Many links are non-responsive in Opera 10
OPERA
Try http://oodle.com. Some work, some don't.
Why oh why does Opera find it so difficult to be compatible? Why does Firefox work in 99.9999% of
websites whereas Opera just doesn't come anywhere close? Why won't Opera designers realize that
nothing matters more than actually displaying the page? If the page doesn't work, does anything
else really matter? That is number one priority. Function. THEN work on features. Opera will
never be taken seriously until this is hammered into the stubborn brains of its designers. No
browser comes close to Opera's flexibility and customizability. NOW is the time to work in getting
it to function seemlessly. Like on financial websites!
Bill Leary
news:qn%Hm.113$1g6...@newsfe10.iad...
> Anybody else noticing that when they click on links on some pages nothing
> happens?
> Try http://oodle.com. Some work, some don't.
I've found this can happen on any page at all. I'll have a Yahoo! page up,
and the links aren't active. When I mouse over them, I continue to get the
normal pointer rather than the pointing finger. If I go up and refresh the
page, they usually become active after the refresh.
- Bill
ge...@none.net
Before whining, please be more specific with examples about what you
find that works and doesn't. I haven't found anything on that site
that doesn't work.
Be aware that when Opera doesn't work with links on a site, it's most
likely the site's programming (IE, FF friendly), but it could also be
something about your set up or something with Opera that needs
reporting.
Gene
onlyme
there can be various reasons why something dosnt work some MAY be Operas
fault and some will be the sites fault,however if opera worked the same as
IE or FF there wouldnt be any need for it would there.why would you have
several browsers that all work the same but have a different UI?if people
want Opera to work identically to IE or FF why are they bothering with it
in the first place,go and use them instead of whining about Opera all the
time
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
Bill Leary
news:20091103172803...@none.net...
In my case the most common failing sites are the Yahoo! main page and
various Wikipedia pages. A page refresh (usually) clears the problem.
- Bill
ge...@none.net
"Bill Leary" <Bill_...@msn.com> wrote:
> In my case the most common failing sites are the Yahoo! main page and
> various Wikipedia pages. A page refresh (usually) clears the problem.
What fails for you on the Yahoo home page? While on the sports page
there were some problems with 10 beta, the home page is one place I've
never had problems. Do you clear the cache on closing Opera? Are you
logged into Yahoo? (Not sure if the latter has anything to do with
anything)
Gene
OPERA
>>> nothing happens? Try http://oodle.com. Some work, some don't.
>>>
>>> Why oh why does Opera find it so difficult to be compatible? Why
>>> does Firefox work in 99.9999% of websites whereas Opera just doesn't
>>> come anywhere close? Why won't Opera designers realize that nothing
>>> matters more than actually displaying the page? If the page doesn't
>>> work, does anything else really matter? That is number one
>>> priority. Function. THEN work on features. Opera will never be
>>> taken seriously until this is hammered into the stubborn brains of
>>> its designers. No browser comes close to Opera's flexibility and
>>> customizability. NOW is the time to work in getting it to function
>>> seemlessly. Like on financial websites!
>>
>> Before whining, please be more specific with examples about what you
>> find that works and doesn't. I haven't found anything on that site
>> that doesn't work.
>>
>> Be aware that when Opera doesn't work with links on a site, it's most
>> likely the site's programming (IE, FF friendly), but it could also be
>> something about your set up or something with Opera that needs
>> reporting.
>
> the sites fault,however if opera worked the same as IE or FF there wouldnt be any need for it
> would there.why would you have several browsers that all work the same but have a different UI?if
> people want Opera to work identically to IE or FF why are they bothering with it in the first
> place,go and use them instead of whining about Opera all the time
If the page doesn't display - nothing else matters.
If the links don't work - nothing else matters.
Once those minor tidbits are ironed out, then we can concentrate on how we are displaying the page,
the control the user has over that display (this is where Opera far outperforms all other browsers),
the general customization the user has over the browser (an Opera strong point but where Firefox is
close as well), the speed of the browser (this is a low priority for me but to others its much
higher) and a myriad of other things. I bother with Opera because it excels in the areas I value.
But if the page doesn't open and the links don't work - all is mute.
OPERA
>>> nothing happens? Try http://oodle.com. Some work, some don't.
>>>
>>> Why oh why does Opera find it so difficult to be compatible? Why
>>> does Firefox work in 99.9999% of websites whereas Opera just doesn't
>>> come anywhere close? Why won't Opera designers realize that nothing
>>> matters more than actually displaying the page? If the page doesn't
>>> work, does anything else really matter? That is number one
>>> priority. Function. THEN work on features. Opera will never be
>>> taken seriously until this is hammered into the stubborn brains of
>>> its designers. No browser comes close to Opera's flexibility and
>>> customizability. NOW is the time to work in getting it to function
>>> seemlessly. Like on financial websites!
>>
>> Before whining, please be more specific with examples about what you
>> find that works and doesn't. I haven't found anything on that site
>> that doesn't work.
>>
>> Be aware that when Opera doesn't work with links on a site, it's most
>> likely the site's programming (IE, FF friendly), but it could also be
>> something about your set up or something with Opera that needs
>> reporting.
>
> In my case the most common failing sites are the Yahoo! main page and various Wikipedia pages. A
> page refresh (usually) clears the problem.
Wow - I can't remember having any problems with Wikipedia or Yahoo. Usually the biggest sites
perform admirably. Its the sites that are big (perhaps in the cities they are in) that seem to give
the most headaches. Maybe the biggest sites ensure full browser compatibility and this costs more
than some of the other sites can rationalize?
Bill Leary
news:20091104094908...@none.net...
> On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 03:14:22 -0500
> "Bill Leary" <Bill_...@msn.com> wrote:
>
>> In my case the most common failing sites are the Yahoo! main page and
>> various Wikipedia pages. A page refresh (usually) clears the problem.
>
> What fails for you on the Yahoo home page?
Links don't work. The cursor doesn't change from the pointer to the finger
when placed over them and clicking does nothing.
> While on the sports page there were some problems with 10 beta,
> the home page is one place I've never had problems.
I'd been wondering if this was user related. This seems to indicate it is.
> Do you clear the cache on closing Opera?
Yes.
> Are you logged into Yahoo? (Not sure if the latter has anything to
> do with anything)
Usually not. I'm not sure if I've seen it when logged in. I rarely log in.
- Bill
Bill Leary
>> In my case the most common failing sites are the Yahoo! main page and
>> various Wikipedia pages. A page refresh (usually) clears the problem.
>
> Wow - I can't remember having any problems with Wikipedia or Yahoo.
> Usually the biggest sites perform admirably. Its the sites that are big
> (perhaps in the cities they are in) that seem to give the most headaches.
> Maybe the biggest sites ensure full browser compatibility and this costs
> more than some of the other sites can rationalize?
Might be proportional. Those are the two sites I use most often, so they're
were I see the trouble most often.
- Bill
Naruki Bigglesworth
It matters WHY it won't display. If the page doesn't display because the page designer
deliberately disabled it for Opera browsers, you are yelling at the wrong people. You need to
wait for the page designer to come out of his office late one night and drag him into a dark
alley and... rationally explain his mistake. Be forceful, but polite.
Also, "moot" is the word you were looking for. If you're mute, nobody can hear you complain.
:-)
OPERA
I think not. If Firefox can display almost every page on the planet, so could Opera if they were
determined. Its up to them to make it display, no matter what. If Firefox can do it, Opera can do
it. 99% of pages that won't display on Opera display perfectly on Firefox. But I hate Firefox! It
just seems very awkward compared to Opera. Opera just flows. Of course it could something to do
with the fact I spend 100x more time on Opera!
> Also, "moot" is the word you were looking for. If you're mute, nobody can hear you complain.
> :-)
Lol....you got me there! Thanks for the correction!
Matthew Winn
> I think not. If Firefox can display almost every page on the planet, so could Opera if they were
> determined. Its up to them to make it display, no matter what. If Firefox can do it, Opera can do
> it. 99% of pages that won't display on Opera display perfectly on Firefox.
It's not possible to write a browser that displays the page no matter
what.
The problem is that "make it display, no matter what" is far too vague
a specification to program to. The number of different incorrect ways
of writing a web page rises exponentially with the size of the page,
and there's no way any team of developers can anticipate and code for
every possible soup of tags that the browser encounters.
So why is it that so many pages work in Firefox? Simply because the
people writing the pages are coding by the "suck it and see" method.
Instead of understanding what they're doing and writing perfectly
valid code they bodge something together and then batter it around
until it works in the browser they're testing with. At that point they
think "job done" and stop.
So the page displays in Firefox, not because Firefox's developers are
better than Opera's, but because the page author stopped working on
the page when it worked in Firefox. If you know almost nothing about
HTML, CSS and JavaScript and fiddle around with a badly-written web
page until it looks right in Opera then chances are you'll end up with
a page that Firefox chokes on. We don't see that as much because more
people test in Firefox than in Opera, but in general if someone tries
writing /anything/ by trial and error then the result will work when
used in the same environment as was used for the trials while in other
environments it'll show the errors.
It used to be quite common to see the same effect in source code for
languages like C. C is a lightly-specified language: in the interest
of high performance there are many areas where it leaves details of
how something is done as implementation-defined and warns programmers
not to rely on such details being the same on different architectures.
Programmers of inferior quality often failed to realise this and would
write code that worked perfectly on their own machines but failed
badly when compiled with a different version of C. There was nothing
wrong with either the C language itself or the various compilers. The
mistake was entirely the programmer's for depending on behaviour that
occurred only by chance, and the only reason the code worked on the
programmer's machine was because that's the one where the programmer
tested it.
--
Matthew Winn
[If replying by mail remove the "r" from "urk"]
OPERA
>> determined. Its up to them to make it display, no matter what. If Firefox can do it, Opera can
>> do
>> it. 99% of pages that won't display on Opera display perfectly on Firefox.
>
> It's not possible to write a browser that displays the page no matter
> what.
So how does Firefox manage it?
> The problem is that "make it display, no matter what" is far too vague
> a specification to program to. The number of different incorrect ways
> of writing a web page rises exponentially with the size of the page,
> and there's no way any team of developers can anticipate and code for
> every possible soup of tags that the browser encounters.
If Firefox can do it, Opera can do it.
> So why is it that so many pages work in Firefox? Simply because the
> Matthew Winn
Matthew you explain it very well. I just recalled faking the ID of the browser
before as IE or Firefox - used to do that before but it seldom improved things.
I wonder if that helps at all these days? Anybody
having success at that? I think mine is set to identify as Opera. Is that a
mistake? Or does it help the website to adopt to Opera? I wonder if they
use the information "against you" and block Opera's functionality upon
hearing its not one of the chosen few browsers? I was just looking for
that area in Opera to set it and now I can't find it. Have they deleted that
option?
andreas koppa
> Anybody else noticing that when they click on links on some pages
> nothing happens?
> Try http://oodle.com. Some work, some don't.
Be more specific. As a matter of fact, the root page has 3363 Errors and
362 warnings!
Eik
> So how does Firefox manage it?
It doesn't, the websites do.
Before Firefox became so famous and got a good market share, there were
plenty of problematic websites. Using it was just as bad as with Opera, if
not worse because Opera supports much more proprietary IE code than it
does now and used to do in earlier versions.
However, when they started spending big money on marketing, got Google's
money behind them and the media latched onto them as though they were the
second coming, websites started feeling pressured into making sure their
sites worked in Firefox. They also often snap into action if an Apple
product is involved even though they may have the same proportion of Linux
users and not care about them in the least.
Opera hasn't been graced by the media spotlight and fanboy following in
the same way as Firefox, so companies aren't embarrased to simply ignore
the problems and reel out the usual excuses when its users complain. The
lazy/ignorant web designers don't want to read the whole HTML or ECMAscipt
specs, they just want to go ahead and start coding until they hit a
problem and then search Google for one paragraph that gives them a copy &
paste workaround, so unless the companies who employ their services
pressure them to check their pages work in Opera, they'll just keep
hammering away until it just sort of works in IE and Firefox, and now
possibly Safari and Chrome too.
The fact that all the big modern web browsers now have a similar support
for the relevant technologies means that by having to check a page works
in Webkit, IE and Firefox, there's a much higher chance of it also working
in Opera, and indeed this is true - there are far fewer problematic
websites today than there were 10 years ago - but each browser is
different so it's always possible to make a page that won't work in Opera
unless you test it and fix any problems.
To be fair, there are sometimes features that Opera is late in
implementing (dynamic rendering, document.StyleSheets, XHR, XSL, etc), and
this means that Opera is the odd one out and therefore takes the
responsibility to get those sites working, but more often than not the
problem is down to bad coding by the websites rather than the use of
things Opera can't do.
When gMail started relying on XHR and other Javascript methods to work
properly, Opera was quick to add initial support for them, and then extend
that support as gMail made more and more use of it. That's an example of
Opera reacting quickly to fix problematic websites, even though users had
been requesting XHR support for ages before that and got no response. But
if a website is relatively unknown or broken because of bad coding rather
the need for a missing feature, then not only can Opera do little about
it, but there's nothing to stop that site updating their code later on and
breaking in Opera all over again.
Opera also added Browser.js to help fix problematic websites on the fly,
but this can only help so far and relies on someone (usually another Opera
user or one of the Opera developers) debugging the broken site and fixing
it. If those fixes could be added to the actual website rather than each
user's instalation of Opera, the problem would be fixed for everyone, but
just try emailing any corporation telling them you've fixed their broken
Javascript for them and all they have to do is replace their own broken
file with the fixed one you've attached!
Ted S.
<sp...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> If those fixes could be added to the actual website rather than each
> user's instalation of Opera, the problem would be fixed for everyone,
> but just try emailing any corporation telling them you've fixed their
> broken Javascript for them and all they have to do is replace their
> own broken file with the fixed one you've attached!
Back in the days of Opera5 or so, I had a problem with the National
Football League's site in that it wasn't showing a menu properly because
of browser sniffing. I emailed the webmaster, who responded within a
day or so saying that he had fixed the problem. Yeah right. I got the
same runaround a second time, so finally I tried sending the NFL's home
page to the W3C validator and, when it turned up a whole bunch of coding
errors, sent a polite note to the webmaster suggesting he send his code
to the validator.
Amazingly, that got the site fixed. (Or, at least, working in Opera. I
wouldn't be surprised if every major site brings up at least one error
on the validators simply because they're all so complicated.)
--
Ted S.
fedya at hughes dot net
Now blogging at http://justacineast.blogspot.com
Rijk van Geijtenbeek
> just try emailing any corporation telling them you've fixed their broken
> Javascript for them and all they have to do is replace their own broken
> file with the fixed one you've attached!
This nicely illustrates the point:
http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/2009/11/05/the-lengths-to-go-to-to-get-a-site-fixed
--
Rijk van Geijtenbeek
Opera Software ASA
Tweak: http://my.opera.com/Rijk/blog/
"The most common way to get usability wrong is to listen to what users
say rather than actually watching what they do." - J.Nielsen
Matthew Winn
> > It's not possible to write a browser that displays the page no matter
> > what.
>
> So how does Firefox manage it?
But that's the point: it doesn't.
A few days ago I stumbled across a site that had a whole load of
numbered headings in it. In Opera all the numbers were "1". I had a
look at the page source and found that the HTML was a complete mess:
the page started out with an ordered list to get the numbering but
then used <h?> tags to set highlighing within lines, and there were
similar horrors throughout the page. It had been written by someone
who knew nothing about semantic markup and who was treating the web
page like a work processor document: if the author wanted large bold
text then he used something that gave large bold text, which might be
<font...><b> or it might be <h2> depending on how the author felt at
the time.
The important point here - and I'm going to shout it because it's
vital to understanding the problem that browser writers face - is
this:
THERE IS NO CORRECT WAY TO RENDER THIS HTML.
The author didn't understand what he was doing and fiddled until he
got something that happened to come out right on his browser. But
someone else testing in a different browser might end up writing the
same sort of tag soup in order to get a different result. For example,
in this page the author expected the list numbering to be continuous
but in Opera it isn't. But someone else might /want/ the list numbers
to reset, and if they test their page in Opera and it seems to work
they'll end up with a page that goes wrong in Firefox or IE.
Browsers are written to handle HTML according to a specification,
but when the HTML isn't to specification they can't stop and ask
the author what they should do. They have to fall back on an error
recovery strategy. But there's no specification for an error recovery
strategy in HTML, so it's up to each browser to decide for itself.
They can't even copy another browser's strategy, because until they
find out how the other browser copes with each particular variation
of invalid HTML they have nothing to copy. Given that there are as
many different ways of writing invalid HTML as there are pages with
invalid HTML, that task is essentially the same as testing a browser
against every single web page that has ever been written.
Brixomatic
> I think not. If Firefox can display almost every page on the planet, so could Opera if they were
> determined.
You mean if the webdesigners were determined?
Each browser corrects some mistakes webdesigenrs does and the error
correction strategies of the market leaders are often not trivial to
explore for makers of other browsers.
The Acid-Tests are an attempt to get a standardized behaviour on a lot
of corner cases and Opera 10 masters these tests all perfectly - Firefox
and Internet Explorer do not. It is quite possible that some of the
websites you find, which do not work in Opera but in IE and Firefox to
rely on Firefox and Internet Explorer doing something wrong regarding
the Acid-Tests. It's also possible they're just something differently,
which is not yet specified well enough, than Opera does.
Anyways: Since copying the market leader's errors or their error-
correction-strategies will lead to no where in the long run, I find he
better strategy is to contact the website owner and tell him about the
incompatibility, so he can check and correct his website.
If the webdesigners research on this problem uncovered a rendering-bug
in the browser, he could then provide a good and simple straight-to-the-
point example to the browser maker so he had something to work with to
correct the mistake.
This means: when ever you find a website does not work correctly with
your web browser of choice, you should always follow these three steps:
1. Check the website with the browser running with standard settings and
without third party software like content blockers. This verifies that
there is a problem with the site or the browser and not with your own
settings which you might have messed up.
2. make a screen shot of the problem, and supply that with a brief
explaination what's going wrong to the website owner. Don't forget to
add the browser version.
3. hope.
Regards,
-Wanja-
--
"Gewisse Schriftsteller sagen von ihren Werken immer: 'Mein Buch, mein
Kommentar, meine Geschichte'. [..] Es wï¿œre besser, wenn sie sagten:
'unser Buch, unser Kommentar, unsere Geschichte'; wenn man bedenkt, dass
das Gute darin mehr von anderen ist als von ihnen." [Blaise Pascal]
GianAo
In my case it happens when the page is still loading (or some part of the
page). Try with Esc, the page stop loading and links usually work.
Cheers. G
--
Opera Browser Italia: http://www.operazone.it
Creato con il rivoluzionario client e-mail di Opera:
http://www.opera.com/mail/
Aaron W. Hsu
wrote:
> On Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:05:53 +0100, Bill Leary <Bill_...@msn.com>
> wrote:
>
>> "OPERA" <nob...@nowhere.com> wrote in message
>> news:qn%Hm.113$1g6...@newsfe10.iad...
>>> Anybody else noticing that when they click on links on some pages
>>> nothing happens?
>>> Try http://oodle.com. Some work, some don't.
>>
>> I've found this can happen on any page at all. I'll have a Yahoo! page
>> up, and the links aren't active. When I mouse over them, I continue to
>> get the normal pointer rather than the pointing finger. If I go up and
>> refresh the page, they usually become active after the refresh.
>
> In my case it happens when the page is still loading (or some part of
> the page). Try with Esc, the page stop loading and links usually work.
> Cheers. G
Sometimes Opera doesn't update the mouse pointer to reveal that a link is
a link, but clicking on the link nonetheless works.
Aaron W. Hsu
--
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its
victims may be the most oppressive. -- C. S. Lewis