Opera's WebKit switch saw it lose 90 employees, many developers
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NetOperator Wibby
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I hope this doesn't turn out to be a bad idea. I love and use Opera as my main browser. I jailbroke my phone so I could use Opera Mini as my default browser...Opera Mini could definitely benefit from WebKit though.
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Alfonse":29mnl1e1 said:
Your statement does not make sense... The number of employed personnel does not have a direct correlation to end user benefits or innovation. Microsoft had employees uncountable when it released Windows Vista. That didn't make it a better product.
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Bad Monkey!":1pnskrx6 said:
It is a very curious statement. Opera Mini only works the way it does because it *isn't* rendering things locally. I'm not sure they'll implement that with Webkit.. maybe they will. Otherwise, even with a similar Webkit engine, they'll be anathema to the App Store.
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I cannot fault the logic. For a small company it definitely makes sense to not reinvent the wheel. Of course it's a bit sad for the whole browser ecosystem. After all this is arguably the most important software technology in existence.
And it leaves three ie gecko and website. Let's hope that none of those goes out.
And it leaves three ie gecko and website. Let's hope that none of those goes out.
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I personally hope they push the repo of Presto onto Github or something; for historical purposes, that code could be an excellent resource to have.
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du_sumboudy":1y2jluy8 said:
Considering Webkit is arguably the most portable Web renderer in existence.. I'm sure that Opera will manage to make it work.
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Fact is, it would be cheaper for Opera to integrate permisevly licensed engine, than have to do all the extensive testing themselves and thus employ people for the relatively small userbase they have.
Make absolutely no mistake, having other people do all the grunt work and testing is the only real reason Opera moved to webkit.
Also Presto won't be opensourced if they have any patents or copyright on it they can use in the future, even against the people that maintain the code they are using.
Make absolutely no mistake, having other people do all the grunt work and testing is the only real reason Opera moved to webkit.
Also Presto won't be opensourced if they have any patents or copyright on it they can use in the future, even against the people that maintain the code they are using.
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LauRoman":3tacrmxh said:
Yeah, I'd imagine that is, since that's basically why they said they were moving to WebKit. Repeatedly.
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That would be incredibly sad. It just feels like taking a step towards being a patent troll to sue over code you can't be bothered to even use in your own browser.LauRoman":3bynb5yp said:
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KitsuneKnight":37283poq said:
Not having braindead developers (like the ones on Blogger.com) coding for WebKit instead of the web standards and then showing a "yur browser is too oldz lol" message to Opera might have had something to do with it as well. Every couple of
I await the first beta of OperaKit. Rumored casualties are Carakan (confirmed), Dragonfly (confirmed), Fit-to-Width/Seamless Zoom and Single-Column/Small Screen mode (all but confirmed, those depend on Presto's dynamic layout code), Instant "Back" and "Undo" (probably too dependent on Presto to be able to be retrofitted to WebKit), IRC and Torrent clients - torrents, I agree, because nobody uses them, but IRC had it's uses and has been stable for ages (any new releases of the IRC spec lately
?). I always wondered why they didn't add XMPP.Now, where did I leave my Opera Bork Edition?
(edit: added Bork nostalgia and added explanation and link to the sitepatching effort, Bork Bork!)
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It makes sense if you read it as humor. Go on, give it a try some time.coder543":1y623a0l said:
Okay, let me explain the joke and kill it dead in the process. There are two parts to the statement:
1. Opera is making a case for focusing on "developing end user benefits and innovations"
2. Opera lays off 90 people "about half of whom were developers" working on Presto
It can be read that there is no real intent to benefit the end user, nor to innovate, and that it's all about delivering a more solid and standardized product to their embedded customers like (at least previously) Nintendo. So the real two parts to the statement are:
1. we're going to make more money off selling Opera
2. we're going to make more money off selling Opera
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This is my take. I also love how Google Drive (hm... same company) keeps reminding me that my newly-installed Firefox ESR is too old, even though I've told the messenger umpteen times it is dismissed.tigas":3pp1482e said:
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It seems logical that some developers wouldn't have the necessary skills to work on WebKit (maybe some of them were really glorified beta testers or something?) but 90 is too many.
For so many to leave, it sounds like they either don't intend to actually contribute much to the WebKit project, or they had a bunch of employees quit in protest.
For so many to leave, it sounds like they either don't intend to actually contribute much to the WebKit project, or they had a bunch of employees quit in protest.
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tigas":2kyzy90w said:I await the first beta of OperaKit. Rumored casualties are Carakan (confirmed), Dragonfly (confirmed), Fit-to-Width/Seamless Zoom and Single-Column/Small Screen mode (all but confirmed, those depend on Presto's dynamic layout code), Instant "Back" and "Undo" (probably too dependent on Presto to be able to be retrofitted to WebKit), IRC and Torrent clients - torrents, I agree, because nobody uses them, but IRC had it's uses and has been stable for ages (any new releases of the IRC spec lately
Carakan makes sense, V8 or SquirelFish/Nitro are both as good or better (they picked V8 I think?)
Dragonfly going away is a mixed bag. In some ways the WebKit Inspector is better, in some ways Dragonfly is better. Best case scenario would be to switch to the WebKit Inpsector and then port everything good in dragonfly over... time will tell if that happens.
Fit-to-Width/Seamless Zoom should be possible in WebKit. All touchscreen WebKit browsers have that feature.
Safari has something very similar to Instant Back (I think it might be different however). Dunno about Chrome, but if Safari has it then Opera should be able to do it too. When I use the touch gesture on my mouse (or on any trackpad) to tell safari to go back, I can see the previous page sliding into the window before I've even completed the gesture (and I can undo the gesture way through).
I think it's just a screenshot of the last page and it does re-send the TCP request and re-execute "on load" javascript and so on, but your form data and everything is preserved. I just went back and then forwards, and it showed me this comment box during the transition, then the box vanished, then ars technica's javascript re-created the comment box (as an empty box) and then safari filled my half-written comment into the box.
I'm not sure what you mean by "Undo"? Surely all browsers have undo these days?
Killing IRC and Torrents is a good idea. Torrents built into the browser are a great idea that's probably never going to kick off now that CDN's are so cheap for commercial projects and freely available to open source projects. And having IRC embedded in a browser makes even less sense than an embedded email client.
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abhi_beckert":14x07c52 said:
90 developers didn't quit, only "about" half were developers. 45 seems to be a much more reasonable number of people deciding now was a good time to move on, for whatever reason, in a company with over 900 employees (just prior to when this reportedly occurred, I'd figure a very large percentage of that number consists of developers).
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abhi_beckert":184tiiw9 said:tigas":184tiiw9 said:I await the first beta of OperaKit. Rumored casualties are Carakan (confirmed), Dragonfly (confirmed), Fit-to-Width/Seamless Zoom and Single-Column/Small Screen mode (all but confirmed, those depend on Presto's dynamic layout code), Instant "Back" and "Undo" (probably too dependent on Presto to be able to be retrofitted to WebKit), IRC and Torrent clients - torrents, I agree, because nobody uses them, but IRC had it's uses and has been stable for ages (any new releases of the IRC spec lately
Fit-to-Width/Seamless Zoom should be possible in WebKit. All touchscreen WebKit browsers have that feature.
Safari has something very similar to Instant Back (I think it might be different however). Dunno about Chrome, but if Safari has it then Opera should be able to do it too. When I use the touch gesture on my mouse (or on any trackpad) to tell safari to go back, I can see the previous page sliding into the window before I've even completed the gesture (and I can undo the gesture way through).
I think it's just a screenshot of the last page and it does re-send the TCP request and re-execute "on load" javascript and so on, but your form data and everything is preserved. I just went back and then forwards, and it showed me this comment box during the transition, then the box vanished, then ars technica's javascript re-created the comment box (as an empty box) and then safari filled my half-written comment into the box.
I'm not sure what you mean by "Undo"? Surely all browsers have undo these days?
Are you an Opera user? Even though other browsers try to emulate those features (Opera does NOT show a screenshot of the previous page, for example), the way those things work on Opera is very, very specific (and so far, IMHO, better).
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cream wobbly":3dla3ij9 said:
... Google didn't make WebKit though... Apple did, hence the Kit suffice and the capitalization...
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abhi_beckert":2ynfeg17 said:
I think by "Undo" he means if you close a tab you can immediately bring the tab back with all of it's associated history, though I'd be rather surprised if tabbed browsers don't have this feature already.
I don't see how any of those features are useless at all. For torrents, why should I need to install a bittorrent client if I only occasionally use it? Though I do understand many private torrent communities are very strict on what clients they allow their user to connect to their services with, but I don't think that was ever Opera's intended audience in the first place.
Opera's email and rss reader is probably at least as competent as Mozilla's Thunderbird client (I haven't used that in several years), and there are extensions for Firefox which serve the same purpose anyways. So there is obviously an audience for this kind of service. I only stopped using Opera's email client because I got a smartphone, so it was a bit redundant to have both services.
Obviously these features aren't useless as people developed competing services for Firefox. Making the argument sounds more like that a browser should only be a browser and nothing else, when its obvious technology is not headed that way. Opera hasn't even said whether or not any of these features will survive post-Presto, so it's only conjecture at this point anyways.
I think more that anything this highlights a trend that's been in the web development community for several years of not adhering to standards and only developing a website with specific browsers in mind. Opera's move means they are most likely tired of trying to promote standards adherence and are now just willing to accept this trend. It is worry and a bad sign for the future of the Internet. Waves of this have been at least present since HTML 5 was introduced, at least three years since it's formal introduction and we've yet to reach a recommendation status and it's not expected to reach one until 2014.
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Not sure how what you said relates to the prior two posts... but Apple only created the WebKit project. The WebKit code itself is descended from KDE's KHTML and KJS* technology... But, again, not really sure how this all relates...marcusj0015":yzdu9co5 said:
* Not sure how much, if any, heritage the various current WebKit JS engines share with KJS. I'd imagine V8 might be totally independent.
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KitsuneKnight":3pu47fpj said:
the quote changed on me, I originally quoted it from the dude talking about google not allowing presto to view pages conspiracy theory.
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Of the 90, I wonder how many were devs/marketers, and how many were "collateral damage" (office staff, janitors, maybe sysops, and all coincident management)
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marcusj0015":1fxbvc6j said:
I don't know as much as a conspiracy, as much as it was just the way their servers reacted to a connection with an Opera browser. Google has excluded features from Opera before, regardless of whether they work or not. Being able to change the background on google.com was not available to Opera unless you told Opera to lie about being Opera, and the feature worked fine. There's also the incessant advertisement for Chrome if you're not using Chrome claiming that it's a "faster, better way to browse." I don't know if this is present on any other browsers, but it certainly is on almost every other Google page in Opera.
Various other sites refuse to accept Opera even still, suggesting that you should upgrade to a newer browser despite having the most recent version of Opera installed.
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I like the idea of having a "Chromium core" beneath Opera goodness. Too many websites tell me they don't know how to work with Opera and that I have to use a different browser; the number seems to be increasing. Sometimes I can make Opera work on these sites but frequently they refuse to function, even if I change the browser ID.
I also wonder whether the requirements for Mega.co.nz might be part of this. According to the site's tech support, Opera doesn't support any of the APIs used by Mega and the Javascript engine is too slow. While this is just one site, with the "rise" of cloud computing and storage lockers, I'm sure these requirements will become more common in the future.
Since nearly every website works great with Chrome, having a WebKit engine should make life much easier for everyone, developers and users alike.
I also wonder whether the requirements for Mega.co.nz might be part of this. According to the site's tech support, Opera doesn't support any of the APIs used by Mega and the Javascript engine is too slow. While this is just one site, with the "rise" of cloud computing and storage lockers, I'm sure these requirements will become more common in the future.
Since nearly every website works great with Chrome, having a WebKit engine should make life much easier for everyone, developers and users alike.
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Crap...if Dragonfly goes, I'll shut automatic updates off and stay with version 12.x until it gets too dangerous. I'll have to hope in the meantime all the little things that make Opera better stick around or come back (tab restore, right-click to open new tab on the tab bar, automatic restoration of last session, being able to save sessions, etc, etc.)
The other browsers all have little quirks that are now infuriating, but that might be because I've had Opera as my primary browser for more than 10 years. Chrome isn't too be trusted, I don't want to spend four hours configuring Firefox (and downloading and installing extensions that require configuration, and then might break 6 weeks later when the next update comes.) IE is still IE...although it's worlds ahead of where it was back in the version 7 and 8 days.
This sucks, quite frankly. I hope Opera gets it together and can make a decent browser around WebKit. I also feel for all the people out of a job. Sucks that it's always the grunts that take the brunt of the bad when changes come "for the good of the business."
The other browsers all have little quirks that are now infuriating, but that might be because I've had Opera as my primary browser for more than 10 years. Chrome isn't too be trusted, I don't want to spend four hours configuring Firefox (and downloading and installing extensions that require configuration, and then might break 6 weeks later when the next update comes.) IE is still IE...although it's worlds ahead of where it was back in the version 7 and 8 days.
This sucks, quite frankly. I hope Opera gets it together and can make a decent browser around WebKit. I also feel for all the people out of a job. Sucks that it's always the grunts that take the brunt of the bad when changes come "for the good of the business."
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I've been an OPERA user for over 10 years because they were the true innovators.
I've seen the marginalization of their vision occurring in their 2012 releases.
I lamented the elimination of UNITE.
I 've been able to sync my web activity across machines for years because of Opera Sync.
My live tiles in speed dial have allowed me to instantly link to my favorite sites way before there was this annoying METRO/WIN8 thingy.
OPERA widgets /> extensions were the incubator of all APPS.
TOO bad the masses of content consumers are so trained by what cums with the boxes that suck up their eye time.
I've seen the marginalization of their vision occurring in their 2012 releases.
I lamented the elimination of UNITE.
I 've been able to sync my web activity across machines for years because of Opera Sync.
My live tiles in speed dial have allowed me to instantly link to my favorite sites way before there was this annoying METRO/WIN8 thingy.
OPERA widgets /> extensions were the incubator of all APPS.
TOO bad the masses of content consumers are so trained by what cums with the boxes that suck up their eye time.
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Personally, I think Opera can now disappear. Their announcement made for a suicide note in my mind, and I can't imagine what kind of value-add they can offer now that they threw in the towel on their own layout engine and Javascript compiler. A lot of the value that Opera offered was in it's small download size and very fast layout engine along with very good standards compliance. They innovated, and they really did so with Presto.
Now that they are becoming just another Chrome-clone, I can't see the point in continuing to use it. Why? I might as well download Chrome. They're doing the actual browser work now, and have a lot more experience and expertise in the development.
I'd like to see them open source Presto now, but I my guess is that they probably would have announced that with the change if that's the way they were leaning. What a waste. Farewell Opera; it's been a good ride.
(Doesn't this feel vaguely reminiscent of Qualcomm's crack-brained attempt to port Eudora's features to Thunderbird? That turned out well.)
Now that they are becoming just another Chrome-clone, I can't see the point in continuing to use it. Why? I might as well download Chrome. They're doing the actual browser work now, and have a lot more experience and expertise in the development.
I'd like to see them open source Presto now, but I my guess is that they probably would have announced that with the change if that's the way they were leaning. What a waste. Farewell Opera; it's been a good ride.
(Doesn't this feel vaguely reminiscent of Qualcomm's crack-brained attempt to port Eudora's features to Thunderbird? That turned out well.)
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Pretty much the KDE team did. WebKit is a fork of KHTML.marcusj0015":4on4kc13 said:
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Opera could've had their own Operabook if they wanted to. Browser as a light OS replacement was done earlier by them (Opera Unite with widgets) and it already had so many other native features in it (Opera Link, BitTorrent client, email client, IRC, the list goes on) before Google even came up with its Chromebook shite. And it was better than Google's solution.
But no, the braindead hipster web devs took the bait and started making sites for WebKit (say, using WebKit-specific CSS prefixes instead of standardised ones) and swallowed up the performance "benchmarks" touting how fast Chrome was (using Google's own JavaScript test, no less - no surprise there).
I'm annoyed that this has happened and I agree with Mozilla that this isn't in the best interests of the standards as a whole because it gives Google more leverage. However, I'd take Mozilla or Opera over Google as a company anyday because they are just that bit more ethical.
And to the hipster web devs who say that this is a great thing because it means that their code will need less testing across all engines I say "Write standard code you lazy monkeys".
But no, the braindead hipster web devs took the bait and started making sites for WebKit (say, using WebKit-specific CSS prefixes instead of standardised ones) and swallowed up the performance "benchmarks" touting how fast Chrome was (using Google's own JavaScript test, no less - no surprise there).
I'm annoyed that this has happened and I agree with Mozilla that this isn't in the best interests of the standards as a whole because it gives Google more leverage. However, I'd take Mozilla or Opera over Google as a company anyday because they are just that bit more ethical.
And to the hipster web devs who say that this is a great thing because it means that their code will need less testing across all engines I say "Write standard code you lazy monkeys".
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tigas":kndywar2 said:I await the first beta of OperaKit. Rumored casualties are Carakan (confirmed), Dragonfly (confirmed), Fit-to-Width/Seamless Zoom and Single-Column/Small Screen mode (all but confirmed, those depend on Presto's dynamic layout code), Instant "Back" and "Undo" (probably too dependent on Presto to be able to be retrofitted to WebKit), IRC and Torrent clients - torrents, I agree, because nobody uses them, but IRC had it's uses and has been stable for ages (any new releases of the IRC spec lately
OK, now I'm sad. The fit-to-width thing is one of the greatest features that everyone else should have had eons ago. I don't have a particularly big monitor (still rockin' that CRT) and have poor eyesight so the seamless zoom has been a real lifesaver. It just doesn't compare in Chrome, which is my other-other browser.
The speed alone in going back and forward in nav history in one tab is worth the download, IMHO.
I also wonder how this will affect the memory footprint. Opera is no longer the svelte program it once was; it's not unusual for me to get over 1GB of usage from hardcore session use, but with that chunk it would not be impossible for me on my 10 year old computer to keep open 75+ tabs without bogging down. Chrome clocks in somewhere around, oh, 10 tabs before it starts to crawl.
Granted, Chrome does seem to load stuff faster (sites like GetGlue actually lock up Opera nowadays) but the overall usefulness is just so much better in Opera that I don't see myself upgrading anytime soon. The built-in RSS feed has been great, too. I only wish it was integrated and synced with Mini & Mobile, too, but that never really came to fruition.
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fjpoblam":80al2693 said:
Well at least half of the 90 were people checking site compatibility - testers, and web developer reach out. It seems worrying because the cuts are on what's called "Core" team, but of course Presto was the most important stuff the Core Team was doing.
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As if "standard code" means predictable implementation across browsers.wicker_man":2o8smnom said:
Opera is in my experience as a web developer the second most bitchiest, after IE. And I'm talking IE6-7-8, IE9 is less buggy. Of modern browsers, Opera is the one I've had to code the most workarounds for. So yeah, I welcome the death of Presto.
Mobile browsers are just a bitch to code for in general. Every one of them renders sites differently. CSS is a pain in the ass anyway, it always feels like voodoo doing some of the more extravagant things. But when browsers then take it on themselves to calculate dimensions and sizes differently, it's infuriating.
And Safari iOS has been - by FAR - the best and most predictable mobile browser. THAT's why everybody's coding for it! The other's have caught up in the last year. But it's ridiculous what a piece of shit Firefox Mobile has been until recently. Opera Mobile is also one buggy nightmare.
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tigas":3prmsx91 said:
Though one might wonder if laying off most of their testers just as they start a large-scale rebuilding of their main product was a great idea.
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jasonvalhalla":2tx6unot said:
That's because you;re coding for it and most likely on it (WebKit engine). I think if you've tried coding in Opera you'd find that you have to code a lot of workarounds for Safari, too. The reason "everyone" is coding for WebKit/Mobile Safari is because it's the default browser on iPad/iPhone and this is what the majority of designers' clients use, too (that's an assumption, just like yours was).
The biggest ache was the non-standard box model implementation and browser-specific margins, etc. - something that's fairly easily solved with a decent CSS reset. After that, I've found if you keep to standards and don't use some hip alpha HTML/CSS stuff your code will work great across the board.
I agree with you on the Opera Mobile front though.
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