Review of CNet

CNet seems to like to turn a harsh eye on Opera, but does it critique hold up?

I don’t think it does, and I’m willing to bet you won’t either once you look closer.

Reader’s Rating of CNet’s reporting on Opera: 6.0

The Good: Well, I didn’t find any typos
The Bad: Obvious slant and bias towards Firefox, hypocritical view of ads
What’s it for: Technology articles
Who’s it for: People who want bite-sized opinions given to them without the weight of too many facts or impartial reviewing
Business news: Executives may appreciate short, simple articles, unless they were hoping for some sort of actual investigation
The Bottom Line: CNet is clearly enamored with Firefox because it’s free and has extensions, or Internet Explorer because everyone uses it

So whenever you’re reading a review, the first thing you ought to consider is how far you get before you find a glaring error. In a recent CNet review of Opera, CNet made it about 4 lines before making a mistake and a misleading statement.

Here are the first few lines:

Line 1: If you don’t mind paying for Web browser features found nowhere else, Opera 8’s the browser for you. [two lines of review: 7.0 editor’s rating, 8.3 readers’ rating] The good: Customizable interface; built-in RSS reader and mail client; pop-up stopper.

So far so good, but then this:

The bad: Only paid browser on the market; weak technical support.

Well there’s a serious flaw there. First of all, OmniWeb is another paid browser that is on the market. Safari and Internet Explorer only come with recent versions of their respective operating systems. The latest version of Internet Explorer only runs on Windows XP, and the latest version of Safari only runs on Panther and Tiger. Microsoft had said that there would not be another standalone version of IE, then said there will be, but hasn’t said what versions it will support. My guess is XP and maybe 2000.

So in reality, Firefox is the exception as a truly free browser.

As a paid browser, Opera has always been on the cutting edge of browser innovation and was once considered the best alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (IE 6) until Mozilla Firefox came along. Still, Opera 8 offers a few features found in neither IE nor Firefox. If you’re an early adopter, you won’t mind paying. For the rest of us, however, there are better free alternatives to IE, namely Firefox.

If this were a college paper, I would expect that the review would be given an “F” for this line alone. Why? Well, when I went to college, my professors would have required that some sort of argument or evidence or some kind of support be given for a statement such as why Firefox is better. Is price really the only consideration? Is it the most important? I would argue that it isn’t. And unlike CNet, I’ll give my reasons.

If price were the only consideration, CNet ought to be saying that we should use Wordpad to Word, and FreeBSD or Linux to Windows. I haven’t seen them say that. Why? Because there are other considerations, such as ease of use and productivity.

If you are in a corporate setting and using Internet Explorer, you have to take into consideration time lost due to security issues, obviously. Patching the latest hole every few weeks takes time. Are you paying your IT staff? Compare that time spent versus the cost of Opera.

What about Firefox? Well, you either need to restrict users ability to load extensions or worry about security issues or conflicts. How many users are using how many extensions? Are they going to break with the next release? Is there going to be a new one that breaks an existing one? When someone reports a problem, how many different variations of the browser and extensions are you going to have to troubleshoot?

Realistically, I suspect many places will restrict the ability to load extensions, or they should, or they won’t provide tech support for them except in their default state. So users are going to be on their own for support. Or your IT staff is going to have to spend time trying to debug them.

Comparatively, with Opera your users get the features they need built-in, all installations are the same, and if you need it, the cost of official tech support is built-in. (CNet had some things to say about Opera’s tech support, which we’ll address later.)

A free version of Opera also exists, but it includes a small advertising banner across the top of the browser window. As adware goes, the Opera banners are innocuous. Still, with screen real estate at a premium, we didn’t like the added distraction at the top the page.

Absolutely! How dare they! Screen real estate is VERY IMPORTANT and NO ONE OUGHT TO ABUSE IT WITH SOMETHING LIKE AN AD.

Hopefully CNet will read this review and mend their ways, because they have (*GASP* *SHOCK* *HORROR*) a huge banner ad at the top of their review page:

I can’t imagine how this slipped by. Oh, and they also split the ad up over five pages so you get to load all the useless (that is, unrelated to the actual article) HTML 5 times. Or you could try the printer friendly version which certainly wouldn’t have ads, right? Wrong. Same image appears there too.

Other sites, such as Wired, which also shows ads on the “printer friendly” pages, are smart enough to make the ads disappear when the “printer friendly” page is actually printed.

As Jesus (sorta) said: “You hypocrit, first take the ads out of your own website before you criticize someone else for their ads.”

Like Firefox, Opera offers tabbed browser windows and a built-in Google Search bar in the upper-right corner.

Actually, like Opera, Firefox offered tabbed browser windows and a built-in Google search bar.

Opera uses no code from either Internet Explorer or Netscape Gekko

Mozilla’s rendering engine is called Gecko (not Gekko) and it is not referred to as “Netscape Gecko” (nor Netscape Gekko) it’s Mozilla Gecko. Since the article was written by Dan Costa and Robert Vamosi, who clearly are so enamoured with Firefox, you think they might have bothered to do enough research to get the name right.

We were able to browse the Web using Opera 8 with few compatibility problems. Sites using JavaScript caused some problems, but even then, the pages lost only some functionality. At MSNBC.com and Slate.com, for example, the preview menus would not work, but we could still click them to get to subsections. Opera says it adheres to W3C standards, but evidently some Web site operators optimize for IE 6 compatibility and not international Web standards.

You might have thought this would be a good place to mention that Microsoft has lied in the past that Opera did not support standards are purposefully blocked Opera from properly viewing MSN. Is something like that happening with MSNBC? Who knows, but I wouldn’t put it past them. As for Slate, I haven’t checked but wouldn’t be surprised if it was using IE6 specific code either. Opera works with the vast majority of sites out there, but there’s only so much any browser can do if a site wants to prevent users from having choices.

• MSN.com shuts out non-Microsoft browsers wherein they claim to block Opera “to encourage people to use browsers that support standards”
• Analysis of why Opera really didn’t work with MSN which was because they were purposefully sending incorrect markup to Opera and no other browser.
• Microsoft behind $12 million payment to Opera believed to have been an out-of-court settlement over the MSN fiasco (unfortunately the terms apparently required Opera to remain mum about where the money came from, but really, who else is going to hand over $12 mil without batting an eye?

I’m not sure what to do with this sentence:

Opera says it adheres to W3C standards, but evidently some Web site operators optimize for IE 6 compatibility and not international Web standards.

I’m not sure if this was meant to be sarcastic or just reveals a significant lack of knowledge about the reality of the web. The key word that is confusing me is “evidently”… does the author not know about the vast number of sites that don’t come anywhere near adhering to the standards? Can anyone writing about browsers really not know about the plague that is “Best viewed with”?

Given that it’s a paid Web browser, Opera’s technical support could be much better. In addition to many tutorials available on the Opera Software Web site, technical support is limited to an online knowledge base. We found the entries informative and helpful. Paid users of Opera have access to e-mail support. This seems a little stingy; if you have to put up with banner ads on your browser, you should also get your e-mail questions answered. There is no phone technical support available for Opera, and calling the company directly can be expensive since it is based in Oslo, Norway.

I’m not sure if I want to call this untrue or just misleading and confusingly written.

He starts off by saying that the tech support could be better. Then he says that there’s an online knowledge base that was informative and helpful. Um, what?

The phrasing is at least confusing if not improper. He starts off saying it’s a “paid” browser and the only support is an online knowledge base. Then, two sentences later, he says that there is email support for paid users. I think what he meant was “Given that it is an ad-supported browser, Opera’s technical support could be much better.” What he seems to have been trying to say is “users who are using the ad-supported version should get free email support.”

if you have to put up with banner ads on your browser, you should also get your e-mail questions answered.

However, there are other alternatives. First, Opera also comes with an IRC program and you can often find Opera employees online willing to give you help (see Day 13: Chat for information on how to setup and use Opera Chat). There’s also My Opera web community and opera-users mailing list where you will also find not only Opera employees but also very knowledgeable Opera users.

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p> I would give this review a “D”. There are basic facts wrong, unsupported statements, and glaring oversights. The rating of 7.0 is extremely low for a browser which is praised for absolutely everything except price. Here are all the positive things they say about Opera:

1. [has] Web browser features found nowhere else
2. a ton of great technology
3. a supersmall footprint
4. has always been on the cutting edge of browser innovation
5. Opera 8 offers a few features found in neither IE nor Firefox.
6. sophisticated and reliable
7. [the new user tutorial] is a great feature, although the Opera interface is intuitive and Explorer-like enough for consumers to use without any training.
8. enlarge any Web page by as much as 1,000 percent. This is a boon for users who are visually impaired and those of us who spend lots of time reading Web pages.
9. any Web page can be stretched or shrunk within Opera without losing any content on the page
10. Many little things within Opera are easier than with IE. Hit F12 to see a list of your current browser preferences. This is handy when configuring Opera’s built-in pop-up blocker on the fly.
11. When it comes to features, Opera offers pretty much everything found in IE 6, plus tabbed Web pages, an RSS reader, and more built-in security.
12. Opera 8 comes with a built-in RSS reader that makes it easy to sign up for and manage feeds; it’s one of the better RSS readers we’ve seen
13. [HotClick] takes time to get used to, but it can be very addictive.

The negatives are basically that it has ads/isn’t free and don’t work with some sites.

How does that leave Opera with a rating of 7/10?!?!?

See also: “IE vs. the World” on C-Net