Opera Picks Up Webkit Engine

New submitter nthitz writes "Opera has announced that they will be dropping their rendering engine Presto, in favor of Webkit. This knocks the number of major rendering engines down to three. Opera will also be adopting the Chromium V8 Javascript engine. The news coincides with their announcement of 300 million users. '300 million marks the first lap, but the race goes on,' says Lars Boilesen, CEO of Opera Software. 'On the final stretch up to 300 million users, we have experienced the fastest acceleration in user growth we have ever seen. Now, we are shifting into the next gear to claim a bigger piece of the pie in the smartphone market.'" They've already submitted patches to improve multi-column layouts even.

Comments

What do they consider a user?

[Anonymous Coward]

I download their browser from time to time, but only to see if it's the best. It never is, and I never use it again. Am I part of that 300 million?

Re:What do they consider a user?

[SJHillman]

Don't forget that Opera is more that just a desktop browser. It really shines on mobile platforms with Opera Mini and Opera Mobile. The Wii's web browser is also Opera.

From what I hear, they're really big in second and third world countries where bandwidth is more limited and/or you pay by the kilobyte. Opera excels at compressing the content (especially with Opera Turbo).

Re:What do they consider a user?

[tibit]

Sorry, there no such thing as "excelling" at compression "especially" with Opera Turbo. The browser has zero control over compression, it can request plain old gzip compression from the server, and the server may or may not oblige. That's all that's available without a dedicated server. Opera Turbo is a system where the browser basically hijacks you connection and routes it over an Opera-controlled server. It's that server that then obtains the website content for you and compresses it. It's the only way technically to accomplish that, at the price of essentially giving yourself a man-in-the-middle attack. It's not very funny. The only thing their browser is really excellent at is IIRC browsing porn or generally image galleries with lots of image content. They were excellent at it even in their humble beginning days, where it was ad sponsored free or ad-free paid for -- you basically needed Opera to browse porn over a modem connection on a low-end machine (486DX2 w/Windows 95). With the switch to webkit, they lose whatever technical advantages they might have had.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[characterZer0]

There are other aspects to rendering speed than the rending engine. They can still use their own JavaScript engine. The rest of the browser other than rending the actual pages still plays a big part.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[xaxa]

Sorry, there no such thing as "excelling" at compression "especially" with Opera Turbo. The browser has zero control over compression, it can request plain old gzip compression from the server, and the server may or may not oblige. That's all that's available without a dedicated server. Opera Turbo is a system where the browser basically hijacks you connection and routes it over an Opera-controlled server.

So the first part of your comment was irrelevant, except to note in passing that Opera has always had good HTTP compression support, and other features to speed up page loading (e.g. not loading images, or loading them selectively).

It's hardly hijacking if they they tell you what they're doing, and you have to click a button to enable it:
When Opera Turbo is enabled, webpages are compressed via Opera's servers so that they use much less data than the originals. This means that there is less to download, so you can see your webpages more quickly.

Enabling Opera Turbo is as simple as clicking the Opera Turbo icon at the bottom-left of the Opera browser window. When you are on a fast connection again and Opera Turbo is not needed, the Opera browser will automatically disable it.
http://www.opera.com/browser/turbo/

Re:What do they consider a user?

[RedHackTea]

For me, it's the best of Chrome (look, speed, good tabs, etc.) and Firefox (has about:config, intuitive, etc.). One thing that hasn't been copied from Opera yet that doesn't make any sense... Anytime you get a JavaScript alert box, Opera adds a little checkbox allowing you to stop executing scripts on the page. Ever accidentally land on a website that kept spewing off alerts without you being able to close the page except by killing it? Opera also did extensions right; they're super easy to make. Opera has always either been the first or the first to do it right. Hands down.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[v1]

pera Turbo is a system where the browser basically hijacks you connection and routes it over an Opera-controlled server. It's that server that then obtains the website content for you and compresses it. It's the only way technically to accomplish that, at the price of essentially giving yourself a man-in-the-middle attack. It's not very funny

And when you live in a small village in africa and an hour of smartphone use could cost a day's pay, you get mighty thankful for that compression. These aren't the sorts of people that do online banking and are worried about MitM. Many of them are very happy to exchange email with friends and relatives in another village, and text compresses very nicely.

Just because it's not the right feature for you doesn't mean there isn't a significant sized group that really appreciates it.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Wii's browser is god-awful. Probably why Nintendo switched to webkit for the 3DS and Wii U browsers.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[elfprince13]

I might actually use it again if I can use it with Adblock Plus.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[Luckyo]

Opera Mini and Nokia Asha's browser are huge in countries with spotty/bad/expensive mobile coverage. They shrink pages to about 10% of their original size and then stream them from a local proxy. Speed increases are phenomenal.

On the downside it does mangle some pages pretty badly and you don't want to do any really sensitive stuff through it as it's a proxy browser (i.e. banking). Of course, in most of the developing countries at which these systems are aimed Opera and Nokia are trusted FAR more then local operators and in many cases even banks and for a good reason. Western companies tend to adapt Western principles and ethics to their business in large parts, while local culture may view swindling someone who's stupid as a "natural thing to do".

Re:What do they consider a user?

[Jappus]

Glad to be of help:

https://addons.opera.com/en-gb/search/?query=adblock

Sometimes, things can be so easy. :)

Re:What do they consider a user?

[eennaarbrak]

The only thing their browser is really excellent at is IIRC browsing porn or generally image galleries with lots of image content.

BS. I have a limited data plan, and I use Opera to reduce the amount of $$$ I pay. And it works extremely well. So what if my data routes through a server? It goes through various central points anyway. I know Opera can see my surfing habits, and adapt my surfing behaviour accordingly.

Privacy is important, but it is ridiculous to assert that it is the only thing to take into consideration.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[LordLimecat]

Back when our campus got hit with MS Blaster and everyone had ~1kbps in their dorms, my roommate showed me Opera and how it loaded webpages roughly 2-3x faster than others. I dont recall whether turbo was out at this point, but IIRC Opera was doing something that grabbed page data much quicker than whatever else I was using at the time.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[LordLimecat]

Chrome will prompt you to kill popups / download requests if it gets too many, and after a script has hung for some time will give you a prompt to kill it. I believe Firefox has that second feature as well.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, opera has a lot of builtin features that are great for porn browsing. (like finding the next/previous image based on a number in the url). I ran into an Opera engineer at a live sex show in Amsterdam a few years ago and he confirmed that porn was their original demographic -- use IE for regular browsing, opera for the stuff you don't want your wife/husband/kids to know about. (And porn ads were the most lucrative.) They used to have work orgies and such but that's tamed down now.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[Sockatume]

It was really, really handy back on the old 320x240 Nokias because in addition to bringing pages down to a size where the browser wouldn't choke, they reflowed the text into screen-width columns.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[Mattcelt]

Opera has always either been the first or the first to do it right. Hands down.

You're not kidding. Opera's Multi-Document Interface (MDI) was the first foray into tabbed browsing nearly three years before anyone else.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[X0563511]

TFS mentions they are switching to Chromium for JavaScript - so that's out too.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[X0563511]

Email does not require a web browser. In fact, using email instead of HTTP would probably be smaller even factoring in compression. (I think you're confusing webmail with email)

Re:What do they consider a user?

[DrXym]

Opera Turbo is useful if you find yourself bandwidth constrained. e.g. I have a 3G key for when I'm in Spain which used to have a 100MB limit per day before kicking down to 64kbps. Enabling Turbo, ad block, a disk cache and / or squid (I used both) were all ways to maximize the internet I got for my allowance. The datacap appears to have risen up to 300MB a day last time I used it so the need is not so pressing but I still enable turbo to just to claw back space.

Otherwise I don't use Opera. I really don't like it as a browser at all but for the turbo feature. Protocols like SPDY may ultimately make Turbo less relevant and eventually obsolete.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[elfprince13]

I was an Opera user for about 3 years before I discovered ABP. Glad they've finally caught up.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[jittles]

Sorry, there no such thing as "excelling" at compression "especially" with Opera Turbo.

You're obviously unfamiliar with how Opera does their compression. And its the same reason that I actually do not use the mobile version of Opera (well I don't use Opera at all, but I did try their mobile browser). They redirect all requests through their server where they reprocess images and do other things to compress and reduce the data footprint for a website. This is how they are able to excel at compression. The cost is your privacy and security.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[jittles]

Sorry you are familiar. haha. Someone at work bugged me and I thought I had finished reading your comment and hadn't. My mistake ;)

Re:What do they consider a user?

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't they used to have an ad blocking function built in. One that simply filtered out elements of common ad sizes?

I'm surprised they were behind in getting that more modernized.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[SolitaryMan]

They are really big in Eastern Europe (Russia, Ukraine, Belarussia), where I can assure you the bandwidth is actually a way less of a problem than in US. It is just a cultural thing.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[Anonymous Coward]

With the switch to webkit, they lose whatever technical advantages they might have had.

There are several reasons why I prefer Opera, and their rendering engine definitely isn't one of them.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[nullchar]

And, they've had side tabs for many years, with thumbnails too.

I don't understand how anyone uses Chrome (and variants) for Real(TM) web browsing. TabKit+ on Firefox seems to be the only power-browsing tool.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[tibit]

Why on earth would you need a web browser to do email?

Re:What do they consider a user?

[tibit]

Look, it's no longer a web browser's feature if it needs something else besides the client machine it runs on and the web server that serves the content. Opera is providing, essentially, their own ISP infrastructure and bundling access to it into their product. Calling it a web browser is disingenuous. Yes, I am familiar with Opera's bundled email client, so their ISP thing is simply a yet another add-on. But it's not something that a web browser excels at. The rest of the product does that, web browser proper got nothing much to do with it.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[tibit]

It used to be that their engine was the only thing that made people switch. When the choices were IE, Netscape and Opera, it didn't take much figuring out to go for Opera. I used to pay for it, it was so good.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[RocketRabbit]

I was using tabbed browsing in OmniWeb before Opera ever came out.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[hairyfeet]

So its buh bye Opera then? I mean why should I bother with Opera when its just gonna be another Maxthon, a skin on somebody else's engine?

Re:What do they consider a user?

[hairyfeet]

Small village in Africa? How about many areas of the USA that can't get anything but dialup or a capped all to fuck connection? At my mom's place the ONLY thing they can get is wiFi run by a Billy Joe Bob that knows jack shit about dividing bandwidth so when some dumbshit is watching netflix on the thing you pretty much have to have something like turbo.

Most folks don't realize how truly shitty our coverage really is because they go by zip code and the way they measure is if ANYBODY in that zip code can get high speed? then they think anybody can.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[lightBearer]

And when you live in a small village in africa

My take on this is that the person being envisioned doesn't actually own the computer they are checking mail from, hence webmail and browser.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[shutdown -p now]

They still have an ad-blocking function built-in, it just doesn't have the ability to automatically download lists of content to block (but there were third-party solutions for that). Otherwise, since Opera 10 or thereabouts, you could right-click any page and choose "Block content" in the context menu, and then just click on everything that you never wanted to see again, and it'd add it to the list.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[shutdown -p now]

The irony is that the new browser in Wii U is still Opera, and is licensed from Opera ASA - it's actually the first version of Opera to move to WebKit.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[TeknoHog]

A lot of applications used some form of tabbing before web browsers became popular. For example, the different sheets in a spreadsheet program. I never understood the hype about getting this rather basic feature into browsers as well.

Opera's MDI is really quite different from tabbing, although it can certainly act that way. It is basically a window manager within the main window, I guess developed because some ironically named operating systems have very poor window managers themselves.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[swilly]

I remember using tabs in Galeon on Linux before Opera had them. Opera has always had MDI, and it was the first mainstream browser to use tabs for MDI, but it wasn't the first browser with tabs. I don't think anyone really knows who did it first.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[hairyfeet]

Sadly they've let it go to shit the past several releases, probably because they knew they were walking away from it. my oldest was a die HARD Opera user, he wouldn't touch a system without Opera and used to carry Opera portable on a stick so he wouldn't have to use anything else but even he is trying various browsers because he says Opera gets slower and buggier with each release.

If they are gonna abandon presto I really wish they'd open up the code, who knows what good could be made of an open presto engine. After all Mozilla rose from the ashes of netscape, maybe with it open devs could make presto so good opera would end up switching back.

Of course all this is ignoring the rotting elephant in the room which the EU and DoJ really REALLY needs to investigate, and that is Apple's ability to influence the market with their monopolistic practices. Before some Applelite chimes in with "Apple isn't a monopoly" bullshit, total bullshit, look up the wording. it says you do NOT need 100% of the market, you don't even have to own the majority of the market, just that you have the power to assert undue influence and you would be hard pressed to find anybody that says Apple doesn't seriously influence the markets. From the prices of books to whether the web will run on an open format like Theora VS a locked down H.264 ALL of the major calls about the web made in the last couple of years has been made with iPhone in mind.

Do you think Opera would be ditching presto if it could run on the iPhone? Do you think we'd be forced to run HTML V5 before its ready or use a patent troll format like H.264 if iPhone users could choose between that and Flash and WebM and Drac and Theora? No if the company of St Steve of Cupertino says "it is thus" then that is what it is gonna be, no choices in the matter. And I think they need to be investigated as NO company should have that power, I was against MSFT using IE to gain control and I'm against Apple using iPhone/iPad to gain more control. No matter what device or OS you use the web should be about choice, not some corp laying down the law.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[jittles]

Sorry, I replied to myself and you didn't see it. A coworker interrupted me in the middle of reading your post and when I looked back I thought I had read your whole comment. Ignore me.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno, but I use Opera not for Presto, but for stuff like Opera Turbo, Opera Link, RSS/mail reader, built-in mouse gestures, tab grouping and URL filter, extensions API etc. etc. etc.

It would be pretty sad, though, if they'd to lose features like All/No/Cached images switch and fit to width mode, which are probably tighter bound to the engine.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[RocketRabbit]

I think this is another one of those cases where we can safely say that it was probably the fine people who brought us Smalltalk. ST80 had a tabbed interface in the system browser, which while not a web browser was very similar in style and scope.

Re: What do they consider a user?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah ok. Calm down and go shave your feet. Hobbit.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[mattack2]

Why are you jumping from Apple to H.264, developed by MPEG?

Re:What do they consider a user?

[ahabswhale]

lol...You must be kidding. That (side tabs) looks like pure ass and really doesn't help me. You really need to learn how to use your browser better if you think Chrome isn't useful for real web browsing. Between pin tabs and multiple windows, it's works pretty damn well. There are also a shitload of tab plugins for Chrome (like Tab Outliner) that will give you a bunch of options for dealing with tabs.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[nullchar]

1999 called, they want their multiple windows back.

I don't see anything in the Chrome store that's even close to TabKit vertical tabs.

"Tabs Outliner" for Chrome is only a step up from "Side Tabs"... the tab bar is still horizontal and over crowded, and now I need to manage another window to focus when switching applications. It's decent, but needs to be in the same window as the browser and replace the existing tabs.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[hkmwbz]

They are counting active monthly users, not just downloads.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[hkmwbz]

What are you talking about? The Wii U browser isn't Opera.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[hkmwbz]

No, Nintendo probably switched because it was cheaper to license some third-rate Webkit wannabe rather than the real thing. The 3DS and Wii U browsers are truly horrible. The Wii browser actually did a good job within the limits it existed in.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[hkmwbz]

Sadly they've let it go to shit the past several releases, probably because they knew they were walking away from it.

Really? I've been having fewer problems than ever, and looking at the general feedback on their site it's basically the same as always: A vocal minority complaining about things. This is the way it's been for nearly 20 years now. Someone always insists that "they've let it go to shit" and things like that. Even 15 years ago.

even he is trying various browsers because he says Opera gets slower and buggier with each release

Doesn't make sense. It's got fewer bugs than ever.

Do you think Opera would be ditching presto if it could run on the iPhone?

Definitely. They don't have to switch to Webkit across the board just to run on the iPhone.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[hkmwbz]

The engine was the reason people switched? Why? Why would people switch because of something they didn't even notice?

Re:What do they consider a user?

[hkmwbz]

How is it hijacking when they tell you what's going on, and you explicitly have to enable it manually?

I guess you've never heard about proxy servers before.

With the switch to webkit, they lose whatever technical advantages they might have had.

Why? People don't give a damn about the engine. It's the GUI that matters.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[hkmwbz]

Because Apple insisted that H.264 be part of the HTML5 video spec.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[shutdown -p now]

How do you know that it isn't?

One of the Opera guys elsewhere has claimed that Wii U browser is indeed the "new" embedded Opera (WebKit-based one).

Re:What do they consider a user?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, opera isn't in the advertising business. I feel more comfortable letting them see where I go than google, yahoo, bing, Facebook, amazon, and apple.

I seriously doubt they care what passes through their pipes. that makes them the last holdout of the attitudes that used to rule the web.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[hairyfeet]

Because the original HTML V5 spec called for an open format, Theora was the main contender but WebM was being looked at too until Apple made it clear they would only allow H.264 on iPhone/iPad and made a call to Redmond and got MSFT on board and that put an end to that. Ask Mozilla how friendly MPEG-LA is to open source.

Also remember both Apple and MSFT have a stake in MPEG-LA and since both are closed companies the fees are trivial to them, hence why windows has had H.264 drivers since Vista. But you try to bundle H.264 with a FOSS browser or distro and see how quick you get a cease and desist. But if the fact that apple can decide what formats HTML V5 uses for video isn't undue influence on the market i'd like to hear what qualifies, I bet if you were to talk with one of the Opera devs off the record they'd say the only reason they are walking away from presto is they can't get permission to run it on iPad/iPhone.

say what you will about MSFT, at least i could run whatever the fuck i wanted on windows, even products that competed with theirs like browsers and Open/Libre Office, Apple is turning out to be worse than MSFT in every way when it comes to monopolistic behavior.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[tibit]

If you seriously think one didn't notice Opera rendering engine's speed on low-end hardware back when it made real difference, you simply didn't try it and you don't know what you're talking about. In the days when Netscape and IE were the only serious alternatives, Opera had them beat by a wide margin. Even today it handles pages with lots of images at a very good pace when other browsers will trash your drive.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[tibit]

I have heard about proxy servers, but the way the feature is peddles is that it speeds things up. They don't really clamor that what you do is get all your content through Opera. I'm not saying it's a bad feature to have, just that you're basically using Opera as your ISP, with everything it entails.

Maybe you don't give a damn about slow browser rendering engines, but I do, and that's why I used Opera for many years for sites where there are 500 images to download after getting the 40kb chunk of html. The difference used to be so vast it wan't even worth arguing about it. It made no sense to use other browsers. In the last couple of years it got better with other browsers, but they still have latency issues when there's lot of images and you scroll around. Today, Safari and Opera perform equally well if you have an SSD. With mechanical drives, Opera still wins by a slim margin.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[hkmwbz]

What Opera guy was that? I know because Opera never reported to the market that they got a deal (they would definitely do that), and news sites reported that it was using some other browser.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[hkmwbz]

Yes, you are basically using Opera's proxy servers. Like any other proxy server. And their documentation clearly explain what Turbo does.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[shutdown -p now]

It was one of their official "community manager" guys in comments of this same news posted on a prominent Russian website. I don't know his name, but I do know his official status with them. Of course, it is entirely possible that he got it wrong himself.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[hkmwbz]

Russian, eh? Wikipedia:

The browser is based on NetFront NX v2.1, which uses the WebKit layout engine

Guess that's settled then.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[shutdown -p now]

Thanks for clarifying it. It looks like the guy was confused about his own product.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[ahabswhale]

2012 called, it wants you to learn how to use the keyboard.

Just to be clear, I don't use any tab managers. To me, they're total noobville. I can guarantee you that I can get to any tab I need to faster than anyone using one of those slick tab managers. It takes me two hotkeys (assuming I don't already have the appropriate browser window open already). So I don't see how these things would do anything other than slow me down. However, I can see how mousers would like them.

Re:What do they consider a user?

[dewrox]

and it sucks in all forms. by making this move they are affirming that they are irrelevant.

So... why use Opera?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, why would someone use Opera over Chrome or Safari if you're on a Mac?

Re:So... why use Opera?

[SJHillman]

Maybe because of features other than the rendering engine? I prefer Opera's UI, but it's also great to use as a general web client with integrated email, IRC, torrents, etc.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[beelsebob]

Well, because of all the other features. The rendering engine was never a reason to choose opera over them in the first place – it was much slower, especially the javascript engine.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[tibit]

It's really better for browsing image galleries, especially over poor connections. Other than that I agree.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[Rhaban]

Opera's javascript engine was pretty fast a few years ago, before chrome existed. It was way faster than firefox's, ie's or safari's.

Then chrome arrived and, although opera's engine has evolved a lot and is faster than ever, it never managed to reclaim its first place, even letting firefox claim the second place in the javascript speed race.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[Anonymous Coward]

it's also great to use as a general web client with integrated email, IRC, torrents, etc.

I've never really understood this. Why are web browsers considered so special that people want them to be things other than web browsers? Email, IRC & Torrent clients exist and integrate into web browsers just fine.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[SJHillman]

Opera integrates the different components much more tightly than, say, Thunderbird and Firefox. Email and IRC effectively become just another tab and it allows them to share resources so that they're more efficient than having separate programs for each one. It'd be great if Opera released a light version with just the browser, but I don't think you'd really see huge improvements by removing those features simply because they are so well integrated.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[teg]

Why would someone use anything other than Chrome or Chromium on any platform?

On Mac, one good reason would be because it is just 32 bit - unlike the rest of the system. This means that e.g. java does not work in Chrome on Mac. While that might be seen as a good thing at some times ;), this means that you can't use many of the banks here in Norway - or do online credit card payments.

Also, some might think that Google knows enough about you already...

Re:So... why use Opera?

[Runaway1956]

Why an all-in-one?

Personally, I don't want an all-in-one. But, some people don't want to switch between applications. They just want to move from one tab to another. That's cool, I guess. I'm far more comfortable with separate applications, almost always spread between several virtual desktops. The wife, on the other hand, has never used virtual desktops, and seldom switches between applications. She's a better multi-tasker than I am, in real life, but on the computer, hang it up. One window, one desktop, one app. She'll create an insane number of tabs in Firefox, but it's all in Firefox.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[bmo]

You can certainly install the Java for Chrome on Macintosh, but you are limited to Java 6 as the most recent. Google provides a link to the instructions on how to do this.

http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2429779

which links to...

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5559?viewlocale=en_US

--
BMO

Re:So... why use Opera?

[AVee]

Personally, I don't want an all-in-one

Me neither, normally
However, to me sites like StackOverflow and newsgroups or mailinglists pretty much represent the same activity (over different protocols). I really like having those together in the same application, and Opera merges those rather nicely.

On top of that they where the first to implement tabs, which for me was the initial reason to start using Opera. And afaik they are still the only browser to have mouse gestures out of the box, something which I wouldn't want to do without anymore.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[Anonymous Coward]

For me it has to do with clicking links. If I'm clicking a link in my web browser, I would prefer the target of the link also appear in my web browser. This includes things like torrent links and mailto:, both of which Opera handle.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[Archenoth]

I use Opera because it both has the best usage paradigm for me and integrates with pretty much everything I need to do online.

It takes far less time for me to do anything in Opera than it would in another browser. There are extensions for some Opera features in other browsers, like Mouse Gestures, user scripts, and user CSS. But they all lack capabilities that Opera's native version has. There are also no extensions for some Opera features like Tab stacking, or mass-refreshing, pinning, or deleting tabs and windows. (Complete with incremental tab search.) The website-independent settings settings are also awesome, I've used them to make my Slashdot hot pink for example. :)

Also, If I don't like Opera's interface... I can build it.

It has shortcuts for everything too, and if it doesn't, you can make them. One in particular I use is Mousewheel tab switching. Firefox has partial mousewheel tab-switching in it's current incarnations, but it only works with [Right Click] + [Mousewheel down].

Also I've seen mouse gesture extensions for other browsers, (The best extension is All-in-one gestures for Firefox since it also integrates Rocker Navigation.) but they don't encompass the entire browser and only web pages. So I can't use mouse gestures to close or navigate a settings menu for example.

It's sidebar is also really useful. I use it for things like controlling VLC, or E-Mail and RSS and Usenet, or looking at Opera's CPU usage, or contact management with incremental search an everything (No screenshot for this one because too much personal information), or controlling Transmission (Torrent program), or interacting with notes, or quickly turning on/off my proxies or masking my user agent, or managing my tabs and windows, or

Also, as a web developer... Opera has a lot of spiffy development features that lack in other browsers. Dragonfly has more capabilities than the Webkit inspector, for example it can inspect attached events in DOM nodes. There are also view modes built in that allow you to highlight element borders for debugging CSS or see DOM attributes inline. Autoreferesh is also good for debugging CSS and for repeating YouTube videos. :)

I glazed over most of it's features, and it's still many magnitudes more functional than other browsers.

How many extensions do you think I use to get this functionality? The correct answer is zero. And the browser takes up less space than either Firefox or Chrome when installed.

Is this a good enough reason to use Opera?

Re:So... why use Opera?

[amicusNYCL]

Why are web browsers considered so special that people want them to be things other than web browsers?

You've got that backwards. It's not that web browsers are "considered so special", it's that all of the other services you mentioned are considered so useful that it just makes sense to have them all in one place.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we don't really like sending Google every single page we visit and everything we click on.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[Anonymous Coward]

The one killer feature of Opera that has stopped me from moving to another browser has been the address bar. To my knowledge, no other browser has the same functionality as the Opera address bar, and I haven't found one add-on that mimics that functionality.

The address bar in other browsers works quite simply: if the entered string is a web address, the browser goes to that page. If it isn't a web address, it does a Google search.

Opera implements multiple search engines and bookmarks directly into the address bar. For instance, if I type "w" into my Opera address bar, it goes through my bookmarks, finds that I've tagged Wikipedia with "w", then shows me the Wikipedia front page. If I type "w %s", it does a Wikipedia search on %s. The bookmark tag and the search engine don't have to be related in any way: "alpha" alone takes me to Memory Alpha, while "alpha" and a search term does a Wolfram Alpha query.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[jones_supa]

But you can improve the performance and quality of Google products by sending all your information to them!

Re:So... why use Opera?

[Archenoth]

Not quite.

In style of all the other features they copied, Firefox and Chrome both do this now... Both for address and keywords.
But Opera's keyword search is better because it can handle POST requests whereas Firefox's and Chrome's cannot. So you cannot keyword Google Translate (Or similar services) with excessively long strings. Also, many searches are exclusively POST-based.

I honestly use [Ctrl] + [L] more often than any other key combination because I have so many keywords. (Notice the scrollbar? That list has grown since then too.)

I usually set my default address bar search to Google's "I'm feeling lucky" because it usually goes to the right website without ever needing to see a results page. (Keyword address is "http://www.google.com/search?btnI&q=%s" if you want it.)

It even goes to Google search if things are too ambiguous.

The only downside are some automagic suggestions, they won't show up unless you specify the default Google search keyword yourself. (In my case, "g".)

Re:So... why use Opera?

[shutdown -p now]

Because some people don't like its overly minimalistic UI.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[lightBearer]

You could always switch to SRWare Iron.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure who had this feature first, but I've used it for ages in Mozilla based browsers. I remember using it to search the PHP 3 manual back in the day. I'd just type php [keyword] and it used my keyworded bookmark.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[Archenoth]

Yeah... It's a pretty old feature. But Opera was the one that created it.

This happens really often actually. For example, even right now Firefox is currently trying to integrate another Opera feature in its recent releases too. It's not fully functional, but try [RIght Click] + [Mousewheel Up] in the newest Firefox to switch tabs... (Down is broken)

Re:So... why use Opera?

[ahabswhale]

Uh...have you used Chrome or Firefox in the last three years? You can do this shit already and have been able to for a long time.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[hkmwbz]

It'd be great if Opera released a light version with just the browser

It already exists. It's what Opera is by default when you install it. Mail and all that other stuff is disabled until you decide to start using it.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as it's released under a proprietary license, I have no use for it.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[netsentry]

Dragonfly is good for inspecting, particularly for mobile with remote debugging, but I find Firebug and the Web Developer addon for Firefox easier to use. I guess I might just be used to right click + Q to inspect instead of navigating a menu ... albeit only about a 0.75 second time-saver, it's what I'm used to ... and the Web Developer toolbar allows quick highlighting of block elements like you were mentioning. Not to mention quick cache disable, js, all image sizes and paths on the page, and quick user agent access.

The one thing Opera does have that I LOVE is the Opera Mobile Emulator. Emulator plugins for Firefox still give spotty results, but even my weakest mobile detection scripts work with all presets in OME. This is more useful than the Dragonfly remote debugging even, in my opinion.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[Archenoth]

Well, it's really preference in the end. I've always found Firebug and Web Developer a bit clunky. Especially how they handle JavaScript. In Opera, we get a fancy schmancy pretty-print beautified version of code (Togglable) to make weird formatting readable. Every variable that is initialized can be inspected by hovering over them with the mouse.

This is debugging a mouseover event in minified jQuery.
As you can see, it's a lot easier to work with. I just hovered the mouse over elements to inspect them, and clicked on the HTMLDivElement to select it on the page. While not an ideal situation, it certainly is made easier because of Dragonfly.

One thing I like about Firebug that Dragonfly handles in a weird way is breaking on AJAX requests. But that's about my only complaint.

But that's just me. Different strokes for different folks.

and the Web Developer toolbar allows quick highlighting of block elements like you were mentioning. Not to mention quick cache disable, js, all image sizes and paths on the page, and quick user agent access.

Yeah... Dragonfly doesn't have disabling JavaScript and the sort because it's an option built into the browser already, so it would be redundant. I access them all through a my sidebar (Show/hide it with [F4]) and custom shortcuts, so it's all usually really fast.

I guess I might just be used to right click + Q to inspect instead of navigating a menu ...

You don't need to navigate a menu to inspect elements... That would be really tedious to use.
If you are on the Document tab in Dragonfly, you just need to click an element on the page to select it. No need to navigate DOM structure to pick something up.

Also, if you are in another tab, [Right Click] -> [I] does the same thing as [Right Click] -> [Q] does for you.

Re:So... why use Opera?

[beelsebob]

A few years ago is not now. Try writing a game running in html5 canvas. You'll find roughly:

Chrome's rendering and javascript is plenty fast enough for most stuff.
  Safari's rendering an javascript is plenty fast enough for most stuff on Mac OS. On windows, the rendering is dog slow.
Firefox's rendering and javascript is mostly fast enough, but can get bogged down.
  IE's rendering is blistering fast, but it's javascript is abysmally slow.
  Opera's javascript is somewhat slower than Firefox's, but faster than IE's. It's rendering is abysmally slow (even slower than safari on windows).

Re:So... why use Opera?

[Rhaban]

A few years ago is not now. Try writing a game running in html5 canvas.

I wrote one a few months ago for the github game-off: https://github.com/RonanL/game-off-2012
It's faster in chrome/chromium, but it's playable in firefox and opera.

I've written several tests to optimize canvas rendering. I found that chrome benefits a lot more from pre-rendering in an hidden canvas, while firefox doesn't benefit from it at all. Opera is about twice as fast as firefox for pure canvas rendering, and a little faster than chrome.

Keep in mind, I only test rendering a small (12x12px) image, and a game is a lot more than that: pure js performance is very important and not tested here at all.

Here are my test results right now (on linux, with several tabs open in chrome but only one in opera):
Chrome 24:
Draw 100k sprites: 0.551s
Draw 100k sprites in a buffer: 0.370s
Draw 100k sprites with a rotation: 2.193s
Draw 100k sprites with a rotation in a buffer: 2.145s
Draw rotate a sprite in a buffer, the draw it 100k times in another buffer: 0.427s

Opera 12.12:
0.441s
0.344s
1.964s
1.856s
0.344s

Firefox 17:
0.815s
0.892s
4.267s
3.897s
3.085s

Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't need multiple rendering engines, we just need one standards compliant one. Let the features of each browser be the differentiating factor (Chrome's simple UI, Firefox's extensions, IE's.... applet support?)

captcha: possible

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[cpicon92]

We don't need multiple rendering engines, we just need one standards compliant one

Ideally, yes that's true. In practice, this would result in the one becoming a defacto standard, and whomever controls the one controls the standard. We are already kind of seeing this with WebKit. Competition is never a bad thing.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is the competitor to the W3C now then? Competition is not a good thing, when it comes to standards. The only question is, who is best to take the standard forward: the W3C, or the webkit implementors? Either choice creates a monopoly, but with the latter choice, it's a monopoly that produces a working and free implementation.

The point is, when implementations are free, why do we need paper standards at all?

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is only one implementation then what is the point of having standards? Not having enough competing implementations that keep each other sharp and make it meaningful for the makers to complyto a shared standard is what prevents the world from being burdened with another IE6.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is, when implementations are free, why do we need paper standards at all?

A standards organization is made up of industry members who are stakeholders and other interested parties. It's a democracy, which is why standards are always so slow in coming. An implementation is necessarily owned and managed by a much smaller group; democracy-styled software development management doesn't work.

The system we have now where we have standards organizations which are sufficiently careful and methodical and multiple implementations with one or more also acting as testbeds is serving us well. It just happens that WebKit an implementation with many benefits and so is eating the lunches of the others, but let's not jump to the false conclusion that a single open-or-otherwise implementation would serve us just as well.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[tibit]

You live on this cloud nine where standards are complete and leave nothing up for interpretation, and where implementations of the standards are bug-free and introduce no vendor-specific extensions. Alas, in the real world, it's not that way.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[OOSCARR]

Who is the competitor to the W3C now then? Competition is not a good thing, when it comes to standards.

WHATWG

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[silviuc]

Except in webkit's case, nobody actually controls it. Sure, Google, Apple and Co do spend a lot of money paying developers to work on it, but the thing is open-source. Can they all just fork it at some point and turn the forks proprietary. Probably, but why would they? They already share the load on developing the thing, why wouldn't they continue sharing? It would also create fragmentation in their userbase, they really don't want that.

There was one FUDster some months ago that was on a website that was arguing against Webkit because, wait for it, it contained "proprietary" technologies. Yes "proprietary" tech in a open-source product. Just how stupid do those jackasses think we are anyways?!

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

Except in webkit's case, nobody actually controls it.

Go ahead and try to submit a patch to Webkit. Anything at all.

Oh, it has been rejected. It doesn't fit into the "strategic roadmap" of the "governance" committee.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[Richard_at_work]

Who owns the master branch? Who guards the commit gates from the hordes? There's your defacto controllers of WebKit - you can fork all you want, but you need to get the main users (the browser integrators, Google et al) to follow your branch rather than the master.

Apple owns the master branch.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[silviuc]

Their control is accepted by all developers, if indeed that is the case. The minute they turn rotten, is the minute they lose "control". See the OpenOffice - > LibreOffice case.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

Or go further back, where, until Mozilla finished rebuilding the Netscape spaghetti code from the ground up, it was basically IE or bust (Opera was also around back then, but as for-pay/shareware it honestly didn't stand a chance against IE).

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, no, and that's exactly my point. No implementation of a paper standard is bug free, but if the standard was the implementation, it would be free of the kind of bugs where the behaviour doesn't match the standard, by definition. Try at least to make your strawman not be the exact opposite of the case.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

But you don't give a single specific reason why the paper standard is better than my implemenation-as-standard. "Serving us well" is weasel words - the alternative may serve us better.

As for stakeholders, what is their stake? Implementors? That becomes irrelevant. Users? Well, with billions of web users, I doubt their global interests are well served at all by the current situation. Web Developers? They just want a uniform API, which only a monopoly implementation can provide. Like I said, it's a choice between one monopoly with limited outlooks, and another. I take the argument that the outlook of the W3C may be wider than that of the webkit development team, but you're still advocating what is essentially an obsolete waterfall model over something more agile, but not really backing that up with any specific rationale.

There is evidence to suggest that the natural course of things will eventually settle on webkit as the only implementation. Opera moving to webkit is an important data point to that. So if evolution leads to one W3C and one webkit, clearly the old way (multiple implementors) did not serve us well, and a merging of the W3C and webkit might be a natural progression from that. Maybe the W3C eats webkit, so you still get all your stakeholder involvement, but they deliver working code (as well as a spec that doesn't quite match it). Would that be so wrong?

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[Runaway1956]

Imagine if we had said that a few years ago, when IE6 ruled the market. Without the competition from Mozilla, Opera, and Konqueror, among others, do you think Microsoft would have ever improved their browser?

Competition is good. I happen to like Webkit, but I'm not looking forward to a world in which EVERYONE uses webkit. Someone needs to be odd man out, doing things differently, and looking for "the next big thing" in web browsers.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

We already have the 'standard was the implementation' bullshit in Office Open XML. We don't need another in HTML/CSS.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

Well now you're just being fucking stupid.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[JDG1980]

Ideally, yes that's true. In practice, this would result in the one becoming a defacto standard, and whomever controls the one controls the standard. We are already kind of seeing this with WebKit.

It's true that WebKit is becoming a de facto standard, but I don't really see this as a problem. Some people say it's just like what happened with IE6, but there are several reasons why that was much more problematic:

• IE6 was a poorly-documented, closed-source implementation.
• It was controlled by one company. Everyone else was frozen out.
• It only ran on one platform.
• Microsoft actually had an incentive to not make IE too good, because they saw Web-based applications as a strategic threat to their Windows business.

WebKit doesn't have any of these problems. It's a free, open-source rendering engine that can and does run on just about any modern computing platform. Even though the official source tree is curated by Apple, there is major buy-in from other stakeholders including Google and Adobe, and any attempt by Apple to freeze others out would almost certainly result in a swift fork (just as happened with OpenOffice.org after the Oracle acquisition). The decade-long stagnation of the Web under the reign of IE6 was the result of a lot of very specific circumstances; it can't be replicated again, and certainly not with WebKit.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

Except in webkit's case, nobody actually controls it.

Go ahead and try to submit a patch to Webkit. Anything at all.

Oh, it has been rejected. It doesn't fit into the "strategic roadmap" of the "governance" committee.

Fork it.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[JDG1980]

We already have the 'standard was the implementation' bullshit in Office Open XML. We don't need another in HTML/CSS.

Well, first of all, the 'implementation' of OOXML was not and is not open source, so it cannot be examined or freely used. For another thing, OOXML is more complicated by an order of magnitude than HTML/CSS.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[mrbester]

Where if Hixie don't like it, it ain't happening.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

i thought that kde started webkit as a fork of their older KHMTL engine?

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

Who owns the master branch? Who guards the commit gates from the hordes? There's your defacto controllers of WebKit - you can fork all you want, but you need to get the main users (the browser integrators, Google et al) to follow your branch rather than the master.

Apple owns the master branch.

Apple may own today's master branch, but if Apple started doing anything stupid with it, Google would fork and Opera (etc.) would have the option to follow. Google is not beholden to Apple, and vice versa; that stalemate keeps Webkit neutral.

The only danger comes from the possibility of collusion between Google and Apple to break the web...and those two are barely on speaking terms.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[dingen]

No. Apple forked KDE's KHTML into WebKit.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[dingen]

Google bets their entire company on the web becoming a competent and competitive application platform and they're heavily invested in WebKit. There's no way Google is going to allow WebKit to slow down, whether there are competing rendering engines or not.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[rtfa-troll]

If there is only one implementation then what is the point of having standards? Not having enough competing implementations that keep each other sharp and make it meaningful for the makers to complyto a shared standard is what prevents the world from being burdened with another IE6.

Mod parent up. Let's add to that. Without multiple implementations it's often impossible to tell if the standard is complete. It's not until you find two different people reading it and writing software (think "the first byte will be set to one" - is that the left or the right hand byte?) that you find out that it isn't completely specified. The internet standards even explicitly say that you shouldn't have a standard before you have at least two different implementations to bake off.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[JackieBrown]

Who is the competitor to the W3C now then?

Microsoft? :)

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[Richard_at_work]

That's great. But what if Google and Opera don't agree with you? That's the bulk of WebKit integrators that aren't following your fork, so where's it's impetus going to come from?

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[silviuc]

Do you seriously believe that if they start doing "evil" the userbase will keep using their products? Sure, they might not all jump ship, but most users will start using/evaluating other products.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike OpenDocument, Open XML actually has a reference implementation. Oh BTW, Open XML is just as complicated as HTMl/CSS is and not by much more. It is OpenDocument is has simpler standard spec.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[tepples]

There was one FUDster some months ago that was on a website that was arguing against Webkit because, wait for it, it contained "proprietary" technologies.

Are you sure it was against WebKit in general, or specifically against Google Chrome? Google Chrome for PCs includes Adobe Flash Player, for example.

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[silviuc]

It was an article about the "dominance" of webkit. They did not attack a browser, they were saying stupid things about webkit and how it implements stuff that is not yet in the html5 standard. Thing is that HTML 5 is still "work in progress"

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[lucideer]

The point of standards is to regulate competing implementations. It's widely understood that competing standards = BAD (and they exist far too often in far too many industries, to their detriment; also, see this mandatory XKCD reference http://xkcd.com/927/ ) and competing implementations = GOOD (the alternative is an IE6 situation, which we're fast moving towards again with WebKit).

Here's an interesting article on the amount of *postitive* support there was from web developers for IE6 when it first came about... which does give me a strange sense of deja vu, even if the author of that particular blog post wouldn't agree.

I wonder how much this has to do with the average age of web programmers. With a development-community with such a short-term memory, I wonder will the inability to learn from past disasters (like IE6) lead to endless recursion ...

Re:Hopefully we can narrow this down to ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't need multiple operating systems, we just need one standards compliant one. Let the features of each... blah, blah, blah.

Monoculture

[Anonymous Coward]

Open standards in some sense are stronger than open source, because they provide greater capitalistic incentive for improvements (especially for usability and performance) than the commons model. And, there's the malware thing with monocultures.

Re:Monoculture

[LO0G]

How exactly does this work? If we had a monoculture (like we had with IE6), people code to the monoculture, standards be damned. If WebKit implements a standard badly, no amount of complaining by Microsoft and Mozilla will cause the WebKit folks to change their browser rendering to be compliant. And just like what happened with IE6, web developers will ignore the standard in favor of the WebKit implementation. We're ALREADY seeing this happen - webkit has sufficient market share that sites don't bother building standards compliant version of their mobile site, they just write for webkit and consider their work done.

History has shown that if you have a monoculture, standards are irrelevant - the only thing that matters is the one implementation.

Re:Monoculture

[mblase]

You're assuming Opera is a browser developers actually worry about. At less than 2% market share, Opera actually concerns me as a developer less than IE7 on typical projects.

Re:Monoculture

[Anonymous Coward]

You're assuming Opera is a browser developers actually worry about. At less than 2% market share, Opera actually concerns me as a developer less than The Zombie Apocalypse on typical projects.

FTFY

Re:Monoculture

[Kjella]

If WebKit implements a standard badly, no amount of complaining by Microsoft and Mozilla will cause the WebKit folks to change their browser rendering to be compliant.

Assuming there's malice involved and the WebKit developers have an interest in breaking the web, which nobody seems to argue. They just add experimental features that aren't standardized yet, lazy developers use the experimental tags and don't bother to make it work on anything else. I don't see how they can do it any other way, unless they hold off on all development until the W3C gets around to making a final standard, which doesn't exactly happen quick. If there was a real unwillingness to make WebKit standards-compliant you could fork and try building momentum for that, but I don't see that we have a xfree86 vs xorg situation here, just lazy developers but that's hardly a problem WebKit could fix.

Re:Monoculture

[Anonymous Coward]

You're assuming Opera is a browser developers actually worry about. At less than 2% market share, Opera actually concerns me as a developer less than IE7 on typical projects.

Web developers are dumb as fuck. They just traded one tyrant for another.

Re:Monoculture

[LoRdTAW]

"We're ALREADY seeing this happen - webkit has sufficient market share that sites don't bother building standards compliant version of their mobile site, they just write for webkit and consider their work done."

Shitty developers will go the lazy route and target the browser with the biggest share. Unfortunately, there are a lot of shitty web developers out there, many are borderline scam artists. My brother works for a small web dev company and they have a few big name clients. They always test every one of their sites on multiple browsers including Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and IE 6/7/8/9 on both Windows XP/7/8 and Mac OS (mobile browsers usually work if the page works correctly on the desktop browsers). Of course its not easy and often IE is a real steaming pile (especially 6/7/8) but they get the job done and done right.

Re:Monoculture

[ahabswhale]

No, there's a big difference. This tyrant actually offers developer tools that aren't complete pieces of shit. Microsoft is so far behind the curve it's the fucking joke of the web developer community.

Re:Monoculture

[u64]

I mostly just follow the web standards and let the browser developers worry about support.

such an ambiguous feeling..

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using this browser for about ten years. Wish them not to fail.

Monoculture, here we come (again)

[McDutchie]

This is bad news. Another step on the way to browser monoculture, with all the problems that can bring. Next thing Firefox will switch to Webkit and we'll have only Webkit browsers and IE left.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the natural end point of any "free" market. I don't understand why people have such a hard time understanding this.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[ixarux]

only Webkit browsers and IE left.

Aah. Sepia-tinged nostalgia ...

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Vintermann]

Since Opera's engines were closed source anyway, I don't see the diversity they provided as terribly valuable. If they open source the stuff they're abandoning now (as they definitively should), that will be far more valuable.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Anonymous Coward]

This is bad news. Another step on the way to browser monoculture, with all the problems that can bring. Next thing Firefox will switch to Webkit and we'll have only Webkit browsers and IE left.

On some level I get what you're saying, and agree with it.

On the other hand, calling this "IE6 all over again" is at least little bit misguided, as Webkit is FOSS and can be forked, enhanced and deployed by anyone who wishes to do so.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Bert64]

A browser monoculture based on webkit is at least better than a monoculture based on a closed source rendering engine...
Just how bad it is, really comes down to who controls it and how much input other people have into it.

Of course without intervention pretty much everything will end up heading towards a monoculture... Linux for instance has pretty much killed the varied proprietary unixes that existed just as x86 has killed the risc processors they ran on.

So if a monoculture is inevitable, then minimising the damage by keeping it open is the best you can hope for.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Anonymous Coward]

Why this will never happen: http://browserfame.com/363/why-mozilla-gecko-will-not-adopt-webkit

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[c0d3g33k]

As is often the case when closed code is made free, it may become clear why they decided to switch rather than clean up their own. Proprietary codebases are often a mess compared to a high quality open codebase. Seems to be most common with games, given the extreme deadline pressures they are subject to, but not unheard of in other areas. The value of opening the code is countered by the effort required to clean it up. And if there are gaps left by proprietary bits that can't be opened due to licensing issues, the effort needed to get to a viable state is even greater. I'm not sure opening the code would bring that much value, but I do agree with you, since it couldn't hurt.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Anonymous Coward]

Webkit is FOSS and can be forked, enhanced and deployed by anyone who wishes to do so.

Which is all for naught, unless you can get your fork integrated into browsers which people actually use.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[aaaaaaargh!]

It's no big deal. If some monopolist messed around with a single platform it would be easy to replace html with an ad hoc markup language, make a browser for that and ignore all previous standards. I'm not joking. There is really nothing magic about document markup and "mobile" application frameworks, almost any undergraduate CS student could come up with something better than what we have now, and an alternative WWW would be adopted very swifty if the old one for some reason became inconvenient to most users.

To give the doubters an example, I'm pretty sure that I could come up with my own SXML-based version of the web with embedded sandboxed, just-in-time compiled scripting language and my own fast browser within a few days or weeks at maximum, just by using existing HTTP(S) for the clients/servers and gluing together some existing Racket libraries. And I haven't even studied CS. I'm sure some smarter people could come up with something better and faster in even less time. Of course, as long as there is no pressing need, this would be quite a futile exercise.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Isaac Remuant]

Next thing Firefox will switch to Webkit

I very much doubt that. Just research a bit into Firefox development and you'll see this is extremely unlikely. Almost unthinkable.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[drinkypoo]

I'm not sure opening the code would bring that much value, but I do agree with you, since it couldn't hurt.

If some unemployed OCD programmers with a penchant for refactoring code can be turned loose on it, then even a snarly codebase that Opera abandoned might pay us some dividends.

I'm using Opera Mobile on my Android devices because they are so very pathetic; I have a Nook Simple Touch which runs 2,1 (won't someone please get gingerbread working?) and I have (get ready for it) an AT&T Fuze aka HTC Raphael 110, which can be booted into Gingerbread with very little reliability. But Opera Mobile actually runs really well, to the point where I can even make practical use of multitouch zooming and so on, so long as I do not get carried away. Neither Chrome nor Firefox can even be installed on either device... this is truly a sad announcement for people who are still resorting to using antiques.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Peter Bortas]

Operas code is quite clean. Way easier to read and understand than Firefox's. Don't know how it compares to Webkit code-wise.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[CastrTroy]

Yeah, but there are always downsides to a monoculture. x86 is a big example. It took years longer than it should have to get 64 bit desktop computers because Intel was dragging it's heels. It's only once AMD came up with their own implementation and they had no other choice that they had to go along. Also look at power usage. We are finally getting real serious about mobile computing but Intel is too power hungry so you either get a device with less than stellar battery life, or a device that won't run all your old applications. There are some advantages in an open source perspective, such as if one browser implements a new feature, or fixes some CSS rendering bug, all the other browsers can immediately upgrage or fix their browsers. But I think that without real competition there is too much of a likelihood of things stagnating.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a disapointment to myself. I have IE9, Opera, and Chrome installed because they each render slightly differently. Each works better for me in slightly different scenarios. Depending on how much this changes Opera I might have to go drop it for something else.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Sockatume]

The open source community builds a tool that's so good everone adopts it? Unacceptable!

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Anonymous Coward]

Economics courses, that's why...

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Anonymous Coward]

The only bad thing about that scenario is having IE left.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[feld]

and how would you know how clean Opera's code is?

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, a free society leads to...a what, a non-free society? A society that is perfectly free to launch new browsing engines at any time? What exactly is this natural end-point of a free society that everyone has such a hard time understanding? Please O wise one, enlighten us poor plebs...

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[zoward]

A browser monoculture based on webkit is at least better than a monoculture based on a closed source rendering engine...
Just how bad it is, really comes down to who controls it and how much input other people have into it.

Of course without intervention pretty much everything will end up heading towards a monoculture... Linux for instance has pretty much killed the varied proprietary unixes that existed just as x86 has killed the risc processors they ran on.

So if a monoculture is inevitable, then minimising the damage by keeping it open is the best you can hope for.

Last I checked, the various flavors of BSD were alive and well (but I haven't confirmed this with Netcraft, so I may be wrong).

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the natural end point of any "free" market. I don't understand why people have such a hard time understanding this.

Economics courses, that's why...

Your version of "Economics" causes you to believe things that we all observe to be false in the real world. Have fun in fairy-land.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[McDutchie]

What? There is no TCP/IP monoculture. There are many different TCP/IP implementations. All of them interoperate without problems because there is a well-defined standard. That is not monoculture, that is standardization. They are fundamentally different things.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Anonymous Coward]

former employee?

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[foniksonik]

That wasn't a good answer. He basically just said that they've tied the browser UI to the render engine and don't want to separate the two. There's no reason they couldn't keep Gecko to handle XUL and keep their JS extensions to support the browser UI. They just don't want to. Add in the comment about WebKit not supporting new JS standards, which has nothing to do with WebKit (WebKit isn't a JS engine) and you're left wondering what the guy is trying to defend.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Peter Bortas]

Because I've read it.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Anonymous Coward]

As a web developer I'd actually like to see a single (one, 1) rendering engine used by all browser makers. This will save me the trouble of testing websites on 172 different browsers every time I make a change to the layout. Browser makers are free and encouraged to produce their own UI which is independent of the page rendering, but they should use the same rendering engine to provide consistency of content.

Same goes with the scripting engine. Of course the drawback is that no one can be safe from any security holes, but then again the same can be said for other common software like iTunes or Flash.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[snadrus]

The sources of stagnation are market control (via monopoly actions) & patents. Neither apply with Open Source, therefore an open source monoculture shouldn't see the problem.

Counter Example: For years, Apache was 90%+ of the webservers in the world, but stagnation didn't occur because it was open-source and improved upon, compared-against (for other solutions), enhanced by many, and educated others on the uninteresting pieces so they could build their own. We now have SPDY, safer servers, better parallel processing, and better cgi interfaces all from different organizations.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[psydeshow]

It's no big deal. If some monopolist messed around with a single platform it would be easy to replace html with an ad hoc markup language, make a browser for that and ignore all previous standards. I'm not joking. There is really nothing magic about document markup and "mobile" application frameworks, almost any undergraduate CS student could come up with something better than what we have now, and an alternative WWW would be adopted very swifty if the old one for some reason became inconvenient to most users.

I was just thinking the same thing the other day while reading the post from a guy who wants to be a web developer complaining that his Comp-Sci curriculum isn't web focused. As if the World Wide Web was the pinnacle of human communications.

People forget how quickly The Internet because The Web -- basically about 5 years. It was a lot smaller then, but our tools and methods were primitive compared to now.

HTML/CSS/JavaScript over HTTP(S) is the de-facto standard because it can be coerced into working well enough, and no one entity controls it. Come back in 20 years and we could all be using, and coding for, something else entirely. The HTTPS part, in particular, is looking increasingly unsteady on its pins.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[paulpach]

It's the natural end point of any "free" market. I don't understand why people have such a hard time understanding this.

The biggest monopolies are the ones created by government. Consider:

The federal reserve, a private entity, has a monopoly granted by government to print money. They can (and often do) lend it in secret to their shareholders the banks at whatever rate they pick (currently interest free). Free market had already chosen a currency everyone could mine: gold. Government forced people to use this worthless paper and granted the FED the monopoly. The FED abuses this monopoly to protect their shareholder banks and call them "too big to fail", so it just bails them out whenever they are in trouble, so smaller local banks can never compete

The government forces me into the biggest monopoly in retirement plan known to man: The social security. One that we know is unsustainable, and most people would chose something else if there was a choice.

The AMA has a monopoly on medical labor. No one can practice medicine unless the AMA says they can, otherwise the government puts you in jail. So no alternative medicien

The FDA (de)regulates the hell out of medicines, to the point that it is impossible for small labs to get anything approved. And it takes years to get a medicine approved while people suffer or die without access to them.

No one can deliver first class mail within the US except for the USPO. Even a kid in a bike delivering a letter to your mailbox is in violation of federal law.

I could go on and on for how government creates monopolies. Worrying about a html rendering engine, (which is not even the dominant one, and is open source) is silly. You want less monopolies, I got _the_ solution for you: free market.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[A Friendly Troll]

This is bad news. Another step on the way to browser monoculture, with all the problems that can bring.

From TFA:

"It was always a goal to be compatible with the real web while also supporting and promoting open standards. That turns out to be a bit of a challenge when you are faced with a web that is not as open as one might have wanted."

The web isn't open. It never was. Many, many sites only start working properly in Opera when you mask as IE/Firefox, because browser sniffing is still a thing even in 2013.

The popularity of Webkit also brought its share of problems. Too many blogs and sites raving about experimental features, which end up being used on production sites with no fallbacks.

The majority of Opera users won't care. The rendering engine is highly insignificant; people use Opera because of what the browser as a whole can do. I find it mind-boggling that you still need *extensions* in other browsers for something as basic as mouse gestures. I also have no idea how you can remap keys in Firefox or Chrome. Perhaps an extension as well for something as simple as that? Don't even get me started on UI customization; there's nothing that comes even close to what Opera can do.

Opera was and still is great at innovating. Many "standard" features like tab reordering, speed dials and even ad blocking (!) appeared in Opera first, sometimes half a decade before someone else implemented it. If adopting Webkit means they can spend more time doing that, and if the "Opera experience" still remains, I'm fine with it and couldn't care less.

By the way - Opera's been losing market share to Chrome in countries where it was most popular (former USSR). Now there's no reason for those who switched to continue using Chrome. They can return back to Opera.

What still needs to be explained is what happens to all the embedded systems running Opera. That includes fridges, vending machines, airplane multimedia systems, and even the Wii.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Anonymous Coward]

What parts of Opera's code are you referring to? Where can I download this code?

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[hkmwbz]

I don't see it. Presto is irrelevant. No one tests in it. How does replacing something that is irrelevant change anything?

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[hkmwbz]

Google "Peter Bortas Opera"...

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[mattack2]

and an alternative WWW would be adopted very swifty if the old one for some reason became inconvenient to most users.

â¦and why do you think it would be adopted very swiftly?

Regular email is inconvenient to users in that it's so filled with spam. Dealing with spam filters (either on the server or user end) is a pain⦠However, we haven't switched to a similar-but-better system (don't allow forged headers? Probably a million other ideas others have already thought about) to make spam impossible.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[mattack2]

Don't even get me started on UI customization; there's nothing that comes even close to what Opera can do.

How about *not* having UI customization? i.e. using the system's built in UI? No, not a simalcrum of the system's built in UI, the actual built in UI, so things like menus and popups and buttons work the way they're supposed to, and not just look almost the same while they're not actually being used?

I'm serious. That's largely why I use Safari. I like(d) iCab's functionality long ago, but nowadays use Safari mostly because every other one I try doesn't do the "normal stuff normally". (Yes, Safari breaks the rules too by having the tabs for tabbed browsing not be normal OS tabs, but at least buttons and most window controls are the real OS provided ones and behave properly.)

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[c0d3g33k]

Thanks for the insight - that's good to know.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[drinkypoo]

People forget how quickly The Internet because The Web -- basically about 5 years. It was a lot smaller then, but our tools and methods were primitive compared to now.

That's because before the web the internet didn't exist for most people. Before the web the landscape was dominated by expensive providers on the one hand and educational users on the other. The web didn't become significant until internet access got cheap, and the internet didn't become popular until the web became significant.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[tepples]

Anonymous Coward wrote:

unless you can get your fork integrated into browsers which people actually use.

I'd like to see how that's been a problem. Is there a well-known case of WebKit not taking a certain outside patch?

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[McDutchie]

Spam in email is a solved problem because spam filters have become convenient and more than good enough.

Cryptographic signing solved the header forgery problem a long time ago, and the major providers all add signatures to the headers.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[alexvoda]

Sign this to tell Opera we want it to open source Presto: https://www.change.org/petitions/opera-software-open-sources-of-presto-engine And for that matter they should open source Carakan, Vega and Unite too.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Peter Bortas]

I should probably add that I haven't worked for Opera for several years and don't really have a horse in this race.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[hkmwbz]

At least you have first-hand experience with the actual code.

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen proprietary code and open source code, and I've seen some amazing bits of closed source code (AIX Operating system for one), and some really shit open source code (Android and Firefox).
So one can't generalize that open source code is better maintained than closed source code

Re:Monoculture, here we come (again)

[thejynxed]

All except I keep finding mail with forged headers in my inbox, mail that originated from Hotmail, GMail, Yahoo, and several others, and yet claimed they came from some other place such as Paypal, Blizzard or eBay.

Can we have the source, please?

[Dr. Spork]

The Presto rendering engine had some pretty decent performance, and was often the fastest among the graphical browsers. If it's being abandoned, wouldn't it be nice if it were made available as open source? Webkit isn't the right tool for every occasion. I hate to see something so good just die.

Re:Can we have the source, please?

[The MAZZTer]

I can confirm that Opera was the fastest browser before Chrome was on the scene. I visited my aunt once and was trying to use her ancient PC with my thumb drive... Firefox took forever to start, but Opera was instant and browsing was nice and snappy.

Still nothing compared to how Chrome would perform later, at least on other PCs, but still.

Re:Can we have the source, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

While I am primarily an Opera user, my main complaint with the program is that it won't shut down. After being closed, it just hangs out in the background using up resources.

Re:Can we have the source, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Webkit/chrome has always been much faster for me (on good hardware).

Also how do you know it's good? It's closed. Code might be complete spaghetti.

Re:Can we have the source, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

What was the weather like while you visited your aunt? Did she serve you nice dinner?

(If you're going to come along with anecdotes, the least you can do is throw out the irrelevant details...)

Re:Can we have the source, please?

[StripedCow]

You can still use Presto. Just put the following in your document head:

<meta render-engine="https://www.opera.com/developer/tools/presto-12.14.bin" />

Ok, that was a joke. Would be cool, though.

Re:Can we have the source, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to get on topic troll? Since you hand out critique take some now instead.

Re:Can we have the source, please?

[jeditobe]

https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/opera-software-open-presto-sources?utm_campaign=twitter_link&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=share_petition SUPPORT THIS PETITION!

Re:Can we have the source, please?

[maestroX]

yes please

Re:Can we have the source, please?

[justthinkit]

Actually, Internet Explorer has this problem and I've never seen Opera have it.
.

In addition, IE also spawns/loads multiple copies of itself at times, and this definitely chokes the windpipe of the computer pretty effectively.

I live in Opera, run Firefox for those few pages Opera has trouble with...and I run IE, when forced, about 3 times a year.

Re:Can we have the source, please?

[ahabswhale]

It's been a very long time since Opera has been considered a performant browser. Even IE kicks its ass now.

Re:Can we have the source, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then sign this:
https://www.change.org/petitions/opera-software-open-sources-of-presto-engine

In addition to open sourcing Presto, we should also request the sources to Carakan (js engine - replaced by Google V8), Vega (SVG engine) and Opera Unite (abandoned since version 12).
If we want Opera to open source all this the least we can do is petition them.

Re:Can we have the source, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah webkit sucks balls imo. make this abandoned engine open source so we can re-release opera, or i'll just have to find some other browser to use, netscape navigator still around?

Javascript?? Please, NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

We're supposed to be dumping all things java. Can't they make this thing work in COBOL?

Re:Javascript?? Please, NO!

[moronoxyd]

JavaScript is not Java.

Just in case you where not making a funny.

Re:Javascript?? Please, NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

And the moron of the thread award goes to:

Re:Javascript?? Please, NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaand, you are a moron

Re:Javascript?? Please, NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Javascript has more in common with Scheme than Java.

"Java and Javascript are similar like Car and Carpet are similar."

Re:Javascript?? Please, NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if you actually believe that, but just in case anyone else comes along this path, Java and JavaScript are entirely separate from each other. They have absolutely nothing in common, except that the syntax for both is descended from C. And there was a licensing deal to use the Java name.

If you want to disagree (can't see why you'd want to), give evidence.

Re:Javascript?? Please, NO!

[Desler]

The idiots who fall for obvious and old trollbait?

Re:Javascript?? Please, NO!

[JustOK]

Oh, like sanscript isn't a language to model sand casting?

Re:Javascript?? Please, NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually ... that's where you're wrong!

Re:Javascript?? Please, NO!

[JustOK]

my bad, it's to convert serif fonts.

Re:Javascript?? Please, NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

it's a scripting language for java, hence the name.

Wha?

It was originally called LiveScript. Then, and now, it has nothing to do with Java.

Re:Javascript?? Please, NO!

[Desler]

He was trolling, moron.

Re:Javascript?? Please, NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it is LiveScript renamed in some weird cross-branding deal between Sun and Netscape back in the day. Nobody has added the MAYSCRIPT attribute to their APPLET elements for years, now. Mostly because noone have added an APPLET element in years...

Re:Javascript?? Please, NO!

[JustOK]

He was trolling morons.

FTFY

Good idea.

[Spaztian]

One of the reasons I didn't use Opera was actually because Web developers never tended to create content with Opera's rendering engine in mind. This lead to a few weird quirks on some badly(lazy?) coded web pages, sometimes breaking the whole thing altogether. Now, I'm going to give Opera another go. I really like browsers features, however now I don't need to compromise my web experience on the rendering level in order to use it. Good move in my opinion, as I don't think the web really benefits from multipul rendering engines /unless/ one of them goes stale and prevents innovation (Anyone remember Internet Explorer 6?). So long as the rendering engine to webkit or Mozilla's web engine allows the web to grow, I am happy with only one or two out there.

Re:Good idea.

[TeXMaster]

One of the reasons I didn't use Opera was actually because Web developers never tended to create content with Opera's rendering engine in mind.

And that's actually the problem with Opera moving to webkit. Developers shouldn't have any specific rendering engine in mind. They should have the W3C standard in mind. By having one less rendering engine (even if it's just a minority one) reduces the pressure on web developers to code according to standards. It also makes it much harder to spot bugs in rendering engines: how do you know if a particular CSS+HTML combination doesn't work as you would expect according to what the standard does? You check it against multiple engines. If one of the engine does things differently, then either it is non-compliant, or the other engines are. Having one less engine means having one less external check, and less motivation for web engine developers to code standard-compliant engines. We're falling back to web monoculture, and just because it's not IE this time it doesn't make it better.

Re:Good idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

W3C standards? Have fun with your XHTML2 and XForms website which renders in exactly 0 browsers.

In the real world, it just has to work, and if that means a bunch of -webkit- stuff, so be it.

Re:Good idea.

[hkmwbz]

And that's actually the problem with Opera moving to webkit.

Sure, but how is that a problem with Opera moving to Webkit? Clearly Presto is not relevant at all to all those web developers, so what actual difference does it make?

Also, why should any of this be Opera's problem? Why should they pay the bill?

The Vikings and their phones

[ixarux]

Do the Scandinavians hate to be away from the mobile phone markets?

Re:The Vikings and their phones

[nitehawk214]

Do the Scandinavians hate to be away from the mobile phone markets?

Besides, mobile phones do not work from mars.

Cost related?

[Tridus]

Just speculation, but I wonder if this is cost related. It can't be cheap to keep Presto up to par with Webkit and Gecko. Using Webkit instead means they can spend less money on that, and devote more to the UI without particularly affecting the browser's standards compliance.

So in that sense it seems like a sound business decision.

Re:Cost related?

[thoth]

That's exactly what the first link says is the reason:

it [maintaining Presto] ends up taking up a lot of resources - resources that could have been spent on innovation and polish instead

and

Not only will it [switching to Webkit] free up significant engineering resources at Opera and allow us to do more innovation instead of constantly trying to adapt to the web

Re:Cost related?

[fermion]

It is efficiency. We are no longer in a time where people are competing primarily by defining HTML standards. The standards are set and the competition is who can make the best browser experience. This could be integration into other servies, speed, or UI.

So, as a small company,m,m,. if Opera is to compete it has to make the front end look good, not spend time on the engine. Only MS has the money to spend competing on the engine.

Why?

[Lazere]

To what end are they doing this? I was never a big fan of Opera, but somebody was. Their engine was one of the big things that made them different. Now that they've switched to webkit, can anybody tell me what makes them different from Chrome now?

Re:Why?

[SJHillman]

Everything other than the rendering engine? That's what really set Opera apart. The email client is really nice and the IRC and torrent clients aren't bad. I also prefer the UI to Chrome.

Re:Why?

[PhloppyPhallus]

I always thought Opera's selling points had more to do with the customizable UI, and not so much to do with it's rendering engine. For your typical end-user, the impact of Opera having a unique rendering engine is that some pages look funny in Opera because few websites test against Presto. Webkit can't be ignored these days, so by adopting it Opera has less to worry about and gets an engine that keeps up-to-date at a much lower cost than rolling their own. Moreover, should Opera wish to add features to the rendering engine (such as new proposals for the HTML spec) it's a hell of a lot easier to get other to adopt them when you've implemented it in Webkit than a closed source implementation in Presto. It's a win for everyone; the only surprise to me is that they didn't adopt an open renderer sooner.

Re:Why?

[DragonWriter]

ow that they've switched to webkit, can anybody tell me what makes them different from Chrome now?

Everything other than the rendering engine?

Well, not everything, since they are switching to V8 Javascript engine, as well.

OTOH, differentiation on lots of axes may not be as important to them as being able to drive the web in the direction they want. Opera-pushed changes to web standards may be easier get accepted by other browser vendors (and, consequently, standards bodies on which those vendors sit) if, when Opera pays the cost to develop their implementation, they've already automatically got patches to WebKit to implement them -- plus, Opera doesn't have to expend as much effort reimplementing new and widely used features from other vendors if they can just pull them in from upstream.

Working from a common open source base means that each vendor can focus on what they want to do that is new rather than duplicating other vendors' work.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I am a big fan of Opera and continue to use it as my primary browser (I'm on Opera now). I'm concerned with Opera's relevancy if it simply becomes a skin for Webkit and Chromium JS engine

Re:Why?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It's a win for everyone

Except for people like me who were using Opera because it doesn't gobble up gigabytes of memory just to display web pages.

Re:Why?

[hkmwbz]

Why would it become just a skin for WebKit? The engine doesn't even matter to most people. Most people will notice that all sites are suddenly working, and that's about it. It's the user interface that makes Opera relevant.

Re:Why?

[hkmwbz]

Maybe the engine made them different, but it also caused problems. Constant complaints about compatibility problems, for one.

What makes Oepra different from Chrome when it's using Webkit? Less site compatibility?

It's the user interface and features of course.

Re:Why?

[ahabswhale]

You'll get to keep the UI and now you'll actually get much better performance and more standards compliance. This is a win-win for any Opera fan.

Opera is developing backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

First they axed Unite, now Presto. Looks like Opera is jumping on the bandwagon where innovation means removing features instead of adding them.

Re:Opera is developing backwards

[tommituura]

Well, it has worked for Apple well enough...

Re:Opera is developing backwards

[SJHillman]

It was a shame when they ditched Unite, it was very innovative imo. I wish they would re-release it, possibly as a separate software package.

Re:Opera is developing backwards

[Merk42]

Yet when developers add features, it's called bloat. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Re:Opera is developing backwards

[hkmwbz]

Just because something is innovative doesn't mean it ends up being picked up. Unite might have been innovative, but hardly anyone was using it.

Who claimed that removing features was innovative?

Makes sense...

[dejanc]

As a web developer, I should be happy about this development, but the fact is: Opera was always standards compliant and as a user I liked how it rendered pages (qucikly and without any white screen gaps between page loads).

But it probably makes sense for them. Webkit is solid and their costs will probably go down dramatically.

Re:Makes sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that a good thing for webkit? Now Opera can commit to making webkit more standards compliant instead of their own closed engine.

Re:How much of this is down to crApple...

[SJHillman]

Opera was the first alternative browser available on iOS as a result of Opera Mini being classified as a "remote content viewer" rather than a browser.

"rendering ending"?

[nitehawk214]

Do you mean rendering engine?

After all the complaints of slashvertisements yesterday, at least something is back to what we are used to over the last 15 years. Complete lack of grammar and editing.

Re:"rendering ending"?

[Provocateur]

...which in themselves reflect a never-endering ending...

Re:"rendering ending"?

[Sockatume]

I'm quite impressed that it took this long for someone to bother commenting about it.

You're not kidding (evidences within over time)

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Presto rendering engine had some pretty decent performance, and was often the fastest among the graphical browsers." - by Dr. Spork (142693) on Wednesday February 13, @09:00AM (#42882759)

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/11/12/037241/Firefox-4-Regains-Speed-Mojo-With-No-2-Placing

http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html

http://nontroppo.org/timer/kestrel_tests/

---

* Each of those listed benchmarks tests reviews had Opera consistently finishing 1st or 2nd typically vs. all other competing webbrowser programs over time, & yes - In straight HTML processing, Javascript performance (which I consider only heading into exploits faster, as to speed gains here), & even HTML5 tests (iirc, I haven't checked those links recently though)...

(Says it all & "seconds your motion", with backing data from reputable sources!)

APK

P.S.=> Will I try the new motor/engine? Sure - However:

I strongly wager I'll still stick by Opera 12.14 64-bit, since it is amazingly well-done, finally & in pure 64-bit code too!

(Opera's devs have it down solid & with ZERO known bugs afaik, currently, as of this build)...

Time WILL tell though!

... apk

Re:You're not kidding (evidences within over time)

[ProbablyJoe]

Those links are all over 2 years old, so don't really prove anything about the performance of Opera now. Especially considering how much webkit has developed in that time, and the shift in focus towards JS performance. The second link even says to stop posting it on Slashdot because it's so outdated.

Re:How much of this is down to crApple...

[Assmasher]

Opera for iOS operated in this fashion - it's a hack forced on Opera by the wonderful people at crApple.

I'll reconfirm that (w/ documented evidences)

[Anonymous Coward]

http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3457941&cid=42883053

* :)

APK

P.S.=> Enjoy the read, & just for the hell of it? DO consider Opera 12.14 (especially in 64-bit, IF you use that memory address capable version of your OS of choice)...

... apk

Re:Opera

[MarkGriz]

Drama queen

Not Oprah.... OP-ER-A

Have you tried Opera 12.14?

[Anonymous Coward]

Had that issue in ver. 12.12 (had memory leak in it also) on videos on YouTube!

Where the plugin controller would "hang around" (but, eventually turn itself off) in that version!

Fixed, afaik & have been testing since this model released, in current build 12.14 64-bit Opera (what I use on Windows 7 64-bit)...

APK

P.S.=> THUS - You *MAY* want to check the latest/greatest, here, "straight-from-the-horses'-mouth" -> http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/ to see IF it fixes it for you - it did for me!

... apk

Re:Have you tried Opera 12.14?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the info. I've had the problem for the last few years, so I'm not sure what version that is, but I'll try the latest and see if that helps.

You talk like an effeminate cat

[Anonymous Coward]

They've already submitted patches to improve multi-column layouts even.

Snagglepuss?

Re:How much of this is down to crApple...

[moronoxyd]

Actually, Opera Mini works this way on Android as well.

Opera Mobile is the more classical version of Opera for mobile devices.

R.I.P Opera

[zixxt]

Opera is dead after this move. Ever since the founder of Opera left (forced out) Opera has been a sinking ship.

It was good know you Opera, the web browser that could fit on a floppy in my Windows 98 days.

Re:R.I.P Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

Your statements crash against the mighty cliffs of their latest results.

Re:R.I.P Opera

[hkmwbz]

It's a very strange sinking ship then, considering that they've set new profit and revenue records many quarters in a row now.

In fact, they really started bringing in the big cash once the founder stepped down.

In other words: You seem to be a bit confused.

Re:Opera

[93 Escort Wagon]

Drama queen

Not Oprah.... OP-ER-A

He was referring to Opera's fanboys.

Re:How much of this is down to crApple...

[Anonymous Coward]

But it works this way because Opera would be loony to build a hack for crApple that made it 'platform free' (in that the platform specific app is just a container for a web served 'browser experience') and then create an individual browser for Android when they don't know where their code base is going.

Opera would gladly build a platform specific web browser, but if they can't for iOS it makes no sense to do it for Android when the same hack gives you easy Android support.

Re:Opera

[DragonWriter]

Drama queen

Not Oprah.... OP-ER-A

What, you prefer "prima donna"?

Case in point: SeaMonkey

[tepples]

It'd be great if Opera released a light version with just the browser, but I don't think you'd really see huge improvements by removing those features simply because they are so well integrated.

Case in point: Is SeaMonkey significantly larger than Mozilla Firefox?

And the winner is... Mozilla?!!

[Matthew Raymond]

The W3C requires at least two implementations of a standard before it can become a Recommendation. Thus, Google needs at least one ally with its own independent browser implementation to push standards through to Recommendation status. Of the five major browser vendors (Microsoft, Google, Apple, Mozilla and Opera), three of them (Google, Apple and Opera) are now all using a single rendering engine: Webkit. Apple may have a separate JavaScript engine, but it's a fierce competitor of Google, as is Microsoft. This leaves only Opera and Mozilla as potential standards partners, and Opera just went Webkit/V8. So, basically, Mozilla becomes Google's de facto ally for Web standards. (As if they weren't already, considering WebRTC.)

Congratulations, Mozilla. Your continued Google funding is assured.

Re:And the winner is... Mozilla?!!

[JDG1980]

The W3C requires at least two implementations of a standard before it can become a Recommendation.

No one cares about the W3C any more. They've made themselves an irrelevant laughingstock by being years behind the times on updating the HTML and CSS standards. The result is that WebKit is the de facto standard now.

Re:And the winner is... Mozilla?!!

[Skuto]

Who do you think the W3C is? It's the browser vendors. Who do you think benefits from smaller browsers not being interoperable with bigger ones? Not the smaller vendors, I tell you.

Now, do you think the vendors with the near-monopoly marketshare on Mobile care about making competition in their market easier?

Re:And the winner is... Mozilla?!!

[Wraithlyn]

I suggest you read up on WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group).

THAT is the real "browser vendors" group, formed as a direct result of W3C's horribly slow, ineffective, and impractical (remember strict XHTML?) output. It was WHATWG that pushed HTML5 forward (by actually going ahead and implementing it), which effectively forced W3C to abandon XHTML.

Parent's post is entirely correct... W3C made themselves irrelevant.

Re:And the winner is... Mozilla?!!

[jonadab]

Thing is, HTML doesn't need a lot of work. XHTML 1.0 Transitional was basically good. I really only want one change from it: I want to be able to embed block-level elements within paragraphs, so we don't have to keep using as a workaround. That's it. With that change, HTML would be a mature standard. Very few additional changes are needed, and a glacial pace (which admittedly does describe the W3C, and most other large standards bodies) would then not be a problem, for HTML.

There are other web-development improvements I want, but they wouldn't belong in the markup.

CSS, for instance, is a markedly immature standard with lots of room for enhancement. I also want web browsers to support more image formats for the src of the img element -- notably, SVG. (This is only, what, fifteen years overdue? No standards work is needed for this. All that's needed is for browser developers to take their *existing* SVG rendering stuff and say, oh, yes, obviously, if an img tag brings in an SVG image, we'll render it and insert it into the layout, just like we would do for any other image format we support.) Javascript could probably use some enhancements. Unicode should have support for built-in ruby characters (e.g., for furigana) that combine with a base character like diacritical marks. (Imagine being able to take text that has ruby glosses and copy and paste it between applications, just like other text.)

There are other things too. Pretty much none of them require significant changes to HTML. HTML is fine. It does what it needs to do. Stop messing with it.

Re:And the winner is... Mozilla?!!

[yuhong]

Personally, I think "HTML5" even as a buzzword is a misnomer: http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2012/12/about-ms-os2-20-fiasco-px00307-and-dr.html

Re:And the winner is... Mozilla?!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Speak for yourself.

Re:And the winner is... Mozilla?!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think most people don't understand how the standards work with W3C. Companies and individuals have an idea and vent that idea on the W3C mailinglist and they start creating something, if there are others that want to participate, they will join them. Eventually they will create an implementation. In the browser this will be prefixed. Only after 1 or 2 implementations or at least examples have been made will W3C start the real standardisation process.

So of course most people think W3C is always late.

Re:This is bad news. And sad news.

[DragonWriter]

Monopoly is never good.

A common open-source base implementation for core features of a class of applications for which interoperability is an important feature isn't the same thing as a monopoly. It doesn't have any of the problems that come from a monopoly (it may have some of the problems associated with monoculture, which is a different issue than a monopoly.)

Diversity is power. Since everyone walks into a different direction, and then on top of that can take the best of everybody else.

That's actually the selling point of having a common base open source implementation. Everyone can focus their development efforts on their unique interests, and at the same time pull in the common features from the base rather than, if they want features that someone else has, having to reinvent the wheel to implement on top of a different base engine.

It saves time to imitate instead of innovating, yes.

No, it saves time to pull from upstream rather than reinventing the wheel for common features, which frees up resources for innovating for innovative features. This means that features that are intended to work the same across browsers actually will, while more resources are available for each vendor to implement new features.

I always wondered

[SigmundFloyd]

How does the Opera company stay alive?

They've been in operation since... about late '90s? But how exactly? A feature story on them is long overdue.

Re:I always wondered

[wiredlogic]

Licensing for portable devices and Wii.

Re:I always wondered

[AVee]

They initially made money selling the browser, later they had an add-supported version besides the paid version. Currently they make money on the desktop from search placements (e.g. using Google as default search engine) and a some stuff like certain bookmarks in the default setup. Besides the desktop they make money from OEMs licensing Opera for with mobile operators and for devices like mobiles and smart tv's.

Re:I always wondered

[nairnr]

All of the embedded devices - phones, tvs..., Wii, Heck it is on my Blu-Ray player as well...

Re:I always wondered

[hkmwbz]

But most of it is from the regular end user version where Opera makes money every time you search.

Re:I always wondered

[hkmwbz]

That's just a small part of it. Most if it is through revenue deals with Google and others (they get paid when people use the Google search field).

Their rendering what?

[wonkey_monkey]

Opera has announced that they will be dropping their rendering ending

I'd say something like "are the editors even trying any more?" if it hadn't been so clear for so long that no, they're not.

They've already submitted patches to improve multi-column layouts even.

Oy vey, what is dis, submit like an old Jewish man day?

You're welcome, & enjoy... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you'll find it "does the job", minus any bugs (& certainly security-related ones too -> http://secunia.com/advisories/product/41248/ where it displays its usual/typical "zero" known security vulnerabilities present also).

*:)

APK

P.S.=> 12.12 was awful (stuttered & lagged on backspacing via keyboard & reloading sites, but with GOOD REASON - it was to stop a KNOWN security-issue). 12.13 corrected it, but had a 'crasher' on updates - 12.14 corrects BOTH & does a hell of a good job @ it...

... apk

Good news!

[sidragon.net]

Consider the goal: invariably produce specific output for specific input. Given certain markup, styles, and scripts, there's an expected result, and that result should be the same across all browsers. That's is why we have standards. Those standards help make the Web a great platform.

What, then, is the purpose of WebKit, Gecko, Presto, and Trident—four modern browser engines—all consuming development resources, each in pursuit of the exact same standards? If each were successful, we'd have four completely duplicative pieces of software when we only need exactly one.

Some people here are claiming about monoculture. Well, sorry, these aren't biological organisms. Imagine if, instead of having resources divided four ways, those resources were focused on a single project (or, at least, some of those resources were contributing to projects that aren't waste heat). These products are nearly as complex as operating systems. Think about what could be accomplished with all that poorly allocated effort?

Now Opera have come in and helped illustrate my point. They finally realized it's inefficient for them to reinvent the wheel a fourth time. (Maybe Microsoft will do the same.) They may have also realized all this redundant effort also create unnecessary work for web developers, who must perform grueling work and testing to understand and react to the subtle differences in all these engines. With this decision, they can get their engineering talent to focus on useful development, and they've saved the rest of us quite a bit of time, too.

Re:Good news!

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be all well and good, except that the goal IS NOT to invariably produce specific output for specifc input. Web standards are not supposed to guarantee a particular output at all. To believe that to be so is a major misunderstanding. In Web standards, a great deal of discretion is intended to be afforded to the user's agent (the web browser) with regard to the specific interpretation of the contents of a web page. It is to be entirely expected that the same web page, when accessed by different users, will be interpreted in different ways by their respective browsers. Good web design should account for this by de-emphasising cross-browser homogeneity and emphasising semantics. It should not matter if a particular element of the design does not always appear in the same font, or the same colour, or even the same position, or indeed, even in a visual representation at all. This is really basic stuff; separation of content and presentation covers most of it.

There should be no expectation when creating a web site that it will be rendered in the same way in all cases. The classic example is, of course, the text-only browser or the text-to-speech browser for blind users, not to mention search engines and other automated systems. It is not possible for a web developer to design the specific manner in which a particular web page should be output by all possible types of user agent, because there are a potentially unlimited number of different types of user agent. Web standards are necessary to ensure that it is possible for all the different types of user agent, both currently existent options and unconceived future developments, to make use of the Web. The specific manner in which a web page is presented to a user is and should ultimately always be the user's and not the web developer's decision. Webmasters are responsible for the contents of the page. The user and the user's software are responsible for its coherent output.

Online services may standardize among themselves upon a specific implementation, and ignore the standards, but in doing so they should not claim to be a part of the Web.

In an ideal world, we could have a single dominant rendering engine and still adhere to standards, but in practice we need multiple popular rendering engines to ensure that standards, and not writing for the dominant implementation, remain the easy option. If we do not, we risk preventing many potentially innovative future user agents from being possible, and excluding existing minority user agents and any associated minority user groups from the Web.

Re:How much of this is down to crApple...

[Anonymous Coward]

How much of this is down to crApple...

Sorry, I'll make a more reasoned response to your post, just as soon as the subject line stops jumping on my chest and kicking my skull, screaming at me to appreciate the kudgel-sharp wit it's employing, since it clearly worked so hard at it.

I'm afraid it might be a long time before that happens, though.

Errata.

[Anonymous Coward]

s/claiming about/complaining about/

Time to say goodbye, indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, so long what-little-relevance-Opera-still-had. Now you're just another webkit clone in a world of Dolphins.

Why couldn't MS do this instead?

Re:Time to say goodbye, indeed

[hkmwbz]

How is it just another Webkit clone? It's actually using Webkit. And how is using Webkit worse than using Presto?

Re:How much of this is down to crApple...

[POWRSURG]

It's not really a hack. Opera Mini has always operated the way it does. It wasn't something they came up with just to get Opera onto iOS. That being said, this change may result in Opera Mobile being made available on iOS as well.

Was to reinforce whom I posted to

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject-line, & also the fact I noted it was "over time" also - that WAS the point (see the post parent to mine)...

* :)

Shifting to JavaScript performance... boy, that's one I just will NEVER "get over" as to focusing on its speed, vs. its security & faulty DOM!

Mainly since it's like leaving the door open to your home (the trash comes blowing in).

E.G./I.E.-> Ever since they started scripting documents, ala macros in MS OLE Compound document structured storage (think word docs, excel spreadsheets, etc.), it was a "portent of things to come" & worse so, on the web/wire (or, are there NOT massive problems with that occurring via JavaScript? You KNOW there are!).

APK

P.S.=> Anyhow/anyways: The 2nd link stating that doesn't invalidate its data & especially in regards to the person I stated it to (for his reference or others attempting to 'berate him' for his statements too) - it shows that /. readers just LOVE to have a backing reference from a valid test to refer to is all (& the guy probably got sick of his site being 'bandwidthed-out'/DDoS'd in essence/or as is commonly referred to here as being "slashdotted" to death, lol...)

... apk

Re:How much of this is down to crApple...

[Assmasher]

Opera Mini itself is not a hack, Opera Mini on iOS is a hack.

Does anybody seriously believe that Opera wouldn't create a native application full blown 'non mini' browser for iOS if crApple weren't such jerks about their walled garden?

Re:How much of this is down to crApple...

[Assmasher]

Not really, all public companies are the devil - they are legally required to be as soon as they have public shareholders.

Operating Systems are just tools in the toolbox. I could give a sh** which one someone else uses; ergo, I doubt anyone gives a sh** about which ones I use (especially since I use pretty much all of them.)

I must admit though, IRIX has always been one giant stinking pile o' crap.

Natalie Portman is pretty hot, although, I'm more of a Xena Warrior Princess liking type. I like women who are not likely to break during sex.

Agreed re mobile

[CdBee]

I have a large Android handset (Razr xt890), the Opera Mobile browser is brilliant for quick access to my favourite sites - the UI is perfectly tuned for use as a news, weather, forums browser (big icons for faves as it starts, and its incredibly fast). Other stuff, I use Chrome on it as my bookmarks sync to that...

Re:Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer pre-Madonna

Cache

[ThatsNotPudding]

Hmm. But how much of that speed was due to their massive web caching servers?

Petition to make Presto OpenSource

[jeditobe]

https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/opera-software-open-presto-sources?utm_campaign=twitter_link&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=share_petition

google pages...

[Anonymous Coward]

lots of google functionality was not allowed for opera, although it worked fine if you masked opera as FF or IE. (most importantly image reverse search)
also, google was pushing ads saying that opera is not modern browser. every other browser was suggested as "modern", but opera not.

and now, opera is switching to webkit.

it almost seems that google forced opera to do this...

Petition to Operasoftware

[jeditobe]

https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/opera-software-open-presto-sources?utm_campaign=twitter_link&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=share_petition

Sad face.

[Deliveranc3]

Opera I'm going to miss you! You used to be so small fast and configurable. Now you seem big and bloated rarely using less than 700MB for only 30 or 40 tabs.

You still save my sessions automatically while the others require plugins, you lead the way again and again making browsing better not just for your users but for everyone. Now you're throwing in the towel to Google, Microsoft and Firefox(which I don't hate I just don't like), leaving yourself open to patent trolls and big business shenanigans (IE:that's a proprietary standard or custom rendering that makes no sense and causes you months of work to duplicate because it was developed by throwing tonnes of lousy developers at it, ala pdf).

This is going to bite you in the butt, you know it I know it.

I'm sure you have your reasons and once you get on your feet again your brilliant contributions will make things better again... in the meantime I may watch from the sidelines trapped inside the chrome ecosystem, which doesn't have opera:config...

All the best in the future.

Re:Sad face.

[hkmwbz]

Now you're throwing in the towel to Google, Microsoft and Firefox(which I don't hate I just don't like), leaving yourself open to patent trolls and big business shenanigans

Why would they be more open to patent trolls when using Webkit?

This is going to bite you in the butt, you know it I know it.

Why, and how?

Opera is still weird.

[laxr5rs]

Every time I've tried Opera, I think, "weird." Then I read comments that say things like, "it was first at this, or this, or this, and it's better at that." How many people are actually using Opera on a regular basis? Just wondering.

Re:Opera is still weird.

[akozakie]

Me, for example. As a browser and e-mail client. Almost exclusively, on Linux, Windows and Symbian. Since the 6.x days. I've even beta-tested for a while in the 7.x - 9.5 times. After getting used to Opera, Firefox always seemed so unwieldy, I found it funny it was so popular. Even funnier was every time Firefox itself or some plugin brought some "amazing innovation" which I had been using for months already. The newest versions unfortunately are a bit worse, but every change breaks someone's workflow (who will link xkcd?) and I'm still very satisfied.

Firefox without plugins sucks. Firefox with plugins is a unique setup, so in case of any problems you're on your own. Opera is great out of the box and actually feels more customizable, not less - the things you need are right there, no need for a plugin. Whatever works for you, of course - I don't care what you use, I'm happiest with Opera.

I'm sorry about this development. Presto was great - fast, accurate & standards-compliant. Some rare, ancient pages break in it to this day, but that's just a good hint to avoid a given page. And the more implementations are there, the better - if all of them stick to the standards, then standards are the only way to go for webmasters. If only two implementations exist - well, we've already been there in the Netscape vs. IE times. So, Opera, allow me to voice my opinion: THIS MOVE SUCKS.

The switch to V8 on the other hand is much welcome. JS engine in Opera is too slow at times, and with modern pages this usually decides whether the browsing feels smooth.

We'll see how this goes. For now, I think I'll stick with Opera. I really don't want to go through the process of getting Firefox to work how I like (remember that as a non-user I don't know which plugins do what), IE's not an option as I rarely use Windows, and Chrome... Well... Let's just say I'm not inclined to run Google's browser. They already know too much. Chromium, or whatever the open-source version is called, well, maybe...

Who am I kidding? I'm stuck with Opera and I like it (at least until it begins to clearly suck, then I will change, just as I switched to Opera years ago).

Opera CEO is a sales guy!

[eminencja]

The former CEO was a visionary that created the company and founded it on technical excellence. The current CEO is a sales guy. Killing Presto is said.
1) This will kill the crew morale; most of the dev's will quit.
2) Opera may continue to grow for a bit; just like Dell did when it started to outsource more and more manufacturing, and then design to asian companies. (One of those companies is now known as Asus). But it the long run, having no technology, it will deteriorate.

Re:Opera CEO is a sales guy!

[hkmwbz]

This will kill the crew morale; most of the dev's will quit.

Why would it kill morale? If there's anything that would kill morale it's to have to spend most of your time fixing broken sites instead of doing cool new things. According to an Opera employees, the devs are still there.

Opera may continue to grow for a bit; just like Dell did when it started to outsource more and more manufacturing, and then design to asian companies. (One of those companies is now known as Asus). But it the long run, having no technology, it will deteriorate.

What do you mean "having no technology"? How will Opera deteriorate by using the most popular browser engine? How is Opera outsourcing anything. They will be contributing to Webkit.

Re:Opera CEO is a sales guy!

[eminencja]

> Why would it kill morale?

Please, rendering technology was the heart of the browser and now it's been flushed down the toilet.

> How will Opera deteriorate by using the most popular browser engine?

How will it innovate? How will it differentiate? By creating a different set of icons on the toolbar? Look at Dell (basically sticking their logo on sb's else hardware) vs Apple which actually innovated and designed stuff. What Dell did made sense in the short run (they were able to increase their profit margins), but in the long run without innovation and technology you lose.

Re:Opera CEO is a sales guy!

[hkmwbz]

Please, rendering technology was the heart of the browser and now it's been flushed down the toilet.

So? If said technology was frustrating to work with (which we now know it is because they have to spend far too much time doing boring things like patching sites that keep breaking), then replacing it will boost morale.

How will it innovate? How will it differentiate? By creating a different set of icons on the toolbar?

So basically, the way Opera "innovates" and "differentiates" today is to be far less compatible with websites than Chrome?

Of course not. It differentiates with its features and user experience. The user interface, not the engine. The engine is a negative differentiator because it doesn't work on many sites.

Look at Dell (basically sticking their logo on sb's else hardware) vs Apple which actually innovated and designed stuff.

What makes you think Opera won't come up with new and unique features? Does switching to Webkit suddenly mean they lose that ability?

Please Mod Up

[caspy7]

Please mod parent up.
I've been following Firefox development for some time and this echos my sentiment as well.
There are a constellation of reasons why Mozilla will not switch to Webkit. One of those reasons is the one that has been mentioned several times in the comments: avoiding a browser monoculture.

Mozilla is very ideologically driven and understands that there is as much a danger of Webkit becoming a danger to the web (especially the mobile web lately) through monoculture as there once was with IE. It was from that environment that Mozilla formed and Firefox was born. And this belief remains engrained in their DNA.

Re:How much of this is down to crApple...

[hkmwbz]

If this was because Apple doesn't allow non-Webkit browsers, they would have switched to Webkit only on iOS.

Absuulutely no reason to use Opera now

[Anonymous Coward]

Presta is a fast rendering engine, especially once you turn off images; when I had dial-up I did most of my browsing that way. Even now that I have 6mbit cable, I keep Opera around because of it's rendering engine

Vertical Tabs Done Right

[SnappyTech]

Vertical tabs done right, are what keep me with Opera. I often open a dozen windows at a time and the tabs only display well vertically.

Opera Is Dead

[Anonymous Coward]

When Opera does release the last version with Presto I will install it on my machine and then never upgrade. Rest in Peace.

Opera has always been a miserable failure at marketing. First they charged for a software where everybody else was giving it away for free, dramatically limiting their growth when they were leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. Then they continually changed the user interface with every new version of their software so you had to re-learn how to use their browser. Now they are getting rid of the key thing that brings them value. They were the only place to shop for Presto. Nobody needs their expertise to build a Webkit browser.

Note to all mobile customer: if you want a dedicated browser no longer any need to call Opera. Just hire a consultant with some Webkit familiarity. Opera is no longer needed. Rest In Peace.

Another Norwegian company throwing away perfectly good Intellectual Property (think Symbian) to adopt something which brings them no strategic advantage.

This stupid decision will KILL Opera. The company will be gone in a few years.

Please make Presto open source so somebody else can come along and pick up where you dropped the ball. Rest in Peace.

Re:Opera Is Dead

[alexvoda]

Then sign this to ask them to open source Presto: https://www.change.org/petitions/opera-software-open-sources-of-presto-engine

:S

[Anonymous Coward]

Mixed feelings.
Everything that has a beginning has an end, as always.
But choices are the essence of living. Taking away one of them is always a loss.
I guess Presto couldn't live forever and it seems that the ongoing economic crisis didn't help at all.
In developers we trust now! 0:)

Citation/evidence needed... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's been a very long time since Opera has been considered a performant browser. Even IE kicks its ass now." - by ahabswhale (1189519) on Wednesday February 13, @10:10PM (#42891755)

IE kicks Opera's ass at what exactly? I posted a few benchmarks here earlier (some older, some NOT so older) -> http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3457941&cid=42883053 & I didn't see THAT happening there in them!

So, per my subject-line above? Provide some documented proof from an online browser benchmark test @ least... & YES, thanks for that IF you do so!

(Why? Well - I actually bookmark/favorite these for reference is why, so IF you can provide & produce your proof? I can actually use it!).

Fact: Opera's consistently been FASTER than FF or IE over the years now, per those tests I posted...

Chrome being a "newcomer" on the scene with GOOGLE's ca$h behind its development as well, has helped it be a valid competitor in terms of performance @ least, but it too has copied features from Opera (such as 'by site preferences' I noted below)... if not speeddial features as well & definitely tabbed browsing too!

PLUS, another FACT: Competing webbrowsers (IE, FF, Chrome) ALL have copied features from Opera though!

I.E./E.G.-> Opera comes "built in" with features the others only gain via addons (which slow a browser down, fact - stack up a few in FireFox & see... this is a KNOWN issue in fact!) OR, that the competition has OUTRIGHT COPIED from Opera, which had them first!

THE BEST ONES? Ok:

---

1.) Tabbed browsing comes to mind here as an 'example thereof

2.) So does Speed-Dial type features (or even popup blocking)

3.) "By site" preferences as some other browsers copied, OR, need addons to do (which again, slows them down)!

---

(Those are the "big 3" imo, but there's also built-in IRC, email client, Opera "turbo" & more too!)

By Site Preferences are the best (tough call, considering tabbed browsing &/or speeddial rock)!

It's a HUGE Opera feature for security AND SPEED, imo @ least, but it's NOT only "opinion"!

(It's based on fact, via tests of my own, since disabling java & javascript alone not only secure you but also speed up page loads too)!

Mainly since I can set a GLOBAL POLICY to disable cookies, frames/iframes, plugins (only on demand too which Chromium just copied no less), javascript, & more (as to things that get used against you by malicious sites/servers/hosts/domains & maliciously scripted sites) wholesale to ALL sites, first!

Secondly, I then create 'exceptions' for sites that need those features ONLY as needed, on a minimalized basis (usually e-commerce/shopping/banking online sites, those that need javascript & cookies 9/10 times).

NOW - If this is you saying it does kick Opera's ass in javascript (the only possible here and I doubt that too), that's like saying it kicks Opera's ass at being infected by malicious script faster, at most/best, only.

Bottom-line on THAT note?

The dumbest thing being done is concentrating on javascript SPEED vs. its faulty DOM and security issues present (that are a good 90% of what gets taken advantage of by malicious script serving sites or ad banners).

Why?

Javascript's used for database access online largely is why, & that means it's used for online banking/shopping (e-commerce) & that means someone's MONEY!

(Dealing in that with an insecure faulty mechanism is outright irresponsible... point-blank!)

APK

P.S.=> Still, I'd like to see your proof of your statement, & one that's documented from a valid test from a reputable enough source!

Why?

Well - I use both (I still have to use IE 10 64-bit on some sites vs. other browsers is why)

Re:How much of this is down to crApple...

[tepples]

The issue is that Apple would not let Opera release Opera Mobile, and thus Opera Mini had to become the face of Opera on iOS.

Your premise is incorrect.

[sidragon.net]

For the engines in question, that is the goal. It's not as if Trident is for screen readers and Gecko is for full-fledged browsers.

J2ME

[OOSCARR]

Will we see a J2ME version of Opera + webkit?