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Opera 10.50 Beta Out, With Competitive JavaScript
Opera has released its 10.5 beta (for Windows only; Linux and Mac coming). Opera calls 10.5 "the fastest browser on earth," but the jury is out on this claim. WebMonkey says that the new beta feels snappy in their informal testing. Both CNET and ZDNet ran two quick benchmarks that measure JavaScript performance, SunSpider and V8. ZDNet found Opera beating out Chrome in SunSpider but lagging in V8. CNET found Chrome ahead in both tests. What is clear however is that Opera's Carakan JavaScript engine has made up much of the ground in the performance wars; The Reg estimates that 10.5 is seven times faster in the JavaScript stakes than Opera's shipping 10.1 release.
Can we finally just ditch JavaScript for something better? Python, Ruby, or some dialect of Scheme would be much better. Hell, even Perl and Tcl would be a huge step in the right direction.
JavaScript started out as a quick hack over 15 years ago, and has unfortunately stuck around far longer than it should have. We can do better, and we should do better.
Opera, Google, Apple, Mozilla and the KDE project should team up on this goal, and make it happen. If Microsoft doesn't want to get with the times, then leave them behind.
I'm actually far more excited for VEGA (their new vector graphics lib) than the javascript update. Is having spiffy-fast js nice? Yea, but I think Vega is really where they're going to shine. It'll make transformations and other animations run far smoother in opera than any other browser (with the exception of firefox's direct2d experimental build that was released a while back). Kudos Opera, you're ahead of the game yet again.
As an everyday Chrome user I have to say this new Opera beta is pretty spiffy. I've been using it for the past day and while the UI is certainly Chrome-like but seems to have a bit more polish. The best part is it seems on par if not even slightly faster with most rendering in comparison to Chrome. Lately I've switched from Safari/FF to Chrome, but I'll be seeing how Opera works this one out. This will be great to see on Mac and Linux at some point in the future. Especially Mac where Opera performance has generally lagged.
Note: I do recognize and appreciate the need to make javascript perform better.
Thing is...it seems that for many tech "journalists" hardly anything besides js matters anymore!
Notice how Opera said "the fastets on earth"; which might be still debatable of course, but they did not say "...fastest in javascript". Opera knows that's not the whole story in browser performance. You can see it especially when using Opera on some ancient machine where the difference is most startling. WebMonkey seems to know it too (nah, not reading TFA...)
CNET, ZDNet and The Reg seem to care only about JS...
What is it? Some new widespread fascination with numbers like in 3DMark heyday? "Journalists" taking the easy route by simply running automatic benchmarks? (written "for" Opera competitors BTW...)
One that hath name thou can not otter
Yeah, Opera can't win that one. Opera has been around longer than FF and Chrome combined, so when you start changing "Shortcuts" to be more like FF/Chrome the people that have used Opera forever complain.
Are you an alt for BadAnalogyGuy? Trains actually do something useful you can't do as well with horses. Javascript does nothing you can't do better with either plain HTML, or a native app. If you want to display a document, HTML is great and javascript adds nothing useful. If you want to write an app, there are any number of portable languages and toolkits that will perform much better than javascript.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Flush out your headgear, new guy. The days of HTML- and CSS- only websites are over. Even though those sites still exist, there's an entirely new category of "websites" online: web applications. The application I've been working on for the last 3 years or so is composed of about 60% Javascript, 30% PHP, 8% CSS, 1% HTML, 1% "other". With the recent push in Javascript engines, I've actually been able to watch the performance of the application improve by a substantial amount through no effort of my own, just because the application uses Javascript for the entire interface and browsers have focused on that aspect.
Nearly all of Google's services other than search are powered by Javascript, from Maps to Mail. Javascript (or any widely-supported client-side scripting language) is here to stay, and frankly it's the future of anything that's going to be online other than your basic informational sites. Even sites which are taking advantage of all of the new features in HTML5 will continue to take advantage of Javascript as well. The difference between IE6/7 and any very recent (< 3 months) browser is staggering.
I'm glad to see Opera catching up again, they're my browser of choice. They were among the fastest of the "first generation" JS engines, but nearly everyone else other than Microsoft pretty much beat Opera to the punch in the next generation of Javascript. It's nice to see them catch up. I hope Microsoft is able to make better strides with IE9, if not before.
Even the fancy but legitimately useful UI toolkits (e.g. YUI, jQuery) are invasive because they are so often served from third party sites (Yahoo or Google) instead of directly from the app site.
You can't say that the libraries are invasive because they're included from third-party applications, the application developers are invasive. My chosen framework (ExtJS in this case) is served from the same domain as the rest of the application, all gzipped and everything.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Netscape/Mozilla is older than IE, but Firefox still changed over to IE-ish shortcuts on Windows in order to be a more comfortable transition.
Also, I'm not asking Opera to shaft their loyal users. Opera is very customizable. There's no reason why they couldn't create a Firefox-ish shorcut set and let users choose that as an option. In fact, right now my biggest gripe is that their customization doesn't allow you to redefine ctrl-click consistently.
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On top of those major changes, they are pushing Windows at the moment because of the EU Vs. Microsoft thing, where in March Microsoft will have to add the "Choose Your Browser" dialog, and Opera wants 10.5 to be on that list, not 10.1.
Every Tom, Dick, and Harry browser that comes along? IE8/Firefox/Chrome/Safari, which are #1-4 in the marketplace, have very similar keyboard shortcuts. You'd think Opera would at least study its competition. Alternatively it could continue enjoying its niche as #5.
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