Opera on song to challenge Microsoft

Microsoft seems to have won the battle for world domination in the browser market, despatching Netscape to relative obscurity. But there's a new kid on the block in the shape of Opera - an all singing, all dancing alternative that's generating plenty of interest.

Written by Davey Winder

Network IT Week, 29 May 2001

The battle of the browsers, having raged for years, will soon be over. Although net prophecy is all but impossible, I feel lucky today, so shall proclaim Microsoft victorious and Netscape defeated and bound for enthusiastic hobbyist obscurity.

The signs have been there for a while and the two sides are now closer in their overall look and feel. Netscape eventually bowed to the pressure of common sense and threw in the towel on those proprietary extensions.

The long awaited Netscape 6 was released near the end of last year. Its main claim to fame was that it wore the white hat of HTML and had not only jumped into bed with W3C recommendations but had become a born-again browser.

The interface itself you either like or loathe, all big buttons and patronising nods to newbie naivety. Where Netscape revealed its real weakness was in not understanding the market it had fired itself into.

Compliance is one thing, the real world is another. And in the world of the web, the vast majority of site designers decided to appeal to the majority audience and built their pages to display within IE5. The fact that Netscape 6 made Microsoft look positively bug-free didn't help either.

The latest release has solved most, if not all, of the bug issues, but it's too little, too late. Microsoft has already captured 90 per cent of the market, and the release of IE6 as part of the Windows XP operating system is imminent. Not only will this be as standards-compliant as Netscape, but it will keep backwards compatibility.

Singing a different song

Of course, this is the internet and nothing is ever as clear as common sense would suggest. The battle of the browsers may be over, but the war is not yet won - the great pretender, Opera, is very much on the rise.

Nobody would dare suggest that the Norwegian underdog will loosen Microsoft's grip on the browser market, but it will definitely make an impression.

When it comes to standards compliance, cross-platform support, legacy compatibility and an understanding of groundswell consumer opinion, Opera is second to none.

Don't let the small footprint and low budget fool you, Opera combines a slim profile with speedy implementation and true interface innovation.

Microsoft is watching closely, and don't be surprised if certain elements you first saw in Opera pop up in IE. I would be surprised if the new mouse-based 'gesture recognition' feature isn't spat out as 'intellimouse interpretation' or something similar.

Sitting on the sidelines all I can say is "Oh, what a lovely war!" - and who would have thought the Norwegian entry would look like setting off the biggest bang in the Microsoft campus.