Molly at Opera

Here's a bit of good news I came across last week. Molly Holzschlag has joined the Opera team.

Molly and I go way back. She worked for me briefly on the old GEnie network, the General Electric Network for Information Exchange. She ran the disABILITIES forum, and this is was the spark of my passion for equal access and for Molly herself. When Microsoft got into the game, we each had forums over there, as well. The next time anyone heard from Molly, she had written a book about some new language everyone was talking about, HTML. Molly, overnight, literally became the girl who wrote the book on HTML. Speaking engagements followed, magazine gigs, and of course, ever more books.

Before long, Molly had staked out an entire bookshelf. She had written books on HTML, on Web design, on the use of color, on how to work with various Web-related software, and more. Lots more. Over the last decade, she has ceased to be merely molly holzschlag, and has become Molly Holzschlag, in the Web world.

In recent years, Molly has put some muscle behind the move toward standards-based Web pages, even while pointing out that in many cases, no real standards exist. And I credit her with a great deal of the work that went into making Micrsoft's Internet Explorer a much better browser, finally. And now, she works at Opera.

You may not have heard of Opera, but I suspect you will, soon. It's been around for a long time, now. Opera was spun out of a telecom research project in 1995. They released their first browser in 1996 and started really gaining a reputation as the twentieth century came to its close. They built a reputation for a lightweight, very fast Web browser that had amazing fidelity to the published standards. This was back when nobody gave a damn about standards. If anything held Opera back it was that during this time they were charging for their software.

Oh, a free browser was available, but it featured advertising that could not be turned off, unless you paid for the software. This had the effect of causing downloads for new ads while you were browsing for new pages, slowing things down—and did I mention nobody cared that Opera was one of very browsers that actually did what it was supposed to do? Opera is now free, again.

Over the years, they have really forced the hand of other browser developers. I have no doubt that Firefox is a better browser today because Opera was on the scene. Even Microsoft was finally embarrassed that this little company, and it is a little company, could create a Web browser that played by the rules while they could not get Internet Explorer to get out of its own way. Opera is avialable on Macintosh and Windows PCs, on Linux computers, on the popular game playing machinery and a host of Smart Phone hardware.

Molly has worked with the WorldWide Web Consortium, with the Web Standards Project, with a host of publishers, and with me. She may leave Opera one day—there seems to be little permanence anywhere in this industry. But I suspect she will leave Opera a much better company, and browser, than we see today. It might not turn out that way, but that's the way to bet.

Just please, if that day ever comes, no jokes about the Fat Lady singing, huh?