Opera pits Muppet's Swedish chef against Microsoft in browser wars

According to Opera, Microsoft's MSN portal has targeted Opera users in the past two weeks, by sending them intentionally distorted style sheets. These sheets determine the way text and graphics are presented in browser windows.

"When trying to access MSN.com using the Opera 7 browser", the company said, "there are two visible problems. First, for the user it looks like Opera 7 has a serious flaw so that many lines are partially hidden. Second, the page shows less content than users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer see."

Opera Chief Executive Technology Officer Hakon Wium Lie claims that MSN was sending different style sheets to Internet Explorer and Opera 7 browsers, despite the fact that the Opera browser would have rendered the MSN site correctly, if it received the same sheet.

So Opera created a special version of its browser. The new browser is almost identical to Opera 7, except when users visit the MSN site.

In this case, the browser's users view the text displayed on the site in a language mimicking that of the Muppet Show's Swedish Chef. The company called its new browser the "Børk Edition", after the "Børk, Børk, Børk" sound made by the popular TV chef.

"Hergee berger snooger børk", said Mary Lambert, product line manager desktop for Opera. "This is a joke. However, we are trying to make an important point... The Bork edition illustrates how browsers could also distort content, as the Børk edition does. The real point here is that the success of the web depends on software and web site developers behaving well and rising above corporate rivalry", she added.

According to Opera, MSN now allows access to users of Opera 7, but is still sending broken pages to users of earlier versions of the company's browser.

Microsoft controls around 95% of the browser market, according to December 2002 figures from OneStat.com.

Reports suggest that the company admits sending different style sheets to different browsers, but justifies this to "optimise the experience of our users" – as opposed to sabotaging the competition.

In October 2001, Microsoft was subjected to criticism after it blocked access to several non-MSN browsers. Following several complaints, the company decided to support again the Opera and Mozilla browsers.

It warned, however, that the "experience may be slightly degraded simply because they don't support the standards we support closely, as far as the HTML standard in those browsers."

The company maintained that any problems with access were due to the fact that it wanted to encourage people to use standard-compliant browsers.

Opera has published a technical analysis to support its allegations, at:
my.opera.com/dev/discussion/openweb/20030206/