Update: How to make Google services Opera-friendly
Published April 20th, 2007 12:29 PM EDT By Daniel Goldman
Earlier this year I blogged about a patch to get some of the offending Google services, such as Google Spreadsheet, Google Calendar, Picassa Web and Google Docs, to work in the Opera browser.
Long story short, Google made some changes to some of these products, further breaking support in Opera. Now Opera user João Eiras (aka xEarth) fights back again by updating his original patch to make these Google services more Opera-friendly (Downlod the updated patch).
Over in the Opera forums an Opera user wrote the following, which I suspect is a sentiment expressed by many other Opera users about Google’s lack of support for Opera.
“…the severe shortness of a script that fixes all functionality issues with Google docs, Google spreadsheets, Picasa, and Google calendar should be telling. That Google, one of the biggest companies around can’t find the time to test in Opera is shocking; that one man working alone can write a 140 line (including comments) script consisting of a handful of simple fixes should reflect far, far worse on Google than it does on Opera. Especially when you consider that they somehow find the time to work past IE innumerable flaws.”
I’ve spoken with David Storey, who heads Opera’s Web Opening team, about Google. He mentioned to me that various Google teams are working with Opera to solve some of the issues in the browser. For example Opera is actively working with Google’s GWT team (GWT is their Ajax library), and they are currently reporting as well as fixing issues (even working around an opera bug). In addition, their Maps team is also very responsive.
Opera has a dedicated Web Opening team that is constantly working with sites, big and small, to help solve compatibility issues with Opera. This team does a superb job. They don’t merely contact the site and simply let them know there’s a problem with Opera; they actually troubleshoot the problem first and then contact the site webmasters with specific information on what’s causing the problem and instructions on how to fix it.
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using
Maybe they are too busy with those fixes, that they don’t have time for Opera!
using
How about a hint about how to use the script, didn’t see anything on the xEarth web-site either.
using
Gaervern, to enable user JavaScript, use Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Content > JavaScript options, and select the directory where you will put your User JavaScript files.
using
Thanks for the updatel Daniel. It’s nice to know that in the future Opera will work better with Google. For the time being, yay for userjs!
using
I can “sort of” understand Googles lacking support for Opera when you look at the wordwide market share.
But you can’t look at those numbers alone. Like the post after this one; where it says Ukraine has 14.7% opera users. Ukraine is a growing internet market and blocking that many users in a whole country from your services is not a good market strategy.
But I guess Google will fix their Opera support when they come out of beta, like maps.
using
If sites were made to work with Opera **first**, then tweaked to work with FF, and then the bugs in IE, it would be a lot simpler!!
The problem is they do it the other way around, so the tweaks for IE make it difficult for Opera…
using
Thanx Daniel for this update
I use Opera as my main browser for many years now
I am also a great fan of Google and their online apps, so I am forced to use an alternative browser to use them properly
I settled for Flock and I only run Google apps and nothing else
The script described here did not work for me - GMAIL takes ages to load and Calendar looks “funny”
using
The problems aren’t with Google. The problems are with Opera. Opera is unfit for dynamic web applications. Opera has had a bug for *several years* regarding the way it miscalculates page scroll height. Opera cuts off content, and there is no workaround. The zoom functions exacerbate the problem, making Opera unacceptable for business or government use because it destroys accessibility for the disabled. Opera does not have proper dynamic rendering of pages, so it is unfit for browsing heavily dynamic content. Period. Complaints to Google are misdirected — they should be directed at the negligent Opera developers who have ignored very serious problems such as this for *years*. The bugs in Opera make developing web apps for it more time consuming and expensive than developing for IE. Like it or not, that’s the hard truth.
using
paul maul, this problem was fixed in the internal builds of Opera 9.5.