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Opera Picks Up Webkit Engine

Posted by Unknown on from the proprietary-software-dies dept.

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.

6 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. Monoculture, here we come (again) by McDutchie · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Monoculture, here we come (again) by Vintermann · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

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    2. Re:Monoculture, here we come (again) by Bert64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

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    3. Re:Monoculture, here we come (again) by Peter+Bortas · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

  2. Cost related? by Tridus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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  3. Makes sense... by dejanc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.