Opera takes the lead with AJAX support among browsers: More efficient streaming
40 CommentsPublished September 1st, 2006 12:14 PM EDT By Daniel Goldman
On the official Opera Web Applications blog, Arve Bersvendsen wrote about a cool new AJAX feature that was added to Opera 9.
AJAX, which is a programming model for creating interactive web applications, has been made popular recently with Google for Gmail and Google Suggest. Lately it has been the big buzzword on the web for countless other sites too.
Here is just a brief explanation of this new AJAX feature, without getting too technical.
From the blog post: With the traditional AJAX implementation, the browser continually polls the server, sending requests to the server, asking to get data back, making new HTTP requests for every single poll, putting more strain on the server than needed.
In Opera 9 you can instead open a persistent connection to the server, sending data to the client when new information is available, eliminating the need for continuous polling.
“This method for doing remoting offers a tremendous advantage, since the server no longer has to handle the overhead associated with clients asking for new data. Instead, the server simply sends back data [to] every connected client when appropriate, thus reducing the load on the server, with the added advantage of offering instant feedback to the user.”
The new feature is called Server-Sent Events (SSE); it follows the WHATWG Web Applications 1.0 specification.
See it live in action
Opera setup an example web chat application on the web where you can see and test it for yourself. Check out the Opera RealTime Web Chat. (Screenshot here)
Advantages
They seem endless, the advantages for using this new technology. This will decrease the load for servers with heavy use of AJAX. Imagine what Gmail and Google Maps can do with this.
Learn more
You can read more about this in the blog post on the Opera Web Application blog, as well as Arve Bersvendsen’s post in his personal blog.
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I enjoy this new improvement
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funny how it “takes lead” in ajax, yet when it comes to supporting google calender/spreadsheet/writely Opera’s “lead” isn’t so great
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Nice
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@Mag-Y: But that’s Google’s fault, not Opera’s. Look here if you don’t wanna believe me: Firefox 79% DOM, Opera 84%.
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Reddit! http://reddit.com/info/fyss/comments
Just simple registration – no e-mail, can be done in few seconds.
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nice but Firefox has a good ajax support
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So, web developers we have yet another NON-STANDARD way of developing web applications. Does this remind anyone else of another web browser that’s not standard compliant? Hint, it’s Internet Explorer.
Only WW3 standards should be put into browsers. If they aren’t good enough then work to change them.
Just think of the JavaScript one will have to write to make use of this “feature” while having it work with all other browsers.
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Why would anyone want bleach in a web browser?
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Anyone else have Opera crash on you while using this? thats quite bad of Opera to demo something like this then not test it. Never ever ever crashed out on me doing anything else. ever
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Yeah it crashes for me every time…
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to the crashers, maybe you don’t have the most current version of Opera? It’s a “brand new feature” so you may need to upgrade.
As far as “Only WW3 standards should be put into browsers” do you have a clue what your talking about? The W3C is a behmouth that people try to work with and yet nothing gets accomplished.
The WHATWG is a highly regarded standards body when it comes to web development. Implementing a WHATWG standard is not “standards incompliant”. Hell, none of the stuff we have now would exist if companies didn’t implement it before the W3C got around to making a recommendation on it.
I hate to be an *** but Cory your comment is just shortsighted. {sarcasm}Hey everyone lets put innovation on hold until the W3C gets around to doing something. Great idea!{/sarcasm}
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I told opera to check for updates. It thinks it’s the most recent version. Of course I’d check that before posting.
It would be interesting if this could be used on a peer-to-peer basis as well.
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Very cool, any chance of improvements like this trickling into Gecko/KHTML as well?
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Opera also leads in SVG support
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CoryC:
I can give you another example
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/DOM:range
Hint read at the bottom..
Just an example..
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If you experience crashes using this, please report the bug to https://bugs.opera.com/wizard/ – filling in the information as accurately as possible. This feature was tested out by quite a lot of people internally, without experiencing this.
If you know how to use Inspector, feel free to point to a crash log.
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it is much easier to write IM for web application now… : )
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Except Opera is the least compatible browser (or the one that works least well, if you want to put it that way) when it comes to AJAX sites, and we all know that. Everything else on this subject in regards to Opera is irrelevant if it simply chokes on site after site. Sites write for IE and Firefox.
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Um, yeah, this is what Comet is all about, and has been supported in Firefox, IE, and Safari/KHTML for users, just with a different technique.
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Nice! I am using Opera and the chat application for the web: Interaction (http://www.interactionchat.com), it is powered by AJAX and works just like Firefox and Internet Explorer. Kudos to the Opera team.
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“The Fastest Browser on Earth”
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Hm, does Google Reader work in Opera 9.01? It was kinda broken in 9.0…
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“fastest browser on earth that has trouble opening ajax heavy sites”
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Interesting to see that everyone complaining is running Firefox, and everyone praising is running Opera…
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… Olli posted using Opera 9.02 …
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I love Opera but there are too many site incompatibility and issues (youtube, myspace – not just little buggy sites), so i don’t understand too much this work on innovation. Like implementing bittorrent and at the same time having a download manager without a working “resume”.
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The chat things is working fine for me…
Also, it’s quite rare that I ever run into a site that has compatibility issues with Opera. The biggest issue I have is idiots on myspace with transparency in their profiles, but Firefox suffers the same problem.
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The fullscreen in youtube doesn’t work most of the times, sometimes myspace is very slow, for example drag n dropping the top favourites. I have no problem with trasparency (after disabling the smooth scrolling).
Lots of webmails doesn’t work properly in Opera, and lots of other websites. Not necessarily Opera’s fault.
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Oh, the chat is working here also.
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Hangs on connecting for us.
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I don’t use Opera for youtube because of Vista is retarted and decided that Opera doesn’t get sound. =/ Something to do with the new program specific volume controls I suspect.
On MySpace I find that transparency is TOO transparent in Opera and Firefox (but looks fine in IE7). Does this happen on XP??
I’m not having any speed problems with MySpace.
I just did the friends re-arrangement thing using Opera with no problems.
GMail works correctly in Opera if I mask as Mozilla.
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Oh, we reinvented sockets. Seriously, will it even work through proxies and firewalls that have been developed for years around simple request/response http?
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… Olli posted using Opera 9.02 …
Outdated already. Opera 10 is out, Olli is behind times:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2006/09/05/opera-x-screenshot-syncing-more-features-on-the-way/
http://img57.imageshack.us/my.php?image=operax2vq9.png
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Despite so many people claiming its excellent browsing capabilities and functionalities in Opera, I am still using IE and Firefox. Guess it will take a longer time than I thought to really convince myself to switch to Opera.
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That’s what so great about choice, Keith! You can choose to use those lessers browsers, and no one is going to force you to use Opera!
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Sounds promising that work has gone into TinyMCE compability. Opera 9 is absolutely my favorite browser, no one beats Operas unique zoom feature that actually zooms ALL content, not just text. But problems with TinyMCE forces me to use Firefox.
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Hmm Opera is perfect as for it’s speed but it really suffers from lot of sites incompatibilities. For example google reader and others!
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Opera absolutely slaughters it’s competition in speed, size and features. It packs a heck of a lot into a surprisingly small amount of space. You need to stack a dozen or so extensions onto FF to come within spitting distane of Opera… and that’s just for browser functionality, never mind all the other stuff.
Opera’s zoom function is godlike – not only does it zoom text and images, it also zooms flash animations (great in fullscreen mode when watching webcartoons for example), and does a fairly decent job of keeping the formatting stable when zooming aswell.
The compatability thing remains an issue, but unless you make extensive use of the specific sites it has issue with, that’s got real problems, it’s rarely an issue. The strange thing is that Opera is one of the only browsers to pass the Acid2 web standards compatabiilty test (I’ve been told only one other browser has done so).
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Howdy,
It looks like this is the correct place to ask.
I’ve written an AJAX “low-level driver” that works on IE 5 and above, plus all modern browsers. It will not work on Opera 7 or below.
I’d like to know if there is a way to generate an XMLHTTPRequest object in these older browsers, or if I should just tell people with older browsers to upgrade if they want to use my AJAX tool.
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no sound with opera in vista for me either.