ODIN blog 2008
Are you a browser sniffer? Get your site ready for a new smell
Opera released an alpha of Opera 10 earlier this month. One reason for alpha releases is to find and fix potential problems and bugs. These can either be browser bugs that we have to fix or site bugs where the site’s developers need to fix. Opera 10 has…
Accessibility supported web content technologies in WCAG 2.0
A new concept in WCAG 2.0 is accessibility supported web content technologies. This has confused a few people and also raised the wider question of what technologies are in fact accessibility supported?
Opera 9.63 Chinese Ver. is out (and you can try it too)
Opera has just launched our Opera Desktop 9.63 Chinese build. True to Opera desktop's tradition, the China version is also named after a bird:IBIS. IBIS can be downloaded from Opera download (6.7mb)
Germany University Tour
After 7 days, 10 universities and a lot of cool discussions during evening meet-ups, Opera's Geman university tour has comes to an end.
WCAG 2.0 is official - but is that all you need to make a site accessible?
The Web Accessibility Initiative's (WAI) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 was finally made a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Recommendation (web standard) yesterday, almost 10 years after WCAG 1.0 was first published.
Introduction to WAI ARIA now available in Spanish and French
Accessibility genius Gez Lemon recently published An Introduction to WAI ARIA on Dev.Opera. Designed to work together with HTML 5 the Accessible Rich Internet Application Suite, published by the Web Accessibility Initiative, aims to make Ajax accessible to…
2008 - the year the web grew up?
In his first regular ZDNet article, our very own Mr Bruce Lawson looks at how web standards have been evolving in the last couple of years, and asks "is 2008 the year the Web finally grew up?".
Accessibility testing tips and tools presentation
I was fortunate enough to get invited to speak about Accessibility testing tips and tools at Sussex University recently courtesy of Dr Graham McAllister.
Opera 10 alpha: Web Fonts, Acid 3 and more
Opera 10 alpha has been released. Don't look too much at the UI, as this alpha showcases the all-new 2.2 version of Presto, Opera's core rendering engine.
Opera Indonesian tour
After 8 days, 11 universities and 9 kilograms of Nasi Goreng per person, the first Opera university tour of Indonesia is finished.
US University Tour: Accessibility, standards and HTML 5
Last week I was fortunate enough to join the second week of the Opera Education University Tour in the States talking at universities in and around LA and San Diago including University of California Irvine, University of California Los Angeles, University of…
Web Standards presentation at Tsukuba University, Japan
Last Wednesday, Opera held a Web Seminar at Tsukuba University in Japan. This is one of the best technical universities in Japan, and fittingly has the slogan Innovation for the Future. Design wise it has a really nice Japanese-style flower symbol for its…
Opera China and Web Standards
Together with my colleague Henny Swan I've been working in the China Beijing office for the last few weeks which has been really interesting both in terms of getting to know the country and also the state of web standards in China. I thought it would be…
Interview with Veerle Pieters of Duoh.com and Scroll magazine
Last week, ODIN interviewed John Allsopp of Web Directions and Scroll Magazine, and are pleased to have the opportunity to interview Veerle Pieters, who designed the layout of Scroll and who has redesigned company Duoh.com's site to great acclaim.
Opera Dragonfly alpha 3
Today saw the release of Opera Dragonfly alpha 3. As it is based on web technology, you don't have to do anything—it will just update itself the next time you load it. Key new features are DOM editing, localisation, and improved breadcrumb trail. Full details…
Have you got the X Factor? Building websites for mobile and disabled users
Last weekend saw the first ever online conference for web professionals <head>. Spread over three days roughly 80 speakers from different timezones hung out with delegates in virtual rooms speaking on just about any topic you can think of that is web related.
My WebJam 8 presentation on Builder AU: Cool things with HTML5, SVG and SMIL
Builder AU has featured my WebJam 8 presentation of a couple of weeks ago in their video section. Here's an embed (oh the irony) for you to enjoy!
A look under the hood of Opera 9.6
Opera 9.6 has just be released today. What can developer expect from this release? This release focusses on stability, so there has not been wholesale changes like the move from Opera 9.2 and Presto 2, to Opera 9.5 and Presto 2.1. We’ve taken the existing…
Search Engine Optimisation tool for Opera
During the last week I have ported (more or less) the famous SEO for Firefox addon to Opera. Now die-hard Opera fans can also enjoy it’s excellent market research capabilities and enhanced Google/Yahoo! search results.
The perils of browser sniffing
Broswer sniffing doesn't work. Browser sniffing may have started out as a way to prevent browsers without proper features from accessing the sites, but now it often keeps browsers away from sites which otherwise would have worked.
SVG Tiny 1.2 enters last call
The SVG Working Group has publish the Last Call of the SVG Tiny 1.2 working draft. It is welcoming comments until the 13th of October.
Google browser sniffing and the Open Web
As well as being a valuable partner to Opera, with the release of Google Chrome, Google has also become a competitor. We welcome that as more competitors means more innovation, and less likelihood that the Web will be dominated by one single vendor.
Open the Web update: LiveJournal
I’ve recently returned from Russia and the iCamp conference, where I meet, amongst others SUP. You may know them as the Russian company that purchased LiveJournal. They were a company I really wanted to talk to as we’ve had many reports that the rich text…
Two cheers for the Target/NFB accessibility settlement
The American National Federation for the Blind brought a class action lawsuit against target.com for inaccessibility of its website (which is, interestingly, "powered by Amazon.com").
Open the Web update: Google, Facebook, Apple, eBay
A number of high profile sites have been fixed or are in the process of being fixed this week and last. Many users noticed that Orkut broke in Opera Mini. We were snowed under with bug reports on this issue. The issue was with a malformed meta refresh that…
New Opera Dragonfly weekly available
The Opera Dragonfly team has just released their latest weekly. Head over to the Opera Dragonfly blog For more information. The focus on the weekly release is localisation support.
A lovely <br>eak with the CSS Working Group
Yesterday, Microsoft gave me a free lunch. They did it because I went to Cambridge to observe the CSS working group's face-to-face meeting. I was geekily excited to hear them discuss the topic "what is a br element", and to meet fantasai, with whom I'd worked…
The future of video on the Web
Audio and video has been a part of the Web since the early days. Just like the browser wars, with the made for IE or made for Netscape badges, it wasn’t uncommon to see badges asking you to download Real player or Window Media Player. Real were early leaders…
CSS 3 image replacement
Since before the dawn of time, designers have wanted sexy fonts or images for headings, links and buttons on web pages. The adoption of @font-face for CSS to use any font a designer specifies will take away some of the use cases. The time-honoured method of…
Welcome to the Opera Developer Network
Now that the developer relations team at Opera has grown from its humble beginnings, it is about time that we have a combined voice. This blog is the first stage of the Opera Developer Network (or ODIN for short), which will be an umbrella for all of our…