Opera switches to WebKit to develop new mobile, desktop browsers
Feb 13, 2013 7:09 AM
Daniel Ionescu
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2027942/opera-switches-to-webkit-to-develop-new-mobile-desktop-browsers.html
Opera Software will fight Apple and Google on their own turf after deciding to both adopt the page-rendering engine used in the Safari and Chrome browsers and phase out its own technology for both desktop and mobile versions of the Opera browser.
Presto is the rendering engine Opera browsers use to display webpages, and the Norwegian firm has developed it over the years. Opera said its browsers now have more than 300 million monthly users worldwide.
Presto will be dumped in favor of WebKit, the browser engine used by Apple in Safari on OSX and iOS, as well as by Google for Chrome on the desktop and Android. The transition will be gradual; first up will be Android and iOS versions of Opera because the company wants to claim a bigger piece of the pie in the smartphone market.
Hakon Wium Lie, Opera Software’s chief technology officer, said the shift to WebKit means more of the company’s resources can be dedicated to developing new features: “The WebKit engine is already very good, and we aim to take part in making it even better. It supports the standards we care about, and it has the performance we need.”
He added: “It makes more sense to have our experts working with the open source communities to further improve WebKit and Chromium, rather than developing our own rendering engine further. Opera will contribute to the WebKit and Chromium projects, and we have already submitted our first set of patches: to improve multi-column layout.”
The first demos of Opera browsers running on WebKit will be shown at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in less than two weeks. One of them, Opera’s chief technology officer said, will be a project codenamed Ice that was leaked in a video in mid-January. The browser won’t have buttons, but use gestures to control going back and forth through web pages and replace tabs with icons on a homepage.
As you all know I once promoted Opera as it was the best browser by far at one time. Now unfortunately it has gone right down the pan and lags behind most other browsers today. The recently releases seem to have got even worse. The original Opera developers died and with their deaths came the death of Opera. I no longer use Opera and right now my new favourite is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 10. For me, it is the only browser that seems to be balanced and reliable as well as compatible. Sorry Opera Software but you have screwed your once amazing browser into the ground and made it useless for my needs. I do not promote the use of Maxthon, Chrome and Safari. I am also not keen on Firefox bar a couple of useful add-ons.
Thank God Microsoft boosted its flagship browser. When it comes to the crunch forget browser benchmarks, Internet Explorer 10 works best and certainly does on my Windows 8 machine. I also have to admit I have dropped Linux in favour of Windows 8 which is a far more polish operating system which boots ultra fast and works so well. I have even got used to the start screen and removed a classic start button system in favour of the metro/start. Times change and we have to change with the times to suit our needs.
-= The Unhived Mind
I have found a few qwerks in Internet Explorer I do not like recently such as how it has trouble with the Opera Group controlled Fastmail email service. I would advise you all to take a look at the Slimboat browser and WaterFox browsers but ideally try the better 64-bit version of Pale Moon from the Pale Moon Project. Pale Moon is much faster than even Waterfox, try and bench test and see for yourself. Pale Moon is now my browser of choice!
-= The Unhived Mind
http://www.palemoon.org/