Opera files complaint — an open letter to the Web community

Opera.com | 2007-12-13 | Håkon Wium Lie, CTO, Opera Software

[SubGeniusX]

Over the years I have been an active participant in the ongoing fight for open and interoperable Web standards. I have always opposed those who would force proprietary technologies where open alternatives, often superior, exist. From 1994, I worked at CERN and W3C to help make sure there were good specifications for the Web. In 1999, I joined Opera to make sure there was at least one browser that implemented those specifications right. We have worked hard to do that. Unfortunately Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the biggest browser of all, did not.

Today we have taken a stand. Opera has filed a formal complaint with the European Commission to force Microsoft to support open Web standards in its Web browser, Internet Explorer. We believe that Microsoft has harmed Web standards by refusing to support them; Microsoft often participates in creating Web standards, promoting them, and even promising to implement them. Despite their talent, however, they refuse to support Web standards correctly. For example, Internet Explorer is the only modern Web browser that does not support Acid2.

Opera has also requested that Microsoft frees Internet Explorer from the Windows platform. We feel that they have used their market dominating position to limit a genuine choice of browsers on the Web for their own commercial gain.

The time for action is now. The Web browser is the most important application for most of us. Developers and designers are creating more powerful Web sites and applications. But because Internet Explorer doesn't implement open and fully-developed Web standards, the work is hard and frustrating. Web designers are forced to spend time working around IE bugs rather than doing what inspires them. We seek no money from Microsoft. We would rather see Microsoft put their considerable talent and resources to work for the Web community.

To those of you who build and shape the sites and services we use everyday — and who will create those in the future — I ask for your support. You will be the ones who ultimately benefit by having a Web that works seamlessly and effortlessly across devices, browsers and is equally open to everyone. That new day is just over the horizon, and by working together, we will awaken to that dawn.

Thank you.

Håkon Wium Lie Chief Technology Officer, Opera Software 2007-12-13

[ReignOfError]

“Nothing annoys me more than running into a Web site that is IE only.”

Do you really see this as a Microsoft problem?

I do, in part. Microsoft, rather than abide by accepted standards, has repeatedly introduced its own. And because of its dominant position in the market, a number of wrong-headed Web developers have built sites for IE only, not bothering to test on other browsers, or even putting in a browser-detect javascript to lock out other browsers.

Should Microsoft stick to open standards? Yes. Should developers write standards-compliant code and test it on multiple platforms and browsers? Yes. Is this "should" something the courts can and should enforce? I don't see how.

Fortunately, IE-only sites are becoming less and less common. Security concerns led a lot of Windows users to switch to Firefox, Macs OX and Linux market share is growing, and anyone with a lick of sense can see that you don't want to slam the door in the face of potential customers, when it's just as easy to code to accepted standards instead of a single browser.

Even if IE/Windows has 90% of the eyeballs -- and I don't think it ever got that high -- who wants to drive off 10% of its customer base if it's easy to avoid?

[MarkL]

Some businesses who are tied to Microsoft products have some very serious problems. There's a major, nation-wide company that does all their business through web based applications that in-house developers had written. That was all well and good until XP came out. You see, their apps required the use of Microsoft's virutal machine (the M$ version of Java.) As you may or may not know, Sun, who owns Java, sued Microsoft, because M$ the Microsoft version wasn't compliant with the specs laid down by Sun. Because Sun claimed that M$ broke the license agreement, they sued, and Microsoft lost. The judgment stated that M$ was no longer allowed to distribute their VM.

Well guess what. Since the Microsoft VM wasn't compliant with the Sun Java standards, applications that are designed to work with the MS VM will often times NOT WORK with Sun's Java. This is the case with this company. Although I was eventually able to find the installable files on the Internet, and it can be installed on XP, this doesn't bode well for the future.

Mark