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Opera Tells EU That Microsoft's IE Hurts the Web
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Dec 14, 2007 02:25 PM
from the ow-right-in-my-infrastructure dept.
from the ow-right-in-my-infrastructure dept.
kastababy writes "In yet another instance of up-and-coming browser developers fighting back against the Microsoft behemoth, the makers of Opera have filed a complaint with the European Union against Microsoft. In their complaint, they allege that IE's 77% market share abuses its dominant position by tying IE to Windows and its refusal to accept Web standards, causing significant interoperability issues. The complaint also requests that the EU's Antitrust Division force Microsoft to separate IE from Windows and accept several different standards, thereby resolving major interoperability issues and providing consumers more choice in the browser market." Update: 12/14 19:47 GMT by Z : We also discussed this yesterday.
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Your Rights Online: Opera Files EU Complaint Against Microsoft 455 comments
A number of readers have sent word about Opera Software ASA's antitrust complaint against Microsoft filed with the EU. Here is Opera's press release on the filing. The company wants the EU to "obligate Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop" and to "require Microsoft to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities." The latter request makes this a case to watch. Will the Commissioner take the Acid2 test using IE7?
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Dupe? (Score:4, Informative)
This is just sad.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Dupe? (Score:5, Funny)
You must be new here.
Parent
Re:Dupe? (Score:5, Funny)
Not new enough apparently.
Parent
Re:Opera? Cry me a river... (Score:4, Interesting)
Funnily enough, I do agree with Opera on this one, though I don't use Opera.
It may be faster and nicer in many ways, but some Firefox extensions are simply way too valuable to me.
Parent
EU: hard of hearing (Score:5, Funny)
In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
about time (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:about time (Score:5, Interesting)
SVG is almost on the bottom of my wish list. How 'bout meeting the CSS 2.1 spec without having to implement any hacks? I'd be plenty happy with just that!
Question [slashdot.org]
Answer [slashdot.org]
Parent
Re:about time (Score:5, Insightful)
CSS2.1? How about they start with something simpler to fully implement, like
If there's anything I forgot, it belongs on that list. IE has never fully supported anything.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What do you think is taking 3D Realms so long to release Duke 4ever? They really NEED MS to support SVG as the game just won't play well without it.
Re:about time (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's limit us to address books for example.
Outlook express 4 and 5 not compatible:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/244459 [microsoft.com]
MS outlook to MS spam software, not compatible:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/179962 [microsoft.com]
Outlook E supports folders in address book, but not exporting folders:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/241875 [microsoft.com]
That was only from the first result page using keywords address book import error... If they can't standardize on a way to store contact information, can you even claim that microsoft makes *standards*? There is nothing standardized in that company. Show me a single nontrivial webpage with CSS that looks the same in IE 5,6 and 7 WITHOUT any nonstandard hacks. Even when following Microsofts own guidelines, or software that is not possible.
Parent
Re:about time (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Now that I think of it, our team should really be getting some ffox swag. A t-shirt
Re:about time (Score:5, Funny)
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Problem in Accepting Standards (Score:4, Insightful)
But in IE's case, it seems almost to be a complete disregard for the standards.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And should definitely be required to fix bugs (bugs defined where behaviour differs from the published standard) for free and within a reasonable time frame.
Perhaps make them implement any standard feature which is implemented by at least 2 other browsers.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. And it's marked as fixed. Firefox 3 will finally have this. You can check out the beta if you want.
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Decoupling IE and Windows... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's where the OEM comes in. Decouple IE from Windows, and the OEM is free to install IE, Firefox, Opera, whatever.
Re:Decoupling IE and Windows... (Score:5, Insightful)
I, personally, have no qualms with Microsoft shipping IE with Windows. It is their product, after all. BUT they should give OEMs the option to strip it out and replace it with Firefox/Opera/Safari/K-Meleon if they so desire. Which, really, is what this is all about.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Decoupling IE and Windows... (Score:4, Insightful)
What about Opera's dominance on the Nintendo Wii?
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Work to Change it (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Simple (Score:2)
That is why.... Simple isn't it.
The EU ( not all European Counties are members, Norway, Switzerland, Serbia etc) has a bigger population that the US + Canada.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
s/Opera/Internet Explorer/ and I'll agree with you.
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Re:Opera (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well once you're in the real world and your job depends on the site you're building working in IE you'll change your tune.. or find other employment. If it doesn't look right in IE, you can't ignore it, like it or not.
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Also; OT, but "spite" is definitely one of those words which sounds weird when you say it loads of times.
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In all seriousness I already AM an Opera user. Deploying it to my two new workstations and new BlackBerry 8830 would have been part of my standard "end user kit" anyway.
The Wii browser, well, my Bro-In-Law wants it and Xmas is coming up so why the heck not?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I think it's more a case of Opera being pissed that it's not funded with Google money like Mozilla Firefox is.
Wait, so Opera is pissed at Google and Firefox, so their solution is to sue Microsoft? Oh, yeah, and who said Opera doesn't take money from Google?
If "developers" are going to "fight", how about developing something the market cares about instead, eh?
Maybe they'll appeal to the market once the market is actually choosing the best browser instead of having IE forced on it?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You're just pissed that few people care which browser they use.
No, I'm pissed that because of Microsoft's anti-competitive practices, web developers have to spend 5x more time and effort than they should because they can't code to the W3C standards for HTML and CSS. I'm pissed that because of this, many lazy web developers have chosen to only support the one major browser that doesn't conform to standards, which means I can't necessarily use the browser I want.
I'm pissed because Microsoft is purposefull
Re:Waaambulance (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Waaambulance (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft will fight tooth and nail to keep IE closed source so that they can continue to use it strategically to throw a wrench into the standards. As long as stuff doesn't quite work right on IE and IE is the majority browser Microsoft can continue to stall and delay anything that challenges their dominance.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
On and off over the years I've had occasion to work with Microsoft developers on various things. At one point I worked with the COM team and the IE team for several months. I didn't work for MS, I worked for a company that had discovered a weird and complicated bug. "They" are just a bunch of guys, regular programmers, just like you find at every other big company in the world. Nobody has a secret evil plan. It just doesn't exist. They b
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
so i must conclude that either microsoft is incompetent or microsoft is deliberately not implementing the standards.
Re:Waaambulance (Score:5, Informative)
You are aware that Microsoft is a member of the W3C [w3.org], right? And that they contributed to the development of such standards as CSS2? And that Microsoft pledged to support these standards back in 1998, and yet somehow their competitors support considerably more parts of that spec than they do? (I suspect ceasing all development other than security fixes for 3-4 years had quite a bit to do with that.)
A bunch of companies didn't get together and say, "We don't like how Microsoft does the web, let's design another one." A bunch of companies including Microsoft got together and said, "Here's how we're going to design the web," Microsoft signed off on it, and then went off in their own direction.
Parent
Re:Waaambulance (Score:4, Informative)
No, the "IE won and thus reigns king" crowd needs to accept that IE doesn't even have its own set of standards and that this is the real root of the problem. Version to version, we see some bugs fixed, some bugs ignored, and wholly *new* ones appear. When you do a QA cycle on a site and find that IE6 actually renders something mostly okay while it totally breaks in IE7, you can see how ridiculous this is.
Yes, it's a tremendous pain in the ass when there's a standard everybody else either complies with or at least makes a sincere effort to comply with, but when the one player who doesn't follow it doesn't even prove itself to be consistent internally, the resulting product is worthless. They don't even provide any documentation as to what coding standards *should* be followed for their browser; this is why they outright recommend conditional comments [microsoft.com] as a fix for (qutoing them) "pages that display correctly in browsers other than Internet Explorer."
Now, you can either keep lying to yourself, or you can accept the fact that IE is crap and in need of either serious repair or published documentation of how to code for it, and will remain crap until such a time.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In reality, people can just code for IE and ignore the other browsers and hit most of the web.
Sure they can. Except coding for IE alone is still a bitch, and ignoring other browsers is incredibly naive as IE no longer holds 95%+ dominance as it once did. In reality, these people are stupid as far as creating web content goes.
The only instance where this is an acceptable practice in business terms is when the client specifically says, "compatibility with anything other than IE is not necessary" - eithe
Standardized IE's impact on other browsers (Score:4, Insightful)
Not necessarily. End users don't pick their browsers for standards compliance. They do pick them by questions like, "Does this browser work with my bank's website?"
If the most-used browser (IE or otherwise) is fully standards-compliant, that lowers the bar for developers to build sites that work with multiple browsers: target standards and you get something that works in IE8, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc., instead of targeting IE6, tweaking for IE7, tweaking for Firefox, and deciding anyone running another browser is just SOL.
End result: More websites are compatible across the board, so when people try Opera, fewer of them will run it for 2 days and say, "Well, I sorta like it, but the POS browser can't handle my favorite website. I'm going back to IE."
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Re:Microsoft is a world wide monopoly... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know if you recall the purpose of the web. But it's main goal and design is meant be a cross-platform, cross-architecture design for handling content on the "world wide web" - granting access to all who adhere to the recommendations/standards from the formation of standard organizations such as the w3c, ISO/IEEE and others. Microsoft has broken the design of the web in ways that I consider is anti-competitive.
Embrace, break standards (so other software does not work well with Microsoft's implementation) and extend with proprietary lock-ins.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If IE supported all current standards properly, users who switch
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with improving the browser and following the standards, but why ask to untie Windows and IE?
Because it is illegal to tie a product you have monopolized to one in a different market.
...what about MacOS X and Linux?
It is illegal for them to tie products in markets they have monopolized with one in a different market. That is why the EU is investigating Apple's market share with the iPod (since they are close to having monopoly influence in that market) and may force them to remove the ties between the iPod and the ItTunes store and iTunes software.
why should Microsoft sell an OS without a web browser
Because it has destroyed both the market for Web browsers and slowed progre