Annoyed at Opera

[pne]

You know, I'm rather annoyed at Opera.

One of the things I learned from ciwah is that MSIE is not a browser because it ignores published standards, one of them being "the Content-type header which a web server provides is authoritative" (MSIE ignores it in some cases, including text/plain and—I believe—application/octet-stream and attempts to "sniff" the content type by inspecting the data).

I've seen Opera do this too. For example, when viewing some Zilla attachments containing bits of HTML code embedded in the patch, it'll display the page as HTML even though the web server says it's "text/plain".

I'm even more disappointed since I thought Opera marketted itself as being one of the more standards-compliant browsers around. (And besides, rendering text with some embedded HTML tags as HTML screws up the text so you can't read it.)

Comments

[nik-w.livejournal.com]

I wonder if Firebird does the same trick. I'm inclined to think not, as I've had dodgy webpages display as text because they are seemingly missing a content-type declaration. this page (http://hattrick.computergames.ro/htweekly/) displays as text in Firebird, but as HTML in IE. I no longer have Opera on my machine, so I can't test it in that, but if what you are saying is true, it'll probably display as HTML.

HTML

[pne.livejournal.com]

Displays as HTML for me, even though a HEAD to that URL gives me "Content-type: text/plain".

*spits at Opera* Bad browser! No cookie!

Re: HTML

[nik-w.livejournal.com]

A HEAD to that URL? Is this a linux command I am unfamilar with or something you have written (I could probably write something in perl to do it)?

Re: HTML

[pne.livejournal.com]

Well, I could've connected to the web server and issued a HEAD request by hand (HTTP isn't that much of a black art), but I did use a utility program called HEAD to do it.

It comes with the LWP (libwww-perl) package; if you've got the module LWP::Simple installed, for example, you should have GET and HEAD on your path (I think they're both symbolic links to another script called lwp-request).

Try it out with something like HEAD http://www.livejournal.com/; it should send an HTTP HEAD request to LiveJournal and display the HTTP headers returned by that request.

Re: HTML

[nik-w.livejournal.com]

Doh! I was typing "head"! I almost put in the comment "I could write a perl script using LWP". I knew about GET and, now you mention it, about HEAD too - just being a bit dim today!:p Of course, the moment I try it, LJ packs up and dies again (status. is still down - wonder what's going on), but I tried it elsewhere and it worked:)

Issuing requests to webservers manually is like reading your mail via telnet - all it proves is that we're geeky enough to know these things!:p

Re: HTML

[pne.livejournal.com]

Doh! I was typing "head"!

That would tend to have a different effect, yes... :)

Issuing requests to webservers manually is like reading your mail via telnet - all it proves is that we're geeky enough to know these things!:p

I learned how to send mail first. It was fun being taught by someone how to send SMTP and spoof the sender. But I can (and have) read mail via POP3. It works... but it's not that much fun. I'm glad there are more user-friendly clients out there ;)

[pthalo]

I just viewed that page in opera, and it showed as html. so i went into preferences to see what i could do about it, and i just made it display in text. i'm wondering if the option i set could also fix the problem of text emails from lj being displayed as html in opera?

what i did: File, preferences, file types. there was a radio button selected that said "determine action by file extension if mime type is unreliable" i selected "determine action by mime type" and refreshed http://hattrick.computergames.ro/htweekly/. it now displays as a text file :D

[pthalo]

no. didnt fix the email problem. *sulk*

[timwi.livejournal.com]

I also found this annoying at first and even submitted a bugreport to Opera about it, and they told me about the option.

So basically we've both made a mistake that (I suppose) can be annoying to programmers. We've both assumed that there is no option to control this behaviour.

[nik-w.livejournal.com]

A cunning plan, Miss M, have a gold star! With such logical reasoning like that, I should put you on my friends page (as well as the Emma connection)! Opera is still naughty for not doing that by default, though, unlike the wonderful Mozilla Firebird!:)

[pne.livejournal.com]

Opera is still naughty for not doing that by default

Though I'm not sure whether I changed that setting and simply forgot about it... but if you and Timwi had the same problem, then it's probably the default setting.

[pthalo]

I believe it's the default.

Re: HTML

[emma]

It was fun being taught by someone how to send SMTP and spoof the sender.

*giggle* i did that.

[n-true.livejournal.com]

If you're interested, there's a community called opera_browser out there.