Opera's data research will allow developers and vendors to build better targeted Web apps Ars reports that a study from browser maker Opera suggests only 4.13 percent of the 3.5 million pages indexed were found to be standards-compliant.Some interesting points:Adobe Flash is used on about 35 percent of indexed sites worldwide, with China leading the pack at 67 percent penetration AJAX (measured by the use of XMLHttpRequest) is used in 3.2 percent of indexed sites worldwide, with Norway ahead at 10 percent penetration Only 50 percent of indexed sites that display the W3C validation badge were actually using valid HTML (anymore)The really cool thing is that Opera is going to build a search engine on top of the data from this ongoing study. Users (Web developers or vendors) will be able to search for data before making product- or application-related decisions. For example, Opera’s data could answer the question: “How prevalent is Silverlight use in India?” This is exactly the type of fact-based information that we’d all want to know before building a Web app for the Indian market. Kudos to the Opera team for driving this research and the follow-on search capabilities. It is somewhat surprising that Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft hasn’t done this already.p.s.: I should state: “The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies, or opinions.” Open Source