[deleted]
Opera moves to WebKit
31–40 of 295 posts
Re: Opera moves to WebKit
#32Does this mean they'll be using V8 too?
I'm curious too! I think Javascript in Opera was a bigger problem than HTML. A year ago I worked on an app with heavy JS frontend and frontend guys told that they can't make it work properly on Opera.
Yeah, I think they're actually switching for V8 more than anything. Their HTML layout engine was/is pretty much fine.
Re: Opera moves to WebKit
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
It breaks my heart to know that Presto is going to most likely be left to bitrot in some SCM somewhere. But on the same note, I understand that using webkit will be better for Opera as a browser.
I wonder if Opera will consider open-sourcing it, or if it (typically) has too many problematic dependencies for that to be worthwhile.
Considering they are switching to an open source rendering engine, I think there is likelihood they would have open-sourced presto already if that was possible. I suspect that like much proprietary software, there are too many licensed dependencies.
It's a pity, because it'd be very cool to get a source dump of the final presto engine. Even if it was never integrated into a new browser, the historical value alone would be significant.
Re: Opera moves to WebKit
#34As far as I hate monopoly and the things that happened years ago with IE6, I'm a bit afraid of what's going on here. I really appreciate the fact that coding a website with webkit bugs in mind will automatically include support of Opera browser now, but does this mean that the whole web will start to code exclusively for webkit engine? This doesn't feel good. I'm afraid webkit will start to dictate features and their…
Besides the fact that I think Firefox is now actually a really great piece of software, this is a primary reason why I continue to use Firefox while everyone else in the office uses chrome.
Re: Opera moves to WebKit
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious too! I think Javascript in Opera was a bigger problem than HTML. A year ago I worked on an app with heavy JS frontend and frontend guys told that they can't make it work properly on Opera.
Yeah, I think they're actually switching for V8 more than anything. Their HTML layout engine was/is pretty much fine.
At http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/300-million-users-and-move-to-... they state they're switching because they feel it is a waste of resources to maintain their own rendering engine. I'd be surprised if the JavaScript engine was a big factor in their decision. The vast majority of "JavaScript" problems encountered by web developers are either problems with the DOM implementation in general. A smaller portion are in the binding between the DOM implementation and the JavaScript language, and fewer still are in the JavaScript engine itself.
Re: Opera moves to WebKit
#36Great news for Opera. Unfortunately this is another reason for developers to ignore other browsers and use proprietary webkit prefixes.
I'd generally agree. But my impression is that Opera had small enough market share that people overwhelmingly ignored it anyways.
Re: Opera moves to WebKit
#37Does this mean they'll be using V8 too?
I'm curious too! I think Javascript in Opera was a bigger problem than HTML. A year ago I worked on an app with heavy JS frontend and frontend guys told that they can't make it work properly on Opera.
It is important to understand that when they said "javascript" they almost certainly meant "DOM". All mainstream javascript engines, including Carakan (the current Opera javascript engine), are very compatible with the standard and with each other.
On the other hand, DOM APIs are rather less interoperable across browsers for both historic (lack of clear standards until recently) and technical (larger surface area, faster pace of addition, lack of proper testsuites) reasons. Therefore they are by far the more likely place to run into an interoperability issue.
Re: Opera moves to WebKit
#38Mixed emotions here. I think it makes every sense for Opera to do this. The cost of maintaining their own rendering engine must have been huge and the advantages it brought were slender. It's also good to have another major player contributing to webkit. On the other hand it's a step closer to an unhealthy monoculture in rendering engines. It's already the case for the mobile web that people are starting to define st…
I wonder if, ironically, rendering engine diversity is something where the slow, incoherent Android update mess is actually a good thing.
To the extent that "whatever WebKit does" gets defined as "whatever ugly, lowest-common-denominator thing that works in the stock Gingerbread browser" that might help other rendering engines stay in the race. In other words, legacy Android browsers might help by slowing down the spread of new WebKit-specific features (that they also don't support).
Re: Opera moves to WebKit
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
High hopes for Servo[1], but it'll still be years yet until it's able to challenge any of those three. Webkit2[2] will probably be ready sooner, but it's less of a radical departure than Servo's intended to be. [1] https://github.com/mozilla/servo [2] http://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebKit2
WebKit2 is a new API layer on top of WebKit, not a new browser engine. It has been used by Safari since v5.1.
Are you sure about that? When I read quotes like "web content (JavaScript, HTML, layout, etc) lives in a separate process from the application UI", that conjures images of a rather drastic and fundamental change. I'm not sure how you'd achieve that with just a new API layer.
Re: Opera moves to WebKit
#40As far as I hate monopoly and the things that happened years ago with IE6, I'm a bit afraid of what's going on here. I really appreciate the fact that coding a website with webkit bugs in mind will automatically include support of Opera browser now, but does this mean that the whole web will start to code exclusively for webkit engine? This doesn't feel good. I'm afraid webkit will start to dictate features and their…
Besides the fact that I think Firefox is now actually a really great piece of software, this is a primary reason why I continue to use Firefox while everyone else in the office uses chrome.
Yes, you are right, I really love to hear that. But as a webdeveloper my first task after I write some code is to test it in a webkit browser. Webkit is everywhere iPad, iPhone, Chrome, Safari, ( now Opera ). I think bad developers will start to exclude other engines support if percentage of non-webkit browsers goes very low. And since a lot of websites are coded from amateurs ( there's nothing wrong to this ) there will be more and more webkit-optimized content. That's sad!