They're making record profits

To be fair, share prices has almost nothing to do with the health of a business.

Unfortunately, a lot of my favourite Opera UI features have been broken, with options I've used since the days of Opera 3 or 4 not working correctly. I've tried the latest version and it still has a number of annoying UI bugs that were reported years ago. To me recent versions of Opera don't even come close to matching the browser it used to be.

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.

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.

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.

The are two things about Presto; one is that it tends to be standards compliant almost to a fault.

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.

The sad part about it is 'if everything is the same under the hood', browsers will just compete for user's attention and with each other on UI features and such?

So why use Opera at all then, use the WebKit browsers already existing, if Opera introduces a killer feature, just wait a bit, and your favorite WebKit browser will have it soon (that is the way of it usually right?).

I don't see how Opera will be more valuable in any industry that is already controlled by 'established' WebKit browsers.

Maybe continued and maybe better innovation 'under the hood' would have been a better game changer?

does anybody here HONESTLY think Opera would be abandoning presto if it would run on iPhone?

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.

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.
other too.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I don't really understand what you are complaining about or indeed what you want to happen instead.

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

You don't seem to care about there are thousands of incompatible forks of webkit that all implement the standards incorrectly.

Also this says nothing about the JavaScript interpreters which there are more than 6 or 7 different interpreter in the wild, which aren't tied to the Webkit engine.

Let alone all the application frameworks that are using (incompatible) versions of Webkit (SmartTV SDK versions on its own is different enough).

Then we have even in the same browser version on different operating systems.

Safari (last time I checked) works differently on Windows than it does on MacOSX and probably works differently on iOS ... that is fragmentation in the same bloody code base.

Then we have projects that want to start using HTML 5 and JS in their desktop frameworks (QML, Metro, GTK), which won't be webkit.

Webkit isn't a browser, it is just one component of. Much like Linux is one component of a Linux distro.

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

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.

And how would that be different with n completely different rendering-engines? I will tell you: since WebKit is LGPL all the work done on WebKit is open sourced and so everybody can use, can upgrade, can move on to invent in the WebKit world.

No, it isn't a browser but "WebKit is an open source web browser engine." - from webkit.org

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.

It would be unreasonable to expect full conformance to the complete specification of a new standard: there are always likely to be edge cases. But, as we have stressed before, some areas of WebGL need to be carefully implemented to prevent security issues arising and unfortunately in this case, because security-related conformance tests are not clearly identified, it is not possible to determine if an implementation is secure. This has been a contributory factor in security issues being missed by developers of the current browser implementations of WebGL, which has in turn created serious security flaws. Browser developers should start banning non-conformant configurations as they are identified until the security issues that have been highlighted are resolved.

Context therefore recommends that users and system administrators disable WebGL.

We need more diversity, not going backwards to one single monopolistic eco-system.

Opera doing this takes away a little more choice from the user

In 2003, *every* website worked with IE6.

For me, though, Opera will always be that one program I downloaded right away whenever I inaugurated a new BeOS installation.

does anybody here HONESTLY think Opera would be abandoning presto if it would run on iPhone?

since Apple tries its damnedest to shut down competition and won't allow anything but webkit well that is what we ALL get

How do you fix Webkit in specific browser versions?

really?

Somebody doesn't know what they are talking about on here again.

Webkit is a not a browser

Let's face it, WebGL is a proprietary API

It is beyond me how some people can be as egotistic to claim that Microsoft should implement a standard to their web browser

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.

Because

This is what a decentralized authority on the direction of the web means to developers. Write multiple times, test everywhere

use a JS framework

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

"really?

so you just proved my point in why they need to be investigated.

Would you please provide an update for all our iPad users, regardless of the iPad generation?

Cause you know, WebKit is open and such so that I don't have to hack around for iPad users.

Everything needed to implement Silverlight is provided by Microsoft.

I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at. In fact, Moonlight did a great job of implementing Silverlight.

-webkit prefixes

Touch

shitload of WebKit only extensions that are used by plenty of "iPhone Optimized" websites around the internet.

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.

developers get hired to create applications for what consumers have right now

The entire Silverlight 4 profile is supported with Moonlight.

Basically you get a very high amount of compatibility.

Silverlight is king when it comes to .NET LOB.

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

Daniel Glazman, co-chair of the CSS WG, posted a call for action that warned of the dire consequences of web developers using only -webkit-prefixed CSS declarations: IE, Mozilla and Opera would also implement -webkit-.

2. Is that why the BSODs stopped when I changed browsers?

stopping development on the main thing that makes you special.

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.

Opera moving to WebKIt won't mean sh*t for the web because Presto doesn't mean anything.

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.

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.

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?

the engine. When it was competing with Netscape and IE5 it was particularly fast and light on resources, but that's no longer the case these days.

"stopping development on the main thing that makes you special.