OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/20920/Opera_To_Launch_New_JavaScript_Engine Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Sat, 25 May 2013 10:45:31 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com old news http://www.osnews.com/thread?347345 http://www.osnews.com/thread?347345 Wednesday, 3. December 2008
What's New
Below is an overview of the new functionality in Opera 10.0 Alpha 1.

Presto 2.2 Engine

Opera 10.0 Alpha 1 includes Presto 2.2 (Kestrel includes Presto 2.1.1), an updated version of Opera's Core. Presto 2.2 features numerous new features and loads of bug fixes, such as:

100/100 and pixel-perfect on the Acid3 test
New regular expression engine, which greatly improves performance
Improved CSS performance
Pretty-printing of unstyled XML
Web font support
RGBA and HSLA support
Selectors API support Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (poundsmack) Comments RE: old news http://www.osnews.com/thread?347355 http://www.osnews.com/thread?347355 No, this is new news - which probably won't even be stable enough to go into 10.0.

It's a shame people make so much fuss over Javascript benchmarks - Opera is head and shoulders above anyone in rendering and UI performance, the things that actually matter right now. Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (johnnysaucepn) Comments RE[2]: old news http://www.osnews.com/thread?347358 http://www.osnews.com/thread?347358 Javascript performance means a lot to many people (myself included) "right now" and is rightly getting the attention it's been lacking. Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jesse) Comments RE[3]: old news http://www.osnews.com/thread?347359 http://www.osnews.com/thread?347359 Opera browser deserves more attention and marketshare than its competition.

IMO it is a high quality product, with a lot of features, providing an excellent user experience and that runs in a lot of platforms.

Good work Opera guys! Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ebasconp) Comments RE[4]: old news http://www.osnews.com/thread?347395 http://www.osnews.com/thread?347395
IMO it is a high quality product, with a lot of features, providing an excellent user experience and that runs in a lot of platforms.


I will agree that it's got a lot of features, certainly more than Firefox out of the box. But don't agree that it provides an excellent user experience. Too many things still require hacking ini files and other types of voodoo to get working, and trying to move your profile to a different drive is a pain, especially on Vista.

IMHO, their Javascript engine is fine insofar as speed goes. They really need to concentrate more on usability tweaks. Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (WorknMan) Comments RE[5]: old news http://www.osnews.com/thread?347406 http://www.osnews.com/thread?347406
I will agree that it's got a lot of features, certainly more than Firefox out of the box. But don't agree that it provides an excellent user experience. Too many things still require hacking ini files and other types of voodoo to get working, and trying to move your profile to a different drive is a pain, especially on Vista.

IMHO, their Javascript engine is fine insofar as speed goes. They really need to concentrate more on usability tweaks.


what about typing opera:config into the address bar?

how hard is it to paste your old profile folder over the new one?

I used the same profile pretty much the whole time i used opera 9 on windows. opera on linux was pretty terrible for a little while but the current alpha has been great so far. Fri, 06 Feb 2009 04:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (stabbyjones) Comments RE: old news http://www.osnews.com/thread?347407 http://www.osnews.com/thread?347407 Opera is not considered to pass acid 3 due to poor animation from presto performance. Webkit nightlies pass though Fri, 06 Feb 2009 05:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (google_ninja) Comments RE[4]: old news http://www.osnews.com/thread?347408 http://www.osnews.com/thread?347408
Opera browser deserves more attention and marketshare than its competition.

IMO it is a high quality product, with a lot of features, providing an excellent user experience and that runs in a lot of platforms.

Good work Opera guys!


I wish that were the case but I can tell you as a Mac user - they spend very little time improving the user interface let alone their abysmal support for Google services such as proper support for the rich text boxes used in Blogger and numerous other websites.

If Opera wish to at least win me over they need to get the fundamentals working properly instead of expecting all the internet world to change to suit their refusal to support the web as it exists today (ugly and non-compliant code galore). Fri, 06 Feb 2009 05:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kaiwai) Comments RE[5]: old news http://www.osnews.com/thread?347419 http://www.osnews.com/thread?347419 Rich-text forms have been supported since the 9.x series. Gmail and HTML authoring for instance work perfectly in Opera.

I don't know for the Mac, but on other systems, Opera's minimalist GUI is a good thing IMO.

What exact problems do you find in Opera? Fri, 06 Feb 2009 08:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Liquidator) Comments RE[5]: old news http://www.osnews.com/thread?347420 http://www.osnews.com/thread?347420
Too many things still require hacking ini files and other types of voodoo to get working


I have never done it. Why do you need to edit .ini files?

trying to move your profile to a different drive is a pain, especially on Vista.


Just copy/paste C:\Users\David\AppData\Local\Opera\Opera

Couldn't be more simple ;) Fri, 06 Feb 2009 08:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Liquidator) Comments RE[6]: old news http://www.osnews.com/thread?347425 http://www.osnews.com/thread?347425
Rich-text forms have been supported since the 9.x series. Gmail and HTML authoring for instance work perfectly in Opera.

I don't know for the Mac, but on other systems, Opera's minimalist GUI is a good thing IMO.

What exact problems do you find in Opera?


Try copy and pasting into blogger rich text box - I never said it didn't support it - where in the post did I say that it didn't support it? I said "proper support for the rich text boxes used in Blogger and numerous other websites." which clearly means that they are supported, but not fully/properly/flawlessly supported. Just as one can say their sound card is supported but 90% of the features on the sound card are unsupported.

I also have found that the browser constantly hangs because of scripts used in the websites, whole websites bringing down the browser that would otherwise work flawlessly on Safari and Firefox. Again, I've lodged bug reports (no use complaining if you don't submit bug reports) and they haven't been fixed. I've done my part submitting bug reports - Opera on the other hand refuse to fix these bugs. I've done all I can do.

Again, I'd love to use Opera - Safari is bug ridden and is bogged down after a period of time in use (I have a single window with over 300 tabs open and I cry every-time I see the memory usage). Firefox buggy, slow and flawed - especially in regards to continuous crashes when loading websites or just stalling when loading websites for no reason - heck, I'll sit here watch eyetv and find that I can't watch tv whilst a website is loading in the background. So it isn't as though I'm adverse to the idea of running other browsers - its just that Opera has to fix things up before I move over to it.Edited 2009-02-06 09:27 UTC Fri, 06 Feb 2009 09:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kaiwai) Comments RE[6]: old news http://www.osnews.com/thread?347521 http://www.osnews.com/thread?347521
Just copy/paste C:\Users\David\AppData\Local\Opera\Opera


About hacking ini files....

Let's say I want to move my profile to D:\Profiles\Opera (different partition) since that's where I keep profiles for all of my applications (Firefox, Thunderbird, etc), as it's easier to back up if everything is in one place, and I can easily format the C drive if I need to, as I know there are no important data files on there.

However....

1. How's Opera going to know where I moved these files to
2. What if I don't want the cache directory in there with everything else? No reason to back that up, right?Edited 2009-02-06 18:49 UTC Fri, 06 Feb 2009 18:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (WorknMan) Comments RE[7]: old news http://www.osnews.com/thread?347583 http://www.osnews.com/thread?347583
(I have a single window with over 300 tabs open and I cry every-time I see the memory usage)


Are you serious? 300 tabs? Sat, 07 Feb 2009 07:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vitae) Comments RE[2]: old news http://www.osnews.com/thread?347631 http://www.osnews.com/thread?347631
No, this is new news - which probably won't even be stable enough to go into 10.0.

It's a shame people make so much fuss over Javascript benchmarks - Opera is head and shoulders above anyone in rendering and UI performance, the things that actually matter right now.


Javascript is very important on today's web. It's used virtually everywhere and currently Opera's javascript performance is subpar. It really can affect your browsing negatively if you visit javascript heavy websites. This is an important development for Opera especially considering Webkit and Gecko's recent JS performance enhancements. Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (abraxas) Comments