Opera Desktop Team Reveals Browser Usage Findings
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 6th Jul 2007 19:50 UTC, submitted by juno_106
Opera Software "Back in January we added the ability to report usage of different features and preferences so we could learn more about how the browser is used in general. First we invited you, our weekly users to help us and in 9.2 we started asking one in 100 users if they want to participate. We would like to share some of our findings with you."
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Kroc
Member since:
2005-11-10

Did I not point out that a few of those users, are lawfully required access to certain websites. In the UK there is a £20'000 fine for failure to provide adequate disabled access, this includes e-commerce websites. Read this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/norfolk/3117050.stm

I manage fine supporting disabled users with almost no extra effort. Writing correct HTML, CSS and Javascript via event binding is not rocket science, you just can't be a lazy sod that thinks disabled people don't exist and will go away if you don't cater for them.

Reply Parent Score: 5

algkalv Member since:
2005-11-04

I manage fine supporting disabled users with almost no extra effort. Writing correct HTML, CSS and Javascript via event binding is not rocket science, you just can't be a lazy sod that thinks disabled people don't exist and will go away if you don't cater for them


There are consumers of assistive technologies who are not disabled. A non-negligible (though not large either) proportion of users prefer text + color only. the reason is that they are after text, and are not interested in web applications; they also actively seek solutions to curb the onslaught of the irrelevant. The latter includes everything that the text they are after. Javascript has nothing to offer here, neither do plugins, cookies, multimedia apart from select images, etc.

It is not difficult to cater to those people from the point of view of the browser vendor. Defaults should have the appeal to the largest possible set of users, but that does not preclude options for those who need -or- want them. That is why there is opera:config, that is why there are FF extensions, etc.

example: http://img2.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/c4ead84cb5.png

Defaults are there to be changed ;)

Consumers of text+color, as I like to call them, and amongst whom I count myself, do not mind "broken pages", i.e. sites which are unusable due to content done in flash, navigation or content served via javascript. It is really not a problem. Since web apps are not even remotely interesting for them (us), and since we can get the text nearly always, and fine-tune the sites with site preferences in more than one browser, then the problem becomes non-existent. Personally, I have javascript turned on only for my bank, via site preferences. And vote with my wallet, as well as presence. If someone fails to cater t me, I go elsewhere if I cannot work around it. not really tied to a vendor ;)

Finally, as Kroc says, apart from a few isolated examples, it's fairly easy to cater to everyone, with responsible enhancement JS overlays. Most of the time, it is not the web applications that are a problem - it is the web pages written for IE, and only for IE, that are the real pain in the eyebrow, as are those which sprinkle their measly content with restrictive nonsense that prevents a huge portion of their potential audience from using their sites.

Disclaimer: I am an Opera employee (speaking for myself only)

Reply Parent Score: 2

Liquidator Member since:
2007-03-04

Yeah, while I would be depressed on a plain black and white desktop like this: http://img2.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/c4ead84cb5.png (I'm more an Vista kinda guy!), I respect your choice. I think allowing you to customize your desktop, your browser and the web page rendering the way you want is a fundamental and legitimate right.

I think Javascript, being supported by most browsers that I heard of, is a great solution for snappy and responsive applications or web sites. Form prevalidation using javascript is better than only server-side validation, it's faster (use both client and server-side validation for security). Javascript is IMO 100s of times better, lighter and faster for webapps than Java applets, Flex and Flash in general.

Reply Parent Score: 1