Register Interview with Opera CEO
In a 4 page article on The Register’s buzzard-bedecked website, writer Andrew Orlowski sits down and drills Opera’s CEO and founder Jon von Tetzchner.
They discuss the issues of compatability and the speed at which web technology grows and where Opera rates with all of it. (See the HowToCreate.co.uk Browser Speed Comparison if you’re curious on how some of the new Opera versions rate for general speed.)
The CEO seems to suggest that browser compatability issues are more the fault of the website developers and designers, rather than the browser itself. Despite that somewhat defensive stance, he does make it a point to note that Opera will try to develop more tools for compatability as well.
“To be frank, it’s not difficult for them to make this work. There’s one guy who fixed bugs in Google and he used a JavaScript thing for Opera which fixed Maps and Mail. We are also actively doing what we can - changing how Opera identifies itself is often enough to fix the problem. We’ll do whatever it takes.”
Conversation turns to the subject of Google’s presence in Opera and Firefox, and how this effects development and attitudes. Tetzchner doesn’t feel roped in by Google, and he makes it a point to mention that they do have other sponsors and ways to keep the browser free for the end users. (I remember a few years ago when Opera was supported by ads. It wasn’t terribly invasive but it was tacky and I’m so glad they were able to move away from it.)
The Register’s man then goes for blood, trying to get him to talk about their big competitor in the IE alternative market: Firefox. Yet this young CEO handles it with candor (albeit slightly awkward english), quickly explaining that they prefer to focus on their own product rather than what their competitors are doing. He does however get into the philosophy of plugins and how he feels about the way they can impact browser performance.
“Now adding one or two plug-ins is OK, but if you add 15 to 20 then it impacts performance.
…
It’s easier to be efficient if you’re coding every piece of the code yourself. I’ve seen it myself. Someone on a core part strives to make their part really efficient; then someone on the UI side makes something simple but that makes heavy demands.”
They gratefully tackle the thin nature of the mail tools available in Opera, and Tetzchner mentions that they are working to improve the mail feature of Opera. He cites one of the driving forces behind the development as the lack of options for mail clients in the Windows environment. Hopefully that “mail” improvement will also include a less jerky Feed Reader update.
All in all a great interview and an opportunity to see what makes Opera tick. I am an Opera user and a pretty big fan, overall. I’m very much looking forward to the upcoming Kestrel/9.5 build release(s), which rumor states will fix some of the aforementioned mail bugs and may introduce some of the CSS3 support that’s going to be more prominent in Opera’s Peregrine/10 releases.
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