In his PC Magazine column, John Dvorak mentioned how the Opera web browser [operaubuntufonts, opera, opera9, operastaticbin, opera-idstring, operamini41, linkstashbuttonsforoperawin764bit, badoperasites, operaminiusage, operamini4] sends a fake browser ID to web sites. Rather than identifying itself as Opera, it pretends to be Internet Explorer 6. The reason is because of poor (and on one occasion, apparently malicious) web site authoring. Some site authors are unaware of Opera, and assume that if the browser isn't Internet Explorer or Netscape, then the web page won't render correctly. This is obviously quite untrue, but the real bummer here is that no one really knows how many people are using the Opera browser, as it rarely appears in web server logs as itself.
Although this is the default setting, Opera users can choose to set the ID back to Opera, or even choose to impersonate Mozilla. I set it back to Opera, and noticed something: some web sites looked better. In particular Yahoo Groups had some funky font faces and sizes when Opera spoofs IE, but looks excellent when it IDs itself as Opera.
I'll be leaving the browser ID setting as Opera itself.
