Opera Web Standards Curriculum

Gawd Bless™ Chris MIlls and Gawd Bless™ Opera, for together with authors like Norm they have begat the Opera Web Standards Curriculum.

I linked to this in my sidenotes a couple of days ago, but really felt it deserved a bit more attention, considering the extraordinary amount of work that has gone into it.

Opera’s new Web Standards Curriculum, released in association with the Yahoo! Developer Network, is a complete course to teach you standards-based web development, including HTML, CSS, design principles and background theory, and JavaScript basics. It already has support from many organizations (including Yahoo! and the Web Standards Project) and universities. The first 23 articles are currently available, with about 30 more to be published between now and late September.

Finally, there is non-reference resource to point people to, where they can actually learn in stages what web standards mean, and how to adopt and use them to build a better web. Heartily slapped backs to all of the contributors!

Tags: education, opera, webstandards

Kestrel

Uh oh, the Browser Radar™ has been twitching again. I have high hopes for Kestrel, the codename of Opera 9.5, soon to be available as pre-release weekly builds. Aside from the CSS3 support, the section under ‘Platform integration’ caught my eye (emphasis mine of course):

“To make sure that Opera remains the best choice on your platform, we spend a lot of time making Opera feel more integrated with your platform. Mac users can expect a nice new visual look and feel. Opera for Linux will add a QT4 build, so you can easily adjust the skin to match with desktop. There will also be 64-bit Linux/FreeBSD packages made available.”

I’ve been impressed with Opera abilities since about v8, and especially with 9, but the ‘Opera Standard’ interface looks more Mac-like than the ‘Native Macintosh’ skin to me. I use Opera Mini on my mobiles all the time, but it’s never made the leap to my desktop due to its look and feel. I believe that 9.2 introduced proper system-drawn OS X widgets which is a step forward for sure, but with Leopard on the horizon, Opera feels as if it’s still clinging on to a Jaguar look. Sadly, I’ve never had the time to have a go at making my own skin – the process seemed too daunting.

So, I’m quite looking forward to seeing this ‘nice new visual look and feel’, and hoping that it won’t be a disappointment. If anyone at Opera just happens to be reading this, any chance of posting a few screenshots to sate the curiosity?

Tags: browsers, opera, osx