Opera says 'bork' to MSN standards

[Aaron73153]

Opera Software has released a new version of its Opera 7 Web browser with just one tweak--it turns Microsoft's MSN Web site into gibberish that was inspired by the Swedish Chef from "The Muppet Show." The "Bork Edition" of Opera 7 isn't designed so much to win over new visitors as to make a point about how browsers and Web sites should work together. It is Opera's response to what the company alleges are dishonest tactics by Microsoft to make Opera look like it is displaying pages improperly when people view MSN.
The Swedish Chef's dialogue was famously incoherent, and included the phrase "Bork, bork, bork!"





"This is a joke. However, we are trying to make an important point," Mary Lambert, desktop product line manager at Opera, said in a statement. "The success of the Web depends on software and Web site developers behaving well and rising above corporate rivalry."



Microsoft is trying to bully everybody else out of the market.

Read the full story here (http://news.com.com/2100-1023-984632.html?tag=fd_top)

Download it, its the most hilarious thing I've seen!

[matstao]

Microsoft has responded by releasing a new version of Internet Explorer that displays the message "You will be assimilated" when viewing any competitor's homepage. It has been dubbed the "Borg Edition".

(just kidding of course. go Opera!)

[Aaron73153]

LOL

You know that if they could get away with that and not have to worry about the FTC they would.

Go Opera indeed!

[matstao]

http://gaspe.cgaspesie.qc.ca/crioux/billborg.htm

[overdo]

ROFLMAO. this thread is just turning into an anti-microsoft thread....long may it continue:fire

[WRFan]

fighting a war with MS on our backs and at our costs. very nice. I stay with IE. apart from the fact that it's better in all respects, it displays the right pages when I go to MSN, and not some phucking borg or bork or whatever crap. kind of ironic: first opera bitch around that MS doesn't allow it to enter, and now it changes the pages itself. what do I care about opera? they got something to say, then they should go to the court. the people who work in the court are paid to listen to their babling, but I am not and I don't want to hear their complaints. If their browser worked well, MS wouldn't block them. it doesn't block netscape, does it? so instead of losing their time with bitching around and releasing stupid bork editions they should use the time to improve their programme. current version is 7 and still behaves like v. 1 of internet explorer

[Wings_of_Azrael]

I'm still an avid IE user, but I've tried Opera, Mozilla, and I still have Phoenix on my computer. It's nice to see them fighting back against the Microsoft monopoly, I hope someday their browsers will give me what I need, as I'd like to use a 3rd party browser without having to switch back to IE everyday. Mozilla/Phoenix do the best at supporting webpage coding, but I find thair software to be a bit buggy at times, and the ActiveX plug-ins are a bit shoddy. Opera has quite a way to go in terms of rendering webpages properly. The things that made me get rid of Opera was how horribly it rendered Google groups, it kinda hurt the functionality of the site itsself. Also, there are still many normal (non-Microsoft) pages that don't come out right.

[kevoid]

Originally posted by WRFan
fighting a war with MS on our backs and at our costs. very nice. I stay with IE. apart from the fact that it's better in all respects, it displays the right pages when I go to MSN, and not some phucking borg or bork or whatever crap. kind of ironic: first opera bitch around that MS doesn't allow it to enter, and now it changes the pages itself. what do I care about opera? they got something to say, then they should go to the court. the people who work in the court are paid to listen to their babling, but I am not and I don't want to hear their complaints. If their browser worked well, MS wouldn't block them. it doesn't block netscape, does it? so instead of losing their time with bitching around and releasing stupid bork editions they should use the time to improve their programme. current version is 7 and still behaves like v. 1 of internet explorer

Wow, that was such an ignorant post. Microsoft is intentionally giving Opera a different stylesheet for their site. Also, for Hotmail, they warn people that they aren't using IE or Netscape, but Why? Opera works perfectly at the site.

Also, Microsoft does not follow the web standards, they make their own so other browsers mess up. Opera and Mozilla actually display what a site is supposed to look like.

[WRFan]

Mozilla/Phoenix do the best at supporting webpage coding, but I find thair software to be a bit buggy at times, and the ActiveX plug-ins are a bit shoddy

gecko browsers (mozilla, phoenix, chimera, galeon) don't support activex. in fact, no browser does, except for internet explorer. that's why you can't update windows through the MS automatic web update using mozilla - mozilla doesn't support activex.
and this technology is purely windows based, so even if windows mozilla supported it, the linux mozilla could not.

Microsoft is intentionally giving Opera a different stylesheet for their site

no, the browsers just interpret all internet languages in a different way. opera has problems with css, I don't say it just because I don't like opera, it's a fact. it doesn't matter which style sheet you give to opera, it will phuck it anyway

Microsoft does not follow the web standards

you are right, but at the same time you are also wrong. it's true, MS doesn't give a phuck about the standards set by the w3 consortium, but the point is simply that it's actually MS that sets the standards, because most webmasters don't visit the w3c website and read the specifications. they just write the code and test it in internet explorer. in other words, most websites are optimised for IE. and if opera says that MS doesn't like opera, because it uses style sheets opera can't interpret, then, following opera's logic we would have to say that 90 percent of web webmasters hate opera, because their pages are displayed correctly in IE, but not in opera. but this is of course nonsense. webmasters don't sit down and say "ok, now I will write a source code that doesn't work in opera", they say "now I will write the code that is compatible with the mostly used browser", and that's of course IE. so opera has two possibilities: it can recognise the absolute monopoly of MS and IE. sad, I admit, but true. if it accepts this fact, it will rewrite its browser to be more tolerant, as far as w3c standards are concerned. or, the second possibility, opera can decide to stick to the w3c standards, but then it shouldn't be suprised if people switch to IE, because, if we are honest, no one of us gives a phuck about standards, all we want is the pages to be displayed correctly. those w3c loonies sit somewhere and invent standards and say this tag is deprecated, or that tag is deprecated, but most of the webmasters incl. myself don't care. if it works in IE properly, we are satisfied. and if Opera doesn't like those tags, because w3c doesn't like them, so be it, what do I care.

Also, for Hotmail, they warn people that they aren't using IE or Netscape, but Why? Opera works perfectly at the site.

who cares? just use outlook xp. and opera doesn't work perfectly on hotmail site. when I am on linux I use opera to check my hotmail accounts and the site view is always deprecated, like everything you try to display in opera

[Wings_of_Azrael]

Originally posted by WRFan
gecko browsers (mozilla, phoenix, chimera, galeon) don't support activex. in fact, no browser does, except for internet explorer. that's why you can't update windows through the MS automatic web update using mozilla - mozilla doesn't support activex.

Actually, there has been an ActiveX plug-in developed for Mozilla, and I also think it works in Phoenix. Still, as I mentioned before, it's very shoddy and doesn't work properly in most instances. At least in Phoenix, which is the only browser I've tried it in. It did work in a few instances though.

http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/mozilla.htm

[WRFan]

Originally posted by Wings_of_Azrael
Actually, there has been an ActiveX plug-in developed for Mozilla, and I also think it works in Phoenix. Still, as I mentioned before, it's very shoddy and doesn't work properly in most instances. At least in Phoenix, which is the only browser I've tried it in. It did work in a few instances though.

http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/mozilla.htm

hey, that's interesting, I didn't know that, thanx for the info. I would never have imagined that activex support would ever be added to non-ms browsers. still, I don't think it's a good idea to install it, because of all those dialers that are installed through activex.. it's already a hard job to protect oneself from dialers that try to enter the system through internet explorer

[Wings_of_Azrael]

Originally posted by WRFan
hey, that's interesting, I didn't know that, thanx for the info. I would never have imagined that activex support would ever be added to non-ms browsers. still, I don't think it's a good idea to install it, because of all those dialers that are installed through activex.. it's already a hard job to protect oneself from dialers that try to enter the system through internet explorer

Definetly, having ActiveX installed on any browser is a huge security risk. Security is one of the advantages Mozilla has over IE, simply because it's not targeted by hackers. To install ActiveX on Mozilla is to completely destroy that advantage. Especially since Mozilla developers haven't had to work as hard as IE developers on the security aspects, because they didn't support ActiveX to begin with. Still, there are measures one can take to create some amount of protection.