what exactly defines a "monthly user" for Opera and how is that measured? Is it based on usage statistics, or is it just number of installed/downloaded clients?
Usage. Installed/downloaded is very high.
300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit
31–40 of 53 posts
Re: 300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit
#32Terrible news.
This means basically giving up on standards-based compatibility.
Not bad news for Opera - maybe good news for the browser - but an ominous sign on what the web is becoming.
Re: 300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think Mozilla will ever switch. The reason why they've their own engine and try to keep a decent marketshare (which they do indeed have), is to be able to have a say on web standards, and the web in general. Having a say ensure there isn't a single voice taking decisions that led us to things like IE6. And we're actually starting to see IE6-ish stuff happening with webkit, as it's nearly the only rendering en…
I would think one vendor would be great for standards: it is the standard. It sucks for any kind of innovation, though, as IE6 shows incredibly well. Out if curiosity, what IE6-ish things do you see WebKit doing?
It's not one vendor it's just one (open source) implementation. I'd argue this is better for innovation as new features will be quickly ported between the vendor forks and spend more time improving the product than catching up to other implementations.
Re: 300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit
#34As someone who's been a longtime Opera user before switching to Chrome (buggy release around 10.x, weakening site compatibility) I'm so glad to read this. This decision shows the quality of engineers who work at Opera - not afraid to throw a huge chunk of code away if it doesn't serve the company anymore the way it was intended. Thinking about it I can't make up a single example of a large software house doing such a…
Back in the day, Netscape did a full rewrite between major versions. There's a Spolsky blog post about it: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html Very interesting read.
This is totally different. They're not re-writing their application from scratch, but replacing a core component with a popular, well tested and widely support one.
Re: 300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Back in the day, Netscape did a full rewrite between major versions. There's a Spolsky blog post about it: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html Very interesting read.
This is totally different. They're not re-writing their application from scratch, but replacing a core component with a popular, well tested and widely support one.
Indeed it is -- GP only mentioned he didn't know any example of a large amount of code being thrown out, so I provided one.
Re: 300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit
#36As someone who's been a longtime Opera user before switching to Chrome (buggy release around 10.x, weakening site compatibility) I'm so glad to read this. This decision shows the quality of engineers who work at Opera - not afraid to throw a huge chunk of code away if it doesn't serve the company anymore the way it was intended. Thinking about it I can't make up a single example of a large software house doing such a…
Back in the day, Netscape did a full rewrite between major versions. There's a Spolsky blog post about it: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html Very interesting read.
Thanks for the link, it's indeed a good read.
Re: 300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit
#37Terrible news. This means basically giving up on standards-based compatibility. Not bad news for Opera - maybe good news for the browser - but an ominous sign on what the web is becoming.
Whatever Opera do doesnt cause us to give up anything.
Re: 300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit
#38Terrible news. This means basically giving up on standards-based compatibility. Not bad news for Opera - maybe good news for the browser - but an ominous sign on what the web is becoming.
Whatever Opera do doesnt cause us to give up anything.
No, but it encourages other developers to do so, which will encourage other browser makers to do what Opera did. This is a massive step back for real standards as protocols, toward the bad old days of fake "standards" as implementations.
Re: 300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit
#39I feel compelled to jump in and give a warning about Opera. I also know that the herd mind will probably pound my comment into oblivion, which is why I made a new account.
Opera is scammy, unreliable software. DO NOT DO MISSION CRITICAL WORK WITH THIS BROWSER. It will flake out on you in so many uncanny ways its not funny.
Also, Opera had the weird habit of becoming my default browser on my Win 7 machine repeatedly, despite me never doing so and only referencing it for testing purposes.
That, along with Opera having the top 3 spots on HN's front page further indicates to me that Opera is not for real. Like I mean, come on. How many of these submissions and upvotes are fake.
Opera, you're not on the up and up and you know it.
TL;DR: Don't trust Opera.
Re: 300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit
#40We can hope that someday IE will make the move too.
Given the way MS is embracing OpenSource ( git, TypeScript ) that day may not be too far.