Developers are privileged to know the truth about the worth of web browser technologies and the brouhaha over browser lockout by MSN has made them especially eager to spread the word: Internet Explorer and Netscape are not the only acts in town. In fact, the recent outcry over Microsoft’s upgraded MSN.com web site blocking out Opera user fans and millions of other users of alternative browser software from viewing the MSN site brought Opera nothing but louder applause.

Among the Opera users who had unsuccessfully tried to access the MSN site in late October were knowledgeable programmers, who were not buying Microsoft’s justification for the block, that MSN and IE adhered most closely to open standards from the W3C standards body. They were especially scornful because rating highly with the consortium recommendations for open technology standards were just the browser products locked out of MSN: Mozilla, Amaya, and Opera.

At the unveiling of the new look of the new-look MSN.com portal, suspicions grew that Microsoft might be targeting users of non-Microsoft browsers. Jon S. von Tetzchner, Opera's chief executive, was especially on guard and his team were testing things out. He said that every time a browser connects to a server, it sends a string to the server telling it what type of browser is seeking access. "Microsoft is seeing that it is an Opera browser and shutting it out," he said. "If you change the Opera string by one letter, it is letting us in."

Microsoft said its technology was watching for Opera strings because the company wanted to encourage people to use standard-compliant browsers. Microsoft eventually turned around. Bob Visse, director of marketing for MSN, said that the block was an error. Microsoft took prompt steps to correct this “mistake” though some non-Microsoft browser users were still having difficulties viewing MSN.com.

Visse had also made reference to people using "browsers that we know don't support (W3C) standards or that we can't insure will get a great experience for the customer." That was Oslo’s Niagara Falls. If blocked access angered Opera fans, what really riled Opera’s CEO was Microsoft's remark about the other browsers that did not support XHTML Opera fired off a press release that it felt was a fitting response, by making the very medium its in-your-face message. The release was available in W3C-compliant XHTML, which displays properly when accessed with Opera but fails abysmally when accessed with Internet Explorer. To try this test of standards compliance click on the following link:

 http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/xhtml/20011026.xml.

To download a free version of Opera, click below:

"I hope now we will see a change where action matches words and that Microsoft starts to actively support international standards, and starts working on getting their pages to work with other browsers instead of closing the door," said von Tetzchner.

While it is not anywhere near Microsoft in browser dominance, Opera is nevertheless a company to watch. In the last year, over 6 million copies of the Opera browser for Windows were downloaded and installed from Opera's web site by users all over the world. Why is Opera so popular? It’s not difficult to at least partly assign credit to von Tetzchner, an interesting mix of technology idealist and solid business planner who survived the dot-com’s stock fever era by refusing to give into heady temptations to get rich quick and fall from grace even faster. During the dot-com boom, he turned away investment bankers eager to take his company public. "Having a stock going way up and way down would have been too distracting for the engineers," he told interviewers elsewhere. "We needed them to concentrate on software." He says the company is careful “to choose the biggest partners not just those with money. The end user comes first.”

That attitude is part of Opera’s self-branding as an exceptionally competent company of exceptionally competent software developers who excel in browser software for the desktop and Internet appliance markets. He is unable to expect desktop dominance: IE is used by almost 87% of the U.S. on-line population, say reports, followed by Netscape’s 13%. With an “other” ranking, Opera nevertheless thrives on a reputation of putting out a superior product.

In the web battlefield, von Tetzchner proudly points to independent comparative reviews in Europe’s technology publications finding Opera to be more standards-compliant. “We have been focused on standards over the entire time, so we do better,” he tells Open. “Our CTO wrote the CSS standard.” That CTO is Hakon Wium Lie, who suggested the concept of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in 1994 and joined the W3C to strengthen the standards. He’s on the advisory board of the W3C as well.

Opera’s strategy is to tout its expertise on two fronts, the desktop and appliance markets. The market for browsers has expanded from PCs to mobile phones and other Internet-connected devices. Opera’s push to excel in this area for good reason: Embedded Internet devices are memory-constrained, so software to run on them must scale accordingly. Superiority translates into something faster, smaller, and more standards-compliant than competition. The embedded market likes Opera because it is small, fast, and Opera’s developers have made sure the browser can be easily ported to numerous platforms from Linux to EPOC. Opera aims to take a lead position in the Internet appliance market and von Tetzchner believes this year Opera is showing more than a fair chance. For the past year or so, Opera has been in high let’s-make-a-deal mode with important alliances.

Earlier this year, Opera also reached a major deal with Symbian Ltd., the London consortium of mobile phone makers, a partnership that includes Nokia and Ericsson, to be the default browser on a number of wireless devices that connect to the Internet.

“This is different from the desktop market,” says von Tetzchner in an Open interview. “It’s easier to see revenue coming in this market, though we will continue to try to make the best possible browser in the desktop market too.” While his drive seems tempered—“We want to grow as big as possible but we don’t want to take over the world”— his goal is clear and steady: “We can’t do it in the desktop market now, but we can be a leader in the Internet device market.”

For von Tetzchner, a key victory has been a deal announced earlier this year: Big Blue’s decision to use Opera in its NetVista line of Internet appliances. The deal is actually three-way: Opera’s development team came up with a version of its browser for the QNX operating system (QNX Software systems, founded in 1980 by Gordon Bell and Dan Dodge) www.qnx.com, called Opera 5.0 for QNX. IBM chose Opera 5.0 for QNX for their NetVista Internet Appliance. Opera sees this as important, even with its earlier space of partnerships with industry leaders like AMD, Psion, and Be, because the IBM deal is an indicator that an industry player on the scale of IBM is willing to join forces with Opera, a “first” for a major contract, a high note of credibility that Opera can take a lead in the appliance sector.

While deals will keep Opera solvent, can Opera make a lot of money on the desktop side by giving away ad-supported free browsers? “We get revenue in multiple ways,” says von Tetzchner. “In the desktop market we have the free version; we make money off ads and various search engine deals as with Google.” Opera Software and Google have an agreement under which Opera integrates Google’s advanced search technology into its search box feature on the Opera browser.

Paying customers are a source of revenue, where the Advanced Opera browser is sold at $39 for individual users, $20 for students and senior citizens, $15 for upgrades, and at bulk rates too. Why would a customer really want to be a customer? Why not just download the software for free? “We remove the banner ads for paying customers,” he says, “and they are able to surf freely and discreetly. Besides, people just want to support us so that we continue to make the best possible browser possible.”

If Opera survived the dot-com fever, can it now avert the common IT business risks of spending too much too soon on its future? According to BusinessWeek online, Opera Software is burning through about $500,000 a month. “Well you always have to be careful,” says von Tetzchner. “and we have been around for a long time. From the start, we have kept a strong economic control. We feel we have as strong product and so far a sound business model.”

Open also asks von Tetzchner: Do you want to keep Opera Software privately held? What if a company like Microsoft were to propose a buyout? “I would sell on one condition: If Microsoft were to offer us the value of Microsoft plus one dollar, we might consider. Otherwise, it would not make sense. I don’t see the move as likely.”