5 ms·

You don't have to test for it if you are in a market where it has 1.6% share. There are a lot of markets where Opera has 10, 20, or 30% share. As for the secon

by rplnt 14y ago

You don't have to test for it if you are in a market where it has 1.6% share. There are a lot of markets where Opera has 10, 20, or 30% share. As for the second paragraph, Opera was actually strict pro-standard.. sometimes for their own bad. Third paragraph is total bullshit. If anything, Chrome is the one copying from Opera. Webkit isn't "Chrome in a box" either. And pull of what this time? As mentioned in my first paragraph, Opera has and had users, just not in your market probably. I written several times why Opera has users in certain markets, so just tl;dr: Opera was the best browser but was paid. Anything East from Germany didn't really care for paying for software (since it was insanely expensive), so they used the best browser out there. When FF was born, west switched to it (since it was better than IE). Opera went free too late, but managed to hold quite a big user-base in certain areas despite Google pouring billions into advertisement and producing chrome-only features. (another big contributor is Turbo and slow internet speeds, but I think it was a secondary factor). ad EDIT: cry me a river. While I don't feel the need to downvote you, your comment did sound pricky enough to convince someone to do so.

bdash 14y ago
> Webkit isn't "Chrome in a box" either. The Chromium Embedded Framework (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_Embedded_Framework http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_Embedded_Framework) isn't too far from that. I'm not sure if Opera is using this project in particular, but they do mention using Chromium.
- rplnt 14y ago
  It seems you are right, other comments mentioned using V8 as well.
jahewson 14y ago
> There are a lot of markets where Opera has 10, 20, or 30% share. As there are so many would you mind listing a few?
- jve 14y ago
  Russia. Was 20%+ last year, now 10%+ http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-RU-monthly-201201-201301 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-RU-monthly-201201-201301 Or Belarus 30%+: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-BY-monthly-201201-201301 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-BY-monthly-201201-201301
  - mojuba 14y ago
    And Britain at 20% (was surprized myself!) http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-GB-monthly-201208-201301 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-GB-monthly-201208-201301 Edit: my bad, the graph probably didn't refresh properly
    - takluyver 14y ago
      20% in the UK would surprise me too, but that graph shows Opera at 0.56%, and seemingly declining.
  - prumek 14y ago
    StatCounter is a terrible source for anything outside of North America and Western Europe.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- rplnt 14y ago
  As highlighted by my comment, it's middle and eastern Europe : Ukraine 20% (36%), Slovakia 6% (13%), Poland 7% (12%), Czech Republic 5% (10%), Russia 14% (32%), Belarus 32% (45%), Kazachstan 32% (16%) Also, Mobile browsers are not insignificant market: (whole) Europe 24% (50%) Numbers from statcounter.com as of January 2013 (January 2010). I picked 2010 as it was about the time Chrome started it's push around here (I'm in Czech Republic at the moment) - ads in radio, tv, outdoors, on homepages of google.com, youtube.com; Opera was often blocked from accessing gmail, apps,; was deprived of features (by user-agent sniffing) google-wide. And FF was well established at the time, so it didn't carve much to the Opera's share.
jasonkester 14y ago
Opera was actually strict pro-standard.. sometimes for their own bad. Possibly. But they're also the only browser I'm aware of apart from IE that supports "document.all". And (at least as of 2007), they were still using IE's quirks mode box model if you didn't specify a doctype. As I said, they did a good job of trying to please everybody. You could code for Firefox or IE and have a reasonable expectation that it would work on Opera too. That's a good thing, by the way.
- tripzilch 14y ago
  What do you mean, "possibly"? Either you agree that Opera implemented standards as strictly as possible (really the only way when you your own rendering engine with such a small market share) while aiming for compatibility at the same time (which is implemented by copying certain quirks--and O isn't the only one that does that--as well as having a large database of popular sites that are fixed with bits of custom JS), or you disagree that Opera aimed and successfully did implement web standards (which is provably false). Saying "possibly" makes it sound like you don't really know. Did you consider, while typing that remark about the downvotes (bad form, and doesn't add anything to the discussion, except for polarizing it even more), that it might actually be caused by your self-admitted lack of knowledge on the subject? Sure thing, those people may be "Opera devotees", because those are the people that know what they're talking about maybe? You claim that top post was "not actually an anti-Opera comment". What about your remark that "They'll continue to be the browser that nobody cares about"? That was you baiting all of those European and Russian Opera users, that you may or may not have noticed are also here on HN. If you had said "the browser nobody in the US actually cares about" then yes, I could not have disagreed. But this general claim is a tad ignorant, the global 1.3% market share is not at all geographically evenly spread, and goes up to 47% in certain countries. That's a long shot from saying nobody cares about it. (BTW I may be an Opera devotee--a little bit less than I was a few years ago though--but I'm not downvoting you)
  - benihana 14y ago
    >What do you mean, "possibly"? I'm guessing OP meant possibly for the "sometimes for their own bad" part of the comment.
prumek 14y ago
> Opera was actually strict pro-standard.. sometimes for their own bad. Not quite. They always made every effort to be as compatible as possible with real world sites.

by rplnt 14y ago

bdash 14y ago

> Webkit isn't "Chrome in a box" either. The Chromium Embedded Framework (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_Embedded_Framework http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_Embedded_Framework) isn't too far from that. I'm not sure if Opera is using this project in particular, but they do mention using Chromium.

rplnt 14y ago
It seems you are right, other comments mentioned using V8 as well.

jahewson 14y ago

> There are a lot of markets where Opera has 10, 20, or 30% share. As there are so many would you mind listing a few?

jve 14y ago
Russia. Was 20%+ last year, now 10%+ http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-RU-monthly-201201-201301 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-RU-monthly-201201-201301 Or Belarus 30%+: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-BY-monthly-201201-201301 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-BY-monthly-201201-201301
- mojuba 14y ago
  And Britain at 20% (was surprized myself!) http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-GB-monthly-201208-201301 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-GB-monthly-201208-201301 Edit: my bad, the graph probably didn't refresh properly
  - takluyver 14y ago
    20% in the UK would surprise me too, but that graph shows Opera at 0.56%, and seemingly declining.
- prumek 14y ago
  StatCounter is a terrible source for anything outside of North America and Western Europe.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
rplnt 14y ago
As highlighted by my comment, it's middle and eastern Europe : Ukraine 20% (36%), Slovakia 6% (13%), Poland 7% (12%), Czech Republic 5% (10%), Russia 14% (32%), Belarus 32% (45%), Kazachstan 32% (16%) Also, Mobile browsers are not insignificant market: (whole) Europe 24% (50%) Numbers from statcounter.com as of January 2013 (January 2010). I picked 2010 as it was about the time Chrome started it's push around here (I'm in Czech Republic at the moment) - ads in radio, tv, outdoors, on homepages of google.com, youtube.com; Opera was often blocked from accessing gmail, apps,; was deprived of features (by user-agent sniffing) google-wide. And FF was well established at the time, so it didn't carve much to the Opera's share.

jasonkester 14y ago

Opera was actually strict pro-standard.. sometimes for their own bad. Possibly. But they're also the only browser I'm aware of apart from IE that supports "document.all". And (at least as of 2007), they were still using IE's quirks mode box model if you didn't specify a doctype. As I said, they did a good job of trying to please everybody. You could code for Firefox or IE and have a reasonable expectation that it would work on Opera too. That's a good thing, by the way.

tripzilch 14y ago
What do you mean, "possibly"? Either you agree that Opera implemented standards as strictly as possible (really the only way when you your own rendering engine with such a small market share) while aiming for compatibility at the same time (which is implemented by copying certain quirks--and O isn't the only one that does that--as well as having a large database of popular sites that are fixed with bits of custom JS), or you disagree that Opera aimed and successfully did implement web standards (which is provably false). Saying "possibly" makes it sound like you don't really know. Did you consider, while typing that remark about the downvotes (bad form, and doesn't add anything to the discussion, except for polarizing it even more), that it might actually be caused by your self-admitted lack of knowledge on the subject? Sure thing, those people may be "Opera devotees", because those are the people that know what they're talking about maybe? You claim that top post was "not actually an anti-Opera comment". What about your remark that "They'll continue to be the browser that nobody cares about"? That was you baiting all of those European and Russian Opera users, that you may or may not have noticed are also here on HN. If you had said "the browser nobody in the US actually cares about" then yes, I could not have disagreed. But this general claim is a tad ignorant, the global 1.3% market share is not at all geographically evenly spread, and goes up to 47% in certain countries. That's a long shot from saying nobody cares about it. (BTW I may be an Opera devotee--a little bit less than I was a few years ago though--but I'm not downvoting you)
- benihana 14y ago
  >What do you mean, "possibly"? I'm guessing OP meant possibly for the "sometimes for their own bad" part of the comment.

prumek 14y ago

> Opera was actually strict pro-standard.. sometimes for their own bad. Not quite. They always made every effort to be as compatible as possible with real world sites.