Tag Archives: IE

Yahoo discriminating against the Opera browser

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I saw this article posted over at Opera Watch.

As Daniel said, we see a lot of people complaining “xzy site works in IE but not in Opera.” Usually, this isn’t Opera’s fault rather it’s the fault of the web developers using in proper or non standard code. Sometimes, in the case of Microsoft’s MSN site and now Yahoo Mail, the problem is just discrimination.

Most people won’t take the time to look behind the code. They just assume it should work in everything. Well, when you send different code to one browser than you send to another, then yes, thing’s most likely aren’t going to work. In the case of Yahoo, they just decided not to send a good portion of the code.

Haavard Steen, a from Opera Software’s QA team has created a animated comparison between the code sent from Yahoo Mail to Opera and IE. Notice the difference?

Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7 Released

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Mozilla has released a new security update for the Firefox Web Browser. Here is what is new according to the Firefox 1.0.7 change log:

  • Fix for a potential buffer overflow vulnerability when loading a hostname with all soft-hyphens
  • Fix to prevent URLs passed from external programs from being parsed by the shell (Linux only)
  • Fix to prevent a crash when loading a Proxy Auto-Config (PAC) script that uses an “eval” statement
  • Fix to restore InstallTrigger.getVersion() for Extension authors
  • Other stability and security fixes

According to a Secunia vulnerability report, this still leaves Firefox with 3 out of 23 unpatched advisories. For comparisons sake, the Opera Web Browser (which is now free) has 0 out of 8 unpatched advisories and Microsoft’s dominant Internet Explorer has 19 out of 85 unpatched advisories.

Opera To Quit Default IE Spoofing

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As I noted the other day, Opera 8.10 Preview 1 was released. However, I really didn’t go into any of the details about the new version.

Probably the biggest change that will happen, as reported by Opera Watch and even Slashdot.org is that Opera plans to quit spoofing as IE by default.

For those that don’t know, unless you go into the Opera preferences and change the browser agent, Opera will identify itself as Internet Explorer.

This has helped avoid compatibility problems with websites that create IE specific pages. On the other hand, it has also helped to hurt Opera as web masters and statistical services see the browser as IE instead of what it really is, Opera. The change to the default user agent should help more people see that Opera is out there and being used.

IE7 Screenshots & Longhorn Ramblings

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Bink.nu has some screenshots of IE7 in this article. From what I can see, which isn’t much, I’m not impressed.

In other Microsoft related news, Softpedia.com has an article titled “Microsoft Plays Russian Roulette with Longhorn“. In the article, the author says, “Every time I hear another announcement on what Longhorn will implement or what new tricks it will learn to perform, I have the feeling that I’m watching a show where the magician pulls rabbits out of a hat.”

Just wait and see. That’s my advice to anyone watching the news about IE7 and/or Longhorn. Just wait and see.

MSN Search Toolbar Adds Tabs To IE6

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I think by now everyone has heard that Internet Explorer version 7 will include tabbed browsing (also known as Multiple-Document Interface or MDI). A highly popular features among alternate web browser such as Opera and Mozilla Firefox, and even some Internet Explorer shells.

While IE7 is still a ways off, Microsoft’s new MSN Search Toolbar adds tabbed browsing support to Internet Explorer 5.01 and greater. Probably the only tabbed browsing support Windows 2000 users will see from Microsoft.

The new MSN Search Toolbar adds more than just tabs. It’s new features try and take on the popularity of two of Google’s products, the Google Toolbar for IE and Google’s Desktop Search application.

I’d have to give Microsoft credit on this one, as they did something I wish Google had done. They integrated the two products into one. With Google, you have to download, installed, and configure each application separately. – Though I can see the flip side to this as well.