Talk:Criticisms of Opera/Archive 1

Ptomes, you pasted the same URL for both the Opera version history and the Firefox version history. Just thought i'd point that out so you can fix it. seinman 18:22, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Dispute
The page says "Opera 8.51 supports fewer open Web standards than Mozilla Firefox 1.5." Please say which or the statement should be removed. TomAn 22:49, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
 * JavaScript 1.6 (based on ECMA-262, revision 3: ECMA-262), MathML (2.0), SOAP (1.1), XML: XPointer, XML Base, XLink; XPath (1.0), XSLT (1.0) --Ptomes 16:02, 7 February 2006 (UTC)


 * The statement itself is a comparison, not a criticism. It is not Wikipedia's purpose to promote one browser over another.  If there are complaints about lack of standards support in Opera, the standards in question should be listed, rather than measuring up the the browser as a whole to another.  Yet read on and you'll be dismayed to find that all of these articles are already filled with such competitive statements; one-upmanship, as well as consumer product comparison, has no place in an encyclopedia, especially not in Wikipedia.  GreyWyvern 03:45, 8 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I fully agree with "It is not Wikipedia's purpose to promote one browser over another". I really think that all "Criticism of web browsers" concept is fundamental fault especially from point of view users of different browsers (e.g. Criticism from Internet Explorer users). All content writers of related articles should strongly consider removing sectioning by browsers and create only general article about complaints minimally, rather delete entire "Criticism articles". You are right that this sort of criticism has no place in whichever encyclopedy including Wikipedia. The purpose of creating this article was mainly inspired by balancing criticism of other browsers as temporary solution before general consensus of Wikipedians to removing browsers criticism articles. --Ptomes 17:50, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Non-Compliance
I am changing the notice from NPOV to non-compliance. I believe this sort of article merely promotes friction among browser fans of any flavour, much of which is based on personal opinion, and has no place in any kind of encyclopedia. GreyWyvern 22:53, 6 February 2006 (UTC)


 * As long as there will be Internet Explorer, Criticisms of Internet Explorer, Mozilla Application Suite, Criticisms of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla_Firefox and others related articles and sections, there should be also this article too because of balance. This is most common criticism to web browsers, which is something, that is used by hudreds millions people on the world everyday. There are more than 160 another "criticism articles" on Wikipedia right now. Ptomes 16:13, 7 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, I am sorry you feel that way, however this is is the first such "Criticism of X browser" I've been referred to at Wikipedia. If I had to time to object to all of them I very well might.  As a long time user of Wikipedia, these articles immediately struck me as directly opposed to Wikipedia's purpose, which is to document facts about our culture and the world we live in.  "Criticism", by its very definition, is a form of opinion, which, no matter how "objective" it is made to sound, is still counter to the central policy of NPOV.


 * Just because we can add any page to the wiki does not mean it belongs. We should take careful note of how many other articles in the Criticisms category are disputed for non-neutrality or factual inaccuracy.  These browser criticism pages are no different.


 * If one has a beef about any certain browser, there are far better places to have your voice heard than Wikipedia. We should not be turning this place into a bulletin-board for gripes, and a battle-ground for fanboys, just because it happens to be within a high profile domain. GreyWyvern 03:23, 8 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I re-added nocompliance tag again. This page in not Wikipedia material (this is not fanboy-ism, it doesn't matter what the subject is) -- AdrianTM 22:40, 9 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Once again, I agree, but the same should apply to all the other "Criticism of X browser" articles. All of these articles should be deleted and merged with their respective browser pages as in Internet Explorer, Mozilla Application Suite, Mozilla_Firefox GreyWyvern 15:14, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree, please add the noncompliance tag to those pages too if you want, I don't have time to follow those (I didn't even know of their existance) -- AdrianTM 15:20, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Inaccuracy, Irrelevancy
Well, this page is created recently and the contents are sometimes incorrect and Some contents were somewhat rrelevant to the topics. Hopefully the situation has improved a lot, after some statements are revised and rewritten.

Trying to improve style
I'm trying to improve the style in how this article is written, and there are still plenty of problems, some of the kind "This is one criticism that was being heard a bit recently", which is clearly not encyclopedic and to the point to me. In that sentence, as well as several others, there are also many weasel words used in this article, and it's sometimes hard to know if something mentioned is general opinion, or opinion of the author, written as general opinion, due to the combination of such words and lack of references. Anyway, I also removed a bullet point about the Opera cache possibly reducing Opera site visitor statistics, which was out of place and listed under "Website rendering". So far, I've edited "Introduction", and "Web site rendering" under "Criticisms from IE or Mozilla Firefox users", and also added new sections. I'm trying not to remove any information in my edits, but of course please look through the edits if you feel like it. If I remember to, I'll go through this page further a bit later. -- Jugalator 00:07, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Delete/merge
Surely the existance of this page is against NPOV? The content should be merged with Opera, or the page just deleted, since a page devoted to criticism can never be NPOV. I'm not sure which, however, and will leave it to someone more confident --88.106.184.4 09:28, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
 * There exist many "Common criticisms of whatever" pages. Opera isn't the only browser to have a criticism page, see Common criticisms of Internet Explorer and Common criticisms of Mozilla Firefox. - Sikon 13:22, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this should either be deleted or merged into the main article. In other encyclopedic texts, such as Britannica, I have never seen an article dedicated to criticism of a specific product. This seems outside the scope of an encyclopedia.


 * Merge here too. There's not sufficient justification for a separate article, when the criticisms section is short like this. FT2 (Talk 04:33, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

UserJS vs Firefox extensions
As far as I know, UserJS still doesn't give Opera the level of extensibility of Firefox. Firefox extensions can use XPCOM to play with Gecko and system internals while UserJS cannot. Essentially, UserJS is only the Opera implementation of Greasemonkey.--Nonpareility 06:11, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Lack of ActiveX support.
NPOV. Only one browser in the market runs ActiveX controls. It's like blaiming Opera, the company, for not licencing the technology from Microsoft, or because it didn't fall in line with microsoft's policy... wtf? Project2501a 16:32, 12 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd have to agree with you. I mean, come on. If only 1 browser (IE) supports it, why should there be a part complaining about ActiveX not being supported from the other browsers? Since Opera can download faster, there's no real need for ActiveX to be in Opera. After all, ActiveX is just used to download things (mainly plugins and plugin updates). --Moronicles 18:48, 26 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The only POV I see in that statement is the word "lack", which implies that it should have ActiveX support. If you read the corresponding Firefox article, you can see how to word the criticism fairly and without blaming anyone.


 * The fact that only one browser supports ActiveX is irrelevant. Opera's the only mainstream browser that passes Acid2, does that mean it's not valid to criticize Firefox or IE on that topic? --Nonpareility 21:05, 26 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The fact that this "lack" is actually an advantage and IE blocks ActiveX with its security settings should possibly be mentioned? -Iopq 01:07, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

shortcuts

 * Some of Opera's default keyboard shortcuts differ from other browsers. Although these shortcuts can be edited by the user.

AFAIK, that was changed a year or so ago. Now, it has the same shortcuts as firefox (for example, ctrl+T = new tab, ctrl+N = new window). bogdan 10:20, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Context menus

 * Opera does not provide the context menu with related commands on Bookmarks menu items.

It's misleading. Opera has context menus, but in the bookmark bar, not in the menu items. The menu is supposed to be that way, just for selecting items, while the bookmark bar is for organizing them. In fact, it's the menus in Firefox and IE have a non-standard behaviour, not those in Opera. bogdan 10:24, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Rendering problems
In the case of website rendering problems, a user may deal with the problem in three ways:
 * 1) By contacting the webmaster, mentioning the problem, and asking if they can update their affected web pages to include Opera.
 * 2) By posting the encountered problem in the Opera community forums and asking if a fix is available either by an updated ua.ini (to spoof the browser idendity almost completely), browser.js (to fix important websites by overriding or patching specific website code) or a fix by using User Javascript.
 * 3) By using the "Report a site problem" option in the Help menu in Opera to report the issue to Opera Software.

I can't see what has this to do with with Criticism of Opera... bogdan 10:26, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Incorrect
"Although Opera provides more features than other browsers out of the box, it does not provide an architecture to add extra programs in the browser, like for example Mozilla." Widgets, anyone? -Iopq 16:55, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
 * As I understand it, you don't add widgets to your browser, you add it to your desktop.--Nonpareility 21:37, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Item by Item Legitimacy WRT Merging
If there is a question of merging this article with the main Opera page due to a NPOV dispute, it cannot be done from any single perspective. Criticisms from IE users or from Firefox users are not valid as they are more complaints about having one feature and then missing out upon switching. This is akin to people complaining that their car doesn't have 4WD after downgrading from a pickup truck.

A valid criticism would only be one that scores a general concensus from users of all browsers as being a feature all browsers should have and Opera (or any other target browser) does not. Isn't this precisely why the Criticisms of Internet Explorer article is so long? Because newer browsers now have so many standard features which five-year-old IE is now "missing".

Anyway, let me quickly go through the items listed in this article and give my own opinion as to their legitimacy as "criticisms" in light of the above:


 * Opera is closed source
 * So are a lot of other programs. Why single out a web browser?


 * Opera Software does not run an open-readable Bug Tracking system
 * This is a comment on Opera Software ASA's business practices and not the Opera web browser


 * On not rendering like IE/Firefox
 * This may be a legitimate criticism only in the sense that Opera may be "too standards compliant" and not offer a quirks mode which renders more like the broken IE, and thus allowing older pages to display properly.


 * Lack of ActiveX support
 * Considering that criticism of ActiveX takes up a large portion of the Criticisms of Internet Explorer article, I fail to see why lacking this "feature" is a bad thing. Also add in the fact that only one other browser supports ActiveX natively.


 * Broken websites which rely on...
 * Aren't these sites by definition "broken"? Why is this a criticism of Opera?  If the ice is too rough to skate on, do you then blame your skates?


 * Opera bugs
 * All browsers have their own share of bugs; this is not a specific criticism.


 * No incremental upgrade
 * An annoyance, perhaps. This could be a candidate for merging.


 * Functionality via browser extensions
 * Definitely not NPOV. Because one other browser has these features, you cannot criticise Opera for not having them.


 * Lack of developer tools
 * If you are a developer and decide to use Opera, I don't think you'll be too hard-pressed to find the add-ons you need.


 * No RTF editing of emails
 * Yesh, this is a legitimate criticism voiced even by Opera users from the community. However, judging the email client is not really within the scope of a web browser WRT Firefox and MSIE.


 * Lack of FTP upload ability
 * This is really outside the scope of the function of a web browser, thus I do not think it is valid. YMMV.


 * Lack of calendar and task manager in the email client
 * Once again, outside the scope of a web browser. If this were to be a legitimate claim, it should be in an article called Criticisms of Opera's Email Client

GreyWyvern 16:20, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
 * This only shows how poor are the "criticism of..." kind of articles: full of POV and original research. This article is not Encyclopedic and should probably nominated for deletion again. You got my vote anytime for deletion. -- AdrianTM 16:43, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not nominating this article for deletion, it should be merged instead, as both the Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer articles have brief Criticism sections. Opera should undoubtedly have one too. GreyWyvern 21:07, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I could hardly see how this is an Encyclopedic subject. But it's not my decision.... -- AdrianTM 21:22, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The point is that by giving this topic its own article, it just begs for POV, fanboy-ism and complaint. At least by merging it back with the article, authors will be forced to include only the truly relevant.  I've also marked the Firefox and Internet Explorer articles with the same templates.  This is just the first step; later on future authors can decide whether having just a section on Criticism is too inflammatory.GreyWyvern 21:38, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I understand this, however even a separate "Criticism" header in Opera or IE or FF pages is damaging and inviting silly stuff, people should include good or bad stuff in the general article not under a specific header. (e.g., where the issue of standards appear somone can introduce a quoting saying that "however. [....] argues that this sticking to the standards makes Opera unusable with the real pages on the Internet" and the referece to that quote, instead of having a separate "Criticism" section.) I fighted for this for both Linux and Opera articles, Firefox article had already too much under Criticism that I didn't dare to delete. Firefox criticism section looked very bad last time I checked (now I found out it even has a separate page, yuck!) -- AdrianTM 21:51, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I think this criticism should not be part of info about opera browser in wikipedia. Because, wikipedia should put all features and comparisons. Then its user's call to judge which feature or lack of feature is the good/bad one. Also, there is potential scope of dispute on the interpretation of features. Like opera is not open source, so what? Is it a disadvnatage for a software? Windows is not open source?? So, I suggest just delete it.It true not only for opera but also for other browsers.--User:pkm19:46, 12 August 2006(ET)
 * This is a great point, the fact that Opera is closed source is information, if it's good or bad thing that's a POV and against Wikipedia's policies. That's why "criticism" pages, sections are evil for an encyclopedia, they are here to promote POV not informations. -- AdrianTM 14:16, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * A "criticisms of" article has to be handled with care, and usually shouldn't exist except to expand on a subject with a large or otherwise problematic criticisms section, that can't be done justice in the main article except via summary style. I just don't see this meeting that sort of need. So I'd support a remerge back into the main article on the browser. This one's pointless. FT2 (Talk 04:55, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I also support merging the information that's relevant, but not in a separate "criticism" section. -- AdrianTM 14:23, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Acid2
 * Why is it mentioned that specificaly IE will not pass the acid2 test where firefox also does not pass the acid2 test and won't pass it with the upcoming FF 2.0
 * Feel free to add the information about Firefox, don't ask why it was included. Who knows why, maybe the person that added the info didn't know about Firefox. -- AdrianTM 14:16, 29 August 2006 (UTC)