Comments on: Google Reader does evil; dumps Opera

By: Priyank

Priyank — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 12:18:56 +0000

o i c.
About 25% hits to my weblog are by spammers. If the #visitors drop, is usually them, and I am happy;)

By: mahendrap

mahendrap — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 09:10:28 +0000

Mark: //As someone who does some web development, I can say that developing cross browser code is a royal pain in the arse.//
Isn’t that why W3C standards are there in the first place?!

But because these big companies choose not to follow them, we have the rice in folks like you and Priyank!

And yes, Google has fixed the problem. I’ve updated my post. Thanks for the tip-off.

Priyank: //Pray how didya conclude that? Are you talkin abt #comments?//
A combination of number of comments and site visit statistics (excluding feeds).

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 00:56:37 +0000

Priyank – Indeed I do agree, though some companies make it extra hard for developers…

Indidentally, I’m able to load the new and improved Google Reader in Opera right now, and it looks like someone from google just posted in the google reader forums. Pretty speedy response, actually. It normally takes them a few days:P

By: Priyank

Priyank — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:02:36 +0000

//Nita: thank you! It seems like the more my posts and blog look solid, the less the readership!

Pray how didya conclude that? Are you talkin abt #comments?

Mark: You’d agree – Thats precisely why real web designers aren’t a commodity Its the pain that separates rice frm chaff

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 18:44:03 +0000

Google always breaks reader in Opera when the launch a lot of new features, but it’s usually fixed within a week or so. Not that it’s not annoying or anything. Also, my impression of Opera is that even though their CSS support is the best, their javascript support isn’t quite at the same level (and javascript is probably the root cause of reader not working right now). I know a large portion of problems are caused by browser sniffers that don’t look for Opera, but I don’t know if that’s what’s causing the problem with google reader. As someone who does some web development, I can say that developing cross browser code is a royal pain in the arse. Getting stuff to work in IE6, IE7, FF/gecko browsers, Opera, and KHTML browsers is a nightmare. Again, not an excuse…

By: powerkis

powerkis — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 17:32:16 +0000

Not much to say….I just wanted you to know that I came by….and to say “hi.”

By: mahendrap

mahendrap — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 17:00:07 +0000

Sunil: Thanks for visiting. I've been using Opera mini on my O2 Pocket PC, and it's much, much better than the Pocket IE! The video is a nice marketing gimmick capitalizing on the iPhone's restrictive AT&T deal, I'd earlier written about. Cool...thanks!

By: Sunil

Sunil — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 16:46:41 +0000

Lately, I have been using Opera Mobile/Mini on various mobile devices (Thanks to my profession). Equally good (if not better) as the desktop version. The intelligent zoom rocks and easily competes with Safari browser on iphone.

BTW, you may enjoy this video at www{dot}operamini{dot}com{slash}beta{slash}video{slash}

By: mahendrap

mahendrap — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 16:03:44 +0000

Priyank: Given that only Opera on Windows passes the W3C Acid2 test, no wonder that its interpretations are too strict! It has mail, chat, and much more, so I also don’t realize why it wouldn’t be convenient to use Opera to have everything together. But I confess, I have never used Thunderbird, so there may be other features in its mail/feed client that are richer. Like you can see above, I myself use (or used to use) Google Reader, rather than Opera’s in-built RSS feed reader!

Arun: Yes, Opera is the fastest, among other things!

Both: Thanks for the empathy – I hope someone fixes this soon! It’s rather tedious to have to launch IE7 just to use Google Reader! And it’s a pleasant surprise to discover that some of my readers are indeed Opera-aware!

(I’m just waiting for Rambodoc or Krish Ashok to make puns on this Opera business: ‘Opera’tionalize 123 agreement, Rambodoc’s surgery or ‘Opera’tions, fitting post and comments on the day of lead ‘Opera’tic tenor Pavarotti’s demise, etc!)

By: Arunk

Arunk — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 13:57:03 +0000

I like Opera too although I don’t use it that much. No reason really – I don’t have very strong preferences when it comes to browers use all of them as and when I feel like it.

I am quite impressed by Opera’s rendering speed. I have a fairly complex web-application “in development” – all javascript driven and generates very complex content. For a certain test case, IE takes 8 seconds to render, FireFox: 2.5 seconds, but Opera < 1 second! Now that is what I call fast!

I agree with your frustrations – particularly the bit about Opera being most W3C compliant but still gets raw end of the deal.