Opera Dropping Presto In Favor Of Webkit?

Gonna quote what this guy said:

Please read the article before commenting. Also, read my quote, this isn't just about Microsoft.

 

That's why I said it could be bad for Opera at the start because of its longtime fans. Chances aren't all that bad for WebKit Opera to be an entirely different beast, and if they take out a lot of the configurable "guts" the fanbase may shun it. Opera users tend to be power users, they want to be able to change just about anything, to tweak just about anything. I don't look at Opera as a "download and go" type of browser and many of its users don't either.

 

ot posts removed. discuss in civil manner or not at all. Thank you

 

I've been reading some Twitter profiles ... some Opera's own devs and employers (and former devs/employers) don't seem to be ... happy ... with this move AFAIK.

Also: "Mozilla developer Robert O'Callahan expressed disappointment with Opera's decision." Source.

 

I am trying avant browser with chrome engine under its hood. The browser is very fast and I feel it is faster than chrome itself. I hope that opera develops a similar browser

 

I'm not sure your quote is very accurate. Apple put its foot down in the W3C as well. They prevented features from being made part of open standards. So what does that mean? Is Apple in command of the W3C as well?

What current developers aren't happy?

Not surprised if former employees aren't (sour grapes), but that's life.

 

I prefer to not cite names. Those are my impressions, others can have others.

 

Maybe you are mistaking former developers for current developers? I'm seeing a new fire being lit among Opera employees. I think they love this. Imagine working on something really frustrating for a long time, and suddenly you get to stop doing it (compatibility), and do new, innovative things instead.

Doesn't the latter sound much more exciting than trying to plug holes in a dam that are appearing over and over again?

 

Which employees? Links to their comments? It's better to read and hear their own words than any of our guesses or opinions. I'm not sure where you get that there is any innovation here considering it was far more "innovative" to come up with their own in-house engine than just using one already in use by Chromium, Chrome and every knock-off out there of both of those. I'm all for compatibility, but in my opinion the symptoms are being treated instead of the disease.

 

Yes, links to comments would be nice. I don't keep all links I visit, unfortunately, and Wild Hunter didn't want to share his either.

How is making a browser engine innovative? Sure, JIT for JavaScript was innovative, and there's still room for browser engine innovation. But Opera did not do that. They were too tied up fixing compatibility problems. There's nothing inherently innovative about having your own browser engine

Now they can spend their time innovating both on WebKit and their UI.

How would you fix Opera's compatibility problems?

 

Perhaps we're both using the word innovative when we shouldn't be. I can see your point about it not being innovative to develop your own engine, but neither is it to simply use one that others use. The only real "fix" to the majority of compatibility problems is to slap web devs upside their heads and try to get them to stop coding for one browser or one rendering engine. The rise of mobile has had a hand in this as well since a lot, if not most, of the mobile browsers are WebKit-based. Am I saying down with mobile? Of course not, but many web devs are strictly basing their work on how a website will work in WebKit only, and ignoring or putting less effort into making certain that other browsers with differing engines will work just as well. Is that more work? Of course. Can every web dev out there do it with their time/budget constraints? Nope. But not doing so is all but saying "To hell with standards", making previous and continuing work on standards nearly pointless.

 

Very interesting (and long) read...

http://generatedcontent.org/post/43036827576/hey-o-lets-go

Some small snippets:

 

Dragonfly's getting the chop. I bet they dump M2 as well.

 

I'd bet they drop M2 as well. I have no stats to show so I wonder how many use it to begin with.

 

Not sure if I've reported a post outside of blatant spam in my entire time here. I find that very funny though.

 

It is indeed funny. I was all ready and waiting to learn something new too. How disappointing.

 

hahaha!

i hope you are well compensated for all these headaches.

 

Sincerely, if these are the main negative consequences (lack of Drangonfly and M2), I'll probably continue using Opera.

What I fear most is the fact that WebKit/Chromium engine are considerably larger than the Presto engine. And, a multi-process architecture consumes more system resources.

Which means Opera may become much heavier in lower powered devices, unless they optimize the code in someway.

 

The first thing that came to mind when I read Opera + WebKit + Chromium was... Oh, a sandbox coming to Opera users. I hate that!

This may actually be the greatest of the reasons to have me back as an Opera user, which I stopped being when Chromium first came out.

Maybe now they will have some spare time to come up with a better GUI, for example (one that isn't a Firefox kinda rip-off). Other improvements would be welcome as well, of course.

 

I've been wondering what will happen to the Opera x64 build. It will disappear I suppose.

 

I don't think that this is negative for Opera.

Actually, this is something I wanted. Chromium and WebKit projects are one of the best so Chromium based Opera browser is something I would fancy!

 

I'm about to show my engine and coding noobness here, but going by this link: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mult...rer-Firefox-and-WebKit-140535.shtml...perhaps it'll make a difference depending on if they use WebKit 2? WebKit 2 seems like it's easier to deal with than Chromium/Chrome's version.

As far as multi-process goes, sure it may use more resources but it can still be more beneficial.

 

I don't know why it would. Granted I don't know everything about WebKit or the way Opera may do things, but I'd suspect that if the browser was officially built and supported for x64 moving to WebKit wouldn't change that. Firefox needs a rewrite only because it was never 64 to begin with and every 64 bit version they ever had stayed in Alpha form. Now they don't even support that. Chrome already is 64 bit over on the Linux side, they just are taking their sweet time providing it to Linux for complicated reasons I have no understanding of.

 

No, that Opera x64 build will most likely disappear. There is still no released Chromium/WebKit x64 Windows port.