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Opera 9.5 To Fully Support CSS? 256

Posted by kdawson from the taking-standards-seriously dept.
Albert Sandberg writes "According to a developer blog, it looks like Opera 9.5 (which has been code-named Kestrel) will be the first browser to fully support the CSS selector test (test is here). Finally! Weekly builds should start being available in a few weeks."
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Opera 9.5 To Fully Support CSS? More

Opera 9.5 To Fully Support CSS?

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  • Safari Beta 3 (Score:5, Funny)

    by WrongSizeGlass ( 838941 ) on Friday June 22, 2007 @07:50PM (#19615461)

    From the 43 selectors 25 have passed, 9 are buggy and 9 are unsupported (Passed 346 out of 578 tests)
    Not great, but a lot better than I ever did in school. ;-)

    • Re:Safari Beta 3 (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ajehals ( 947354 ) on Friday June 22, 2007 @08:00PM (#19615549) Journal
      For the record...

      Iceweasel 2.0.0.4

      From the 43 selectors 26 have passed, 10 are buggy and 7 are unsupported (Passed 357 out of 578 tests)

      Konqueror 3.5.7

      From the 43 selectors 43 have passed, 0 are buggy and 0 are unsupported (Passed 578 out of 578 tests)

      So konqueror (which I thought shared source with safari?) is 100% compliant at least as of version 3.5.7 (I don't have an earlier version to test.).

    • Internet Explorer 7 (Score:2, Interesting)

      by drivel ( 229435 )

      From the 43 selectors 13 have passed, 4 are buggy and 26 are unsupported (Passed 330 out of 578 tests)
      That is for IE 7.0.6000.16473 under Windows Vista x64

    • Internet Explorer 6 (Score:3, Informative)

      by Datasage ( 214357 )
      From the 43 selectors 10 have passed, 1 are buggy and 32 are unsupported (Passed 276 out of 578 tests)

      IE6 still makes up for 40-45% of the users on the site I maintain for work. Opera is less than .5%, So its cool that it will support it, but it doesn't do me any good.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
        Depends on how you use it. I like using the text-shadow attribute on headings to give a little drop shadow to the text. Last time I checked, Safari was the only browser that renders the drop shadows (presumably Opera supports them now, if it supports 100% of CSS). This means that sites using them look nicer on Safari, but users of other browsers don't lose anything other than aesthetics.

        If web developers used CSS features like this then it would start to be more of a selling point for alternative brow

  • why is it so hard? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by z-j-y ( 1056250 )
    is it a problem of CSS spec if nobody can support it easily?

    • Re:why is it so hard? (Score:5, Informative)

      by daeg ( 828071 ) on Friday June 22, 2007 @08:20PM (#19615741)
      Part of the issue arises from the fact that much of browser rendering code is ancient. Much of the basic rendering pieces weren't built to handle some of the CSS properties. For instance, many advanced selectors break when you are dynamically adding content or changing/adding stylesheets.

      Expect Internet Explorer to lag again unless they completely replace large parts of their HTML rendering engine for standard-compliant sites. There is simply too much legacy code running against the Internet Explorer control, unfortunately.

  • Opera allows me to do great things (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the_kanzure ( 1100087 ) on Friday June 22, 2007 @07:56PM (#19615509) Homepage
    Really, the Opera web browser [opera.com] has allowed me to do great things throughout the internet, with hundreds of tabs open, and consequently more bookmarking being done, and session management, I do not know how productive I would be with Firefox alone. Commonly, when stranded on Firefox-only systems, I am burdened with odd tab loading impairments and generally limited to acting like I am doing literally one thing and one thing only-- no queuing up content or strands of thought, etc. Even with the hierarchical vertical tabbing enhancements through the TBE extension [sakura.ne.jp] akin to iRider [irider.com], my productivity seems to drop. So, I am glad to see more (good) publicity for Opera.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by reanjr ( 588767 )
      Unfortunately, I've been having similar problems (though not as severe) with Opera for Linux since version 9. Looks like 9.5 will fix alot of that, though.
    • You dissed Firefox on /. , major karma mistake (Score:0, Offtopic)

      Yes, Opera is second to none overall, but don't let anyone know, OK? Yes, most of the good features of the new IE and Firefox actually came from Opera, but they don't know that, and as long as you keep getting modded into karma hell, they never will.

      (Yes, I do use Firefox and Konqurer and Opera and I want them all, but please don't take my opera away... It is the ONE closed source tool I REALLY like, and since it does not threaten anyone ple

  • Not Even Close! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22, 2007 @07:57PM (#19615511)
    This post is fanboyism at its worst. Opera is going to fully support CSS selectors, not CSS. Selectors are just one structure in the CSS language. There are still many other parts of the CSS standard that are not supported by Opera and are not yet planned for any future release.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by BZ ( 40346 )
      > Opera is going to fully support CSS selectors

      Or more precisely, fully pass this test. Which is not the same thing -- the test is not exactly exhaustive.

  • The Internet-Age-Old PITA... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...Do I use a fully compliant browser in which half the pages out there won't display properly because they've been coded by lazy, clueless hacks with MCSE...or do I use the shit that is Internet Explorer because almost all pages will display semi-properly, even though the code - and IE - is totally fucked up?

    I use Opera exclusively, and I know that one day everybody will create compliant webpages. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Sigh...

  • What does it matter? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by msauve ( 701917 ) on Friday June 22, 2007 @07:58PM (#19615531)
    I use Opera, which is already known to support existing HTML standards pretty completely and accurately.

    I still frequently run into web sites built by clueless authors who feel a need to do a browser check, and finding it's not IE or Firefox (or sometimes Netscape!), think it is their duty to inform me that their sites only work with "modern" or "updated" browsers. Feh. By and large, that immediately sends me to the site of a competitor if it's a commercial site I'm visiting.

    When will web authors get a clue, and start coding to standards and not implementations. (fuck it if IE breaks because they don't do things correctly)? A properly written web site should never need to do a browser check.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jugalator ( 259273 )
      Well, I use to think of it like this... If Firefox wouldn't have got so common (really it is pretty common today -- seems like especially in Europe), Microsoft wouldn't have as much pressure on making an IE 7, and now that they did, they took the opportunity to update some of its worst CSS problems at least. MS has more or less announced there'll be an IE 8 in their blogs, so I think this competition is good for the web as a whole. It probably doesn't matter in the short perspective, but could in a longer o

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      When will web authors get a clue, and start coding to standards and not implementations. (fuck it if IE breaks because they don't do things correctly)? A properly written web site should never need to do a browser check.

      I'm sorry, but you don't say "fuck it" to 80%+ of your visitors. I believe you meant to say "A properly written web site should do a browser check, and assume that any non-IE browser is standards compliant". Oh yeah and "We know it doesn't work with this old version, please upgrade" is also
      • the proper behavior is to still code to standards, but avoid constructs which IE is known to gag on. If you have to check which browser is visiting, you're not writing good code. If you can't use a site with Lynx, it's poorly written.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kjella ( 173770 )
          the proper behavior is to still code to standards, but avoid constructs which IE is known to gag on.

          Whoever writes that, hasn't tried much if at all. Try doing a basic three column-layout (left bar, main, right bar) with header and footer in IE. Trust me you'll be ready to strangle something long before you get it working in IE. I'd actually much rather try to do it in Lynx, not that anyone gives a fuck about Lynx... Even the most longbearded "you can pry the command line from my cold dead fingers" linux hi

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Christophotron ( 812632 )
            umm excuse me, but i give a fuck about lynx. and I'm not a longbearded linux geek either.. I just happen to like browsing websites with a text-only browser once in a while. mainly when i am using a slow ass dial-up connection to connect to my linux server over ssh. in those cases, its faster to load the pages up in lynx than it is to wait for either opera or firefox to display them. when pages work decently in lynx, i can appreciate it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Daverd ( 641119 )
      Oh, you use IE? That's okay, we didn't want your money anyway.

      Wait, what's that? ... Yeah, we didn't want 80% of everybody else's money either.
    • Well I'd say it should do a check for early versions of IE. Everyone else knows how to upgrade.

  • Still no icon (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TenBrothers ( 995309 ) on Friday June 22, 2007 @08:03PM (#19615579)
    Despite Opera showing its superiority as a browser over and over again and on multiple platforms, from desktop to mobile to game systems, ther eis still no Slashdot Icon to mark Opera news stories.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      They need to change their icon, so slashdot can use the old one.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jesser ( 77961 )
      Be careful what you ask for. Slashdot might use the "Power Ranger" from a recent version of the opera.com web site as the icon representing the browser.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RonnyJ ( 651856 )
      It's not suprising, unfortunately. Whereas there's numerous stories on Slashdot about reviews of Firefox alphas, comparisons to IE, etc. and even lists of extensions, I remember being a bit surprised that there wasn't even a story on Slashdot when the last release (9.2) of Opera came out (granted, I've seen stories about the Wii versions, etc).

      I understand that there's likely a lot more submissions about Firefox (and the stories probably get a lot more page views), but in many peoples view Opera is a better
  • I'm really impressed if they dare to follow the standard.

    Because with their good example, pages will render differently in opera than the author wanted it too as the pages are probably tuned for IE/Mozilla/Konqueror.

    • http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/kestrel-is-c o minga> [opera.com]

      "As a result, Opera 9.5 contains more than a year of improvements on the rendering engine. This includes improved CSS3 support (text-shadow anyone ), superior SVG support and a brand new javascript engine with support for ECMAScript 4 'getters' and 'setters'. Apart from being the best standard compliant browser, Opera 9.5 will also display even more webpages with bad coding."

      They've always been aggressive [operawatch.com] about making sure websites work in th

    • i believe Konqueror is also fully-complient in this regard.

      latest version of firefox is slightly better than IE7 (357 for FF vs. 330 for IE), but that isn't much differance.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jesser ( 77961 )
      Adding support for new CSS selectors usually doesn't cause web pages to break. Especially if you're the first browser to implement them, so very few web sites try to use those selectors.
    • The goal of the Firefox is to support standards also and they are improving on that area with ener new Gecko release. In the current versions Firefox already has better html/xhtml and css3 support than Opera. IE is far behind in everything:

      http://www.webdevout.net/browser-support-summary [webdevout.net]

  • Go Opera! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Aminion ( 896851 ) on Friday June 22, 2007 @08:10PM (#19615637)
    Very nice news but somehow not surprising by the constant underdog. It truly is a shame that Opera only has 2% of the market considering how great it is in comparison to its competitors regarding speed, features, innovation and security. Imagine a browser so great that people actually paid for it as late as 2005 (these days, Opera is 100% free).
    • Opera used to have an advertisement area on the right side of the toolbar, now a blank area. All of the control buttons are still over on the left side. I wonder when they will fix that. Opera is a very good browser, and I have placed it in my Knoppix remaster [geocities.com]for a long time now. I have it loaded up with a bunch of RSS feeds. Opera handles these better than Firefox 2.0.0.4, you get a summary of the story in Opera, in Firefox you only get the title of the story, and sometimes that is shortened. Much better

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jgrahn ( 181062 )

        Opera used to have an advertisement area on the right side of the toolbar, now a blank area.

        When I paid them $$ back in 2000 or so, I could use that former ad-area immediately. It used to be at the top right for me. You may have a problem with your preferences: dragging around the toolbars and hotlists and whatnot, plus taking Opera a few slightly incompatible upgrades, may mess up those preferences. What happens if you rename your ~/.opera directory temporarily while restarting Opera? Do you still have a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mgiuca ( 1040724 )

      (these days, Opera is 100% free).
      ...as in beer.

  • Konqueror FTW (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Reorax ( 629666 ) on Friday June 22, 2007 @08:13PM (#19615667)
    I'm using Konqueror 3.5.7 on Kubuntu right now, and it passes completely. I don't know how long it's been able to pass, since I just found out about the test now. Firefox 2.0.0.4 fails pretty badly, but this version of Konqueror says that it passes all the tests. Yet Opera claims that it is the first browser to pass? Objection! At least one browser has passed before it, and that Opera version is not even out yet, it's in the weekly builds. This is the stable version of Konqueror

  • I used Opera exclusively on Windows, Linux, and BSD for several years, but recently switched to Konqueror. I finally got fed up with a few things in Opera.

    My first complaint is their lack of 64-bit support. I'm running the AMD64 version of Debian, and Opera is (was) the only 32-bit program I had to run, making it a pain to keep a bunch of 32-bit compatibility libraries around for one program. I think 64-bit is popular enough now that it'd be worth the time to compile for it. Given the large number o

    • Re:But... (Score:5, Funny)

      by SpectreBlofeld ( 886224 ) on Friday June 22, 2007 @08:31PM (#19615819)
      The second big complaint was that it doesn't support more than 9 mouse buttons. I spent $100 on a fancy mouse, hoping I could control most of my GUI programs with only the mouse. Much to my surprise, any shortcuts after Button9 simply don't work. This was quite disappointing

        I'm trying to figure out if that's a joke. Nine mouse buttons?

        Any Mac user will tell you that one mouse button, when used in conjunction with seven funny-looking keyboard keys should be enough for anybody!

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by WrongSizeGlass ( 838941 )

        Nine mouse buttons?
        Must be one of those new fangled two-handed mice. That's a button for each finger (a la Twister) with one thumb leftover for the traditional "thumbs up" when you finally complete that complicated multi-mouse buttoned maneuver in Duke Nukem Forever.

      • I'm trying to figure out if that's a joke. Nine mouse buttons?

        No, not a joke. It's one of these. [newegg.com]

        Newegg says 7 buttons, which is technically true, but it's a little more complicated setting it up in X. The main scroll wheel goes forward, backward, left, right, and can be clicked, so that counts as 5 as far as X is concerned. The wheel on the right thumb goes forward, backward, and can also be clicked, so that's 3. To make it more confusing, the little button on top, behind the scroll wheel gets sen

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )
        Well, if I remember last time I dicked around with it, the scroll wheel counts as two "buttons", so for my mouse I have seven:

        Left
        Right
        Side-Left
        Side-Right
        Scrollwheel-click
        Scrollwheel-up
        Scrollwheel-down

        I know there are some mouses that register pushing the scrollwheel left and right, that'd make it nine. Not sure where you'd fit the 10th one though...

    • Oops, should have RTFA :-)

      Looks like they're fixing the tab issue and releasing a 64-bit Linux version. As a bonus, they're releasing a version using Qt4! Maybe I'll get lucky and supporting mouse buttons above Button9 will be one of the UI tweaks they mentioned.

    • You probably shouldn't be annoyed with Opera, because IIRC there ARE only 9 mouse buttons.... as per the USB HID spec.

      I won't swear that this is true, but I'm pretty sure. Totally from memory here.

      I prefer mouse gestures over mouse button shortcuts any day. Personally I use StrokeIt ( http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/ [tcbmi.com] ) on my windows boxes so that I can use gestures in any prog, but whatever floats your boat. I have a 10 button mouse with scroll wheel, all mapped to custom features in my IDE... so it isn't lik

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jgrahn ( 181062 )

      My first complaint is their lack of 64-bit support. I'm running the AMD64 version of Debian, and Opera is (was) the only 32-bit program I had to run, making it a pain to keep a bunch of 32-bit compatibility libraries around for one program.

      I hate that, too.

      I think 64-bit is popular enough now that it'd be worth the time to compile for it. Given the large number of platforms Opera runs on, it should be pretty easy to port.

      When asked on news:opera.linux [opera.linux], one Opera developer claimed they had problems with

  • Different Browser Ratings (Score:5, Informative)

    by The MAZZTer ( 911996 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .tzzagem.> on Friday June 22, 2007 @08:24PM (#19615769) Homepage

    Firefox 2.0.0.4 on Windows Vista:

    From the 43 selectors 26 have passed, 10 are buggy and 7 are unsupported (Passed 357 out of 578 tests)

    Internet Explorer 7.0.6000.16473 on Windows Vista:

    From the 43 selectors 13 have passed, 4 are buggy and 26 are unsupported (Passed 289 out of 534 tests)

    Lynx 2.8.3dev17 on Windows Vista:

    No JavaScript == No tests. :(

    Opera 8.5 on Nintendo DS:

    From the 43 selectors 14 have passed, 3 are buggy and 26 are unsupported (Passed 313 out of 578 tests)

    Opera 9.1 on Nintendo Wii:

    From the 43 selectors 30 have passed, 2 are buggy and 11 are unsupported (Passed 450 out of 578 tests)

    Opera 9.21 on Windows Vista:

    From the 43 selectors 25 have passed, 3 are buggy and 15 are unsupported (Passed 346 out of 578 tests)

    Safari 3.0.1 Beta on Windows Vista:

    From the 43 selectors 25 have passed, 9 are buggy and 9 are unsupported (Passed 346 out of 578 tests)

    Oddly enough, the Wii with an OLDER Opera wins in the Most Completely Working category, while Firefox wins in the Most They At Least Tried category (least unsupported).

    • Amusing addendum while looking for other browsers:

      Internet Explorer 3 16-bit on Windows Vista:

      No JavaScript, and doesn't even recognize the CSS on msn.com or on the test page.

      Newer versions of IE, except for 7 of course, won't run on Vista at all (maybe I'm missing a version-specific DLL for those. Oh well).

    • Firefox 2.0.0.4 on Windows Vista:

      From the 43 selectors 26 have passed, 10 are buggy and 7 are unsupported (Passed 357 out of 578 tests)


      Firefox 3.0alpha6pre on Windows Vista:

      From the 43 selectors 32 have passed, 4 are buggy and 7 are unsupported (Passed 369 out of 578 tests)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by KlomDark ( 6370 )
      IE7 x64 on Windows XP Professional x64 Edition:

      From the 43 selectors 13 have passed, 4 are buggy and 26 are unsupported (Passed 330 out of 578 tests)
    • From the 43 selectors 32 have passed, 4 are buggy and 7 are unsupported (Passed 369 out of 578 tests)
  • Mark me flamebait if ya like. If there's some way to tag my user agent data, you'd see I'm running Linux and Firefox 1.5.0.12. But I have to wonder why Firefox hasn't been all over the idea of 100% compliance.

    It's slick, it's fast, it's effective and it's very compatible. I also love the plugins. But it's not much of a 'selling point' that it's not 100% compliant with whatever standards there are out there. It's especially damning when the same demographic often cite that MSIE isn't compliant with stan

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by heinousjay ( 683506 )
      Gecko tries to walk a razor-thin line of supporting standards (which are essentially defined in a vacuum) and working with the web as it actually exists.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Dan Ost ( 415913 )
      There is no browser out there that is 100% compliant with all the standards that describe web content.

      One of the primary goals behind Firefox/Gecko is standards compliance and, as far as I know, Firefox is the most compliant browser out there, categorically speaking. The problem is that there are several standards (and several versions of each standard) and each standard is large enough that they have to be implemented piecemeal. Each browser team prioritizes what they think are the most important elements
      • The assumption is, of course, that 100% compliance with all the standards is even possible; that the standards don't contradict each other in some edge cases.

        Of course, in addition to being 100% compliant with all the standards, the browser should be able to render pages that already exist, many of which do not follow the standards.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )
        One of the primary goals behind Firefox/Gecko is standards compliance and, as far as I know, Firefox is the most compliant browser out there, categorically speaking.

        Adverb: categorically `katu'górik(u)lee
        In an unqualified manner
        - flatly, unconditionally

        I hardly think that's called for. As you can read in this discussion, Konqueror has supported this for six months, Opera will, Firefox won't for a while. And if you look at the summary table [webdevout.net] here, you'll see that while Firefox wins by 5% in HTML and CSS
    • Now that you've said that, I'm going to point out that Firefox is the reason that I have to assign an align to every td in a table rather than just applying it to a col element.

      Side notes:
      Now that I can test Safari on Windows, it doesn't support it either.

      Another side note:
      IE6 and IE7 are the only browsers to support the CSS text-align on a element. By definition, this also means that Firefox, Opera, and Safari still don't support all of HTML4 and CSS1.
      • Oops, forgot to escape <col> in the last sentence. It should read:

        IE6 and IE7 are the only browsers to support the CSS text-align on a <col> element. By definition, this also means that Firefox, Opera, and Safari still don't support all of HTML4 and CSS1.
  • Passing a single test suite isn't exactly the same thing as supporting the whole standard perfectly. Test suites, by their very nature, only test select subsets of the standard. A single general test suite cannot expose every possible bug in every feature. On top of that, this test suite only covers the selectors, which is a fairly simple and straight-forward part of the spec. Heck, even Internet Explorer supports a bunch of CSS 3 selectors. It's one thing to claim full support for selectors; it's quite dif

  • I can't believe... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MrNemesis ( 587188 ) on Saturday June 23, 2007 @06:25AM (#19618531) Homepage Journal
    ...that no-one has mentioned some of the other gems from TFA, especially in relation to the *nix builds:

    64bit Linux builds
    Qt4 builds
    Faster tab switching (my only gripe with the current Opera under Linux)

    I've been using Opera since 2001, and on Linux since 2004, and it's great to see a vendor maintaining feature parity across different platforms.

    The improvements to CSS et al are always welcome, but as some other users have pointed out it's almost always crappily coded sites that give "alternative" browsers a hard time, so it's also good to see they're apparently factoring in better support for error-ridden sites.

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