developing the browser with the world's best user interface!

Re:Great

[bhtooefr]

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or serious. It really does have a good user interface (7.50 got better - it's an acquired taste if you used 7.23, but it's easier for someone who didn't use Opera before), but paying customers do seem to be a bit rare (I tune out the Google ads, myself).

Re:Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

Always a conspiracy - I wonder if anyone mailed MS to say the style sheet used has a bug in it, instead of 'opera isnt working with MSN'.

Assuming it isn't a conspiracy against Opera by MS, then its likely the former would have found its way to a tech who'd fix it, for the latter, you'd get the canned response about testing and not responsible for 3rd party products etc.

Re:Great

[barzok]

I've tried Opera on a few occasions. Tried being the operative word. I just could not get past the UI. It was crazy. Too many things going on, too many menu items, things placed in completely non-obvious locations. I wanted to like Opera, I even switched to it for a couple months while I waited for Mozilla to stabilize in the pre-0.9 days, but the UI and some of the other features were deal breakers for me.

Asa [mozillazine.org] summed up a lot of the feelings I had in a couple of his blog posts. Granted, he's likely to be somewhat Gecko-biased, but he raises very valid points.

Re:Microsoft?

[makomk]

I've read the analysis. I doubt that Microsoft had a good reason to shift all the content 30 pixels to the left for Opera. The only reasons I can think of are:

• There was a bug in early versions of Opera which this worked around. Officialy, there wasn't; do you believe them? I do.
• They wanted to make their website look broken in Opera

Re:Microsoft?

[N3WBI3]

Well I cant say I sent one (I use mozilla) but the really odd part is if you fed the style sheet from IE to opera (or changed operara to answer IE) the page worked perfectly!

Is this proof? no.

You'd be wrong

[Chuck Chunder]

Opera always has the word "Opera" in it UA string no matter what it identifies as.
The masquerading is only intended to allow Opera to work with sites that don't know about Opera (ie foolishly test for only IE or Netscape and throw an "unsupported" browser otherwise). It isn't intended to hide the fact it's Opera for sites that know about it.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

ESPN.com redirects to: http://msn.espn.go.com/

Gee, MSN again. Wonder what's up there?

Re:Microsoft?

[Liselle]

It could have been an honest mistake. They say never to attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, of course. But some of us remember a few years ago when MSN blocked all non-IE browsers [com.com] from accessing their site, and even went so far as to redirect people to a page telling them to download their goat-kissing IE browser so it would render properly.

In this case, I'm calling malice. :P

No

[Chuck Chunder]

As the link clearly shows [64.233.161.104].
Using Operas "IE" identity (the ones with MSIE in them) Opera got sent Opera specific stylesheets.
When they changed Opera to Oprah they got the MS IE stylesheet. Thus the site was specifically looking for the word "Opera" in the UA string before sending the screwed up style sheet.

Re:Great

[Crizp]

Opera had one thing I liked: the mouse movement based back/left and other actions... press the left key, move the mouse up and then to the left and the browser hits 'back'. It's great, at least when you're mousing around the page anyways. We all know keyboard shortcuts are best, right?

Re:Microsoft?

[SvendTofte]

Opera's reasoning for believing that MS deliberatly sent a *mangled* stylesheet to the *new* (v. 7 at the time) Opera browser is quite simply stunning.

Of course, since Håkon isn't exactly MS pro, it comes as no great surprise either.

Reading Howcome's page, there is one perfectly believeble view on the whole affair, that Howcome deliberatly leaves out, in order to make MSN look bad. How very fitting for him.

The simple point that Howcome forgets to leave out, is that, while Opera 7 (note the seven), does get "stupid" content (let's say it was designed for retarded browsers), the key point is, that Opera 6 gets the FULL content (I tested this, when this story first came out)! Thus, it's clear, that it's merely a really badly coded browser sniffer on MSN's part. Nothing to do with "evil intentions". Just shitty code, that forgets about future versions of browsers.

I wrote howcome on the issue. His reply? I'm paraphrasing, but basicly, "it was not important"...

(Note that I am an Opera user too, but this extreme fanboyism I see from some Opera users is scary. Crying murder, because you get served a special page is just weird. Especially When there's no such thing)

Re:Microsoft? Bork!

[JediTrainer]

Hehe. I had the pleasure of being the author of the JavaScript code they used to do that.

They contacted me a few days before asking permission to use it, but I had no idea what they had been planning. Imagine my surprise! :)

Re:Great...

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe Opera should realise their browser would be a lot better if they just open source it.

Why? Please provide evidence. In the likely event that you have no evidence, please provide anecdotes. In the event that you have no anecdotes, please at least provide some sort of theory or argument to support your claim.

If you want an open source browser, use Mozilla or FireFox. If there are features in Opera which they lack, well, they're open source, so you can add them!

Re:More information is needed...

[rborek]

I use both Opera and Firefox. The one thing Opera has going for it is that it has a better caching system - going forwards and backwards. See Bug 38486 [mozilla.org] for information on this. Firefox (and Mozilla) are dog slow when going forwards or backwards, because it reloads the entire page and re-parses everything. Opera is instantaneous. Even IE is faster.

That said, I hate Opera's handling of history and typed-in links - it's slow, they show up in alphabetical order (if you type in part of a URL - otherwise I think it's random) and it's a FIFO system (so it's not based on last-visited or number of times visited or anything like that). Opera also seems to have more problems rendering content, and actually crashes more often than any of the Firefox nightlies.

Re:Great

[acidvoid]

Yep, it is great.
good software deserves to be rewarded, I have a Windows licence and a Linux licence. Will probably soon add a Mac licence also.
It's quick, has lots of good features, and the interface (in 7.5) has finaly been cleaned up.
The email (which I don't use anymore) was a little strange in the past, but clever: you have a database of emails with a bunch of views on this database -> instead of a bunch of folders with emails in them.

GO OPERA!

Block out MSIE

[ValourX]

To retailiate, here's some PHP code to block or redirect MSIE users, if you're interested:

<?php
$agent="MSIE";
global $HTTP_USER_AGENT;
if ($ie!="true") {
if (strpos($HTTP_USER_AGENT,$agent) == true) {
header("Location: http://" . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']. dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']). "/" ."msie.php");
$ie="true";
exit();
}
}
?>

To implement:

1. Place this at the top of your web pages and make sure they all have the .PHP extention.

2. Create a file called msie.php and provide links to www.opera.com and www.mozilla.org and explain why they are seeing this page.

3. Pass the ?msie=true setting to all of your internal links so that the code is bypassed for MSIE users.

4. Use an if statement to direct MSIE users to a different style sheet if you wish to give them a watered-down version of your site.

An example of a site that blocks MSIE [herotale.com].

Have fun.

-Jem

Re:Great

[bigtrouble77]

I use Opera at home and installed firefox on all 50+ of the work machines I administer (because it's free).

I find opera, by far, to be the superior browser for these reasons:

1. It's faster
2. It has a much better UI out-of-the-box
(I mean features, not visuals)
3. It has a hugely useful hotlist menu
(file transfers, personal notes, dictionary,
and finally links to newest slashdot articles)
4. Tabbed browsing is 10x better
5. User Profiles are organized better
6. Ultra customizable

I don't find the UI confusing at all. Albeit, I do adjust it to look nothing like the default settings. Version 7.5 is very stable, unlike some of the earlier builds and site compatibility is as good as firefox.

Bottom line is, you start depending on the features unique to opera and you WILL become dependant on the browser.

Re:Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's bullshit.

Please read the wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]:

In February 2003 [slashdot.org], Opera Software [slashdot.org] employees discovered that the MSN home page sent a different style sheet to Opera users than it sent to Internet Explorer [slashdot.org]. The style sheet sent to Opera users, a generic 'site.css', contained the style rule ul {margin: -2px 0px 0px -30px;}, which created a 30-pixel negative left margin, causing content to appear overlapping other content. The Internet Explorer style sheet did not contain this rule.

This gave the impression something was wrong with Opera. The Netscape 6 style sheet also specified the same -30px margin, to work around known bugs in that browser (bugs not present in Opera). This same code was present into the supposedly generic style sheet, which was served to Opera by a Javascript checking routine which specifically detected Opera. This was either a deliberate decision by a programmer to make Opera look bad, or was simply the action of someone who was aware of Opera's existence, but unaware of its CSS capabilities (which are in fact better than those of Internet Explorer), and hence chose to send the browser a generic (albeit badly coded) style sheet.

Regardless of the truth behind the story (which only the Microsoft programmer who wrote the code could know), Opera went public with the story, and created a joke "Bork" edition of their browser, which "translated" the page into the speech of the Swedish Chef [slashdot.org] to show how easily a website's appearance could be distorted.

Why would Microsoft deliberately do this to Opera, which poses no threat to them, and in fact builds its products on Microsoft's platform (i.e. you buy Opera for Windows, you need to pay Microsoft first). It's just a lie. Are you really stupid enough to imagine that Bill Gates called up the web developer and said 'Hi dude, can you fuck with the CSS for Opera'? I don't think so......

Good

[mindfucker]

Sounds like they deserved it.

Now maybe the Mozilla Foundation, the World Web Consortium, and an us Web Developers can collectively sue Microsoft for deliberately breaking PNG, CSS, HTTP [apache.org], and the other myriad Internet standards out there. I don't think large punitive damages are out of the question considering the wasted time and effort their sorry excuse for a web browser causes us in having to maintain two different versions of stylesheets and web-pages (IE and non-IE).
</rant>

The effect is the same as mentioned in the article, albeit, on a much broader scale.

Re:Great

[pracz]

I understand your point of view but by doing thas way, we'll run into troubles because the internet will become more and more a disgusting soup of ugly code and flash animations.

We are far away from the concept of Semantic Web [w3.org]!

Re:Microsoft?

[Liselle]

Thank you for ending the analogy early. ;)

My objection is simple, and has nothing to do with their monopoly: they are pissing all over the work of Tim Berners-Lee and anyone else associated with the creation of the web as it was originally envisioned. Hacking apart standards so that you can have control is wrong, period. Either put your content up, or don't. Get out of my browser.

To sum up Asa's blog post...

[hkmwbz]

"Opera sucks because it isn't Firefox."

While that might reflect his personal opinion as a member of Mozilla.org, it certainly doesn't mean that he is right in his bias against Opera. After all, Opera offers a heck of a lot more useful stuff when installed than Firefox.

Just because it doesn't behave exactly like your favorite program, doesn't mean that it sucks! He might have something useful to say, but when he gives the impression that unless Opera is exactly like Firefox, it will always suck,

Oh, and the screenshot is totally wrong. That's not what Opera 7.5 [opera.com] looks like by default at all.

And finally, read this comment: "Posted by: sas on May 13, 2004 02:54 AM". It takes the piss, but it's rather spot on and proves a point. Anyone can make anything look bad by posting biased reviews like that.

ESPN.com has ditched web standards

[Compact Dick]

In 2003, ESPN.com was redesigned to be web standards-compliant [netscape.com]. It rendered perfectly on browsers other than IE. Now they've ditched clean code and returned to the stone age.

I remember a friend complaining that he was forced to rewrite his company's website in non-compliant MSHTML after Microsoft acquired a sizeable stake in his firm. The end result was a crappy, non-scaling site that would break browsers other than IE. Wonder if Microsoft had something to do with ESPN's downfall? [note how espn.com [espn.com] redirects to msn.espn.go.com [go.com]].

Re:Block out MSIE

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't block out MSIE. That's stooping to the level of SCO and gives MS more ammunition for their fight against other software institutions: "look, Firefox and OSS is run by a bunch of kiddies, do you want to trust your company's IT system to a bunch of juvenile delinquents?"

A better approach is to display the page, but also include a well-visible note that explains how MSIE is inferior/insecure and the user should switch to an alternative such as Firefox and Opera.

Re:Great

[avgjoe62]

I would kind of agree with you, but you do have to remember that ESPN's web page is one of THE most popular sites on the Internet in the USA. As such, if you can't read that web page correctly that can cause problems for many users.

The fact I can properly read ESPN.com with Mozilla 1.6 shows that the developers of Mozilla are willing to accommodate the wishes of the majority of Internet users.

Read the article at the last link in the story. MSN (which is where ESPN comes from) checks the agent sent by the browser and then sends Opera a style sheet purposely designed to display incorrectly. Reminds of when I was in the Pentagon in 1997 and Netscape would display empty pages at Microsoft.com where IE showed content.

Re:Microsoft?

[poot_rootbeer]

Further, anyone who has ever done anything with style sheets would never feed that -30px declaration and expect anything productive to be done with it.

Maybe it was a typo, and was supposed to read -3px?

You still haven't convinced me that Microsoft's act was malicious, and not just negligent.

Re:Block out MSIE - Childish

[Anonymous Coward]

To retailiate, here's some PHP code...

That childish behavior is similar to saying "Please do not send me any Word attachments."

The message I am getting from the parent post is NOT that I should use Opera (Which I do already by the way), but that you seek to deny content to a significant segment of the browser population. This is what all the anti-MS bashing is about in this article. You are no better than MSN.

I will reserve judgement on the content of the aforementioned example site.

Re:Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

: It could have been an honest mistake.

It couldn't have been a mistake. The page was specifically made for Opera, so they would have tested it in Opera, where they would have instantly noticed the mistake. There wasn't even any reason to make one specifically for Opera since the default one worked perfectly.

For it to have been a mistake, they would have had to make a typo in a page specifically designed for Opera without testing that page in Opera.

Re:Block out MSIE

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I agree with blocking IE users, but there's a much much easier way of doing it, no PHP required:

<!--[if IE]>
</html>
<![endif]-->

That's it. Conditionals are read only by Exploder, to other browsers they look like comments. Go ahead and just close the html tag and that should work (untested).

However, a much better use for the above would be to display a message saying something about how it's very dangerous for them to run IE, and that they should switch to something better, providing links to firefox (or opera if that's your poison).