Firstly, 60 mils. in just mere two weeks seems a bit suspicious to me. Anyway, 1% penetration might have a reason: [allegedly] default IE masquerading.

If 50 million people download firefox and 40 million keep using it and 60 million download opera but only 4 million keep using it, it would work out.

@fantomas:
Even though Opera masquerades as IE, it always adds Opera/x.y (version) to the user agentstring, so use ofOpera *is* detectable....

fantomas:
It's Opera 7 they're claiming has had 60 million downloads; it was released over two years ago. Opera 8 is what was released two weeks ago.

Quite true, Opera usage is still detectable even when masquerading. I helped my webhost's statistics software provider (smaller company) update their software to properly detect Opera. The Opera masquerading works more for getting past older scripts (server and client) that look for IE. Most stats packages correctly detect Opera these days.

Could Opera not have been counting every download for every version? The latest 7.* release seems to be 7.5.4 from which I would assume there have been quite a lot of updates to 7.x series. Assuming on average each user updates Opera 9 times (10 downloads in total) (Does Opera auto-update?) then that's 6,000,000 real downloads which would make sense. Firefox doesn't count update downloads I believe.

I think the 'skewed' download figures are primarily caused by two types of downloaders:
1) People who want or need Opera (only) to test their webpages in.
2) People who want to try Opera, but are scared by the banner / the price.

As for the second, I think that (and not lack of features, quality issues, user interface problems or anything else) is *the* thing that's keeping Opera small, and makes Firefox grow that fast. Lots of people are not going to pay for a browser or tolerate ads for anything other than testing. Opera is one of the very few pieces of software I'm willing to pay for, so I can quite imagine.

As for your fear of being accused of 'bashing' Opera: you had some very strong opinions on Opera's user interface in 7.5. And while your words were quite hard and IMHO a bit exaggerated, you had good examples and arguments. That's why I defended your points of view in the Opera newsgroups and forums. In the end I think Opera has listened very well. In a way, I'd like to thank you for that :-)

Now that 8 is out, some criticism remains, whereas your arguments are not very strong anymore. To prevent being accused of 'bashing', I can only ask you to provide as clear examples and arguments as possible, and match your choice of words with the seriousness of the issues at hand. That way, the discussion can be fruitful, which cannot be said about some of the blogwars and quarrels lately.

Opera need to hard work to get the web developer market. It needs something like DOM Inspector, a better JavaScript console, and more importantly an extension framework (instead of hacking those ini files). :-S

I have downloaded Opera 6, 7, and 8, but I am not an Opera "user." I keep it around for testing, but don't use it for everyday browsing since I prefer Firefox.

So I think Andy has it about right.

As it has already been pointed out, most stats services correctly identify Opera when it (sortof) spoofs as IE. For all the gory details, see my stats service browser recognition test.

The math is simple.
Opera 7 from Opera v 7.00 beta to Opera v 7.54u2 had about 20 releases.
10 mln users * 20 = 200 milions of potential downloads.

Do you have some Opera complex?

Does the Firefox download counter differentiate between intial downloads and ones prompted by the update mechanism? I know I've installed it on four or five systems, but my download numbers also include three or four downloads for each computer because the updates have been monolithic.

See what this Opera guy wrote about this:

http://operawatch.blogspot.com/2005/05/operas-market-share.html

Opera is not Firefox. To quote Haavard:

In the same blog post, he [ASA] writes about Opera 8's simplified user interface, and how Opera is starting to look more like Firefox. Now, this would indicate that somehow, Opera follows Firefox. But Firefox itself was actually an attempt to make a simplified "IE-like" user interface, so is he really saying that Opera is looking more like IE now? That Opera is following IE's lead?

Get real, asa.

# Asa: "a clear move in Firefox's direction"

Firefox was hardly the first standalone browser with a clean default UI.

# Fabian: "That's why I defended your points of view in the Opera newsgroups and forums. In the end I think Opera has listened very well."

I somehow doubt that Asa's comments were what made Opera change the UI. You obviously haven't paid attention to posts in the Opera forums...

# David Naylor: "most stats services correctly identify Opera when it (sortof) spoofs as IE"

Apparently not. There's a huge list in the Opera forums of stats services that simply fail to detect Opera.

For anyone that's accusing me or the statistics analysts of lying, I'm quoting _Opera_ stats. Opera itself claims 1% marketshare.

- A

Here is the link to the comment by "ser", from above.

http://operawatch.blogspot.com/2005/05/operas-market-share.html

Math is hard? Let's see.

If 1% of internet users make 10 million then 10% should make 100 million. That would be true if there were 1 billion internet users total. Sounds about right to me so far, it's in line with what I heard, and googling gave me this: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

But if this is true then 10% Firefox market share means 100 million users. This doesn't match with 50 million downloads unless we assume that:
- the download statistics are incorrect, or
- Firefox market share stats are incorrect, or
- counted Firefox downloads comprise only a fraction of the total number of Firefox copies being distributed, or
- all of the above factors come into play in some combination.

In any case this means that no serious conclusions can be made on the basis of these stats if you give at least a second of thought to the matter.

I believe in the figures. For example, I have downloaded Opera, but I am using it very rarely, specially on the Internet. I know some other people acting similar.

The difference between 60 million downloads of Opera 7 and 10 million users is easy to explain with the same users downloading the different upgrades, and maybe several times. There are also users of other browsers that download Opera to test, either for development or to see what they prefer.

Similar for Firefox, for that matter. How many active users do Firefox have? So the math part isn't really that hard.

As for the statistics, Opera ASA are just as dependent as anyone else in getting the numbers from different sites to make statistics over browser share. If they bother to make their own - I don't know. Those numbers says 1% share for Opera, and nobody is lying when saying that.

If the stat. programs are fooled by Opera masquerading as IE or not, or rather to what degree they're fooled, that's a question to which answer we can just speculate about. True, it is possible to identify Opera, and true, most programs have been updated to actually identify Opera, too. That doesn't mean that all who used earlier versions have updated to later versions which manage this identification, so there are Opera users who are not identified as such. We just don't know how many they are. We can speculate and come with guesses, educated or not, but the only number we've got is that 1% referred to.

I have downloaded Opera and used it only a couple of times for a single stupid website that doesn't work with any other GNU/Linux browser.

So, for me, there is one download for Opera and one for FF, but 99.99% of the time I use FF.

Hope this helps explain the statistics.

As for counting downloads, the Firefox counter does NOT include downloads via Firefox update. As to the question of how there might be more Firefox users than the download numbers would suggest... since Firefox is free, there are TONS of places to download it from online that are not counted in the counter. Plus it's included on CDs from web magazines and ISPs. I have the same issue with trying to count Portable Firefox downloads. A few European magazines include it in their cover CDs, tons of shareware and freeware sites have it for download. All I count is downloads from my server and MozDev, though.

On the statistics themselves... there are lies, damn lies and statistics :-D All the stats are a bit different. All have slightly different sources and end up with slightly different results. Add to that the fact that, as a web designer/developer, you're really more concerned with the rendering engine than anything else... and it gets confusing for lots of folks. I'm attempting to combine results from the disparate stats surveys into one semi-useful rendering engine stat. You can check out my first draft (released today) here:
http://johnhaller.com/jh/useful_stuff/browser_statistics.asp

Comments and suggestions are appreciated.

Regards,
John

"Apparently not. There's a huge list in the Opera forums of stats services that simply fail to detect Opera."

Link? For my test I tried to identify the most popular web site stats providers. There may well be loads of minor stats services which suck at recognitions, but (I think) those don't tend to be the ones that get quoted in media.

"If the stat. programs are fooled by Opera masquerading as IE or not, or rather to what degree they're fooled, that's a question to which answer we can just speculate about."

No, we can quite simply test it.

I've also attempted to estimate the size of the "Firefox download figure bloat" due to 1.0.x updates: http://naylog.blogspot.com/2005/05/firefox-downloads-without-updates.html

I use FF for... chatzilla.

As has been said before, I too have downloaded (multiple version of) Opera 7, but just used it for testing and never really for casual browsing.

I disliked the skinnable interface that replaced the pure-Qt one a few major versions ago (with the switch from 5.x to 6.x I think?) and made the switch to Mozilla around the time because, honestly, I wasn’t going to buy Opera. Then I tried 7.x and found it so full of… “stuff” that I never managed to get myself to try to use it.

Even though I kept my copy roughly up-to-date for testing purposes.

Not applicable to this post since this is a new feature in O8, but O8 has allowed the browser to be spoofed WITHOUT the "Opera" string in the UA.

chuanz, every version of Firefox ever released allows the browser to be spoofed without any mention of Firefox, Mozilla, or Gecko. Most people won't do it, though.

Most people leave whatver they get as the default for stuff like that and I imagine Opera users aren't significantly more likely to make that kind of change than are Firefox users.

- A

Of course, most FF users don't bother, Asa ... because FF users benefit from the fact that most sites are written with code that looks for IE/Netscape/Mozilla/Gecko.

Opera users do not have that luxury nor have they ever.

Opera is under-represented user-wise, surely, due to the forced UA masquerading that Opera users are forced into all too often.

Quality does not always correlate with market share for any number of reasons which can be engaged in (and have already) in other forums, blogs, etc.

TreeGo, either I wasn't clear or you misunderstood. Neither Opera users, nor Firefox users have any good reason to change the default. Opera defaults to impersonating IE and Firefox defaults to Gecko/Firefox. That works for the overwhelming majority of Opera and Firefox users. chuanz mentioned that Opera had the _new_ _option_ to remove all traces of Opera from the default IE impersonating (but easily dectected as Opera) user agent string. I was suggesting that that option was completely uninteresting from a measurement standpoint since Firefox also has the option to hide its identity completely but most users won't change either one. Opera is easily identified as Opera by all of the major statistics sites out there and I don't see that changing, even with this new option in Opera 8.

"Of course, most FF users don't bother, Asa ... because FF users benefit from the fact that most sites are written with code that looks for IE/Netscape/Mozilla/Gecko"

And why do you think that so many sites are written to wupport Gecko? Could it be that we made the right choice to identify ourselves as what we actually are, presenting developers with our actual capabilities and encouraging them to hand us code we can actually use?

"Opera users do not have that luxury nor have they ever."

Would that be because Opera's process makes the decisions for you rather than inviting you to be a part of it like the open Mozilla process?

"Opera is under-represented user-wise, surely, due to the forced UA masquerading that Opera users are forced into all too often."

Who made that decision to masquerade as IE? Why was that decision made and what input did you have in that decision?

Also, as David has pointed out above, Opera usage is not masked by that. The major usage measurements all know how to detect Opera properly. Not only that, but Opera Software itself claims only 1% marketshare (and 10 million users, which, in a world of about 800 million users, probably does work out to something like 1-1.5%)

"Quality does not always correlate with market share for any number of reasons which can be engaged in (and have already) in other forums, blogs, etc."

The focus of this post was not to question Opera's quality (and even previous posts were not about quality, so much as usability). The focus of this post was on the odd notion that 60 million downloads of Opera 7.x would only translate into 1% of the market (and, again, that 1% is Opera Soft's claim, not mine) while 50 million downloads of Mozilla Firefox would translate into nearly 10% of the market.

The only obvious answers I can come up with are that Opera is wrong about either the 60 million number or the 1% number. If that's not it, the only other answer seems to be that a whole heck of a lot of people download Opera and then don't use it compared to Firefox.

- A

Totally beside the point, but you mean "ekes out", not "eeks out".

Asa,

Sorry, but you still do not understand, Asa. Opera users have to impersonate other browsers to get the same content (completely hiding Opera from the user agent string) on many sites.

Firefox users do not have to do this nearly as much. I have yet to find such a site it is necessary for in Firefox. ActiveX sites, of course, are problematic for all non-IE users.

The default 'as IE' setting in Opera is not sufficient in many, many cases. I could give you a list if you wish.

Firefox, by contrast, gets served the good code by nearly all the same websites that an Opera user is forced to modify his UA for.

It seems you don't understand Opera's new ability and necessity to be completely coded as another browser both through ua.ini and user javascript for many sites, yet, Asa.

To say this necessity in Opera means Opera is sub-standard to Firefox in some way makes no sense.

Firefox is merely riding on the coattails of web developers who still code for the old days of IE vs. Netscape.

You don't know how many people use Opera versus Firefox versus IE. I know my browsing habits with Opera would lead those tracking my UA to believe I was browsing with somethin other than Opera very often.

Even if you did know the numbers, what does that prove? It might just prove that Firefox/Mozilla has more money to spend on marketing. It might just prove that the cloaking of the UA completely via UA.ini and user javascript has more far-reaching implications with respect to usage stats than you think. It might prove that IE is clearly market dominant no matter what Firefox, Opera, and the rest do. It might prove that some go for cool icons and warm fuzzy feelings about non-technical issues more so than the actual workings of the program. It could be that some have bought into the idea that a Google Ad bar built into a browser/mail/news/chat suite is somehow reprehensible even if they use GMail and the Internet at large while viewing ads all the time.

Who knows?

This much I know about Opera versus Firefox. Opera is much better integrated with respect to browsing, mail, chat, newsfeeds, newsgroups. See a recent posting of mine at the Opera Forums that illustrates this better:

As for using extensions to "emulate" Opera... You can probably get similar features, but they won't all fit together the way Opera does.

Amen!

Take it from me ... I have really attempted to do this (make Firefox like Opera in feature-set and overall functionality), too. It cannot be done! (exclamation points need not be interpreted as brain-dead fan-boyism, either)

I-N-T-E-G-R-A-T-I-O-N, baby!

Maybe I should start a whole thread on how Opera's integration of everything under-the-sun-on-the-Internet is unique and smart and not duplicated anywhere else.

For example:

My contact properties allow me to enter chat nicknames. When in chat, that person's unique contact image appears in the chat panel when he is online ... neat!

While chatting, I can easily send an email to one of my contacts in the chatroom ... neat!

While browsing, I can easily select a group of text and right-click and send via email to any of my contacts ... neat!

While browsing (if I need to give my neck and shoulders and rear-end a break) but am interested in reading one final article, I can simply select the text and have the voice read the article to me after I turn up the volume and take a walk around the house---neat!

While chatting, I need to spell-check my new big word ... simple with Opera, and I want to tell somebody in the chatroom about my new favorite bookmark. Simply drag the bookmark over to the chatroom posting area ... great stuff!

Ah, I just got a great newsfeed article notice ... my friend would love to read this. I know what I'll do, I'll press 'F' and forward it to him. Excellent!

I could go on and on ... perhaps I will later.

Suffice to say, the merging together of chat, browser, mail, news, and contacts makes Opera uniquely gifted.

Keep "banging" on Opera, Asa ... it lets me know that Opera is indeed going in the right direction! :)

As for your other blather about Opera making decisions with respect to the UA string that are somehow devious or omit user input, what are you "getting on" about?

Opera permits the user to ID as whatever he or she would like. If website developers would simply send the same code to Opera as they do to other browsers, UA modification measures and default settings that seem "mysterious" to you wouldn't be necessary in the first place.

Message to web authors--->send the same code to Opera that you do to other browsers. Don't send Opera garbage and force Opera users to go through UA modification files and user javascript to read your page. We can do it, but are sometimes annoyed by such ignorance on your part.

And for your information, I do not work for Opera ... I just like Opera lots!

I live in Wisconsin, USA ... far from Norway. :-)

treego, you're a bit confused, I think. The user agent problem is a problem of Opera's own making.

Opera is specifically requesting IE content because Opera's developers decided to try to support IE content rather than trying to get web developers to support Opera. This is a vicious circle where Opera can't win. All of this user agent switching problem exist because Opera developers decided that it was better to try to support IE coded pages than to strongly assert their own user agent. It was a bad decision and it's hurting Opera users and the further advancement of the web.

Firefox and Mozilla decided to strike out bravely against IE only content and the web developers responded by building more and more support for Firefox. Firefox is not riding on the Netscape coat tails. Firefox would fail miserably if it was handed layer tags and other old world Netscape specific code. We're proudly proclaiming "This is Gecko! Serve me standards compliant code" and doing our best to fail gracefully when we get handed something else.

Opera could have done what Apple did, and claimed to be like Gecko rather than IE and with their great standards support, Opera would probably be working on most of the sites that Firefox works on. Unfortunately, Opera decided to try to chase after IE content and it's now hurting them.

As for the integrated suite, perhaps you'd be interested in our older project called Mozilla 1.x. It achieved about 1 or 2 percent market share with a nicely integrated suite of applications but the last year has shown a lot more users were interested in Firefox approach. That hasn't stopped some people from using the suite though -- and if you prefer Opera, you shouldn't stop using it either.

You can ignore me and convince yourself that I hate Opera if that makes you feel better, but it's simply not true. I appreciate Opera's rendering engine and hope that they're able move away from pretending to be IE so that their great rendering engine can really shine. I also hope that they continue to simplify the interface and hide the more geeky and non-browser features so that Opera becomes more appealing to more people. In my ideal world, Opera would have more than 1% of the market.

- A

Most non-uber-geek users of software keep the default settings for things. The default setting in Opera's useragent is detected correctly by every major stats package I know of (and many of the minor ones).

I know tons of people that use Firefox as their everyday browser. I don't know anyone personally that uses Opera (other than fellow developers for testing). I'd say the statistics are about right, too -- Firefox at around 8%, Opera at a bit under 1%.

Firefox isn't riding any coat-tails. They made decisions about the rendering agent based on real-world conditions and standards. Intelligent decisions. Not all sites worked with it but many did. And as market share grew, so did the pressure on websites to work with non-IE browsers like Firefox. In that way, I'd wager that Firefox has helped Opera out quite a bit.

I think Firefox' success is due to a number of things. It's got a LOT of good things going for it. It's stable, fast, very customizable, has lots of themes, has TONS of useful extensions to do everything you can think of, is completely free and is VERY easy to just install and use. No surprises. No other browser has all of that going for it.

Asa has voiced some very valid criticisms of Opera in the past. Even Opera users have agreed with much of it, as do I. I think the default interface in Opera 7.x is absolutely atrocious. It's convoluted and tries to do everything under the sun out of the box resulting in a higher learning curve and a difficult to use interface. Opera 8 is a *big* improvement, but still feels odd... foreign.

I'm a former Opera user myself. I've paid for it in the past. But I left Opera for Mozilla Suite a while ago. And then I switched over to Firefox and never looked back. Firefox is the best browser I've ever seen and I feel comfortable with everyone from my techie friends to my sister with her old laptop using it.

I'm not a fan of the everything integration of Opera. I stopped using IRC back in 1996. I use IM to chat online and Gaim does a bang-up job with that. I was never a fan of the built-in newsreader of Opera (or Mozilla, for that matter). I use Agent for that. My Mail client Thunderbird does a fine job with email. And Palm Desktop does a great job of managing my contacts and syncing with my Palm.

I don't think Asa is "banging" on Opera here. He's calling them on their odd stats and issues with the interface. The simple fact is that Opera has been difficult for new users to grasp whereas Firefox is dead easy for newbies. And there are tons more Firefox users out there than Opera users. Especially among the techies.

Regards,
John

> It might just prove that Firefox/Mozilla has more money to spend on marketing.

treego, I don't think so. Opera Software is a commercial company. Obviously it has more money than Mozilla Foundation which relies on donations.

> You can check out my first draft (released today) here: http://johnhaller.com/jh/useful_stuff/browser_statistics.asp

I also did something similar here. Feel free to contribute. :-)

"I don't think Asa is "banging" on Opera here. He's calling them on their odd stats and issues with the interface. The simple fact is that Opera has been difficult for new users to grasp whereas Firefox is dead easy for newbies. And there are tons more Firefox users out there than Opera users. Especially among the techies."

We all know that this is because Mozilla users have always been doing their "Opera is not free" FUD, and refusing to "put up with ads", when they view ads all the time while surfing anyway.

Mozilla probably has FAR more money than Opera! I mean, 150K to spend on an ad? Come on!

Also, Firefox actually identifies as NETSCAPE.

And of course, Opera's caching is much better than Firefox's so OBVIOUSLY it's going to be undercounted as it doesn't download stuff as often: http://virtuelvis.com/archives/2005/05/statistics-nonsense

Naturally, no ASA post would be complete without some FUD thrown in:

"Would that be because Opera's process makes the decisions for you rather than inviting you to be a part of it like the open Mozilla process?"

OPEN Mozilla process? Gee, I guess we conveniently forgot that lots of bugs in Bugzilla are HIDDEN from most people! Mozilla is no more open than Opera, except people can access Bugzilla bugs. But anyone can read Opera's forums and look up bugs there.

And Mozilla has been known to ignore users when working on Firefox. Loads of features were left out. You are *FORCED* to use buggy extensions instead of properly tested software.

Asa,

I am not confused at all, actually.

You just refuse to admit that Opera is forced to be cloaked completely at many sites because of web author ignorance or unconcern for web standards.

The problem, again, is that sites detect Opera through a variety of means and send Opera users garbage ... I guess you refuse to understand this.

As has been mentioned very explicity and correctly here, there is another very significant factor that throws off these user statistics you are conveniently/deceptively using to suggest that people try Opera and give it up because they don't like it.

Oh, boy... more to refute...

"Firefox identifies itself as Netscape"

Firefox's user-agent header:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 Firefox/1.0.3

Opera's user-agent header:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; en) Opera 8.0

So, we have Firefox identifying itself as... Firefox. And Opera sorta pretending to be MSIE 6.0.

"Mozilla probably has FAR more money than Opera! I mean, 150K to spend on an ad? Come on!"

A one-time ad based on donations specifically FOR that ad initially organized by individuals outside the Mozilla organization... oh yeah, they're ROLLING in the dough.

"And of course, Opera's caching is much better than Firefox's so OBVIOUSLY it's going to be undercounted as it doesn't download stuff as often: ">http://virtuelvis.com/archives/2005/05/statistics-nonsense"

This is such bullshit that I'm amazed. For people that are too ignorant to know better... website visitor statistics are based on vistors... NOT hits... NOT page views... VISITORS. Cache has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with it. You are counted as ONE visitor whether you download one webpage or 50 webpages and 200 images. EVERY major stats program provides browser stats by visitor. EVERY major browser stats survey does it by visitor.

OPEN Mozilla process? Gee, I guess we conveniently forgot that lots of bugs in Bugzilla are HIDDEN from most people! Mozilla is no more open than Opera, except people can access Bugzilla bugs. But anyone can read Opera's forums and look up bugs there.

The only bugs that are hidden are SECURITY bugs that could result in an exploit of the issue. The bug filer has an option to check the box to make such a bug hidden. You don't get to see the list of Opera's bugs. Which is more open?

And Mozilla has been known to ignore users when working on Firefox. Loads of features were left out. You are *FORCED* to use buggy extensions instead of properly tested software.

When you try and include EVERY feature that people ask for, you end up with the horrible interface of Opera 7.x. Include the features that are enough for 95% of the people using your product and then add the ability for the other 5% to add the features they want.

It's nice to know that TreeGo can stil have an active existence as the world's most annoying Opera fan even after being banned from the MozillaZine forums.

- Chris

It's nice to know that TreeGo can stil have an active existence as the world's most annoying Opera fan even after being banned from the MozillaZine forums.

Really? Haha. How much of an ignorant ass do you have to be to be banned from mozillaZine? Well, I got a good smile from that little tidbit.

I have always been nice at Mozillazine.

I am not banned, either, as far as I know.

I didn't bring up Opera here, and hardly ever do at Mozillazine. I might respond to FUD and inaccuracies about Opera initiated here and there, though.

:-)

I see that someone is trying to use my posting about statistics as an argument for Opera. It's not. It's an argument against the use of statistics as absolute truths. A statistic is a domain-limited (Not in the computer sense of the word 'domain') collection and analysis of data that by no means should be generalized, and it should never used as an argument for one browser or the other.

Further (and to stray a bit off-topic), both the Mozilla and Opera communities have far more important fish to fry than this, and they have far better things to do than bashing each others products with less-than-educated reasoning: There is a hugely "popular" browser out there, that builds on an ancient rendering core that causes headaches every day, that prevents innovation, that has a long history of css errors, html errors, security problems. Furthermore, this product lacks most of the features that has made browsers a more user-friendly experience. This browser is not Firefox, it's not Opera, it's not Safari, nor is it based on any of said browsers' rendering cores. You all know which browser I'm speaking of.

Arve, I actually referenced your article to dispell some of the anti-Opera rhetoric here ......... again.

I really don't see why everyone gets so worked up about this post by Asa. He's simply asking why/how the numbers that have come out of Opera (or wherever - I don't know) seem so contradictory.

Oh, and BTW, stats are far from pointless. Since the web is not an easy place to summarize in numbers, you should obviously not go around thinking "Oh, according to WebSideStory 5.69% of the web's users are using Firefox". Trends, however, are rather a nice thing, especially if several data sources are indicating the same trends.

What's wrong with people feeling good about Opera's success, or Firefox's success? Especially useless people like me who can't code... I might as well be aware of the success rates, so I can tell people how popular browser X is...

For all this rah rah from Treego about how Opera "has to" change useragent string to *completely hide* Opera's identity, it's a bunch of hot air. The vast majority of Internet users - of ALL browsers - have absolutely *no idea* what "user agent" even is! Probably more importantly, they don't *want to* know. They want their browser to work out of the box, period. By that I mean they want the browser to load sites they visit. They don't want to go and change how the browser identifies itself.

Therefore, the default useragent string, provided by the distributor, is what's at issue. For Opera, it's IE (with Opera in the string), and for Firefox, it's Gecko/Firefox. Opera tries to hide, Firefox does not. Plain and simple. Opera's this default was designed to fool browser sniffing codes, NOT to misrepresent its share of the market, which is precisely why it was left there. Haavard, in a recent Opera thread, responding to a request that the *default* useragent eliminate all references to Opera, responded in the negative because it would eliminate all evidence that someone is using Opera, and thereby the webmaster's incentive to use Opera compliant code.

So yeah, we can have all the argunent about why it's so darn important for Opera to hide its identity, but overall, it's not doing any good by showing IE's hold a little stronger than it really is.

As for the math, I concur with Asa. But what everyone needs to realize is roughly 1 billion Internet "users" does NOT translate into 1 billion computers connected to the Internet. Lots of people - especially in developing countries - use Internet cafes and libraries where you have a lot of Internet users, yet only a few computers connected to the Internet. Therefore, it is not at all surprising if Firefox has roughly 100 million users from 50 million downloads. If you assume that two people use the same computer, you have your answer. Not that I am saying assume that, but you can see how the math works. Also remember that a small number of people use pre 1.0 versions of Firefox, and yet a few more use customized versions made by others downloaded from their private sites. So a number of users close to or greater than the number of downloads is quite feasible, more being marrier. However, 60 million downloads and 10 million users - where users are much less than download numbers, does show that the browser is not catching on, to say the least.

It's amazing what people like Treego will read into what you post. You're one of the public faces for Mozilla, you've criticized Opera at times, so obviously, you *must* hate Opera, and everything you say that isn't "Opera rocks!" is obviously FUD, slamming the one true browser, etc.

Suggestion for anyone thinking "OMG Asa hatez Opera!":

Re-read his post, but substitute, say, Apple and Safari for Opera, and tell me whether you still think it's FUD.

Better yet, read what he actually wrote, and not what you're convinced he must have written.

(FWIW, I've paid for each Opera upgrade since 3.x -- on several platforms -- but I've been a Firefox user since before the name change.)

For all this rah rah from Treego about how Opera "has to" change useragent string to *completely hide* Opera's identity, it's a bunch of hot air.

It's the truth. There are several sites that render poorly unless Opera is completely hidden via a UA string concoction along with a user javascript entry.

Without those things, people wonder what is wrong with Opera at MSNBC, BestBuy.com, onlinegames.channel.aol.com, nick.com, topix.net, ipl.org, nwolb.com, unicare.com, certain functions at sports.yahoo.com, cbsnews.com, ESPN, etc.

Opera has an uphill battle like no other browser out there because web standards are not adhered to.

That is not 'hot air' ---> it's 'cold fact.'

Perhaps these brief articles will give you an idea on the UA history and how we have arrived at the chaos we have today with respect to this:

http://encyclopedia.lockergnome.com/s/b/User_agent

http://tntluoma.com/opera/lover/6/day15-instant/

---- Quote ----
For all this rah rah from Treego about how Opera "has to" change useragent string to *completely hide* Opera's identity, it's a bunch of hot air. (...) [Users] don't want to go and change how the browser identifies itself.
----------------

Just some information: ua.ini is one of Opera 8's new features. It's a file containing a list of sites with corresponding UA strings. Currently, there are 6 options for the strings: (1) choose the UA specified by the user in Preferences (which by default is set to IE/Opera), (2) identify as Opera, (3|4) identify as IE/Opera or Mozilla/Opera, (5|6) identify as IE or Mozilla and hide Opera completely.
If one of the listed websites is visited, Opera identifies as whatever is set for that site in ua.ini.

A user can add sites to his ua.ini manually, but the file is also automatically updated from Opera servers. There's a new option in the Help menu (Report a site problem) to bring sites to the attention of Opera staff. This means that even an Opera user that has never heard of a User Agent will hide the true identity of his browser on some sites (based on reports of faulty sites by other Opera users).

Opera users may wind up getting much better results with a UA string like:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/compatible Firefox/compatible Opera 8.0

If a website supports IE and Firefox. Opera will be much happier with the Firefox code.

treego... why do you insist on starting arguments? Why did you run back to the Opera forum and start a thread among your rabid Opera fan-boys on this blog? Are you hoping that some of them will come over and lend a hand in bashing away at Asa? treego... I have to tell you... watching you in the debate/discussion thread over at Opera I can only conclude that you love to argue... to be contentious... and for your stated "private faith beliefs" I'm shocked that you don't see the hypocrisy.

Folks, I wouldn't be too concerned about treego's views. The word trolling comes readily to mind here.

leushino,

You simply mystify me.

Of course, I will call attention to this kind of thing to other Opera users when a competitor is making ill-informed inferences as Asa is doing (more than once now, recently). Asa is on a crusade (whether he denies it or not) to make Opera look bad. I don't like it at all.

My faith has nothing to do with calling Asa "onto the carpet" for his thinly veiled attacks on a terrific Internet suite. Why should it? My faith is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand here.

This 'knee-jerk' reaction to accusing anyone of supporting Opera in a Mozilla-based environment is just plain silly.

You are welcome to use Mozilla-stuff as well as Opera-stuff as I am. And if we are going to make allegations as Asa has, he and others should be able to defend them in the light of new facts that apparently he and some other like-minded individuals are unaware of.

I have no malice or ill-intent to anyone on individual basis ... arguments regarding this type of thing should not be interpreted as personal hostility or disrespect. I respect Asa as a knowledgable individual who has skills that most likely go far, far beyond mine when it comes to matters of this type.

I do know a little, though, and I hope to set straight some of these things when possible.

So ... have a friendly debate without calling into question someone's faith, please, leushino.

"Firefox's user-agent header:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 Firefox/1.0.3"

Try navigator.appName, dear apprentice. And the UA string, as you can see, Firefox identifies itself as Mozilla *AND* Gecko *AND* Firefox. Wow.

"When you try and include EVERY feature that people ask for, you end up with the horrible interface of Opera 7.x."

Ah, Mozilla excuses again. Try Opera 8, dear apprentice :)

Oh, and WHERE did Opera state that it has 1% of the market?

"Opera users may wind up getting much better results with a UA string like:"

No they won't. The problem appears on sites like MSNBC as long as Opera is *ANYWHERE* in the UA string. Changing it to Firefox and still including Opera won't help.

I was wrong to judge you for trolling, given my own posting record. I'm little more than a hypocrite. Sorry for any offense I've given.

"Firefox identifies itself as Mozilla *AND* Gecko *AND* Firefox. Wow."

That's cos Firefox is all of those, silly.

Mozilla Firefox, a Gecko-based browser - see?

"Try navigator.appName, dear apprentice. And the UA string, as you can see, Firefox identifies itself as Mozilla *AND* Gecko *AND* Firefox. Wow."

The string I gave is EXACTLY the string that Firefox 1.0.3 presents to websites... which is what we're concerned about as it's the server that usually does the browser sniffing. And its Mozilla Firefox which uses the Gecko engine. So, OF COURSE, all of that is accurate. Duh.

"Ah, Mozilla excuses again. Try Opera 8, dear apprentice :)"

Yeah, Opera 8 that FINALLY removes some of the cruft from the default interface (and was just released 2 weeeks ago). Tried it. It sucks less. The ads are STILL distracting with their color changes. I still don't like it. Even if it were equal to Firefox in all technical and usability aspects... I'd still use Firefox because it is Free (with a capital F) and I can do things like create Portable Firefox without worrying about stupid licensing issues.

"Oh, and WHERE did Opera state that it has 1% of the market?"

Never said that they did. And it seems to be a bit under 1%.

"No they won't. The problem appears on sites like MSNBC as long as Opera is *ANYWHERE* in the UA string. Changing it to Firefox and still including Opera won't help."

Well, there will ALWAYS be sites like that. There are sites that do that to Firefox as well (though there are very few). And this IS MSNBC we're talking about here which is hostile to ANY non-IE browser.

Jockey believes that sites have been actively discriminating against Opera for the last decade becuase of silly stunts like the Bork Bork Browser. The fact that an open source app with no advertising fund, a known track record of being on Microsoft's bad side and a UA string which identifies it as itself doesn't suffer from these drawbacks is some sort of conspiracy to these people.

- Chris

Math isn't hard, it's pretty simple.

Opera 7 had 10 or more major releases, along with public betas. This EASILY accounts for the difference between 10 million active users and 60 million downloads.

As well, I'm fairly sure the 9-10% market share is for Firefox, Mozilla AND Netscape, not just Firefox.

Opera did not always identify as IE. It only started to do so at THE REQUEST OF ITS USERS because sites were detecting Opera and sending it different code, which was broken. Opera didn't WANT the "IE Content", but more often than not, the "IE Content" is what it displayed best.

But why do you care? Why the sudden surge in postings which put down Opera (not saying you are trolling Asa, because you are not)? Are you upset by the new release of Opera being better? Are you upset by Opera not doing better? I don't get it. What purpose does it serve to keep posting about Opera over and over again to keep pointing out its deficiencie?

Lately, you have been spreading some misleading information about Opera. Because you are so trusted as a Mozilla spokesman, your word is taken as truth. I'm not saying you are LYING, but from your postings, people are getting a bad impression of Opera.

Why not stick to focusing on the good of Firefox, and stop focusing on the bad of Opera?

vcv, I care about opera. I care about safari. I care about ie. I want the web to be a better place for users. I can't do a lot to influence the products shipped by opera, mac, or windows, but that's not going to stop me from pointing out how they can do better. I'll also point out how Firefox can do better.

The internet is a better place to work and play when there are multiple clients competing to make it better for users. I believe that opera, safari, and Firefox are attempting to do that, and I'm going to speak up when I see them moving in the right or wrong direction. My opera posts around the release of opera 8 have been mostly positive and I think this release is a big step forward.

I was also curious about the 60M figure trotted out by Opera's spokespeople right after Firefox hit 50 million downloads. It seemed a bit suspect because I was making the assumption that it was a response to Firefox's 50M and if the downloads lined up so closely, it would seem that the usage statistics should line up more closely. Firefox has roughly 10% of the browser market and achieved that with about 50M downloads (plus various other distribution mechanisms) and Opera has about 1% of the browser market and seemingly achieved that with about 60M downloads. That just seemed odd to me so I posted about it.

- A

So has anybody learned anything new through this discussion? O_o

I've learned that some people will keep repeating the same thing no matter what informational tidbits are thrown their way.

Jockey believes that sites have been actively discriminating against Opera for the last decade becuase of silly stunts like the Bork Bork Browser. The fact that an open source app with no advertising fund, a known track record of being on Microsoft's bad side and a UA string which identifies it as itself doesn't suffer from these drawbacks is some sort of conspiracy to these people.

@Chris C ---> Did you get a chance to read the following at Tim Luoma's Overlong History of User-Agent String which explains why Opera is "left out in the cold" so-to-speak because of the genesis and evolution of the web. I think it explains a lot:

An overlong history of user agent string

Why would you want to change the browser identification? In a word: stupidity. Not your stupidity, and not Opera’s stupidity... Actually Opera is quite smart about it. It’s web designers that have caused the problems.

Every time you go to a website, you send what is called a User Agent string.

This is your current User Agent String:

Every browser has one. Most of them start with the word “Mozilla”. Mozilla has always been the nickname for the browser made by Netscape. (And now, just for fun, we have a browser called Netscape and a different browser called Mozilla, both of which identify themselves as Mozilla.).

Let’s take a look at a few examples:
Internet Explorer sends this:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Q312461)
Opera (by default) sends this:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows XP) Opera 6.05 [en]
Mozilla sends this:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826

They all start with the word “Mozilla” because, about a thousand Internet years ago, an early version of Netscape (which identified itself as “Mozilla”) could handle more complex HTML than early versions of Internet Explorer.

Web designers were swept up into a practice that would haunt them yea unto the the gates of hell: they started Sniffing Browsers. Basically, they looked at the User Agent string and started to give different content to different browsers. OH NO! Danger, Will Robinson, Danger! Cue music: If I could turn back time...

Looking back it’s like watching one of those Friday the 13th movies where the audience can sense the horror and danger but the players are oblivious. The next thing you know, Internet Explorer added functionality to handle more complex HTML, but since some folks had already started looking for the word “Mozilla” in the User Agent string, Microsoft decided that they would adopt it too.

Yes, dear friends, that’s right. Now so we had Netscape making a browser which everyone called “Netscape” .... except Netscape themselves, who called it “Mozilla”.... and then Microsoft was making a browser that everyone called Internet Explorer but which also pretended it was Netscape by saying that it was Mozilla. Got that? Are you starting to see what a hellish existence web designers found themselves in?

It gets worse... as time went on, people started making different versions of the same web sites: one for Netscape (err... I mean Mozilla) and one for Internet Explorer. Then we had the advent of the evil that was “This site looks better in...” So if you went with a browser that wasn’t Netscape/Mozilla or Internet Explorer then you might find yourself completely locked out of the site.

Are you screaming yet?

As Internet Explorer gained in popularity, more and more sites were designed only for it. Many times this meant using completely non-standard HTML that would only work in IE, but sometimes it was totally unneccesary and stupid.

So in order to gain access to those sites, some browsers started to pretend to be Internet Explorer which was, in turn, still pretending to be Netscape... I mean, Mozilla. Enough....

Ok, ok, treego - so Opera has been practically forced to ID as IE. I do hope that if Opera 8 gets really popular, they change the default ID for v8.5 to Opera, so that all web designers out there will unerstand that somethings happening. (And if they don't, well just have to natter them, won't we?)

treego, your excerpt says very little. Not only that, it's quite misleading. Firefox and Mozilla identify themselves as "Gecko" and that's what the content developers care about. Content developers serve code to IE and to Gecko. Sometimes all of their code works in both without any browser detection (if they've done a good job.) Sometimes most of their code works in both but they have little code forks for a small feature on the page that needs to be implemented differently for IE and Gecko. Sometimes their entire site is forked at the gate with one site for IE and one site for Gecko. In any of these cases, if the site works with Gecko, it's probably written very closely to the standards and that means it would work well for Opera which implements the standards quite well.

There are probably no cases where Firefox/Mozilla get good code because that code was designed for the classic Netscape. Every site that works with Firefox/Mozilla today works because we made Gecko support that code or the web developers made their code support Gecko.

Opera made a decision to impersonate IE and then attempt to deal with IE content. There were little or no sites that were serving Opera content that it couldn't deal with that weren't also at one point serving Firefox/Mozilla content it couldn't deal with. The difference is that Firefox/Mozilla engaged in a massive outreach program to web developers helping them write better code that would work well in all browsers, and built a lot of additional flexibility into our rendering engine, in order to get websites to work with Firefox/Mozilla. Then, as our market share increased and developers saw more and more of our user agent in their logs, more and more of them fixed their content to be cross-browser so it would work in IE or Firefox.

Opera made the decision to chase IE by claiming it could handle IE content when it can't always do that. That was an unfortunate mistake that Opera made quite a while ago and it's hurting them. Safari made a much better decision, identifying as "like Gecko" because it (not unlike Opera) has a very good rendering engine that would rather be receiving the standards-compliant code that sites are serving to Firefox. Opera should be trying to get that standards-compliant code rather than the IE code. They could probably deal with it better than the IE code and they wouldn't be forced into the vicious circle you describe.

The main point here is that all of us had problems with IE only code in the beginning. Gecko browsers, Opera browsers, KHTML browsers were all suffering when the web was written for IE (and the old Netscape). The Mozilla community worked to make the web better so that our browsers would work on more of the Web. That work benefited Opera, and Safari, because they also like getting standards-based content. It improved the web for developers too, by showing the way to a new set of capabilities and forcing IE to ship an improved rendering engine with better support for CSS and PNG images. Opera took what it thought was a shortcut and decided to try to impersonate IE to get IE content. That got Opera working on quite a few more sites in the short term but it cost them in the long term and it did little nothing to help the standards cause because developers had no incentives to improve their content for Opera users since Opera was claiming it could handle the IE content.

What Opera can still do (and should have done years ago) is bit the bullet, and ask for the high-quality standards-based code that many sites are offering these days and then work hard to support that really well (there are some Gecko quirks that they'd have to build support for like Safari has). This would be painful in the short term because a number of sites would break for Opera users, but in the long run Opera, Safari, and Firefox would all benefit from it and the web and web developers would benefit too.

Mozilla has done a lot to make the web a better place by putting a standards compliant browser out there and by identifying it as such (by the Gecko string in the UA) to web developers. Web developers, in turn, have written a lot more standards compliant code that benefits all of the standards compliant browsers out there. It's time for Opera to join the party and defend the standards it claims such great support for by identifying itself honestly and working, like Mozilla has for about 5 years now, to convince sites to adjust their code.

- A

Asa,

I know your intentions are good. Never have I doubted that.

But you have been posting about Opera a lot lately, and the general vibe of these posts is negative. Yes, you have been talking about how it could be better. But you have to pick those ideas out of the bigger impression that your posts are giving people -- that Opera is an immature product that is finally starting to catch up to firefox.

I understand that your posts have been commenting on the Opera 8 release being better than previous, which is true. But I can't help but feel an undertone from your posts, that it still isn't good enough, is inferior to Firefox, and still has a ways to go. While you may feel like that, and I can't argue with you for believing such, I don't think it's very "positive" of you to give other users these impressions.

This blog entry gives off the impression that Opera is lying about their download numbers.
Your april 23rd entry talked about "bloat" and how Opera is "moving towards firefox", which also gives a bad impression.
Another previous entry you talk about some improvements they've made, but that there are still a lot of complaints not addressed.

Now, personally I can interpret these entries fine, and I know you mean no harm.

However, some people would get a bad impression of Opera from reading your entries. Why? Because they see that everytime you talk about Opera, you have something bad to say (and good sometimes too, but people focus on the bad more often), as opposed to mostly positive talk about Firefox and its success. This gives people the impression that Opera bad, Firefox good. I know it sounds stupid, but it really does happen.

Asa, I give up ... Opera does support standards .... you are spinning too much, again, I'm afraid.

On identifying as IE...

What you don't seem to understand is that some sites SPECIFICALLY check for the Opera string.

When Opera Software made the decision to identify as IE, Firefox was no where near popular yet. It wasn't even released as a final product. So there were website authors who had used Opera in previous versions (oh say.. 3.x, 4.x and 5.x) when Opera couldn't handle IE content very well yet. So these authors realize that people using Opera don't see their site properly, and they either try sending Opera different (dumbed down) content or no content. Now fast forward a bit, Opera is at 7.x and now 8.x, and a lot of these site authors haven't even used either version! They still assume Opera can't handle the content, and do browser sniffing. I'm not even exaggerating. I have ran across a lot of site authors who have said they last used Opera at 3, 4, 5 or maybe 6. They honestly believe Opera can't handle their site.

So here you have Opera, that can handle most of these sites content fine now, and authors who don't think it can. These authors are pretty set that Opera can't handle it, because hey, the last time they tried it it couldnt! This makes people who try Opera unhappy. They can't view their favorite sites, and think its Operas fault! Since Firefox isn't a big player yet, pretending to be Gecko won't work too well. Pretending to be IE ends up fixing a lot of sites though. So they enable it by default for new users, and let you change it to anything for "power" users.

Along comes Firefox. Mozilla has been out for a while, and actually does a pretty good job of displaying "IE content" from the beginning. So most authors don't even bother detecting Mozilla, if they even know about it. Firefox is a brand new browser to most people. They don't understand that it is built off of the mozilla code-base. Even so, it doesn't matter. People try Firefox, and it works well. Their first impression is that its good, and they see no need to detect Firefox specifically.

Back to Opera. It's at 7.5, 7.6, and soon 8.0. It can display almost all of the same content just fine. But people still have the bad taste in their mouth from previous versions. People still detect for Opera and send it different code, if any. Opera could proudly proclaim it is Opera, or is Gecko compatible, but those people still have the bad taste. They still look for Opera. Long term, it might convince a bunch of site authors. Short term, Opera loses users and gets a bad rep.

But, they will be doing it soon. With the UA.ini feature and auto-updating it, they'll soon be able to spoof most major sites that detect Opera. Eventually, those site authors will see next to no Opera users in their logs. Either they wonder why and find out, and hopefully remove the detection, or they still leave it in. But now that these major sites are spoofed, Opera can proudly declare to other sites that aren't so rude that it is indeed only Opera.

It's simply a matter of time. Opera is doing the best it can, and it's insult to say they OPERA made the mistake by identifying as IE. Maybe you can blame them for their browser not supporting enough in previous versions, but that is the past and was 3+ years ago. People should learn to move on now. Opera is a viable alternative, and it works now.

vcv, you're just not correct here on your history. Mozilla, before Firefox, identified as Gecko and several years ago, before Mozilla 1.0, very few sites worked with Gecko/Mozilla.

Our tech evangelism team, and our Gecko developers busted their butts to make things better. That's why sites mostly just work in Firefox -- because we've been working with those sites for _years_ to get them to support Gecko (for Mozilla, before Firefox). That didn't just magically happen, as you seem to suggest. We took a hard road of getting the web to support Gecko, starting about 5 years ago. We never stopped. We put huge amounts of resources into making the web work in Gecko and making Gecko work with the web (where it didn't break standards or encourage more IE specific coding.)

Along comes Firefox, and a lot of our Mozilla/Gecko work pays off because Firefox becomes more popular and a lot of sites "just work". It wasn't some "good fortune" or "luck" that made that happen. It was Mozilla, back when we had near zero market share, busting our butts to make it happen. We never stopped busting our butts and we made big dents in major sites before we had any appreciable market share. Before Firefox existed, Microsoft and ESPN and Wired and other major sites were rewriting to support Gecko.

We didn't take the easy road and just identify as IE and try to support bogus content. If Opera had spent the last five years doing the kind of outreach that we did, then they wouldn't be in the position they are today. Having once chosen to idntify as IE but not actually support IE content, they made a lot of developers skeptical and that's why some developers sniff specifically for Opera rather than just giving it the "IE content" or the "not IE content (gecko)". It's a problem very clearly of Opera's own making. They chose that rout rather than the outreach and evangelism rout that Mozilla chose.

There is a way out of this vicious circle and it's not UA.ini. It's taking the hit and demanding recognition like Mozilla did for Gecko way back in 1999. Things will break but eventually the developers will come to respect the capabilities of Opera's great rendering engine (like they did for Gecko) and the world will be a better place.

Not doing this perpetuates the problem. Mozilla understood that problem 5 years ago so we didn't take that shortcut to compatibility. That was a difficult decision and there was a lot of fighting about it but it turned out to be correct and what Opera did turned out to not be the best thing. It's time for Opera to join Gecko and Safari and combined we'll make the world and the web a better place. Opera joining forces with IE and giving web authors less incentive to move to standards-based content was the wrong thing to do and it's the wrong path to continue on.

I'm not bashing the product here at all, I'm bashing the short-sighted decision that's costing all of the good browsers (opera, Firefox/Mozilla, and Safari). Opera management made that decision. Thanks to Mozilla's open source model, that kind of decision wouldn't have been tollerated in our community and we made the right decision. It's never to late to start doing the right thing and I hope Opera will see that light.

- A

If sites just wrote to standards (W3C), why would any web developer have to worry about what browser is on the receiving end. If a browser cannot handle the standards, then that browser will need to get its act together.

Opera can render the same stuff as Firefox and IE (excluding ActiveX stuff as is the case for Firefox) with some very small give and take as far as I can tell from browsing a wide variety of websites --- cloaking 'Opera' through ua.ini and user javascript bears this out virtually 100% of the time on problematic sites. I have yet to come across a page that looked good in Firefox and not so good in Opera due to web author's choice to sniff out Opera and give it something different that could not be made to look exactly the same in Opera as it does in Firefox when measures are taken to ensure that Opera gets the very same code as Firefox is getting (again, using ua.ini and user javascript or something like Proximitron or Privoxy).

If the following is an oversimplification, please explain it: What good is a user agent string, theoretically, if all sites adhere to W3C standards? Would a UA string not just be a method for establishing a browser's market share in such an ideal cyber world alone? A UA string should not determine that some unfortunate soul using a standards-based browser is given some lesser content.

If standards are the goal, then web authors should send the same content to all users, regardless of their browser of choice.

As for what Opera has done the last 5 years, Asa, I doubt you have any inside knowledge about what they have done. Opera has an active community that does seek to educate web authors (I am amongst them), and Opera does contact Microsoft, for instance, regularly from what I have seen and likely other large web presences such as Google, Yahoo, etc.

Opera suffers because web authors just don't write standard code and let the chips fall where they may for the end user, yet, though. Too many web authors send bad code to Opera. Opera supports and enthusiastically encourages standards. I have no inside sources at Opera, but I would have to guess that they (Opera) know that if web authors would just adhere to standards, Opera would not have to institute ua.ini and user javascript to detect javascript sniffers that will circumvent the end result Opera being sent bad/less sophisticated code. In a world where web standards are adhered to, Opera does very well.

Bottomline, if Opera gets the same code that Firefox does, Opera renders just as well. Web authors, if they must differentiate for ActiveX, should send IE users their ActiveX page and all others the standard page.

Now, unless you are right, Asa .... that Opera has been lying around and doing nothing about this while you and your cohorts have been busting their buns to make sure Firefox gets recognized by web authors, I would like to know why Opera is slighted by too many web authors worldwide, yet.

OK, I'm too tired to continue for now ... I'm learning a little something, I think. I wait eagerly to hear Opera's response to some of your accusations here, Asa.

There are several sites that render poorly unless Opera is completely hidden via a UA string concoction along with a user javascript entry. - treego

That's not the point. The point is that the vast majority of surfers don't know, and far more importantly don't care one bit about useragent string. Period. The issue at hand is the default one - since that is the one that stays intact for the vast majority. End of story. If you want to persuade Opera to eliminated "opera" from the default string, thereby eliminating any evidence that people actually use Opera be my guest. People are not going to go and change it just so they can use Opera.

As well, I'm fairly sure the 9-10% market share is for Firefox, Mozilla AND Netscape, not just Firefox.

Uh, no. This 9-10% is ONLY Firefox. Check out this report where each browser's share is listed. Note that Firefox and Mozilla and Netscape are all listed seperately. The TOTAL is almost 15%.

Fact is, Firefox's navigator.appName is NETSCAPE.

And Chris C needs to get his facts straight. It is a simple fact that lots and lots of sites specifically break Opera, whether it is intentional or not. Why would it be because of the bork version? That was specifically created for msn.com. Why doesn't the same thing happen to Firefox? Who knows? One possible explanation is that it's "the new Netscape" in people's minds, and all web devs know about Netscape. Therefore, they "must" support Firefox. Look at navigator.appName. It's Netscape!

And naturally, Asa brags about Gecko compatibility. He conveniently ignores the fact that you got the Netscape legacy for free... Again, Asa is bashing Opera.

"I'm not bashing the product here at all"

Yes you are, Asa. Your comments are illogical at best. The simple answer is: Firefox is the new Netscape in people's minds. navigator.appName, anyone?

"Thanks to Mozilla's open source model"

That's got nothing to do with it. The open source model wasn't exactly at work when people's feature requests were ignored by the Firefox devs...

yfan: I think you forgot about the link. At least, it doesn't work for me.

---- Quote ----
yfan said: "The point is that the vast majority of surfers don't know, and far more importantly don't care one bit about useragent string. Period. The issue at hand is the default one - since that is the one that stays intact for the vast majority. End of story."
----------------

Read my previous post here. The UA *does not* stay intact for the vast majority. UA.ini changes the UA string for specific sites and thereby ignores the user ID settings, no matter how much the user knows about UA's.

Sigh, app name isn't something sites sniff or care about. You clearly don't understand how sites sniff browsers, which understanding would seem a key foundation for this entire discussion.

You're bringing up a bunch of pointless information trying to show that we get some benefit from all those Netscape sites from the days of the old browser wars. The Netscape legacy didn't buy us anything. We don't support Netscape's old layer tag and other legacy Netscape-specific code. The people who would serve us Netscape-specific code wouldn't be doing us any more favor than those handing us IE-specific code.

You've made it clear that you don't understand how websites sniff browsers, why they sniff browsers and what's likely to change that behavior. Given your general ignorance on this topic, I don't see a lot of value in continuing this debate.

- A

Opera UA background according to Peter Karlsson of Opera Software

yfan: I think you forgot about the link. At least, it doesn't work for me.

Oops, yeah, sorry about that. Here it is, just click my name

"Read my previous post here. The UA *does not* stay intact for the vast majority. UA.ini changes the UA string for specific sites and thereby ignores the user ID settings, no matter how much the user knows about UA's." - sc

Oh, that's even better. Opera now changes colors on the fly for specific sites to try and get around their browser sniffing code. In that case, Asa's argument is even more valid: whereas Opera tries to find the easy way out by covering itself in a cloak and asking for IE specific code - more on some sites than others, it seems, Firefox proudly proclaims its own identity and encourages developers not to take the shortcut and think that it's the browser-maker's job to comply with IE-specific code!

As for the MSNBC site, I remember a time when Mozilla had the same problems with that site that Opera is having now (namely the menus). Mozilla didn't take the "easy" way out and say, oh well we'll just ID as IE or even Netscape 4.x. They went to work - and now, MSNBC (other than the video part) works fine with Firefox without doing any UA changes.

"Fact is, Firefox's navigator.appName is NETSCAPE."

Fact is, nearly ALL of the sites you're complaining about that give Opera the wrong code are using server-side browser sniffing. Server-side browser sniffing only has access to the useragent (since there is no http_appname). All of the good browser-sniffing Javascript techniques use navigator.useragent. If a browser sniffer was using navigator.appname and sending Firefox Netscape4 code (legacy stuff) it would result in a horrible page. So, the point is rather moot. navigator.appname doesn't buy Firefox a thing.

As Asa said, Mozilla has been working on this stuff for 5 years now. I was using the Mozilla Suite back in the M12 days. (that's Milestone 12... WAY pre-1.0 of Mozilla, let alone Firefox 1.0, to the uninitiated) But Mozilla made a *far* better decision... they didn't fake IE's useragent. It's Opera's own historical decision that is biting them in the butt now.

What befuddles me is that given that Opera's rendering is not compatible with IE's box model and code quirks, why does it fake as IE? It's like *asking* for content that you know won't work :?

Opera needs standards compliant code in order to work right, it really should be using "like GECKO", just like Apple who caved in and changed "like KHTML" in Safari to "like Gecko" in the new release.

Asa,

No, my history is fine. I know Mozilla has always identified as Gecko, I never said otherwise. I didn't say Mozilla never had troubles with sites either. But Mozilla had better support for the sites out there initially then Opera. Plus it had the history of Netscape behind it, so those that did know about it, more often than not, assumed it could handle sites pretty well. Opera used to have poor support for existing sites in the past. Some site authors learned this after trying it and were left with a sour taste in their mouth. With Mozilla, this happened much much less. NOWHERE did I say it just magically happened. PLEASE reread what I said.

Do you think Opera was just sitting on their ass this whole time?? No, they've been trying to work with these sites too! But because of the "bad taste", some authors ignored them. This also caused Opera users to complain, because some sites simply didn't work. And who was blamed? Opera. So Opera did what it could, and gave users the choice to try and trick these sites to see the intended content. And it worked pretty well! Opera was still in the User Agent string at the end (sort like Firefox eh?), but now some sites were working properly.

I NEVER said it was "luck". Both Opera and Mozilla worked very hard to try and get sites to work. Mozilla had better support for sites from the beginning than Opera and the history of Netscape behind it.

Please tell me why Microsoft would be so willing to rewrite some of their sites to support Gecko, an open-source browser engine (hint: MS doesn't like open source), and not Opera, a propietary pay browser which would turn almost anyone but the geeks off. That doesn't make sense to me. Anyway, while you say this and that site were rewriting to support Gecko (I have to take your word on this), some sites were doing this for Opera as well.

I can't believe I have to explain this simple concept to you again. You seem to think Opera identifies as IE, and THEN sites choose to check for it. NO, it is the other way around most of the time. I already explained at least twice the history. Opera has not always identified as Opera (and I don't believe they did until sometime in the 7.x series, but I'll have to check on that), and they did as a result of (a) sites checking for Opera and blocking it or sending it different content (b) users complaining and WANTING this. How do I know? That's the exact reason they give when they made the decision! Now don't start accusing Opera Software of lying, because they have always been very honest.

Now, during this whole time, Opera and it's users were emailing site authors and explaining to them that
(a) Opera can indeed support their site, or
(b) What changes they need to make to get their site to work in Opera
I was one of these people. Sometimes it worked, sometimes I got ignored and told essentially "Opera sucks and I'm not supporting it", when a lot of these times, these authors hadn't tried Opera in a long time. Are you getting it now?

It's funny how you spin the Mozilla/Firefox = hero and Opera = made stupid choices bit. Again, Opera did not just sit on their asses and not try to do anything about these sites. Opera did it because it was the best short-term solution and what the community wanted. Yes, this did hurt them a little bit in the long run, but that was the decision they made because of circumstances, and until a better solution came along. Now we have UN.ini, and once Opera gets a good list of major sites that need to be spoofed, they will soon start identifying as Opera by default again.

Yes, Firefox helped Opera, Safai, etc. But Opera also helped Firefox a ton in the way of browser innovation. Mouse gestures, tabbed browsing (though Opera wasnt the absolute first technically), spatial navigation, instant forward/back.

Opera is taking an even better route. It's hunting down sites that look for Opera, and learning to spoof that site. And soon it will proudly proclaim to others that it is indeed Opera and Opera alone (though it's always in the UA string for sites not in UA.ini, so it's very simple to find). Eventually, site authors will have no choice. They will not be able to check for Opera and get away with it if they have any significant amount of traffic. Their content will be fed how it should.

Mozilla's "solution" may have been quicker and worked better, but it wasn't going to work as well for Opera.

yfan: Sorry, I'm not going by this Janco company.

http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox37.html seems a lot more consistent to me, and more akin to websidestory's statistics as well (trying to find now).

As for the MSNBC site, I remember a time when Mozilla had the same problems with that site that Opera is having now (namely the menus). Mozilla didn't take the "easy" way out and say, oh well we'll just ID as IE or even Netscape 4.x. They went to work - and now, MSNBC (other than the video part) works fine with Firefox without doing any UA changes.

Tell me, why then, when when Opera used to tell msn.com that it was IE, everything was displayed properly? Tell me, why then, that Opera no longer has to do this on msn.com and gets sent the regular code now.

Can you explain that? I'll give you a hint: It has nothing to do with Mozilla/Firefox.

Hey, thanks Asa!

http://www.websidestory.com/products/web-analytics/datainsights/spotlight/05-10-2005.html

You proved my point yourself :)

"Yes, Firefox helped Opera, Safai, etc. But Opera also helped Firefox a ton in the way of browser innovation. Mouse gestures, tabbed browsing (though Opera wasnt the absolute first technically), spatial navigation, instant forward/back."

They've all helped each other. Each browser -- including many with less than 1% marketshare -- has innovated and the others have adopted those innovations. And it was a Gecko-based browser... Galeon... that had tabs first.

Actually I think it was an IE based browser? Or a Mac one? NetCaptor maybe?

But let's just agree that both browsers are where they are today because of the other :)

I'm glad Firefox came along. It's definately helped Opera and the web in general. I just get sometimes tired of some of the people that push it is all.

"Actually I think it was an IE based browser? Or a Mac one? NetCaptor maybe?"

I actually researched the browser histories a bit and the earliest mention in release notes I could find was within Galeon... and it was before Opera's implementation and Maxthon. If anyone can find an earlier mention, I'd like to know. It would be pretty cool to come up with a tree of browser innovations and see who had it first and then who else adopted it.

"I'm glad Firefox came along. It's definately helped Opera and the web in general. I just get sometimes tired of some of the people that push it is all."

Yeah, there are fanboys of EVERY product. I've seen em for Opera, Firefox, IE, Linux, Windows. Basically everything except Microsoft Bob. I was thinking about becoming an MS Bob fanboy just so there'd be one to annoy all the other fanboys out there. "Start Button? Pshah. I just click on the pictures on my wooden graphical desktop. SOO much more intuitive."

Well your experiences have probably been a different than mine.

When Firefox started getting big, I kept hearing the same thing over and over. People telling me to try Firefox, how great it is, etc. It got a bit annoying because I had been following it since 0.3 and was well aware of it.

Then there were those people that were saying it's the greatest thing since sliced bread (someone seriously said this). People saying "finally there is an alternative for IE!", etc.

It just got to be really annoying. Everywhere I went, there was Firefox. All these tech news sites had a new Firefox article every day. Firefox gains 0.25% market share. Firefox at 22million downloads. Firefox this, Firefox that.

Hey.. great.. it's getting a lot of publicity. But it did get annoying after a while.

As far as the tabs thing goes
NetCaptor had tabs back in 1999 at least (version 5.x). Galeon wasn't even out then AFAIK.

"As far as the tabs thing goes NetCaptor had tabs back in 1999 at least (version 5.x). Galeon wasn't even out then AFAIK."

Ah, so it did. They were even planning to patent them *sigh*
http://www.prweb.com/releases/1999/5/prweb7988.php

Galeon came out mid-2000 and... I think... had tabs in its initial release.

I can't seem to find information about when Opera added tabs ("pages") and I don't think I care enough to download each version from 3.62 forward.

I can't seem to find information about when Mozilla added tabs either.

Anybody?

Opera had a "page bar" before Mozilla added Tabs, but it was still purely MDI at the time and didn't look like "tabs". However, it was the same concept.

vcv, MDI is not at all the same concept as tabs. Saying that it is doesn't make it so.

- A

Opera's original Window menu for the menus was kludgey. The Page Bar + MDI isn't really the same thing as tabs and still felt kludgey (though better than the window menu). Plus, as you said, it appears that NetCaptor had tabs first and everything else came from that.

Asa,

I meant the "Page bar", not MDI. It had buttons to access each page contained within the main window.

John,

Yes, the page bar + MDI was kludgy, but it IS the same concept. Just because the buttons looked like buttons and not tabs, does not make them that much different.