Filed under: Web services, Google, Browser Tips

Unofficial patch for running Google services in Opera

Opera v. Google
Opera has made some great strides in the browser wars recently, with amazing support for Windows Mobile devices and the Nintendo Wii video game console. Opera 9.2 for the PC also adds some nifty new features like a Speed Dial function that lets you set 9 different pages as a sort of home page.

But Opera still has a fairly small share of the browser market, and developers often don't think about Opera users. Usually that's not such a big deal, as Opera supports all the major web standards. But certain online applications like Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, and Picasa Web don't play very well with Opera.

Back in January João Eiras developed a patch that fixed some known issues with those programs.
  • Fixed mouse scrolling in Google Spreadsheets so that when you roll the scrollwheel down, the page moves down.
  • Remove the "browser not compatible" notice in Google Calendar, and allow event popups to work
  • Remove the "browser not compatible" notice in Picasa Web -- the program works fine on Opera, and the warning just doesn't make any sense.
Well, apparently when Google went and updated some of their services, many of these patches stopped working. Eiras has updated his script a few times, but he says several issues have popped up with Google Spreadsheets.
[via Opera Watch]