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Comment by josefresco | Hacker News Reader

The publicity that Opera has gained has not been 'free' in the traditional sense of the word. They are a well known Internet brand who very publicly shared their app approval status with the world. While I do agree the PR they got has helped downloads, it's not like they were an unheard of brand that won the PR-superbowl.

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I dunno. I'm very happy for Opera - but their branding is not really strong at all outside of tech circles. A lot of "normal" people know about Firefox, but I've yet to meet someone who uses Opera, or even knows of it, who isn't significantly connected to our industry.

Agreed. And Opera usage certainly doesn't seem to be growing. I really wish it was more standards compliant :/

"I really wish it was more standards compliant :/"

uh What? It is and always has been one of the most compliant...

Sorry, I probably shouldn't have used the term 'standards compliant'.

Don't get me wrong, it's far better than IE, but whereas if you get something working in firefox, it usually works as is in safari/chrome, there's sometimes little quirks in Opera.

As a relatively small userbase use Opera, it'd just be nice if it did things exactly the same as firefox/Chrome - layout, scrolling, iframes, etc etc

I can't remember specific details, but I often notice weird layout quirks, or issues with scrolling (Not well defined in any standard).

Traditionally, I think of Opera as the browser not afraid to be truly standards compliant, even if it means little differences between FF/Safari. I have seen examples of this, sorry that I can't find them now. Personally I'm happy to have Opera in this role, because I think it's an important role.

If something does need to be fixed "for Opera", it's generally only a tiny CSS change, as opposed to the kinds of structural overhauls IE will make you wrestle with.

In short, in the name of standards, I think it would be nice if FF etc did things exactly the same as Opera :)

Can opera even do things like border-radius yet?

Yes, as of version 10.50: http://www.opera.com/docs/changelogs/windows/1050/

This isn't about Opera, but just backing up the "renders different != non-compliant" thought - I just fixed a rendering bug in one of my pages that only showed up in Google Chrome. It turned out that Chrome was behaving correctly and that Firefox and IE were not. When I fixed the CSS rule, they were all happy.

Sometimes the one who is different is the most correct. Maybe if you satisfy Opera first, you won't have as many problems with the others.

By this argument, Firefox/safari/chrome should just copy what IE does, because IE has the biggest market share.

@Cory Matthews:

Compared to IE? Yes. Compared to Firefox? Depends on the release schedule of both. Compared to Chrome or Safari? It lags significantly behind.

You can reply directly to comments using the "reply" link. No need for @ style comments.

Given that he was using a reply link to make the comment, he probably knows they exist. There's a "flame retardant" feature that disables the reply link for a period immediately after a higher-nested comment was posted.

In that case you can still get one by using the "link" link to get to it.

Thanks, I didn't know about that work-around. Indeed, there was no reply link on that comment; I assumed, like every other comment system, there was a limit to nested levels.

They've long been the leader in the mobile market though, and while the PR has undoubtedly helped like crazy that probably would have carried them alone.

Yep, anyone who's ever owned a blackberry knows about opera mini and how great it is.

Surely that's only because the bundled blackberry browser is so doggedly useless, rather than opera mini excelling by itself?

It's no different to Firefox/IE though. Nothing wrong with being relatively better, either.

Kevin Drum, a liberal political blogger, has recently adopted Opera as his web browser and has been posting about it:

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/03/opera-after-month

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