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I like the doors. It's become a signature FocusShift theme.

In fact, when I see a comic with a door, I get to laugh twice. Just thinking of all the upcoming complaints in the comments gives me a chuckle even before I read the actual comic. ;^)

I don't know, at least he's starting to get a sense of humor. The doors are starting to look like doors too.

./(I am a Maaaac!!) ./(and I am a PCeeee!!!)
See? If you draw people from far enough they look like dots, no need to use complicated devices that overload your GPU such as sticks and circles.

Thom has addressed this specific criticism before, but I'll put in my own piece. The doors are a sort of signature style of his. Eventually you'll see a comic of a behind-closed-office-doors conversation, and you'll invariably think "Focus Shift". Just as seeing a stick-figure brings up memories of xkcd.com, or bug-eyed round faces reminds one of Garfield, so too Thom has his own style that is consistent and getting better with each comic.

I don't find his work the best or funniest on the net by far, but it's a great effort and he's doing it for the fun of it. I think it's just fine.

That is kind of the idea, yeah. Whether you're staring at the same stick (Xkcd) or blob (C&H) figures, or at a door with a different logo each time - more or less the same to me. I guess what bothers some is not the doors in and of itself, but the simple fact that I haven't yet shown anything even remotely resembling a human or an animal. I guess that unnerves people or something.



Hah, I don't have any illusions on this front myself. I wouldn't even want to put Focus Shift in the same sentence as xkcd, C&H, or UserFriendly (wait, I just did), let alone compare myself to them. I do think that for someone who drew his first ever comic just 2.5 months ago, I'm doing relatively fine.

Thanks, though .

Edited 2008-03-11 15:16 UTC

So Thom Holwerda, what about the fact that Opera never sued Microsoft?

What Opera did was to ask the EU to investigate Microsoft. It was an antitrust complaint, not a lawsuit. Opera isn't going to make any money from this or anything like that.

And besides, it was this antitrust complaint which caused Microsoft to change its mind and default to standards mode in IE8.

So I don't get the drawing. It's pointless. And it's very old news by now anyway.

And finally, Opera is doing well financially. It's profitable, has a large pile of cash, and desktop revenue alone grew from between 50 to more than 100% last year. So again, I don't get it. Your drawing is basically failing on all levels...

If it was a total failure it wouldn't have made you so defensive.

It doesn't unnerve me. I just think it looks rubbish and kills the joke somewhat.

Everyones humour is different though, so perhaps I'm just in the minorety on this one

Edited 2008-03-12 14:43 UTC

It's unfunny because it isn't true.

Opera didn't sue Microsoft. They merely asked the EC to launch an antitrust investigation of the company.

If Microsoft is found "guilty", Opera won't make a single dime. There's nothing in it for Opera, except strengthening open standards. Evil, eh?

And besides, Microsoft's change of heart regarding standards in IE8 was due to Opera's antitrust complaint. They were afraid of more fines.

Is your comment supposed to be sarcastic?
:-P

Judging by your avatar, there weren't enough fart jokes or Cartman's Mom jokes to make it truly hilarious.

And THAT was sarcasm, since you apparently need to practice it a little.

FWIW, on a megabytes per instance basis, Opera is the single largest memory hog on my servers. We run a lot of simultaneous Epiphany, Evolution, and OpenOffice instances. But I was surprised to discover that once I had done away with Firefox and Thunderbird, Opera, which we use for a few sites that Epiphany gets rejected from with a "We don't yet support Netscape" message, is the next resource hog that I need to tackle.

Edited 2008-03-10 21:13 UTC

I am not content with either Firefox, Safari or IE for various reasons...however, since I have to use a browser I would pick one of these over Opera since I can't stand the horrible Opera user interface and behavior. I am not saying Opera isn't any good, I am just saying its not my cup of tea.

It all comes down to one simple property: That Opera are not capable of opening a browser-window with only a given url when I have said it should open with startpage. Its either both or none...unlike any of the previously mentioned browsers.

So please don't mod me down for this one. Once again I am not saying anything bad about Opera, its just not my preference due to its interface and behavior that doesn't fit my browsing habbits.

It all comes down to one simple property: That Opera are not capable of opening a browser-window with only a given url when I have said it should open with startpage. Its either both or none...unlike any of the previously mentioned browsers.

Have you recently tryed opera it as it is perfecly possible to set it that way. Tools ->preferences -> startup . And yes it then only opens the homepage you have choosen nothing more.

I don't think you understand me...if I say it should start with my homepage, and exit the browser...for later to click an external link and open the browser...it will open BOTH the clicked url AND the homepage. At this point I don't want to open my homepage since I have specifically said which URL to open.

So why not just disable the start page and then edit the shortcut you use to start Opera most of the time (I assume you're using Windows?) to open your start page like an external link?

This little quirk hardly seems like a decent reason to ditch a good browser.

As for Opera's user interface..you realise it is possible to make it look almost exactly like Firefox, right?

WoW! I think you may be right. I have missed this feature since I first tried Opera when it was a version 5 or something. I need to check this out further!

Too bad Opera got issues with the Google webapps

Edited 2008-03-11 09:05 UTC

I use Konqueror because I like to use the same program for browsing the internet and managing my files.

For some time I used Firefox but its only real advantage to me was that it screwed up less websites. That's why I still have it installed although I don't need it all that often.

I also tried Opera. It seemed rather fast and the mouse gestures were a nice touch. I'm not dexterous enough though, the only thing that worked reliably was next and back :-D
Last time I checked Opera was proprietary and that's a big, big minus in my book.

All in all I just don't see any compelling reason to install it.

If I'm not mistaken some of Opera's employees (namely CSS-guru and CTO Håkon Wium Lie) was positive to making it open source.

He mentions this in a (Norwegian) interview: http://www.digi.no/php/art.php?id=500083

Here are some selected quotes I'm transelating. (I'm not language expert though so they won't be the most accurate, but accurate enough I hope!)

"Everyone who sells software these days discusses open source. It would be irresponsible to do otherwise."

"We are quite proud of our code and would very much like to show it. The problem is commercial re-use. It's businesses wise problematic."

"We haven't found a business model that is compatible with todays open source-licenses"

I don't use it because it isn't compatible with Google's online services; take the rich text box used in Blogger, it doesn't work properly. Uploading videos to YouTube, doesn't work properly. There is a whole laundry list of incompatibilities. These are going to be fixed in 9.5.

I think the greater issue is the lack of accepting by Opera engineers and management that the reason why people don't use it is because it doesn't do what people want; who cares if it isn't from big-bad Microsoft, if they can't visit the websites they like, they're not going to move.

@kaiwai

"I think the greater issue is the lack of accepting by Opera engineers and management that the reason why people don't use it is because it doesn't do what people want; who cares if it isn't from big-bad Microsoft, if they can't visit the websites they like, they're not going to move.

That's assuming that Opera is to blame for all these problems.

It's assuming that Opera pretends that they don't exist.

Reality is that Opera is always working hard on compatibility. As should be apparent from 9.5 (and actually all versions before that).

The main problem is that Opera has a small user base so sites aren't tested in Opera. Firefox has lots of users, and even before it became popular it could benefit from descending from Netscape (and thus get compatibility for free) since most sites were designed to work with IE and Netscape 6 anyway.

I would laugh if this comic was at all amusing, or wasn't a rehash of the same 'joke' a hundred ignorant, self-congratulatory bloggers all came up with two months ago.

Opera have done as much, probably more, to test compatibility with sites than any other browser maker. FF relies on techheads pushing it onto others, and the perception that somehow FF is 'cooler' than IE. People build for FF, and that's no bad thing, but other browser makers have to make things work on their own merit. Opera specifically patches bad code on sites on the fly, for those too lazy to do it properly.

The Opera interface is just smoother, faster and more convenient. It has better future standards support than any other browser.

And it hasn't sued anyone.

Oh, come on now. Google, Blogger and Youtube are the BIGGEST websites on the internet, the most visited and interacted with. I'm not referring to two bit sites out of the view of the public which only 3 people visit per month (and I know each of them).

I'm talking about major websites which work with Firefox, work with Internet Explorer, and yet, when it comes to Opera - this has been a KNOWN issue, since, well, since year dot.

Yes, you are trying to defend you browser of choice, but also accept the fact that I have on many occasions lodged bug reports, posted on operat forums, posted on Opera desktop blog telling them about these issues - and not a single thing has been done by them.

I'm Sorry, it isn't as though I'm sitting in the corner doing nothing about it; I'm out there trying to get them to fix compatibility, and so far they haven't done squat on those regards.

What you are not taking into account is the fact that Google's employees overwhelmingly use Firefox (Google is one of very few companies that are allowed to contribute directly with code to Firefox), and it goes without saying that IE needs to be supported.

Both IE and Firefox are officially supported by Google services. Opera (and to a lesser extent Safari) is more of an afterthought.

When you consider the fact that Google keeps changing their site code, and that they rarely or never test in Opera, it goes without saying that things will keep breaking even if Opera keeps fixing them (which they do - check out their browser.js site patching).


Nonsense. If you pay attention to the dev blogs, they are constantly working on Google issues.


Again, nonsense. You are assuming that Opera is doing nothing about it, which is completely false.

The bottom line is that it isn't that simple. Google not only relies HEAVILY on specific bugs in IE and Firefox, but their code is obfuscated, and it keeps changing.

You claim that these problems are due to Opera not caring about compatibility. That is a blatant lie. Compatibility is something they're talking about and working on ALL THE TIME. The reason for compatibility problems is NOT that they don't care or have an attitude that it doesn't matter. The reason is that there are LOTS of sites out there that don't test in Opera (where as most test in IE and Firefox), and many of them are extremely complex. Furthermore, compatibility patches can't just be deployed overnight. They need to be tested, verified, etc.

I think you got it a bit wrong. It's not that we don't use it, we just know its place. I also have it always installed, but I rarely use it, and it's always been in "that other browser you test things in from time to time" status for me. I liked its mobile version for a time though, but these days I mostly use the ie mobile and try minimo from time to time and that's it. I always found it just lacked a little bit of a lot of things, and that description kept to be constant [for me at least] at each release.

Because they don't have a monopoly on OS and they don't use it to illegally push their web browser bundled with their OS. Try uninstalling IE and Windows won't work anymore. You have to use IE anyway. And don't tell me IE is the most used browser because it is better.
This comic is pretty stupid actually. If you believe IE7 is competing on its own merit, you must be drinking too much. IE7 is bundled in Windows. Everybody is forced to make their site work with IE7. If IE7 isn't standard compliant, it means they are making so that many wab site won't necesastily work with other browsers. As such, they are using a monopoly to crush the competition and they are breacking the law. In such a case, suing is the perfectly reasonable thing to do.

So... why is Opera fairing so poorly against Firefox?

Because FF is GPL-compatible. Opera is not going to sue Mozilla BTW.

What do you mean, faring poorly? Is this some kind of a competition? Are Opera and FF on different sides? The two companies have completely different business models, both are being financially successful, and both are committed to heading towards an interoperable future.

I don't know really. Every time I've used it it's been lightning fast, compatible and feature filled. But it just doesn't sit right somehow. It's completely unquantifiable, but it just doesn't feel good. Also the interface on the mac version has enough little differences to make it quite jarring and stand out as not a mac app.

Without exception, every single time I've tried Opera, its user interface drove me insane. Yes, I realize you can customize it to look exactly like <insert browser here>, but why bother? It doesn't in my experience render noticably faster or better than Firefox or anything else I might use, and as such it's simply not worth my time spending hours trying to figure out how to reconfigure it to work the way I want when something else renders everything I visit perfectly and doesn't have the setup overhead.

Edited 2008-03-11 16:24 UTC

Bingo.

What setup overhead?

Opera is a smaller download than Firefox, and behaves just like any other standalone browser by default.

I personally like it.

BUT - it feels a bit "clunky". A lot of options, enough that it's too much. I don't care about IRC chat or built in bittorrent support. All I want to do is browse the web. Firefox feels "slim" - with optional plugins to tailor to your needs. Opera...again...feels like it's over burden with features I don't care about.

Then why don't you try and figure out what it is you don't like about it? Seems like nobody can actually answer the question, or any answer they give is "because I'm used to how Firefox does it".

At least Opera can use native Windows controls for it's interface, which makes it smoother and less clunky than FF to use.

point #1: If I could put it into words, I would. The best I can come up with is the way things are arranged is awkward for me, its default tab handling isn't the way I'd like, and just general behavioral quirks. Besides that, Firefox pretty much does things the way every other browser since the beginning of browsers has done things, I'm equally at home with IE's user interface except it sucks at rendering most of the time. Opera is the only browser where the UI just feels alien. Also, don't underestimate the power of habit. If someone is used to doing things a certain way, they will pretty much intuitively resist change, unless the change can be proven to be beneficial to adapt to. In this case, I see no benefit since I see no performance, rendering or usability improvement from Opera's way of doing things. Thus, no incentive to change. I want a simple, minimalistic interface that stays out of my way. FF does just fine at that.

point #2: You assume I'm using Windows.

Edited 2008-03-11 16:38 UTC

In what way? It looks exactly like any other browser.

As much as I love Opera, it is the second time they've sued Microsoft.

heh, oops.

i guess i read the comic as a SCO like action.

going after microsoft, hell, ill cheer for anyone that does so...

Edited 2008-03-11 04:15 UTC

As I said earlier:

Opera didn't sue Microsoft. They merely asked the EC to launch an antitrust investigation of the company.

If Microsoft is found "guilty", Opera won't make a single dime. There's nothing in it for Opera, except strengthening open standards. Evil, eh?

And besides, Microsoft's change of heart regarding standards in IE8 was due to Opera's antitrust complaint. They were afraid of more fines.

When was the first (and apparently only) time they sued Microsoft, by the way?

best browser ever, opera reinvented the whole thing, everything you firefox lovers use comes from them, IE7 ? IE8 ? its MS realizing thanks to firefox that they should change, but where did the great mozilla got the ideas? Opera...
anyways, its fun nonetheless

just wanted people to know that...
i remember an article somewhere saying what im now stating...

great comic.. keep it up thom!