Opera - heap of Charlie...

[Captain Stable]

...Romeo Alpha Papa or what?

In my spare time I write website software. The one I've been working on lately has a lot of DHTML, JavaScript, PHP and CSS's. I've got it working in every browser I have on my machine* (yes, EVEN Internet Explorer) except Opera.

Opera refuses to download half the images, won't open anything shockwave or Flash-generated, stops part way through perfectly good .js and .css files, part-loads the HTML, and crashes with motonous regularity. The error log is totally useless.

Before anyone suggests it's the installation on my machine and to reinstall it, I did that. I've also tested this website on another machine with the same result.

Giving up. I had to spend about 5 days just getting IE to work as I wanted the site displayed.

Anyone else had similar problems?

* Browsers installed:- Firefox (my favourite), IE 8, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera.

[parabellum]

I find this one quite good too:

FlashPeak SlimBrowser (http://slimbrowser.flashpeak.com/)

Opera used to be very simple and quick, now I find it cumbersome and complicated.

[Mr Optimistic]

Seems to struggle with dropdowns and so is unusable for many shopping sites.

[pmills575]

I have always had more problems with Opera than any other browser. In fact I decided eventually not to test my web sites with Opera any more, it's just too much effort. I am afraid my attitude is that if you use Opera, unlucky. My web site stats show very little use of Opera so I can't be ar**d to worry about Opera users.

pm575

[Mac the Knife]

!!!!!!!

Opera works fine for me on 99% of websites and the integrated mail client is excellent.

We're now considering standardising our practice on Opera rather than Firefox........!

I find that it is stabler and (with the mail client) much quicker & lighter than Firefox/Thunderbird.

:ok:

Mac

[vulcanised]

I have been using Opera (and Firefox) for several years but I had a lot of problems with Opera earlier this year.

Went on the user forums and posted details of the problems in a polite manner and got a very abusive response from one of the Mods.

[AnthonyGA]

At one time I tried to test my site regularly with all the major browsers, but as browsers have become better behaved, I've switched to validating my code as standard HTML, etc. If I know the code conforms to the standard, then any browser that also conforms to the standard will display it correctly, and typically browsers such as Firefox or IE are sufficiently in conformance to do this. If a browser doesn't conform, that's not my problem. Opera is used by too few people to make any difference, anyway.

Another workable strategy is to keep your site as simple as possible, then it will usually work on any browser. Most of my site is straight HTML, with only one or two pages that contain any scripting, and no ActiveX or Flash or other garbage.