The One with the Thoughts of Frans

I found this old, unfinished post in my drafts. I’m not quite sure when I originally wrote it, but it was over a year ago. Rather than updating the content I decided to publish it as is, as I’m not sure why I didn’t, with a small addendum at the end.

---

I made a little compilation of the various error messages displayed by browsers upon encountering an XML syntax error. Firefox (Gecko) has the unfriendly looking error on top, Chromium (Webkit) renders the page up to the error, but shows a large error message (albeit not at all useful like in Opera & Fx), and for Opera I included 10.10 and the latest 10.50 pre-alpha build. Note that it’s just the styles behind the error message that changed a bit: the content and helpfulness of the error message is still the same. I’ll run it down a bit more:

• Firefox displays an error message that’s only useful if you already know sufficiently much about X(HT)ML, whereas Opera’s error message not only highlights more clearly where parsing failed — although ultimately this difference might just be one of preference. More important, its error message might just helpfully link you precisely where you need to go to learn how to avoid it. When I first started messing about with XHTML back in ’03 or so, I probably would’ve appreciated it if Opera had done that. At the time Opera behaved the same as Fx does now.
• Chromium displays an error message that doesn’t even manage to clearly indicate what’s the problem. This compares negatively to Fx and Opera highlighting the &.
• Chromium renders the page up to the problem, which may result in a get out of jail free card. The error message doesn’t seem very annoying, but if the error is in the middle of the page it’ll still be in the way. In my sample page it’s at the end, however. (My example page is basically a standard installation of phpGraphy on which I decided to switch to application/xml+xhtml because it claims to be more or less XHTML compliant now — I had to fix all the unclosed meta and link tags first.)
• Despite rendering the page, you won’t be able to see the page fully in Chromium. You will with Opera’s reparse as HTML function.

I hope that clarifies why I think Opera’s handling is best, both as a user and as an author.

---

This blog post is now outdated. You can return to the behavior I hailed by disabling the opera:config#UserPrefs|AutomaticallyreparseXHTMLwithparsingerrorsasHTML option.

I already wrote down some thoughts about the addressbar changes in Opera 11 a few days ago, and it got me thinking that the addressbar could definitely be improved, just not by detracting from it.

To cut to the chase, here’s the addressbar I’m envisioning:

What you see on this screenshot, however, does not tell the whole story. Let’s start with what’s visible:

• The protocol is grayed out. This is the method that most so-called URL highlighting uses to emphasize the domain. I think this is the wrong approach, but in the case of the protocol it seems the right thing to do. It is somewhat hidden, but still fully visible: no need to select the addressbar to find out what protocol is being used. People know that something is a web address when they see it in print thanks to the protocol, even if they have no idea what it means (and in fact many might mistakenly interpret HTTPS as safe), and combined with the large, clear button indicating security information you’d really have to try to misinterpret HTTPS as safe.
• The domain is highlighted, specifically by bolding in this example, but it could also be done through underlining, a background color, or a combination of various things. The important part is that the domain is highlighted, rather than the rest of the URI lowlighted.
• Query strings have parameter highlighting, and characters that separate parameters like ? and & are hidden and replaced by a small outline indicating what goes with what. The space between the various parameters corresponds to the size of the hidden ? or & characters and thus no shifting will occur when selecting them. I did not look into things like color blindness and the colors I used are solely for illustration purposes; they are no suggestion for specific colors.

Then, what’s not visible:

• Complex query strings, meaning with 3 or 4 parameters or more, could be hidden from that point on, but this should be visibly indicated. An ellipsis is the standard method of conveying such information, so there’s no need to come up with something fancy. A complex query string like Google’s would thus look something like http://www.google.be/search [client=opera] [rls=en] [q=test]…

  Perhaps the number of parameters before hiding occurs should be configurable as well.

  This hiding should not affect links to IDs like #someID, which are hidden along with the query string at the moment.

• Linkify URI segments on hover when a modifier key, such as Ctrl or Shift, is pressed. This has been implemented quite nicely by the Firefox extension Locationbar².

That’s about it for my proposal regarding how to truly upgrade the addressbar as opposed to trying to make it little more than a domain display.

Opera 11 made some drastic changes to the addressbar. I think the thought is good, but the execution leaves quite a bit to be desired.

Here you can see the classic method as it is in 10.63: full URL. You could say that the security information is somewhat detached on the right.

This is Opera 11, with the changed addressbar. The favicon is removed, the protocol and query string are hidden, and the security information is made more prevalent.

Generally speaking I don’t care too much about http vs. https; secure vs. insecure certainly is a better way of presenting that, lest https give you a false sense of security. Then again, I think that keeping the protocol and simply moving the security indication to the spot of the favicon (while still getting rid of that) would’ve accomplished the same effect better without losing out on such information. After all, if I notice some site uses https, but is insecure, I should probably notify the site, right? The lack of something like ftp is slightly more annoying, but the lack query strings is the absolute worst. I realize that some query strings can be overly complex, but I fail to see why the lowest common denominator should get rid of the good query strings as well. Seeing or not seeing it is only part of the issue: it also kills the ability to easily select the relevant part of the query string that you want to change (like a search term).

And here is my combination of both. Remove the favicon, which might give a false sense of being on the real site (and is already visible on the tab), and move the security information to where the favicon used to be. The rest of the URL can remain fully accessible, displaying information for those who can use it. Domain highlighting can take care of those who have trouble spotting the domain they’re on (and on Windows it already does, making the removal of the query string even more peculiar). No extra step is necessary to select parts of the URL.

I feel that this is a fair compromise: it makes the security information more accessible without compromising existing functionality.

Weather in fall always comes paired with temperature drops, fall storms, and lots of rain. But seldom did the temperature drop from 20°C to a mere 7°C from one day to the next.

The release of Ubuntu 10.10 coincided with this change for wintry weather; however, while I’m sure it’s swell, you won’t see me upgrading just yet. Perhaps I’ll have to look a little harder into acquiring a netbook so I can use it with the Ubuntu Netbook Edition.

Of more interest is the announcement that Opera 11 will have extensions. Or, more particularly, that I was the first to guess this in a contest.

As far as I’m concerned there are two reasons for disabling speed dials: it’s faster, and your history doesn’t misbehave.

The speed is less relevant since Opera 10, although more relevant again since Opera 10.50. The history argument is far more important to me. It really throws me off that the first page I visited in a window still allows me to go back. I don’t know why someone would want to go back to the speed dial; isn’t it faster to just open a new one?

To disable the speed dial, you have you change the SpeedDialState setting in opera:config.

0: Folded
1: Shown
2: Read only, and always show speed dial
3: Disable speed dial

Set it to 3 to disable speed dial completely. If you think this will impair your ability to open pages quickly and easily, you need to take note of go to nickname (Shift + F2).

If you’re like me and you aren’t particularly fond of sites opening in new tabs without your explicit command, you might be interested in activating Opera’s Ignore Target setting. This setting “Unfortunately … also disables the window.open() method, breaking the functionality of many sites,” so you might prefer to utilize JKing’s UserJS which stops most links from opening in new windows.

On the other hand, you might prefer all links to external sites to open in a new tab. I recently wrote a script that does just that for someone on the MyOpera forum.

For those of you who read my blog, use Opera and don’t follow the latest releases, Opera 10.50 for Windows was released yesterday. Download it now!

The 30 Days to Becoming an Opera 6 Lover series may very well have been what pulled me over the edge. That which made me choose Opera instead of MyIE2 (now Maxthon). It should therefore be no surprise that I still harbor warm feelings toward it. While it may be old, and the original series is no longer hosted by TnT Luoma as far as I can tell, I think that the series could still teach current (aspiring) users of Opera a thing or two — even the 30 Days series for Opera 6. Due to the large part the Opera 6 series played in my personal discovery of Opera, however, my judgment may be somewhat impaired.

I dug into the Internet Archive and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the 30 Days series for Opera 6 is available through the archive in a nice ZIP file. The original Opera 6 lover pages do not seem to have been preserved, but the ZIP file is easier to use regardless.

The 30 Days series for Opera 8 was also preserved. The Opera 8 series is still available in the archives of TnT Luoma, but the pictures and some other things are broken. Besides, I like the old layout better; it used to be blue, however, which was even better — you probably don’t want to read the oldest text available, though. While I would not recommend a detailed read (it is quite outdated after all), I would certainly recommend skimming through most of it.

By the time Opera 8 came out — and consequently, the 30 Days to Becoming an Opera 8 Lover series — I was already a seasoned Opera user, so the series didn’t do much for me. I did discover one very important Opera feature thanks to it, however. In the default keyboard setup, Shift + F2 is bound to go to nickname. If you don’t know what nicknames are, you can give bookmarks so-called nicknames; if you type them out in the address bar and press enter it will take you to the bookmark, and it will offer autocomplete suggestions while you’re typing. Useful, but not a huge time saver.

Go to nickname is better, because it starts going to the nickname as soon as it’s got a match. So if you have only one bookmark with a nickname that starts with a, you’ll only have to type a and you’ll be on your way. I had not realized this prior to reading the Opera 8 Lover series, and it wasn’t actually written in the series, but without it I might very well never have tried this feature again. After some consideration and major inspiration by Moose I rebound F2 to new page & go to nickname, which means that ever since, pressing F2 automatically opened a new page and this tremendously useful dialog. The introduction of speed dial didn’t do much for me thanks to this keyboard shortcut. It might take a few seconds more to configure, but it’s worth it. Additionally, new tabs will open even faster if you disable speed dial.

ExtendOpera.org was launched a few days ago. It’s a user initiative, aimed at bringing those aspects of Opera customization that Opera software has somewhat abandoned together.

Last month, Apple released the Safari 4 beta. A few Opera users, myself included, decided to take action after viewing Apple’s false marketing claims. The following is the result of a combined effort, although I can proudly say that I wrote quite a bit of text for the article. It’s not entirely finished yet, but it’s good enough to cross-post it right now to draw some extra attention to it.

Everything that follows is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Deceptive Safari 4 Marketing.”

---

When the Safari 4 beta was released, on February 24, 2009^[1], Apple Inc. published a feature list claiming a long list of innovations, inventions, and browser firsts^[2]. While Safari 4 may contain numerous features that are new to current Safari users, many of these have been publicly available to users of other browsers for quite some time, invalidating many of Apple’s claims.

Contents 1 Falsely Claimed Innovations In Safari 1.1 Implemented Prior to Safari’s Initial Release 1.2 Implemented Prior to Inclusion in Safari 1.3 Not Implemented Exclusively in Safari 1.4 Other 2 References

Falsely Claimed Innovations In Safari

Implemented Prior to Safari’s Initial Release

The first public beta of Safari was released on January 7, 2003^[3]. This is a list of innovations claimed by Apple that were first added in other browsers prior to Safari’s release.

• Built-in Google search: Apple claims that “Safari was the first popular browser to build a search field into its user interface” (emphasis added). The first public beta of Safari was released on January 7, 2003^[3]. Opera 5, however, which was released on December 6, 2000^[4][5], already featured a built-in search field^[6][7]. The second version of Mozilla Firefox (Phoenix 0.2), which was released on October 1, 2002, contains a similar feature^[8]. Consequently, Apple’s usage of “popular browser,” which has been suggested to validate this claim^[9], is ambiguous at best^[10].

• CSS 3 Web fonts: Apple claims that “Safari is the first web browser to automatically recognize websites that use custom fonts, downloading them as they’re needed” (emphasis added). However, Internet Explorer 4, released in 1997^[11], sports this feature as well^[12].

• Downloads window: Apple asserts that “Safari was the first popular browser with a download management window.” However, Opera 3.5, released on November 18, 1998, first introduced a transfer window to the Opera browser^[13]. Similarly to the built-in Google search, if Opera is assumed not popular enough to falsify the claim, Firefox (Phoenix 0.1) had this feature nearly half a year prior to Safari on September 23, 2002^[8].

• Inline Progress Indicator: While Apple states that “Safari was the first browser to move the progress indicator into the address field,” Opera first added this feature in Opera 5.10, released in 2001^[14].

• Movable tabs: In Apple’s words, “Safari was the first browser to let you organize tabs by dragging and dropping. … Rearrange tabs by dragging their tab handle left or right. Drag a tab out of a window to create a new window. Or drag a tab from one window to another window to merge their tabs” (emphasis added). Opera 7 Beta 1, released on November 13, 2002^[5], came with “Extended and vastly improved drag-and-drop support,” and this included the ability to “Move bookmarks, tabs, and MDI pages between SDI windows”^[15]. Furthermore, the same feature was already available as an extension^[16] in Firefox and was added as a feature to Firefox 1.5^[17], released on November 29, 2005. Safari did not add movable tabs until Safari 3^[18], which was released on June 11, 2007^[3].
  • Releaseyears of tabbed browsers: NetCaptor in 1998^[19], later by IBrowse in 1999, Opera in 2000, Mozilla in 2001, Konqueror and Safari in 2003, Internet Explorer 7 in 2006 and Google Chrome in 2008.
  • Releaseyears of movable tabs: NetCaptor 5.0 in 1998^[19], IBrowse 2.3 at 29 Jan 2003^[20], Opera 7 in 2003, Google Chrome 1 in 2008, Safari 4 in 2009.

• Open multiple bookmarks in one click – According to Apple, “[Safari] was the first browser to offer Auto-Click bookmarks.” This feature offers the ability “to open multiple pages in individual tabs with a single click.” Opera 4, released in 2000^[13], could open all of the bookmarks inside of a folder through the right-click menu. Opera 6 added the feature to open all bookmarks in a folder with a single middle click and added “Open all folder items” to the drop-down menu on the personal bar^[21].

• Third party cookie blocking: According to Apple, “Safari is the first browser that blocks … tracking cookies by default” (emphasis added). It is hard to verify or falsify this claim; nevertheless, it should be noted that this feature was already present in Opera 4^[21].

Implemented Prior to Inclusion in Safari

• RSS Aggregator: While Apple claims that Safari is the first browser that integrated an RSS reader into the browser, Opera integrated an RSS reader into its browser in 2003^[22], well before Apple in 2005^[3][23].

Not Implemented Exclusively in Safari

• Acid 3 Compliance: Apple asserts, “Safari is the first — and only — web browser to pass Acid 3″ (emphasis added). It is arguable that WebKit was the first rendering engine to get 100/100 (it was close between Opera and WebKit). However, Safari is not the only WebKit browser. Lunascape is also capable of using the Webkit rendering engine, and thus also passes the Acid 3 test^[24].

Other

• Apple claims, “Safari [4] supports Accessible Rich Internet Applications,” yet it is only partially implemented^[25].

References