FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Contact: Chris Carrico George Olsen Urge Public Relations 2-Lane Media chris@urgepr.com golsen@2lm.com 213-848-8743 310-473-3706 x2225 WSP RELEASES LIST OF OPERA TOP 10 PROBLEMS WITH KEY WEB STANDARD February 3, 1999 -- Despite a late, but ambitious first attempt at implementing the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS-1) standard, Opera Software's Opera 3.51 browsers still needs to fix some major problems, according to a report released today by the Web Standards Project. The report is the second in a series of browser reviews by WSP, an international coalition of Web developers who are urging browser makers to fully support standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium. "Cascading Style Sheets give developers precise control over the appearance of a page that we've been waiting for," said George Olsen, WSP Project Leader and Design Director at 2-Lane Media in Los Angeles. "Unfortunately, Web browsers' uneven support for Cascading Style Sheets over the past two years has made it impractical for many developers to actually use it," Olsen said. "While Opera offers better support for this standard than the 4.0 browsers from Netscape and Microsoft, there are still some serious problems. We hope Opera will make it a priority to fix the problems so that they fully support this standard and make it usable for developers." Many of the specific problems that Opera needs to address involve issues with laying out elements of a Web page and handling typographic styles correctly. While Opera Software did fix a few of the most glaring problems between in its Opera 3.51 update, some major bugs remain. WSP also believes this illustrates the danger of releasing a browser without complete testing - since many users will likely continue to use the older version and consequently developers may need to support an additional set of workarounds. About The Web Standards Project: WSP is an international coalition of Web developers and Web experts who are urging browser makers to fully support Cascading Style Sheet Level 1 (CSS-1), the Document Object Model (DOM) and XML in their browsers. Its effort to bring attention to the existing and potential problems involved with browser incompatibility does not mean that WSP is opposed to innovations by browser manufacturers. The coalition merely urges browser manufacturers to use open standards for enhancements and support existing ones before adding new features George Olsen mailto:golsen@2lm.com Design Director http://www.2lm.com 2-Lane Media tel: 310/473-3706 x2225