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Waxing Operatic
Feb. 26th, 2003 11:13 pmThis has nothing to do with formal vocal music, and much to do with how i choose to browse the Internet.
I use Opera, and for a handful of reasons. Most importantly, it's because it's a compact, efficient browser which adheres more closely to W3C guidelines than any other available for Windows-based PCs. As such it's a great tool for checking standards compliance in web pages.
Opera's a small, Scandanavian company, which further sets it apart from Microsoft's Internet Explorer and AOL owned Netscape- both US based computing monsters. As the little guy in the market, Opera's developers tend to listen to the users more than their counterparts seem to, and they certainly show none of the blatant arrogance of the Big Two. Opera users get to contribute to the product, too- not necessarily in the open-source sense of the word, but user contributions are decidedly welcomed, and Opera is one of the most translated internet tools available- there are user interface language packs available for the major languages and a handful of the minor ones as well. So, using Opera, i can browse the web not only in Russian or German, but Gàidhlig too, and language packs are also available for such comparably rare languages as Icelandic, Catalan, Welsh and Northern Sami.
And they have a sense of humour as well. Apparently someone at MSN recently decided to deliberately target the Opera users by rendering the MSN page unusable to users of Opera browsers. Here's the text of Opera's response press release:
( Click here to read it, bork bork bork.... )
See why i love these guys?
I use Opera, and for a handful of reasons. Most importantly, it's because it's a compact, efficient browser which adheres more closely to W3C guidelines than any other available for Windows-based PCs. As such it's a great tool for checking standards compliance in web pages.
Opera's a small, Scandanavian company, which further sets it apart from Microsoft's Internet Explorer and AOL owned Netscape- both US based computing monsters. As the little guy in the market, Opera's developers tend to listen to the users more than their counterparts seem to, and they certainly show none of the blatant arrogance of the Big Two. Opera users get to contribute to the product, too- not necessarily in the open-source sense of the word, but user contributions are decidedly welcomed, and Opera is one of the most translated internet tools available- there are user interface language packs available for the major languages and a handful of the minor ones as well. So, using Opera, i can browse the web not only in Russian or German, but Gàidhlig too, and language packs are also available for such comparably rare languages as Icelandic, Catalan, Welsh and Northern Sami.
And they have a sense of humour as well. Apparently someone at MSN recently decided to deliberately target the Opera users by rendering the MSN page unusable to users of Opera browsers. Here's the text of Opera's response press release:
( Click here to read it, bork bork bork.... )
See why i love these guys?
