Is Opera Turbo on?

Question

I've got a page which uses Flash with animations (These are not crucial but additional).

Everything works fine, if I'm not using Opera with activated Turbo. Then the Flash Movie is shown as a big ugly arrow in a circle the size of the flash movie which is intended to act as a play button for the flash.

I'm using SWFobject, so I easily could turn of the animation if I knew if Opera's turbo mechanism is used, but how do I do this in JavaScript (or maybe CSS if this goes)

How to reproduce?
Surf this page with Opera (or any other page which uses flash)
http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/
Without Opera Turbo you see a flash animation and flash version information With Opera Turbo you see two white arrows in gray circles

edit 1 I'm quite sure now, that there is not a pure JS solution and not a PHP solution. The best guess is a combined AS/JS solution.

are you still able to circumvent plugin-on-demand in Opera ? — c69, Jan 11 '12 at 09:49
@c69 I don't know anything about that. And I don't think this is the problem. I just switch on Turbo and there you go. Flash is installed and if you klick on the play button, flash starts to play. — yunzen, Jan 11 '12 at 10:02
Sorry for of topic, but what is required to add bountys to a question? I've read the faq but cant seem to find it. — Johan, Jan 19 '12 at 22:15
@Johan you need to wait 2 days after the question was asked. Then you can add bounty — yunzen, Jan 20 '12 at 08:05

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 14 '12 at 03:11

5

Client side detection: There is no way to access that through javascript. Client side detection for opera turbo is not possible currently, maybe it will be supported in the future but who knows?

Server side detection: When opera turbo is enabled all requests from client are done to opera servers, the opera servers are going to access your application (do compressions) and forward the processed content to the final client (user's computer).

With that in mind, let's do some network sniffing and see where are your connection going:

~$ nslookup opera10beta-turbo.opera-mini.net
>Server:        189.40.226.80
>Address:   189.40.226.80#53
>Non-authoritative answer:
>opera10beta-turbo.opera-mini.net   canonical name = global-turbo-1.opera-mini.net.
>Name:  global-turbo-1.opera-mini.net
>Address: 141.0.11.252

~$ nslookup 64.255.180.252
>Server:        192.168.1.254
>Address:   192.168.1.254#53
>Non-authoritative answer:
>252.180.255.64.in-addr.arpa    canonical name = 252.0-24.180.255.64.in-addr.arpa.
>252.0-24.180.255.64.in-addr.arpa   name = global-turbo-1-lvs-usa.opera-mini.net.

As you can see the name and canonical name from opera servers can be used to detect if you application is being accessed through opera servers intermediation. I think server side coding could handle that (not sure what language are you using on your server).

It's good to remember that Opera Turbo will not intermediate your requests if you're accessing something in your local server.

Hope it helps.

answered Jan 14 '12 at 03:11

marcio

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Also, Opera sends an X-Forwarded-For header when using Turbo, with the value as the user's actual IP. If you're comparing the dns to check for Turbo, be sure to check for presence of X-forwarded-for as well. It's also worth to note that Opera Mini content is always piped through Opera's servers. – Jani Hartikainen Jan 14 '12 at 03:31
This seems like a good answer, but I thought there is no guarantee that every connection with opera turbo is actually compressed. If yout network connexion is fast enough, opera won't re-route the request via the opera servers, but will still not play the swf. – yunzen Jan 14 '12 at 22:51
@JaniHartikainen good information, I didn't include it in the answer because I thought every user behind a proxy would create this header too. Bu the X-forwarded-for could be used to filter which requests to inspect instead of inspect every requisition. That could be interesting to avoid performance loss on every cases. – marcio Jan 15 '12 at 00:31
@yunzen Well said. I like that feature since Opera Turbo can act as some kind off add blocker too. But it configures a drawback to my answer when flash is involved. This is probably a non win situation that developers shouldn't be concerned, users that activate opera turbo probably will understand that this behavior is a browser feature not a bug in the website (just like in any add blocker plugin from other browsers). – marcio Jan 15 '12 at 00:42
Would be nice, if I shouldn't be bothered, but I *am* concerned about that. – yunzen Jan 15 '12 at 22:43
I'm still thinking about that problem but every check that comes to mind seems too indirect to fully detect Turbo presence. – marcio Jan 16 '12 at 00:49
I think that individual users can change the Opera Turbo server in Opera's turbosettings.xml. So the server side solution may not be a great answer, even if it is the only one. – iND Jan 16 '12 at 09:37
1

The idea is not to use the server name entire string, the idea is to look for keywords like opera and turbo altogether. But yes, nothing can beat a combo of ninja feature + user configuration. – marcio Jan 16 '12 at 12:23

iND · Answer 2 · 2012-01-14T00:00:21.580

2

I believe that the answer to the speed issue is that the Flash content is not downloaded initially. You have to manually click on the icon to download it. Same for animated GIFs. This is part of the strategy to boost the speed. (cf., this Opera Desktop Team post.)

Which is why you want to know how to check for Opera Turbo, and not just Opera. From my local tests, I cannot tell the difference using PHP's _SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"] variable. I think this is similar to what Opera lists as the user agent string, as shown here and here.

It seems that, rather notifying the website of the browser condition, Opera silently manages the request results differently.

edited Jan 14 '12 at 00:00

answered Jan 13 '12 at 23:43

iND

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I'm not sure about the Flash not being downloaded with Turbo activated. I remember some sort of saving processor performance as a reason. But I'm not sure. – yunzen Jan 15 '12 at 22:42
@yunzen, please see the link to the Opera blog post. That is what I am using to verify my claim. – iND Jan 16 '12 at 07:11
this is from 2009. Maybe it has changed since – yunzen Jan 16 '12 at 08:05
Well, you can always check whether the SWF is actually on the page, right? And that seems to be killing two birds with one stone . . . no Flash where there should be Flash (along with the Opera user agent string) is a pretty good way of determining that Turbo is activated. – iND Jan 16 '12 at 09:44
As I stated in the comments in the other answer by marcioAlmada: 'I thought there is no guarantee that every connection with opera turbo is actually compressed. If yout network connexion is fast enough, opera won't re-route the request via the opera servers, but will still not play the swf.' So this will be no safe answer – yunzen Jan 16 '12 at 11:31
Currently behavior of OP turbo doesn't remove the flash ` – marcio Jan 16 '12 at 12:21
So you have just established conditions that *do* exist in the DOM: the Opera arrow. Or does it not exist in the DOM (I have uninstalled Opera at this point, so you will have to check this)? So if there is a big arrow instead of the SWF, you have a valid check (if there is no icon, then it is the normal condition). Or it may be that the SWF is hidden when *you* have not programmed it to be hidden, so cf., [this post](http://stackoverflow.com/a/3726702/516537). – iND Jan 16 '12 at 18:12
ok, checked again now. The arrow itself does not exist in the DOM, all that exists is the original flash element (with blocked download/execution as I said). But the arrow is not injected in DOM, the inspectors do not accuse any difference in DOM before and after a given flash object is activated. This seems a good thing, they're not hacking our DOMs =] – marcio Jan 17 '12 at 22:36
Hm. But it is a hack. So much so that is is redefining what qualifies as part of the DOM; an image is showing that's not listed in the DOM. Hm hm hm. Cannot see anything using Firebug, and it *does* show up when all CSS is off. No solutions . . . yet? – iND Jan 18 '12 at 00:00

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 15 '13 at 12:35

2

You can try to check if the flash object is loaded with some javascript. This code works on my computer with Opera 11:

<html>
<head>
  <script language=JavaScript>
    function isFlashBlocked(){
      var blocked;
      try {
        // Can test this on any flash object on the page
        window.document.myFlash.SetVariable("dummy", "dummy");
        // Flash not blocked
        blocked = false;
      }
      catch(err) {
        // Flash blocked
        blocked = true;
      }

      return blocked;
    }

    function removeBlockedFlash() {
      if (isFlashBlocked()) {
        // Hide all flash objects
        window.document.myFlash.setAttribute("style", "display: none");
        // ...

        // Display replacement content
        window.document.myImage.setAttribute("style", "display: inline");
        // ...
      }
    }
  </script>
</head>
<body onload="removeBlockedFlash()">
  <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="HelloWorld.swf" 
          width="100" height="100" id="myFlash">
  </object>
  <img src="image.jpg" style="display: none" id="myImage" />
</body>
</html>

If you detect that flash is blocked, you hide every flash object and display what you want.

Edit: This code doesn't work with Firefox, you probably need to detect the browser before using this function.

edited Feb 15 '13 at 12:35

yunzen

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answered Jan 19 '12 at 22:09

Lesque

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+1 This is very opera turbo independent and works to tell if flash was loaded or is blocked! Still no way to avoid the hideous white button right? – marcio Jan 19 '12 at 23:17
That means, I need a dummy 1x1 flash anywhere on the page? This works with ExternalInterface only? – yunzen Jan 20 '12 at 08:07
@yunzen You don't need a dummy flash object because you already have some flash on the page. I think you don't need to modify your page or your flash code, you simply add the javascript with the id of one of your existing flash objects. If you detect that flash is blocked then remove/hide ` – Lesque Jan 20 '12 at 08:57
@Lesque But I have the problem, that the blocked Flash looks so ugly. And can I set a variable on a flash that is currently loading? So I do not remove flash when it is not blocked? – yunzen Jan 20 '12 at 11:04
@yunzen I have edited the answer with a more complete example. It show how to replace flash with an image if flash was blocked. – Lesque Jan 20 '12 at 19:33

Is Opera Turbo on?

3 Answers3