Opera to switch to Webkit

I dont know when and why I switched away from Opera to Firefox.. but its one piece of jem.

Opera Software today announced reaching the milestone of 300 million monthly users across all its browser products on phones, tablets, TVs and computers.

"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."

To provide a leading browser on Android and iOS, this year Opera will make a gradual transition to the WebKit engine, as well as Chromium, for most of its upcoming versions of browsers for smartphones and computers.

"The WebKit engine is already very good, and we aim to take part in making it even better. It supports the standards we care about, and it has the performance we need," says CTO of Opera Software, Håkon Wium Lie. "It makes more sense to have our experts working with the open source communities to further improve WebKit and Chromium, rather than developing our own rendering engine further. Opera will contribute to the WebKit and Chromium projects, and we have already submitted our first set of patches: to improve multi-column layout."

The first look at what Opera is bringing to the smartphone game as a result of this switch will be shown at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this month, with a preview of its upcoming browser for Android.

"Opera is also experimenting with WebKit in several research and development projects, and many of you got a peek of one of them, codenamed ‘ICE’, last month. As a leading innovator in browsers, we are very excited that ICE received such great buzz. We will provide more information about ICE and other exciting R&D projects in the future, but as we are also really proud of our new browser on Android and our Opera Web Pass operator offering, those products will be the main focus at MWC," says Wium Lie. "The shift to WebKit means more of our resources can be dedicated to developing new features and the user-friendly solutions that can be expected from a company that invented so many of the features that are today being used by everyone in the browser industry."

"300 million is a bonanza big number, and we are certain this move will help us grow even more - and make our products even better," says Boilesen.

"Opera is for people who appreciate choice, and we are going to make it even easier to choose Opera in the future."

Link

Huh? Presto engine was already fast enough, we don't need another chrome clone :banghead:

Stupid opera.

^^ it happens when ~~people~~ developers don't follow web standards. last time I checked Opera was the most compatible browser with the standards. this was bound to happen as more apps(HTML5) are targeted to Webkit based browsers(AKA Safari/Chrome/Android stock browser). I think this is the only move which Opera could do.

long time opera user here. opera is the most compatible browser by web standards, but the web itself is very bad at sticking to those standards
increasingly irritated by the frequent updates, and switching to chrome for all the web 2.0 sites. mostly because everything does not stop if one site goes down or hangs.
but many site work much better on chrome. all the live, dynamic sites are definitely better on chrome. grooveshark, lastfm, 8tracks, youtube, reddit, pixlr are some sites that are easily better on chrome than opera.
and google strait up keeps harassing you to switch browsers to chrome, and then many web sites have an irritating pop up saying that the site is not optimised for your browser if you are using opera. then I usually don't bother with that site.
if this change means I don't have to keep a chrome version running for the applications, then it's welcome

Hmm... people still use Opera! Good!

Sad day. I'm going to switch to ie10 now.

ssk_the_gr8 said:
Sad day. I'm going to switch to ie10 now.

IE10 is really good you know

Opera > all.

Sad day for Presto though. Sad day for web-standards as well. Reminds me of the IE6 era.

It's mainly because mobile browsing = Webkit as far as support is concerned. And Apple doesn't allow a full fledged browser to use some other engine than Webkit on iOS.

They can use Webkit only for the Mobile browser and keep Presto for the desktop.

Oh well this is bad. Hopefully the change will be for the better

ssk_the_gr8 said:
Sad day. I'm going to switch to ie10 now.

tkin said:
IE10 is really good you know

Switch to Firefox if you really consider switching from Opera.

Really sad. I love Opera for a long time.

"Opera is the browser that everyone needs, but not what everyone deserves right now."

A bit over the top?

Opera will show a preview of its first Chromium-based smartphone browser at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month. The browser company, which boasts of having 300 million users, says that it has already made its first contribution to WebKit: a set of patches to make WebKit's handling of CSS columns as capable as Presto's.

Long time opera user(fanboy

) here.
I don't mind this at all. Never used opera for its rendering engine. well maybe for the instant back feature. But thats about it. And knowing Opera I am sure they'll figure out a way to keep the instant back feature in the webkit based browser.

jaykant said:
Opera will show a preview of its first Chromium-based smartphone browser at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month. The browser company, which boasts of having 300 million users, says that it has already made its first contribution to WebKit: a set of patches to make WebKit's handling of CSS columns as capable as Presto's.

No doubt about this, opera has been the foremost leader in rendering tech forever, opera creator(forgot name) actually designed CSS, maybe with opera we can finally get rid of the maximum no. of bugs that chromium has.

well this seems a logical move... when i first got internet, opera was the only browser i used for a couple of years... then one day that compatibility problems with certain sites began coming up.. and the frequency of the isuues began increasing and some site would just make the browser hang.. then i switched to Chrome. and i have been using it since..

i hope the devs at opera redesign their WebKit to look different from Chrome.

btw i guess Opera Mini is the default standard of mobile browsers..

i'm so disappointed by opera's decision to switch to webkit. I hated IE6 for ruining the web and now due to web developers ignorance, webkit is the new IE6. I would have preferred it if they chose gecko.

ssk_the_gr8 said:
i'm so disappointed by opera's decision to switch to webkit. I hated IE6 for ruining the web and now due to web developers ignorance, webkit is the new IE6. I would have preferred it if they chose gecko.

Same here, but Presto was faster than all, its google's damn forcing their stuff down everyone's throat that caused web devs to become ignorant and design webpages that had issues with opera, even google broke gmail for opera a few years back, had to use fake browser id to circumvent that, not to mention google also blocked instant for opera at time of launch, only supported it a lot later. If every web browser devs stuck to web standards then web devs would have been forced to use proper standards :evil:

Using IE10 and FF, they cant match opera. But the truth is that Opera was not getting traction and with the power of google's advertising monopoly they could never compete.

ssk_the_gr8 said:
Using IE10 and FF, they cant match opera. But the truth is that Opera was not getting traction and with the power of google's advertising monopoly they could never compete.

Yes, its very surprising to see Google, who people praise for openness and android etc is actually turning into a silent tyrant, previously they tried to reject their advertisement contract with firefox when chrome came out, then I see a lot of products like Avast and adobe flash, etc come with chrome installers :facepalm:

BTW.. we are talking about Webkit rendering engine and not the chrome browser , webkit is still open source.

We're not that ignorant rcuber. We know web kit is oss. But competition is important.

and now due to web developers ignorance, webkit is the new IE6. I would have preferred it if they chose gecko.

Why ? Whats so bad about webkit ? not arguing, just wanna know.

cute.bandar said:
Why ? Whats so bad about webkit ? not arguing, just wanna know.

Its not bad by itself, but it is never good to let a single entity monopolize the market. Lack of viable alternatives means the stifling of innovation. Last time it happened -- IE6 -- aka the dark ages. Also, web devs are supposed to adhere to web standards. They'd start coding specifically for Webkit if it were the dominant rendering engine (already happening now). Opera's Presto was the best, if not in performance, then in memory management.

kbar1 said:
Its not bad by itself, but it is never good to let a single entity monopolize the market. Lack of viable alternatives means the stifling of innovation. Last time it happened -- IE6 -- aka the dark ages. Also, web devs are supposed to adhere to web standards. They'd start coding specifically for Webkit if it were the dominant rendering engine (already happening now). Opera's Presto was the best, if not in performance, then in memory management.

The word, chrome uses as much ram as the pos android OS does, even without addons.

btw will the webkit opera will use will be a heavy modified fork ?

We have independence to add (or remove) anything we like from WebKit or Chromium via our fork, but we aim to promote interoperability, not harm it.

Source
It seems to be..

tkin said:
The word, chrome uses as much ram as the pos android OS does, even without addons.

and processor..you can test it with a laptop and core temp application.