Macromedia and Opera Join for Mac Development

This deal makes quite a bit of sense if you think about it.

First let's deal with why they need an embeddable browser. Not many of these have been released yet, but many companies are starting to use Flash to develop desktop applications. At ESPN, we created 'The BottomLine' which we believe to be the most widely used installable Flash desktop application in the world. We released it a couple of months ago and it has already been downloaded by over 300,000 users. Here's the problem though: the application is only embeddable as a true installable app on Windows PCs. The reason is that there is an IE control built into Windows which allows you to easily construct a 'shell' around any Flash app. All other machine/browser combinations must use the popup window version of the BottomLine. If you're curious, you can check out our app here --> http://espn.go.com/bottomline/

Now to the second question, why Opera? Well, clearly non-PC IE is not an alternative because it is not very modular and you'll have to jump through a ton of hoops to get Microsoft to put any sort of resources towards this sort of thing. But how about Mozilla? Well, Mozilla would be a great candidate but unfortunately the organization that develops Mozilla is not cohesive enough to be able to sign such a deal. Mozilla is rapidly becoming a marvel of open-source engineering (finally), but from a business perspective, I don't even know who the 'who' would be, when thinking about who over there could sign off on such a deal. Opera, on the other hand, is an organized company with a vested interest in creating embeddable browsers. They've already made headway in the phone market, the PDA market, and elsewhere. Their browser is small, fast, and modular... hence it is perfect.

And finally, why the Mac? The answer to this question is that this project will not only exist on the Mac, it is merely *starting* with the Mac. There are many good reasons for this. Firstly, it won't raise much of an eyebrow with Microsoft. There will be no sort of rapid response from them to get themselves into the mix. Secondly, OS X is based on Unix, and since ton of computers around the world are also based on UNIX, this project will serve as a starting point for a similar app meant specifically for UNIX boxes. Thirdly, Opera is known for sculpting their products around the various strengths and weaknesses of different operating systems. Mac Opera works differently than PC Opera, etc. By starting with an OS which is completely different than one which the majority of the world uses (Windows), they are showing the world from the get-go that this installable mini-browser shell thing they are building will be meant for all people, not just Windows users.

Anyway, I'm excited to see what they come up with. You don't know how many Mac and Unix users have written into ESPN asking us to offer an installable version of the BottomLine for their systems. Hopefully, this will be the foundation for such an offering.

Mike
http://www.mdavidson.com

Also, Opera has some experience with the wee-portable-kiosk-browser scene. In the last days of BeOS, when Be, Inc. was pushing it as a portable "appliance" OS, Opera was the browser of choice.

The girl who lives above me is jumping rope again. I know this has nothing to do with the topic, but I had to bitch to someone.

--

Why would Macromedia think that any half-conscious web developer would be interested in previewing work on only one browser?

... and why not work with Chimera who seem to support more standards than Opera and it is only at 0.3!

Mike, while you can't do a standalone Flash app with zero coding on the Mac, you can embed a Flash file into a QuickTime movie and get the same user experience.

The movie will be played by QuickTime Player, but since you can switch the chrome off in your file, this doesn't really affect the outcome.

And if you are comfortable with minimum coding, you can build a wrapper app that runs your Flash with QuickTime.

Both of these approaches are limited, however, to Flash 4 in the case of QuickTime 5.0 and to Flash 5 in the case of QuickTime 6.0 (available in preview form only).

Here's a URL to the news article Opera posted about this.
http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2002/07/20020702.html

Sounds like W3C compliance was a big issue. Be nice if Opera would spend a little more time developing their OS X version and bring it up to par with their Windows version featurewise, maybe this could happen while they work with Macromedia.

Mike, that espn app is cool, but whats with the homepage? as of this writing it looks like
http://espn.go.com/main.html is missing some logos or something at the top of the page. does this have something to do with your MSN cobranding/content partnership?

off topic rant--> I'm sick of MSN and Netscape/AOL style cobranding. If i go to ESPN i want sports, not Hotmai. It wouldnt be so bad if the cobranding was so intrusive, but it figures as prominent navigation space in the holy "top of page" area. Because of this i have to learn to ignore the very area that should be a key starting point.

I can't figure out who the worst offender is: MSN seems bigger, more intrusive and more insidious, but Netscape sites need to "look good" in Netscape 4.x so their layouts rigid, leading horrible, and so on.

No bother, I read way more independent sites anyway.

Marko,

Wrapping a data-driven Flash app into a Quicktime movie is never a good idea. Quicktime's support for the Flash file format is very limited and when you start writing all sorts of crazy ActionScript to suck dynamic data into Flash and display it in a meaningful manner, Quicktime simply doesn't handle it well. It's almost like emulation really. The only time I'd ever wrap Flash into Quicktime is if I were only using Flash for the effects and not the scripting/dynamic data stuff.

Also, making a wrapper for a Quicktime movie does not accomplish what we've accomplished in creating our 'mini-browser' shell. With our shell, you can dock the thing to the top or bottom of your screen, set it to auto-hide mode, have it launch at startup, and all sorts of all configurable options which aren't available in a shell such as iShell (I assume that's the program you're referring to). Try the PC version of the BottomLine out and you'll see what I'm talking about. It's quite a bit more than a simple wrapper. It also detects if you're online which is very important for this app.

Mike Davidson
Art Director
ESPN.com

Nathan,

Not sure what the missing images you're referring to are all about... perhaps a server was down.

I agree with you wholeheartedly though that the MSN branding sucks. It sucks bad. There is nothing good about it. This was a deal driven entirely by business reasons and obviously had nothing to do with creating a better user experience. I agree that if users want Hotmail, they don't need to be able to link to it from our site. Nobody around here is fond of the MSN chrome and every time I see it encasing every page of ESPN.com, it makes me want to quit my job.

Anyway, I better stop dissing the MSN stuff before I get a call from the president of ESPN telling me I've been fired for badmouthing a deal of ours.

Mike Davidson
Art Director
ESPN.com

as noted below, clearly Opera was choosen because they actually know how to embedded a lightweight browser that has good W3C support (see Sharp Zaurus/BeIA devices). Opera renders faster than IE anyway... Frankly, IE is dead on the Mac if they don't release version 6 when Jaguar comes out... as every browser has lapped it in rendering and launch times.

Perhaps (big perhaps) this has something to do with Dreamweaver's somewhat-spotty display of CSS positioning elements (I haven't tried the new MX version; this is based on my experience with DW4). If Opera's rendering engine makes it easier to design pure-CSS sites (or other types of standards-based sites) in Dreamweaver, this would be a good thing, no?

opera has standards support, yes - but it is faaaar from perfect. no browser offers complete standards support, and until that "wonder"-browser can be used to test perfect code, no specific browser should be chosen. they all have their quirks and you gotta test for 'em all!