OSNews

No it is NOT "understandable" it is monopolistic practices that need to be busted. we ALL know what this is about, Cupertino using undue influence on the market, from trying to control the price of books to deciding what video format an "open" web is supposed to run on (which won't be open much longer if Apple has their way, H.264 is controlled by one of the worst patent trolls out there and ask Mozilla how friendly they are to FOSS) its all about Apple being the 800 pound gorilla and making the world bend to them thanks to their locked down platform.

does anybody here HONESTLY think Opera would be abandoning presto if it would run on iPhone? I was against MSFT when they used IE to try to gain more control, I am against Apple using iPhone/iPad to gain more control. No matter which OS or device you use the web should be about openness and choices NOT about a single corp dictating everything, and especially not a single corp that is sue happy and a control freak dictating control. we should ALL be royally po'd at this, we are losing choices left and right and its all due to Cupertino and how much influence they are having on the markets.

Of course they would. If it was just about iOS they could use Webkit there and Presto everywhere else. But this is a switch across the board.

Riiight, because they have an unlimited budget and resources and can afford to keep multiple branches going.

sigh, the iFanboys can waste mod points all the want but it won't make straw into gold and we have seen time and time again the undue influence Cupertino has on the web and it needs to be stopped NOW, before we end up with "This site works best on iPad" like we had with IE. Everybody forget the original HTML V5 specs called for open video, either Theora or WebM? Wanna guess why its H.264 now? Because Apple said quite clearly we will ONLY allow H.264 and called their fellow monopoly lovers MSFT and got them on board, thus killing any chance of an open format for patent troll MPEG-LA instead.

No the reason Opera is doing this is they simply have no choice, they have limited resources and keeping two development teams is more than their limited budget can afford and since Apple tries its damnedest to shut down competition and won't allow anything but webkit well that is what we ALL get, like it or not. Its time for an EU or DoJ investigation.

Again... Read my other post in this thread. Apple does NOT allow webkit based browsers in the App Store. They don't allow any application with built-in browser engines. Period.

The only browser on iOS that uses webkit directly is Safari.

Edited 2013-02-14 20:41 UTC

What about chrome in AppStore?

Edit: sorry your answer follows (didn't notice) therefore the question can be ignored.

Edited 2013-02-14 20:54 UTC

so you just proved my point in why they need to be investigated. do you think if MSFT made IE 11 the ONLY browser that would run on win 9 that there wouldn't be an investigation? So why does Apple get a pass when they are influencing the markets no differently than MSFT would in the same sitch?

Again if anybody doesn't think Apple has undue influence all they have to do is look at HTML V5, before Apple said "we will ONLY allow H.264" the standard clearly called for an open codec as the baseline so that ALL could watch videos without tollbooths. Apple comes along and says "You'll do what we say or it won't work on iPhone/ipad" and there goes Theora and open codecs for a patent troll which both Apple and MSFT have a stake in.

seriously what more proof do you need? if it were MSFT doing the exact same thing wouldn't everyone be calling foul?

I wasn't responding to that - I was responding to your theory that dropping Presto and using WebKit was motivated by a desire or need to run on iOS. That is patently false. Opera is dropping Presto because they want to, for various reasons they have explained themselves:

http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/300-million-users-and-move-to-webkit

There is no sinister machinations going on - they just don't feel like it is worth the effort to develop and maintain a separate engine anymore.

What do you mean by multiple branches? All they would need to do is to port their cross-platform GUI toolkit to the iPhone... Oops, they already did! So they could easily have used the built-in engine if they wanted to.

Webkit on iOS is also very different from just getting the standard Webkit. The former is made to make it easy to embed into applications, while the latter requires you to build everything else yourself.

So again: If it was just about iOS they could use Webkit there and Presto everywhere else.

> called their fellow monopoly lovers
> fellow monopoly
> fellow
> monopoly

Take a deep breath and listen to yourself.

This isn't Apple exerting force. This is Opera losing the speed advantage they had in the legacy IE/Firefox days, and instead being relegated to a fan favorite for their unique approach to UX. So they decide to save some time and money by falling in line behind the rendering engine that outran them, which they can do because it is open source (i.e., Apple does not control its destiny, except to the extent the will of the market allows).

Meanwhile, the iBooks price fixing scandal was trumped up if not outright invented. Hamstringing the Kindle app with their in-app purchase shenanigans was scummy, but allowing the publishers to set ebook prices, while certainly not as consumer-friendly as Amazon's policy of aggressive undercutting, is also far less monopoly-friendly. Amazon is the 800 lb gorilla when it comes to controlling the prices of books and pricing competitors out of the market.

I don't follow... It isn't about presto not running on iPhone. Their new webkit based browsers won't run on iPhone either...

Apple doesn't have a policy disallowing browser engines other than webkit - their policy is they do not allow any browser engines. You either use the native UIWebView class (i.e. Safari) or you don't use a browser engine at all and send everything to external servers for rendering (i.e. Opera Mini). In either case, your browser is NOT using webkit directly - using UIWebView is completely different from using webkit.

Chrome, for example, is a webkit based browser... But the iOS version does not include webkit at all - it just wraps around UIWebView. How is being webkit based an advantage for iOS deployment when you in fact cannot use it?

Personally, while I share a lot of the sentiment about Opera dropping Presto - it really only boils down to one thing: Opera would rather concentrate on making browsers than making browser engines. Presto, while it is overall an excellent engine, is not gaining traction - it never really has, and it offers no competitive advantage anymore. There is certainly an argument that its existence helps with maintaining web standards (which is why I am sad to see it go), but from a business point of view, why bother?

IMHO it's all been downhill for Opera since Tetzchner left.

Weird, people were saying the same thing when he was still in charge. And after all, it was under his leadership that the failed Unite monstrosity was made. And useless widgets. And all that garbage.

What do you mean by Chrome-theme? Why wouldn't they be able to survive by using an engine which ensures close to 100% site compatibility, one of the main problems with Presto?

People don't care about the engine. They care about the user experience. Features, etc.

In 2003, *every* website worked with IE6.

Unfortunately, *Windows* didn't work with IE6. I kept getting 4 or 5 BSODs a day until I switched from IE to Opera.

and if you would have bothered to read the BSOD you would have noticed that the culprit was not windows but some 3rd-party driver (most likely graphics)

1. Thanks for the helpful observation.
2. Is that why the BSODs stopped when I changed browsers?

maybe one browser used hardware-acceleration, and the other didn't

just because because both display the same thing doesn't mean the use the same methods

but we will never know what was the problem with your pc because you ignored what the BSOD was telling you...

Some people do care about engine. That's why they are using Chrome instead of Firefox, IE and Opera.

No, people don't care about the engine. Why would someone switch to Chrome because of the engine? Doesn't even make sense.

they do?
according to their last report (1st - 3rd quarter) earnings per share dropped from 0.155$ in 2011 to 0,119$ in 2012 (with an as good as constant number of shares)

Edited 2013-02-13 15:03 UTC

To be fair, share prices has almost nothing to do with the health of a business. Just look at Apple: record profits, but still the shares price came down. Basically it's all financial speculation.

This is not the share price, this is revenue divided by number of shares. That's a standard metric reported by public companies.

I stand corrected. Thank you for the clarification.

earnings per share and the price of a share are two different things

---------edit--------
some1 was faster...

Edited 2013-02-13 15:29 UTC

EPS isn't actually relevant. All recent quarters have been record quarters, both revenue-wise and profit-wise. Opera made a ton more money in 2012 than in 2011. If there are more shares in the market, so what? That doesn't change the fact that both revenue and profit is higher than ever.

It's that 15 cents and 11 cents?

yes, but both numbers should be rounded up (16 and 12 cent)

Actually modern version of IE needs less shims than Chrome and Safari.

It seems the boot is on the other foot now.

Only in a parallel universe. Microsoft themself spoke out loud just recently that please, please web-designers, not forget the IE.

Firefox and WebKit. That's the landscape. Both working together well on all platforms (including Windows) and usually if it works in one it does in the other too.

Its IE being far behind like still not supporting for example WebGL, still not working on THE major platforms Android and iOS.

Edited 2013-02-13 21:39 UTC

Yeah well that what happened to the other companies with IE6 back in 2001 ... and that turned out soooo well didn't it?

We had no browser innovation for years. Everything was written for the one browser.

The same is happening with webkit but in the mobile space.



I want a landscape where I can program against the spec and each browser behave the same, whatever the platform.

As other have said, there are hundreds of browsers that use some form of webkit. It is fragmented ... write once hack everywhere.

There are blog posts on pretty well respected web development sites that are saying that same as I do.



Also WebGL is a crap spec.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/87696-webgl-is-fundamentally-f...

http://www.contextis.com/research/blog/webgl-more-webgl-security-fl...

BUT HEY LETS SUPPORT IT even though there are major security issues.

Also while IE10 isn't bleeding edge, it has all the important features that most web developers want to use today.

Lets not forget that jQuery team actually came out and said that there are less shims for modern IE than Chrome and Safari.

I really wish this drivel that is years out of date would not be repeated.

IE is released as a product for Windows, Microsoft really release IE for corporate customers, even their own evangelists say this.

I don't use IE as a browser, but IE9 and IE10 are as capable as Firefox and Chrome.

Edited 2013-02-14 00:42 UTC

I think the difference is in intent, which in turn is a function of business model. Right from the start Microsoft saw the web as a threat to it's business which was to ensure that everything that supported it's OS/Productivity monopoly flourished and everything that even remotely threatened it or even opened an alternative space did not flourish. Microsoft thought that a neutral browser that ran equally well on any platform undermined it's platform strategy. It's answer was a closed proprietary browser engine and the crushing of netscape by leveraging the Windows OS monopoly. Once netscape was finished and IE ruled Microsoft lost interest in browser development because they didn't want the web to be a rich and developing experience, they wanted it to be a tepid backwater compared to Windows apps.

Now compare that to Webkit, which is open and non-proprietary. Both the most important companies driving webkit development, Google and Apple, want an open standards based feature rich web, although both want that for different reasons. They don't want that because they are kind of heart, they want that because an open standards based feature rich web enhances and synegises with both their (different) core business models.

I think it is unlikely that webkit will go the way of IE.

I desire that everyone that states this does a contract with a Fortune 500 company to support Webkit across all major operating systems and mobile devices.

Then watch how Webkit being open solves their issues when CSS or JavaScript break across Webkit versions.

Finally have fun discussing compromise solutions on such issues with their project manager.

You not develop against a certain version and vendor but the standard. If behavior/layout changes in WebKit then that happens cause the previous implementation had bugs that got fixed.

Yes, this is a very different approach then what Microsoft does with IE.

As web-developer I thank WebKit for continues fixing and improving the Web at an incredible speed. This is far better then having to deal with IE6 bugs for years to come cause the vendor decided not to fix.

Anyhow, everybody who likes the IE6 approach more can go on, make an own WebKit based browser and not fix. Luckly it seems all major vendors decided against that.

Edited 2013-02-14 15:03 UTC

How do you fix Webkit in specific browser versions?

Because the project manager really would like that all the iPad users have the same experience on his company new web site.

Or for that matter all Android users since version 2.2.

I can give more examples.

You miss the point, everything will be built for Webkit first and everything else second, just like it was for IE6 ... because developers aren't following the spec they are developing for Webkit only.

And that is a problem ? IE6 was a problem for two reasons:

1) it was not developed anymore, meaning no progress
2) only available on a single platform

IE6 was all about locked-in, locking users on windows, and locking users on microsoft technologies. All of that is not possible with Webkit. Since it is LGPL, it cannot become proprietary, and, if Apple cannot prevent others to use Webkit on different platform, also Apple cannot stop progress, if Apple decides to stop development of Webkit, no problem, Google and Opera will carry on the work, and it will give them a competitive advantage over Apple. This is the major difference between IE6 and Webkit, one was blocking progress, the other one cannot.



Shame on developers for developing website that works in real life instead of developing website that would work in a theoretical world...

That said, there is still the need for a good specification to make sure that rendering does not get broken across version of webkit. And that is an area where Opera is a very welcomed addition to the webkit world, they have always been the best at respecting the specification.

You are still missing the point. It is a mono-culture of Webkit and there are loads of incompatible forks.

Incompatible forks means lots of fragmentation. Fragmentation is a nightmare for developers.

Also if your browser isn't webkit based on mobile, well your browser won't work with a huge number of mobile sites.



The standard is moot if everyone treats webkit as the de-facto standard. The Standard becomes webkit ... the same complaints are made about Microsoft Office not supporting ODF.

Edited 2013-02-14 09:18 UTC

So because something has a flaw, it is crap.

What amazing logic!

I love how the Microsoft fans are attacking WebGL despite Microsoft's alternative being even worse in the security department.

Wow, a single vulnerability in WebGL! If that means it's crap, then all browsers, ever, are crap.

Did you even read the links? There are serious security concerns because it lets the browser basically have full control of the hardware.

Security is important. This isn't minor flaws, it is pretty damn serious.

There are plenty of sites that don't work in Firefox but work in Chrome.

Edited 2013-02-14 08:27 UTC

But that still doesn't explain why Microsoft has not implemented it

very funny

Fact is Firefox, Chrome are both way more secure then IE. Fact is Firefox, Chrome, both implement WebGL, IE doesn't. So?

And come on, Microsoft crying about WebGL security while doing ActiveX and Silverlight can't be taken serious.

For native, direct access to hardware. Compiled Javascript, eg V8 and WebCoreScript, native code, all do. Its not magic but pretty standard.

Edited 2013-02-14 15:29 UTC

Conjecture. I wonder why we have our browsers patched by every company with security vunerabilities. Nothing is secure and WebGL is insecure by design as the article states, IF YOU ACTUALLY READ IT!



ActiveX is off these days by default unless it is a trusted plugin, much like flash. I suspect silverlight is the same. This isn't 2004 anymore.

Find arguments that aren't over 8 years old please.

The biggest security thread to browsers has been the Java Plugin for years now.



From the penetration testing company, which I dunno actually make money doing this stuff.



Sorry I am going to take a penetration testing companies' word over yours.

Edited 2013-02-14 17:36 UTC

Silverlight adds an additional layer of indirection to the graphics card API calls.

WebGL is little more than a way to marshal OpenGL calls from the browser to the graphics card through JavaScript.

Silverlight can be disabled, uninstalled, black listed, etc

Silverlight includes protection against 3D driver DOS and even black lists graphics card known to exhibit this problem, putting pressure on graphics card developers.

Does WebGL do anything of the sort? No.

Let's face it, WebGL is a proprietary API brainchild of the Kronos Group who are not a standard setting organization and WebGL is not ubiquitous both in install base or in use on websites, so it is not afforded its standard status through those means either.

This is akin to Microsoft introducing WebDX and claiming it to be a 3D web standard by their own fiat.

And yet, since its not Microsoft, people like you will rush to find a justification, ANY justification for this steaming pile of shit.

It is beyond me how some people can be as egotistic to claim that Microsoft should implement a standard to their web browser, which ships by default on Windows, and thus has an installed base of hundreds of millions of peple, especially when its not a standard at all, and hasn't been properly vetted for security.

People can draw false equivalencies all day about Silverlight and WebGL, but the FACT is that Microsoft has NEVER pushed Silverlight INTO the browser. Its always been a plugin. Microsoft is NOT forcing or lobbying to have Silverlight become a standard of the web.

Stop the bullshit lies.

Three engines? Trident isn't worth testing, nobody uses IE except to download chrome or Firefox, unless they are forced to use it at work.


...I would love to be able to say.
I wish MS would make it multiplatform already, so I didn't need to virtualise just for their engine.

Edited 2013-02-13 21:26 UTC

I am currently testing a UK Very large client's customer-facing website.

Their usage stats looks something like below;

IE8 ~15% of all traffic to the site
IE9 ~20%
Firefox ~20%
Chrome ~30%

The rest is made up of other browsers or variations inc Opera and IE10. We simply can't justify the resource as a business to test theses browsers at this time.

I WISH I could stop testing IE8 (as does tend to throw up a number of issues on more advanced features) but the commercial reality is you cant ignore them.

I hope you actually look at the business requirements of your customers before deciding the the irrelevancy of a rendering engine

No IE 7?

We just got a request for proposal the other day where we are required to have the web site made IE 7 compatible.

QFT

Tell that to 40% of our users.

Oh, At first I thought you were saying that the other browsers also abandoned their engines to focus on ui. But I understand you're saying that Opera will now just be like them, only doing ui.

Fair enough, however Opera has actually invented most of the modern web browser ui that I find useful (tabs, quick dial, etc). Its the engine that it usually fell short on. So I look forward to it being able to innovate without having to constantly fix their javascript support.

Yeah sorry I could have been more clear. But I don't care about who was first. I care about who does it best. Opera is number 2 for me(Firefox is 1). Opera feels fast and reliable. The speed of Chrome with the nice Opera GUI would be an improvement on Chrome but a step backwards for Opera.

Edited 2013-02-13 18:10 UTC

I've been using Opera almost exclusively since somewhere around the 5.x or 6.x days.

Releases 10+ took a big nosedive in reliability. Even so, I'm pretty saddened by this news. I'll still stick with the Presto versions as long as I can.

The are two things about Presto; one is that it tends to be standards compliant almost to a fault. If you make a site look good in Opera, you are almost guaranteed it is going to look fine in all the other browsers.

But even for everyday users rather than developers, when a company has developed a UI and engine side by side for years, a lot of the UI features come to depend on engine features. They work together.

Dragonfly is the most obvious example, but there will be tons of other things, affecting addons, and custom CSS filters, and the like. There is no chance that WebKit offers exactly the same hooks into that Presto does.

Most of the 'big' features they will adapt, I am sure, but all along the margins you can expect them to lop off the stuff that is really hard to do (cause for whatever reason, the object you need that is readily accessible in Presto is buried ten layers deep in WebKit) or not a big enough feature to be worth the effort--except it was the feature you used everyday.

In short, it is almost certain that some of the features that exist now won't exist in the initial WebKit releases, and may never come back.

Yeah, except that's wrong. Opera has always gone out of its way to render sites, even when that mean adding proprietary stuff like document.all.

If there is demand for a certain feature they can and will add it. They have now even more forces to do so since lesser work on the rendering-engine is needed. If there is no demand then indeed, that feature may gone.

If you had a look at WebKit code and development you wouldn't argue about 10 inches deep layers nobody can touch. That's not reality. This isn't IE :-)

Edited 2013-02-13 21:52 UTC

Umm... I have. I have done some custom [proof-of-concept] type projects using the Qt5WebKit codebase.

I like it just fine. But that doesn't mean that it will provide 100% of what Presto provides in a convenient way.

I would say exactly the same thing in reverse if someone were trying to take the Presto engine--which I am sure is also a good code base--and stick it into a long-term WebKit project.

Edited 2013-02-13 22:59 UTC

Qt5 QWebKit doesn't expose all the functionality and flexibility WebKit offers.

Opera also already started on that. They just pushed patches to improve HTML columns in WebKit. So, this extending where they see need isn't theory but it already is happening successfully.

I remember when people were talking about how version 8+ took a big nosedive in reliability. And before that, version 6+. And basically every major version.

Apparently Opera has been taking big nosedives from the very start, if one is to listen to people like you.

Why stick with Presto btw?

FWIW, I never had trouble through the 9.x series.

Now there is all sorts of quirky stuff. It crashes occasionally, it looses the address bar (maximize/shrink/maximize/shrink, and 'presto!' it's back), it can't download reliably from FTP sites, though every other browser I've tried on the same network works fine, &c.

I still like it better than the others though. The strengths outweigh the quirks. As for why Presto, I followed up my own comment with some reasons.

For the reliability itself, I'm not sure if the crashes come from the engine or the UI side of things. I suspect the UI, actually. The latest crash fest was in 12.13, where after a few days it wouldn't even start if you had more than one add-on installed and the background update-checker was scheduled to run (you are fortunate if you didn't hit this one).

Edited 2013-02-13 23:10 UTC

People were reporting all sorts of quirky stuff, including crashes, back at Opera 9 as well. On the other hand, I've never lost the address bar with Opera 12, and I haven't seen anyone else lose it either.

Do you use multiple monitors? I've always had a suspicion it is related to moving the window between screens.

The first web browser with Tabs was InternetWorks in 1994

Was that before or after Opera's support for MDI with a clickable bar to switch between child windows? While it wasn't a "tab bar" per se, it was the precursor to it.

In 1994, at the same time, except that was Opera was only a private project at that time.

http://blog.chromium.org/2010/03/does-your-browser-behave.html ...perhaps the js compliance of Opera engine was just "too good" in an idealistic way.

Their engine has generally some good points, large part of why Opera is light on resources for example (most noticeable on older machines; also, this surely allowed them to host Opera Mini more easily - but maybe Webkit & present server hardware are now good enough for that)

Edited 2013-02-18 20:55 UTC

If Presto is the main thing that makes Opera special, then Opera has been in big trouble. After all, the main job of a browser is to show web sites, and Presto had major compatibility problems.

You are wrong, of course. People don't care about the engine. They care about the user experience and features.

Kicking the web in the nuts? How so? It wasn't really making it easier or harder for web developers because web developers mostly ignored Presto. Opera moving to WebKIt won't mean sh*t for the web because Presto doesn't mean anything.

I don't know about how popular Opera was but I always felt Mozilla and Opera were the innovators of the web. So you can understand that when Opera announces they will be a follower from now on it feels like a kick in the nuts for me.

How does this mean that Opera will be a follower? Who was following Opera? Not web developers, that's for sure!

Won't this make innovation even easier for Opera since they don't have to work on compatibility problems most of the time anymore?

They certainly have taken the first step towards making it easier for web developers. Next step is removing another browser from the web to make it easier for web developers. How web developers must long for the days when they only had to develop for one browser.

But they didn't announce to be a follower - Opera will surely contribute to Webkit in major ways. Maybe even leaving greater mark on the web than before.

They went with webkit because they wanted to spend less on the engine. They also fired a large portion of their engine people.

Which I feel doesn't strictly contradict what I said... oh well, we'll see.

Plus, the greatest mark of Opera on the web is Opera Mini - which isn't really about the rendering engine (running on servers, to the users it doesn't make much difference which one)

To be fair, it captured notable chunk of mobile browsing (but of course via Mini, so not a real browser with all expected features)

The only major thing that makes Opera Software special is (IMHO) Opera Mini, how it allows many more people to connect and/or lower the costs of doing that. It's certainly the only really popular Opera product.

And they don't stop development of Mini; also, nice thing about it: swapping of the engine can be done virtually transparently for users.

The only major thing that makes Opera Software special is (IMHO) Opera Mini, how it allows many more people to connect and/or lower the costs of doing that. It's certainly the only really popular Opera product.

And they don't stop development of Mini; also, nice thing about it: swapping of the engine can be done virtually transparently for users. "
[I'm only including your comment in the reply to have a better written reply, not to disparage it...]
Counterpoint: not in all cases does special == popular. [My desktop browser in windows 98 > bsd v5 > bsd v6 > bsd v7 > bsdv8 > bsdv9 [presently] ... Opera, it consistenly loads quicker. lends to user customization, plays nice with tabs, does what one would expect... ]
I expect if/when I am forced to use a newer webkit version, if it isn't as stable/speedy, there would
be alternatives. But not looking forward to it.

The only reason to use Opera is an engine with major compatibility problems?

Wow.

Yup, their JavaScript bugs alot and freeze Opera on certain pages. I open IE, use the same URL, works like a charm, go figure. I stopped reporting problems to Opera since they don't give a fuck about reports or you have to insist very heavily, massively (like the mouse gesture in 11.5 I guess) for them to step back with their "new advanced feature mania".

Opera has become the Fedora of browser : breaking what used to work, new bad functionning features pushed to users without them demanding for, all about hype.

I paid 3 times Opera (through support plans) because I found it really good (8 - 10 era) but not anymore.

Kochise

The reason for this is obvious. If they are hit by a performance bug in IE they'll fix it right away. Not so for Opera.

So even if Opera has fewer performance bugs than other browsers you won't notice it because sites will work around those bugs in other browsers, while leaving the ones affecting Opera alone.


LOL, that's clueless. Opera has always added new features.


How do you know if something was demanded or not? Just because you don't want it doesn't mean no one did.

1- On the JavaScript problem, here 12.14, try this :

http://www.pagesjaunes.fr/
"Qui, quoi ?" = "Centre equestre"
"Où ?" = "Pau"
"Recherche à proximité de" = checked

Once on the result page, scroll down and hover the map.

2- Yup, Opera always added new features, in the beta first, then in the "stable" release. But it always have a drawback, you have to get it all, almost no way to disable this or that feature one by one.

3- If they push new features, it would be cool they are fully functional and don't requires a dozens updates to get them fixed. The "visual mouse gesture" fiasco introduced in 11.5 was a pure mess no one ever understood why they pushed it without warning :

http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=839952

When I say I stopped reporting bugs, because it's always left open with no answer :

WebGL do not work : http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=1593342

Nothing changed, yet it's advertised as a major compatibility point. Nope !

Mails gets scrambled after Opera crash : http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=1438962

Never corrected, reseting the M2 client is still not possible without using tricks. And I don't speak about reimporting all the mails and mail accounts :

http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=201905

Soooo, since Opera is always focusing on new features without maintainting their old features, I give up.

Kochise

Wow, so there's an apparent JS problem in a browser. So what? What does this have to do with anything?

WebGL isn't even finished, HWA was disabled by default, and now we know why. They decided to switch to WebKit instead.

Mails get scrambled after a crash? No they don't. They work fine after a crash.

But what you are doing now is just to desperately try to change the subject by linking to random stuff. Anyone can link to random bugs in any browser.

Not just that random, like the mail crash, because they are experienced by various users for say... 8 years now ?

WebGL was hyper hyped by Opera as being the first browser to implement it, but it appears it doesn't work that well beside their internal demo ?

Javascript is buggy, you can forgive Opera but go thermonuclear on this if ever IE fails that bad ?

Come on, stop being an Opera fanboy, they tried to add features, that great, but the Opera browser became more and more tricky and buggy. Since 12 it even crash more and more.

Vote me down at please, it will not correct Opera's flaws anyway.

Kochise

"The mail crash"? You are making this silly assumption about one single mail crash, and that's just weird. No one else seems to be having this problem, and I've used the mail client heavily on multiple computers.

Where did Opera hype WebGL, and how is that relevant to anything?

JavaScript is no buggier than other browsers, dear child.

Come on, stop trolling. You are just making up stuff as you go along.

WebKit isn't a phrozen blackbox like IE was. Its constantly driven forward and anybody can submit patches, create snapshots to turn into a product, branch and keep a specific version alive, do changes.

WebKit allows all that. IE never did and that we had to fight so long with IE6 was result of that. Microsoft never made SP releases, pushed updates, allowed others to fix. Nobody but Microsoft could do anything and Microsoft decided to not do anything on IE after IE6, after they won the first browser-war, for a long time.

That can't happen with WebKit. The license inherited from KDE's KHTML, LGPL, prevents that. Welcome to an open base constantly driven forward. A construction kit everybody can utilize and turn into a project as long as the result is opensouce too and so can be used by others.

Edited 2013-02-13 22:03 UTC

How does it help?

Right now we have a code base with browser specific hacks for:

- Safari on Windows
- Safari on MacOS X
- Mobile Safari
- Chrome

All using different versions of Webkit.

How does Webkit being open fix the bugs between those browsers?

You still hack browser specific hacks against a certain version and then wonder the break if a new version appears? Why not use one of the many js-frameworks available for that? Then it usually works cause vendors check against them but not against your little webkit-version hack homepage.

Because this destroys the premise of the unified web that many clamor for (or at least did, when it was IE doing the non-standard BS).

The reason for IE's dominance and subsequent subversion of the standards process isn't really because it wasn't developed in the open, but because it gained enough clout what web developers stopped bothering with anything else.

WebKit and IE are in the exact same situation. It is mildly amusing how many of the blind fanatics don't see it.

But it merely underscores a point a lot of people have been making: The web is fundamentally broken. Design by committee is broken.

This is what a decentralized authority on the direction of the web means to developers. Write multiple times, test everywhere, use a JS framework, and likely shoot yourself.

This is the bullshit that people wish we'd replace our native app platforms for? Ha.

Nailed IT!

You not answer my question.



And it became now one lesser case to test and special case. Good point why Opera dropping Presto and going WebKit is good for us!



And? You are using JS so why don't you use a JS framework? Why do you or your other mate keepon to add browser-engine and browser-version checks with different code-paths and then wonder it breaks?



NOBODY but you in all of the threads here wrote something related to that. This isn't about any false claims native apps are dead nobody did. Its about Opera switching from Presto to WebKit.

So, what was your point and how its related?

Edited 2013-02-15 00:53 UTC

I can't really recall any sites that only function properly in webkit browsers.

There are quite a few on mobile, and I have seen plenty that don't work (lots of them are JS heavy mind you) on the desktop.

Edited 2013-02-14 09:28 UTC

Example link?

Can't think of anything obvious. Most of these sites are done by designers that abuse -webkit prefixes.

I usually never return to them and I am certainly not going to keep a list.

A lot of the sencha touch toolkit only worked in Chrome/Safari as of last year ... is the only example that sticks in my mind ... which I thought was pretty poor.

I am sure you might call bullshit, but considering the -webkit prefix abuse has been called out on quite well respected blogs such as quirksmode ... There is plenty of evidence the problem exists.

Edited 2013-02-14 16:15 UTC

Any website using touch / animation usually uses WebKit extensions.

But its must more than that, there's a shitload of WebKit only extensions that are used by plenty of "iPhone Optimized" websites around the internet.

You need look no farther than Apple's own developer documentation to see how bad things are. Also, anyone who does this kinda thing for a living can attest to the absolute clusterfuck that this is.

I do this for a living, I mainly still work on the now not so cool "desktop website" for a major gaming company in UK. Though my title is front end I spent most of my time re-factoring and adding new features to a large C# codebase. For the most part I enjoy my job.

We are adding in some touch functionality, but we have bigger problems at the moment which are more to do with version control and fragmentation.

I am constantly frustrated though that people think that because something is open source that there immediately isn't a problem.

For those that are using a browser it is fine and I enjoy using the newest Firefox. For those developing it is a different story and tbh I think in a worse state (mainly due to it being transitional).

The w3c even suggests the use of browser prefixes for yet not stable and standardized API. Once the API is stable and standard prefixes are removed.



WebKit is the only browser engine supporting the 2 existing touch interfaces including Microsoft's very own one. Both touch interfaces (including Microsoft's) didn't made it through the w3c yet too. Good example from yours validating the need for the prefix case :-)



Most of them supported by e.g. Firefox. HTML5 is a living standard and it takes some time till de facto standards made it through the w3c committees, into the specs and till a new version of the specs is published (how many years took HTML5? right). Meanwhile browser-vendors like Firefox, Opera, Google, Apple, Blackberry, etc work well together to define what comes next, implement it (with prefixes), get it stable, push through w3c, remove prefixes.

See such prefixes as "future" namespace with private API that is subject to changes till it becomes official public API.

Exactly this concept is the reason why HTML development accelerated so much within last years compared to the many many years before.

Edited 2013-02-15 19:08 UTC

Shows that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

-webkit-* has only been used which means styles are off in other browsers.

I don't understand why you choose to deliberately miss the point.

_proto_ is also abused.

Edited 2013-02-16 14:41 UTC

Yeah, they broke text-to-speech in the Windows version sometime in the 9.x branch, and ignored posts on their forums about it. I sent a bug report and waited a couple of versions for it to get fixed, and then just gave up on it. I have never gone back. Fuck Opera

I feel that's still mostly the case, Opera is still lighter - particularly visible on older machines, try it on such one day (like, a decade old; or a 1st gen netbook).

It's probably one of the reasons why Opera has big usage share in CIS... (where PCs tend to be used longer)

Agreed. Opera was always strong on the UI, not the engine. If they now become good at the engine too then Chrome, take care, competition is coming. May Opera's market share raise again!

Edited 2013-02-13 22:08 UTC

They can use embedded Gecko instead of WebKit: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Embedding/IPCLiteAPI

I guess their problem is that they are tired of maintaining their own engine (which is an enormous task).

Edited 2013-02-13 19:10 UTC

Yes, so? That means the part you actually notice will be different.


What prevents those Webkit browsers from doing the same when Opera is using Presto?

How does switching to Webkit make any difference when it comes to the UI?


How is it more valuable today? Because it has an engine with lots of compatibility problems?


They tried that. But when they added some new standard, the other browser ignored it and added their own instead, forcing Opera to implement that instead.

And you are of course using Opera as your only browser?


Why? The user doesn't care about engines.

To be brutally frank, if your MLS system doesn't work in Opera over something like CSS, the people coding it probably still have their heads wedged up 1997's arse using presentational markup, no separation of presentation from content, using the STYLE tag and attribute for no good reason, no semantics, tables for layout, endless pointless javascripted asshattery for christmas only knows what or doing CSS' job, or other outdated half-assed methodologies that have zero business on any website written after 1998.

Apart from a 100% min-height bug with a fairly well known workaround, there is no reason for HTML/CSS that works in FF/chrome to be a problem in Opera apart from ineptitude or ignorance on the part of the developer...

Which you could probably find out about really quick by doing a view source and a few cut/paste... if you cut/paste all the text from the page, and compare the size to the markup, if the code is more than 3x larger below 10k or 2x larger over 10k, the developer probably needs to go back and learn how HTML works. Is it a tranny document or filled to the brim with HTML 5's idiocy? (since HTML 5 seems carefully crafted for the folks who until a couple years ago sleazed out HTML 3.2 and slapped a tranny on it -- sure as shine-ola isn't for anyone who practices semantic markup; at best it's a sick buzzword akin to web 2.0... at worst, well...)

There's a lot of really crappy outdated code sleazed out by developers who then have the cojones to complain that their broken outdated idiotic practices and endless garbage javascript, HTML and CSS frameworks not working is the fault of the browsers.

Again, maybe if they pulled their heads out of 1997's arse they wouldn't be having these problems.

... and I'm saying this because I've never seen a multiple listing system that wasn't an absolute train wreck of garbage code built by inept fools who have no business writing HTML in the first place!

"the trend"?