Hacker News Reader

Comment by notatoad | Hacker News Reader

Opera doesn't support websockets. I'm sure some socket.IO fans will tell me that's not a big deal, but it kind of is. modern browsers support websockets.

and i know, this demo doesn't use it and will work fine in opera if you spoof the UA, but it's a lot easier to develop if you pick a feature set you're going to support, and skim out any browsers that don't support that feature set.

View on HN

Excuses, excuses ... Detecting required features by browser identification is not only so 90's, it's downright ridiculous.

All it takes to detect websockets is:

if ('WebSocket' in window) { /* Web Sockets supported / } else { / Web Sockets not supported */ }

Ironically, this was taken from:

http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/introducing-web-sockets/

Also, every web developer with half a brain can use https://github.com/gimite/web-socket-js instead of locking out users unnecessarily by matching the User-Agent.

It's not about detecting features. It's about testing: When you're developing a web app, each new browser you choose to support increases your testing time: starting out developing for chrome, adding safari support usually is just a formality. adding firefox support means a couple extra hours of testing, but everything usually works. adding opera support means your tests are going to start failing, and a bunch more work.

I'm picking on websockets because that's what's been annoying me at work lately, but it's just an example. the myspace demo doesn't even use websockets, it's totally irrelevant, but websocket support is a good cursory indication of whether or not it is a modern browser, and therefore how much development time will be added by officially supporting it.

"Hey friend, it looks like you are using Opera. Beware, pal, that we don't go to the opera down here on the ranch, so there may be rough-riding ahead! Try one of these nifty browsers buddy, or sally forth into the unknown. OK, pardner?"

This is a preview. Complain if they launch publicly like this, otherwise, cut them some slack.

IT WILL BE TOO LATE IF WE COMPLAIN WHEN THEY LAUNCH PUBLICLY.

You can put all the disclaimers you want before a use and they will "venture forth into the unknown". However, they will ignore (if they even read/understood it) your warning and then bury you in support tickets, complain loudly to their friends, and leave you with a mess to deal with and no real clean/easy way out.

I second this... users rarely read anything & remember even less. If you let them in, then they expect it to work. Its unfortunate for Opera, but we're doing the same for our beta launch.

And lest anybody say it won't be that bad, yes it will be that bad. There are some remarkably vitriolic people on the internet.

> then bury you in support tickets

After all, Myspace has a commonly-used bug reporting functionality.

> complain loudly to their friends

Because they won't complain about being locked out?

I agree with you that opera should support web sprockets, and I sympathize with web developers making the decision to develop for new technology and browsers that don't support it be damned. But the actual message myspace displays is pretty needlessly snarky and stupidly insulting. I also have zero faith they'll be able to update their browser detection script often enough to avoid looking like dinosaurs themselves from time to time.

It takes character and guts to stand up for something. I think MySpace can be credited for that. The snark-iness was probably meant more for ie6-7 users than Opera users.

Demanding conformity from human beings (how dare you choose a different tool?) is the opposite of character, though doing it this brazenly does take guts.

> It takes character and guts to stand up for something.

What does showing a message "Our superpowers have detected you're using an outdated browser. That must mean: a - You don't use the Internet very often. b - You're at your parents' place on the PC they bought in 1996. c - You work for the government or a big corporation." to users using a browser released in the past month stand up for, other than ignorance?

Doesn't it seem far more likely to be indifference to a negligible market share than ignorance of Opera's existence? It's not worth their money to spend any amount of time making a custom error for "Your browser is new, but we don't support it anyway" separate from "Your browser is old and we don't support it" when 99.9% of the people seeing the message are in the latter category.

I was referring specifically to khet's statement I quoted. What is Myspace "standing up for" here?

Maybe they meant to say "outdated or foreign browser" and "d. You're a freedom-hating socialist commie", seeing as it's the only browser not developed in the US? ;-)

Opera does support web sockets: opera:config#UserPrefs|EnableWebSockets

They are not enabled by default, that's all. So it's not just that the message is snarky and insulting, it reflects ignorance as well.

speaking of reflecting ignorance: thinking that disabled-by-default browser settings count as support.

No reason to be snarky. Opera chose to disable websockets because of security flaws; see http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/12/security-flaws-force-firefo...

Or you could just use the features you want to use and try to fail gracefully when you can't. (Old IE could be a special case, as it is solid chunk of FUBAR.)

Sure, you could do that if you had unlimited developer time and people using old browsers are an important market. but that isn't always reality, you've got to choose where to focus your efforts.

No, you don't need unlimited developer time to do feature detection. It's just good practice, after it's ingrained it doesn't take any more time than not doing it.

Don't mix "development cost" with "overall support cost".

Overall support will include specific feature testing, regression testing, and user testing. Additionally, support tickets may be opened and introduce support costs in ticket management, escalation, and assessment.

Don't provide any extra support? "Your browser is not supported/you are on your own" is much better than denying access.

Eventually people will start spoofing just to get in, and then you have a much worse problem in your hands. You know the Opera story. There is no excuse to block user agents unless it's commercial software with support contracts on the line.

I challenge your assumption that the average person knows how to spoof user agents.

The average person is not using Opera :)

I agree.. plus I'm using Opera as I type this.

It could be worse. You might be using Dillo.

Actually that's quite easy in Opera. There is a dropdown box to select different user agents called "Browser Identification".

I understand that the HN audience finds it incredibly simple to do. My point being, go ask your family members who don't frequent HN (or sites like it) what a user-agent is.

Degradability died as an industry desire about 6mos after it emerged.

Opera supports websockets, thank you very much. They're just disabled by default.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com