http://europa.eu/abc/european_countries/index_en.htm

It is not naive to present things the way they are.

“One company is actively petitioning a governing body to aggressively interfere (read: block) with a rival company’s way of doing business.”

Said rival company is a convicted monopolist which has engaged in anti-competitive practices. Look up the antitrust laws.

“Just because they’re not asking for money doesn’t make it any less invasive.”

Dealing with abuse is not “invasive”.

“As any fool knows, installing another browser is pretty much a two click procedure following a simple web navigation.”

Which is besides the point. The fact is that IE is still required to access many websites.

“Anyone supporting Opera in this action is someone who believes government price fixing, output control, and other centrally planned hobbling of the free market is a good thing.”

There is government regulation in all other markets. Aviation, public transportation, food, etc. Why not IT? If it’s Microsoft, it’s suddenly “hobbling of the free market”? Get real.

“yet, because Apple isn’t as big as microsoft, these hypocrites like Opera choose to ignore a browser that should be taken off the market by force”

Is this a joke? It is precisely the fact that Apple is not as big as Microsoft – by far – which does not make them a target of antitrust regulations.

How is it hypocritical to use the law as it was meant to be used? Get a grip.

“responsible for creating the entire industry”

Microsoft is not responsible for this.

“Opera sucks whine whine bitch bitch”

Your personal and biased opinions on Opera are completely irrelevant to this case.

“opera is a bad option”

Tell that to Nintendo, who actually contacted Opera when they needed a browser.

It hasn’t been proven that this way of doing business is hurting anyone, is unfair, or monopolistic. As any fool knows, installing another browser is pretty much a two click procedure following a simple web navigation. Go to mozilla/firefox/etc/etc/ .com. Click download. Click install. Anyone supporting Opera in this action is someone who believes government price fixing, output control, and other centrally planned hobbling of the free market is a good thing. This action by Opera is complete nonsense, mainly due to the fact that Opera has no play because Opera has always been a weak and incomplete browser. Only recently have they managed to find a niche that works (lightweight run anywhere browser). I wonder, especially given the forum we’re in, why anyone who has any real experience building web apps (Ajax anyone?) can with a straight face claim that the industry that Microsoft invented — browser based applications, htmlhttp request, local file storage for browser apps all thanks to nobody at Netscape or Opera — is now being hindered because IE has trouble with fixed backgrounds, or whatever picky whiny nonsense this business about “not conforming to standards” is about. Safari is a joke of a browser that is a constant stumbling block to developers, run by perhaps the most insidious monopolizers in the computer industry — yet, because Apple isn’t as big as microsoft, these hypocrites like Opera choose to ignore a browser that should be taken off the market by force, literally. Opera still doesn’t properly handle rich text areas, just recently added support for the request object, has a horrendously hard to use interface, filled with so much useless crud that it should be a study in bad software design, and I’m supposed to care about what this useless and irrelevant company thinks? Indeed, my money (or, european citizen money) is going to fund committees to look into whether sanctioning a successful innovative company, which is responsible for creating the entire industry this forum deals in, to the benefit of a known behind-the-times, badly made, irrelevant and incomplete competitor is a good thing? I understand that most readers may be inexperienced teenagers who think the world is run by evil coporations with Bill Gates wearing the pointy hat, but it’s really run by corrupt government bureaucracies who make their money by pursuing these sorts of frivolous actions.

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The truth: opera is a bad option, and so people don’t use it, will never use it, and it isn’t because microsoft is making them not use it.

Successful? To a certain extent, but IE still has more than 80% of the market, and lots of sites STILL require IE.

* “Now it seems that any company who doesn’t immediately fetch 20 or so percent of the market has lawsuits against MS to subsidize their products.”

Opera is profitable and had a revenue growth of more than 50% in the last quarter. They also have a lot of cash. They do not need to be subsidized. They do, however, need to be able to compete.

* “And this nonsensical corruption of market principles can have no better midwife than the socialist bureaucracy of the EU.”

Like the socialist bureacracy of the US? They have antitrust laws too, you know. And aren’t afraid to use them (US v. Microsoft).

Perhaps ironically, my professional experience is that when developers work against standards, using Firefox (or better, Safari) as a starting point, total development time including IE 6 and 7 support is shorter, the application stabler and more futureproof.

If it was Opera’s intention to bring the latter into discussion by leeching off of the former, they’re being manipulative and disingenuous. If it was to bring the former into discussion without any intention of following through with it (knowing the latter instantly dooms their case), this is just downright harmful to any hope of future versions of IE being anything more than half-baked crap.

That said, there is plenty of validity (at least in the US) for the desire to have IE separated from Windows. After all, personal computers and computer software are private innovations, but the Internet was financed and developed by the “public” (the government, with public dollars) and by virtue of that the public *should* own the Internet. By virtue of IE’s stranglehold on Internet sites and applications, public use of public property is being hindered for private profit and control of the market. I only think that portion of their complaint should be retraced for pragmatic purposes.

Be real buddy – the power is in mindshare… developers have none. People buying PC’s get Vista, and IE. That is the standard, today, like it or hate it.

Sure people who know better run better software (XP/Firefox/What have you) … That is simply not where the masses flock, stock and barrel.

Develop for IE or be marginalized.

Microsoft has the money, resource and skills to rewrite IE in the time it took to release IE7 (and now IE8). Yet they don’t. Why is that? I think we all know and people like you are part of the problem.

Luckily, all networks inherently work round problems. We take the path of least resistance. These days, standards-compliant browsers offer the path of least resistance and developers create sites that work on those first then try and make them work on IE. We should try very hard to make sure the experience for IE users is greatly diminished, because they use a broken browser that wastes our time. If they prefer the diminished experience of the Internet, they are free to keep using MSIE. For the rest of us though, we’ve already switched to Firefox, Opera and other standards-compliant browsers and will simply leave the others behind because, quite frankly, we don’t care about them any more.