Opera Dropping Presto In Favor Of Webkit?

new build:

http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2013/01/28/opera-12-13-rc2

 

I'm hoping there are more than just three changes in the build. I'll readily admit that the Opera community can at times whine enough to make Noah's flood look like a rain puddle, but they had some legit complaints last build and I don't see any reference to Opera at least looking at them.

 

It's an RC...

12.13 final will be released soon.

then new betas will start, I'm assuming with a larger change log.

 

They're certainly moving along pretty quickly.

 

I have read all this thread, and even understood a little of it, but one comment by Davesk17 in his post on Jan.21 really escapes me:

"Presto may not be perfect, but a lot of the problem could be that a lot of web pages are incompatible with it. This is more to do with those who have designed the page in the first place than Opera ASA IMO."

That seems to be the explanation given by Opera itself in answer to complaints about pages not opening with Opera. Isn't it unrealistic to expect web page designers to be concerned with compatibility with a browser used by less than 5% of the public? Seems to me Opera might be more concerned with making Opera compatible with more web pages rather than the other way around. Would it be totally unrealistic for Opera to use multiple engines, as some browsers do (Avant, Lunascape, Maxthon)?

 

Exactly.. Nobody in their right mind would devote man hours to coding for something in use by 3-5% (max) of the population, it just doesn't make sense. Although I do not believe most of the issues are with coding, rather Opera's rendering engine itself having flaws.

12.12 was a problem, lots of people had issues. 12.13 was a DEBACLE, literally breaking 3-4 of the most popular websites, and crashing nonstop. 12.14 fixed 'some' of the crashing, but now Facebook is broken in some cases.. Opera is really failing lately, it just isn't viable.. Sadly.

 

Opera can work around most of the issues, but some rare webpages may need to be reported as they may need specific fixes. Report them here: https://bugs.opera.com/wizard/

Usually, if the webpages conform with W3C web standards (their recommendations, not to be confused with their drafts), they will load fine in Opera and won't need specific fixes.

 

Opera world market share: 1.75%.

 

It has 1.75% of the worldwide desktop browser market share and 9.84% of the worldwide mobile browser market share. With these markets combined, Opera gets a 2.70% market share - according to Net Marketshare.

 

even if it's 2% it's still a hell of a lot of people if there are 2 billions internet users in the world.

we're talking about over 40 millions people.

 

Let's assume 2 possibilities assuming Opera goes with the multiple engine route...

1. Web developers adopt Presto in their webpage design assuming the change leads to a bigger market share for Opera
2. Web developers don't bother since "Webkit engine is now used in Opera"

It's difficult to predict and I still have doubts. Would the gains justify the extra work? More importantly...would the decision to use multiple engines help in the long run?

Opera team will analyse the costs vs benefits and implement things the way they deem fit. Till then...all we can do is conjecture.

 

Web developers shouldn't need to "adopt Presto" in their webpage design. They just need to develop webpages which conform with W3C web standards (their recommendations, not to be confused with their drafts) and every decent browser will load them fine. And also stop the compatibility hacks for old versions of IE - in order to incentive people to upgrade to latest versions.

 

Funny, it makes perfect sense to me.

Well, there you go then; straight from the horse's mouth.

I dunno squire, Chrome breaks more pages for me than Opera does. I know that there is a lot of whinging on this thread about Opera, but I wouldn't use it myself if it was deficient in some way. That certainly doesn't escape me! The only pages Opera really breaks for me are some Yahoo! News pages, & it fractures them a little than outright breaking them. I find Opera a fast useful & customisable browser. It works well for me on three separate computers (including portable versions).

I still predict that this time next year it will still have the Presto engine & not be owned by Facebook.

 

What he said.

 

Would it be asking too much for the folks in Norway to correctly render Netflix right out of the box, without resorting to tweaking?

 

Nailed it. Drop developing for Webkit (solely for I mean), drop browser-sniffing and if you're going to prefix do it right. Site design has gotten sloppy, lazy and heavy just for features and prettiness sake in my opinion.

 

Opera known for polished skins and elegance? Uhm, not really.

Looks like everyone has a different view of what Opera "used to be." No one seems to remember all the complaints for version 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9...

 

That's what security fixes are for. These are minor versions only intended to fix stuff like security flaws.

I don't know why you think there should be a lot of fixes in a Release Candidate.

 

Designers should code to standards, not once for each browser engine. Opera isn't expecting designers to code for Opera either. They are hoping that designers will get a clue and follow standards, and while they work towards that goal they're constantly doing workarounds in Presto to make sure it's as compatible as possible.

These days most compatibility problems are caused by browser sniffing and blocking.

Not if Netflix is either blocking Opera or relying on undocumented bugs in other browsers that Opera would need to add workarounds for before it can start working. Those workarounds don't come about overnight.

The problem needs to be analyzed (properly), the fix implemented (without breaking other stuff), then tested (especially making sure the fix doesn't break other sites, which probably requires a lot of resources), and finally deployed.

That takes more than just a few hours.

 

Opera the only browser that doesn't correctly render Netflix. Maybe Netflix not available in Norway?

 

I agree with the use of standards.

Nevertheless, in my previous post, I'm not talking about what needs to be done by web devs. My choice of words perhaps betrayed my original intent so I'll try again. Some web dev simply choose to design pages for specific engines (e.g. Webkit/Gecko) If that remains (and I doubt it will change soon), how would multiple-engine be a help in Opera's case? Sure, it keeps Presto fans happy but is it worth the time/energy over let's say sticking to 1 engine only? I don't have the answer but there goes my thoughts on the subject. It'll be interesting to see what Opera team decides.

 

Not sure why you decided to reply to a post from last month, but what the hell, I'll bite. Opera has plenty of bugs that have been there for ages on end that don't get fixed. My post was in regards to 12.13, and we're on 12.14 now, so you're late to the party actually. My whole point is that from v11 to now, there are still bugs aplenty that can affect settings and websites that have not been attended to. That is why I was expecting a bigger changelog at the time. Plus, it was RC 2 at the time, which is close enough to final that one would expect more fixes. We weren't talking about a Snapshot here. Do you understand now?

 

Yes it is, but I don't think there's a connection between the two.

 

I added Site Preferences for netflix.com / movies.netflix.com and tweaked them to Accept cookies in Cookies, Send referrer information and Mask as Firefox in Network...

And Netflix works 100% right here, with Opera 12.14.

 

So then there is no excuse for Opera not rendering Netflix properly straight out of the box.