Comments on: Opera to stop spoofing User Agent as IE

By: zkblog man

zkblog man — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 08:32:00 +0000

Thanks for the correction.

By: Donna

Donna — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 13:30:00 +0000

I am trying really hard to understand all of this.

I just bought my first Mac, because my PC died of post-spyware related complications. I love it so far. I am not much of a computer person, but it has been really easy, even setting up my wireless internet myself.

Now to the browser problem – I always thought the internet was just the internet and it didn’t matter what browser you used. Apparently my office email, which I need to be able to access on my days at home, requires me to have IE6. Then I find that the Mac IE is NOT the same as IE6. Then I found something that said Opera could identify itself as IE 6.

Could anyone kindly walk me through how I, with a Mac, could get around this IE6 thing, and whether it jeopardizes the security of my computer at all.

I am trying so hard to learn! But I need to be able to start doing more actual work soon on my computer.

Thanks

By: ondro

ondro — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 08:59:00 +0000

So why not to write an excellent article about opera’s cool features at shlashdot, osnews, or anywhere else? Just an idea…

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 20:03:00 +0000

Opera usage is slightly worse because the many magazine reviews I’ve read about Opera, miss some of its most important features. The journalist gets excited on some of features and leaves out proper zooming and all the rest that are important to pull new people in.

By: Daniel Goldman

Daniel Goldman — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 14:49:00 +0000

Not quite 60%

The browser share page only shows the stats of the last 100 visitors.

Since this site has been slashdotted, I have revceived many Firefox visitors. However, when all dust settles, you’ll see a predominant Opera visitor base.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 14:45:00 +0000

“For most sites Opera comes in very low on this usage list (not on Opera Watch though, more than 60% of the visitors use the Opera browser – no surprise there).”

Check it out:
http://www.sitemeter.com/default.asp?action=stats&site=s10operawatch&report=13

Not quite 60%
http://www.getfirefox.com

By: ILoveJackDaniels

ILoveJackDaniels — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 14:42:00 +0000

The majority of web analytics packages do report Opera usage correctly – they look specifically for “Opera” at the end of the UA string.

Unfortunately, even though Opera is an amazing browser (my first choice), they are always going to have a hard time competing with the free options. Voice technology (as that requires major investment) might be the thing that tips the balance.

By: enric naval

enric naval — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 10:18:00 +0000

You can also parse your webserver stats with some stats program, like webalizer. And, because the default configuration is optimized for speed and is brain-damaged, you could use this configuration file for webalizer, which has an updated GroupAgent list for webalizer.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 07:40:00 +0000

It seems that some people don´t get it. Opera is Identified as IE (with the word “Opera” in the string) by default in order to bypass browser sniffers from sites that BLOCK Opera (Banks,…) or send BROKEN CODE to Opera (JS menus in most cases) if Opera is Identified as itself. That is the problem here, this is not really about “Stats”; the point is that since Opera has introduced browser.js in Opera 8.01, the developers can use scripts in order to fix this type of sniffers and menus and that´s the reason why they are testing this option now (obviously, they cannot add every single site that targets Opera to ua.ini so browser.js is a big step forward).

Anyway, the decision has not been made yet. This is just a preview…

By: ReyBrujo

ReyBrujo — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 21:25:00 +0000

First of all, I am a Firefox user since it was named Phoenix.

This is a great step for the Opera community, which will also help the whole internet community. This won’t only raise numbers for Opera, but also lower Internet Explorer one to a more realistic measure.

This is not about names, but about coding styles and standards. Good luck!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 21:09:00 +0000

I agree that the Opera’s spoof is not very successful under most of the serious status counting technologies, such as the one from onestat.com, but i think to identify as opera by default will sure to improve the authority and importance of Opera in browser market

By: Dado

Dado — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 13:30:00 +0000

Clicked to post a comment that you can id if its our favorite browser even if Opera disguises itself as IE (so it’s not Opera’s fault but a lousy code in those stats) but I see you people already pointed that out. Great blog btw.

By: Thia Michelle

Thia Michelle — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 07:21:00 +0000

I agree w/ Mr. Goldman.

I check my websites for how they appear in IE, Firefox (& Mozilla), and Safari since these browsers make up more than 99% of my hits.

Additionally, I use redirect scripts funnel IE users to separate CSS files (since an IE CSS file will *inevitably* have to be coded with a million hacks).

If Opera quit masquerading, I think the browser would get more attention and possibly avoid being sent to pages that would appear broken for them, since Opera CSS support is superior to IE.

By: minghong

minghong — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 05:31:00 +0000

Good. We’ll see 1 percentage of minor decrease in the share of Internet Explorer, and 1 percentage of minor increase in the share of “Unknown” browser: making our statistics somewhat more useful.

By: Boris Zbarsky

Boris Zbarsky — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 02:11:00 +0000

People seem to be obsessed with this idea of copying features. For the record, as I recall discussion about a reporter feature in Firefox started after Safari shipped just such a feature. So trust me, no copying of Opera was involved.