Last December, I posted about a user script for Opera that got several Google services to actually work in the wonderful Opera browser, and its a good time for an update. The script is new as of March 14, fixing Spreadsheets, Calendar, Picasa Web Albums, and Docs. You can get it here.
The real shame is that almost every problem in Google’s services results in Google’s stuff being coded specifically for the mistakes other browsers have. Yes, Google needs its stuff to work more importanly in IE and Firefox, but coding for quirks of those browsers means your stuff is always going to have problems with alternative browsers and future browsers, especially if you have zero fallbacks for standards-compliant browsers.
a description of what the script does
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warns the user to Mask as IE
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simply makes the “browser not compatible” notification to go way
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simply overrides bad browser sniffing
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many issues related to bad object detection
Apparently, before being acquired by Google, Writely was a model of browser compatibility, and since Google picked it up, not so much. Shame.
As one person puts it in the Opera forums:
In this thread’s case, the severe shortness of a script that fixes all functionality issues with Google docs, Google spreadsheets, Picasa, and Google calendar should be telling. That Google, one of the biggest companies around can’t find the time to test in Opera is shocking; that one man working alone can write an 140 line (including comments) script consisting of a handful of simple fixes should reflect far, far worse on Google than it does on Opera. Especially when you consider that they somehow find the time to work past IE innumerable flaws.
It’s not like Google doesn’t care. According to Opera Watch, some of their teams work hard with Opera to make sure things work. Problem is, then you have Google Page Creator, “which flooded the code with a enormous amount of browser quirks usage, or using Mozilla or IE’s bugs as features”.
(via Download Squad)
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