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Poll: What do you think about Opera switching to WebKit? comments

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Left under the original article, as archived.

Michael JohnsonWednesday, February 13, 2013 5:32:18 PM
I agree with Christian Heilmann. To me it's said the such a strong voice for standards is being weakened.
CodyWednesday, February 13, 2013 5:40:58 PM
Already commented on this over at the previous thread, but it totally bears repeating, because it is something which has irritated me about WebKit for years, and which I've always liked in Opera.

I need the ability to pause animated GIFs in order to stop the particularly migraine-inducing ones, as well as to read text that's near even some of the milder ones without constantly getting distracted.

If the new WebKit-based Opera implements the necessary hooks to stop animated GIFs on escape and to selectively pause GIFs on a per-site basis--as the current version of Opera can do--this makes me very happy. Especially if those hooks are contributed back to WebKit to be available to other browsers using the engine.

If it means that Opera loses the ability to stop GIFs, however, then that's yet another browser taken out of my arsenal for everyday web surfing.
GuyWednesday, February 13, 2013 5:58:41 PM
Hello,
I receive this news with much apprehension. While Opera Software's decision to cease support of Opera Browser for Solaris affected few of our users, this development may effect a change to nearly all within the organization.
While we do not utilize many of the Opera Browser features, the highly configurable nature of the browser is an important aspect -- as user's roles have differing needs.
I am hoping for only positive changes, not having to introduce a new browser into our environment, reeducation of users, and configuring for their varied needs.
Sincere regards.
Guy FlemingWednesday, February 13, 2013 6:43:15 PM
Originally posted by drlaunch:

Before I start, I must say that that poll in the sidebar there is going to be very biased. It's not going to represent the userbase at all. It represents a very vocal minority, with strong feelings about this change. Most of which will probably be the the old "I'm afraid of change so I have to be a total douche about it", people.

I answered "Bad idea". Not because I'm afraid of change. Actually, the people who had that reason are wrong. I doubt Opera will be much different to general end user. Things will probably work the same way they do today. Probably even extensions and Dragonfly. I belong to the small subset that thinks this will have a bad impact on the future of the web. I think https://twitter.com/dstorey]David Storey speaks for a lot of us on this matter.

What happened during the last browser monopoly, was that developers stopped following the web specs, and started making code that targeted MSIE-specific features. The problems caused by this were around for many years, and the Mozilla Foundation and Opera Software spent a lot of effort on changing things for the better. During the rise of WebKit on mobile, mobile devs started targeting WebKit-specific features, especially in CSS only. And during the rise of Chrome on PC/Mac, developers started making web applications that used features only available in Chrome, especially V8, and started using browser sniffing to block browsers again. What just happened is that Opera Software seemingly stopped wearing its blue beanie, and started rewarding these devs for trying to make a new browser monopoly.

Left are gecko and trident, used in Firefox and MSIE respectively. As far as Mozilla goes, I think they have yet to release an official statement about it. If they switch to WebKit, which I kind of doubt, we're left with trident, from the old monopolist MSIE. Then I doubt trident will survive much longer. Way to go Opera Software. Replacing that monopoly you fought so hard with another.

I for one am going to keep using Opera until the switch has been done. Then I'm going to have to decide whether to stay with an old version of Opera, or if I'll be forced to take my blue beanie with me and switch to Firefox. Am I moaning about this? Yes. Am I entitled to? Absolutely.

Follow https://twitter.com/dstorey]@dstorey[/URL] for more about web standards and the open web.
As a coder, I must agree and urge Haavard to reconsider. Under the Opera 9 and 10 series, the code was at optimal performance and did not target how other browsers behaved. Microsoft can do whatever they like, we however are not M$ and should not at all feel pressured to follow the same route as firefox. I stop using Opera because the code is flawed and cannot self sustain stability. This new idea would only threaten Opera ASA and the work put into it development of the browser. Havaard, you want change? Don't given in to the idea that if Mozilla wants to follow, so must we. Mozilla has shown decline, we cannot follow suite and expect to be better. Presto even at current state, is much better than Webkit. Any coder should realize this and understand that. Webkit is used by IE, we all hate IE and should avoid the engine like the plague. Webkit cannot be added to or made better, as M$ has sole rights to the engine. If this is done, all respect that you have will be lost, and no one will look to you as the best.
CodyWednesday, February 13, 2013 6:49:41 PM
Originally posted by Virusboy:

Webkit is used by IE, we all hate IE and should avoid the engine like the plague. Webkit cannot be added to or made better, as M$ has sole rights to the engine.

If this is done, all respect that you have will be lost, and no one will look to you as the best.
Uhh...what? WebKit is (a) free and open-source, and (b) not used by Microsoft.
thshdwWednesday, February 13, 2013 7:10:45 PM
I think moving to webkit is a good plan.

My major concern is that this change will some how change the interface.

I use Opera for its interface. If moving to webkit means that my 30 open tabs are slower or use more memory or cause more crashes then its bad. If moving to webkit means I lose the email client, or Dragonfly, or mouse gestures or keyboard shortcuts or the feed-reader, or insert your favorite feature here; then its bad.

I think their needs to be some reassurance from Opera that this change will not hinder the interface or feature set.
HaavardWednesday, February 13, 2013 7:34:29 PM
Originally posted by BS-Harou:

Many long-time Opera devs left Opera (Anne, Patrik, Rijk, ...) and don't tell me it has nothing to do with it.
Rijk and Anne left Opera before they knew about WebKit. I don't know about the rest, but I know that overall people are excited about this at the office. Finally we can focus on more interesting things than constantly fixing sites that keep changing and breaking.

Originally posted by mrskensington:

As an STB Developer who does a lot of development on Opera Mobile it's a little worrying. Whilst all our apps try to be as standards compliant as possible we have to use a number of opera propriety extensions (like opera.lockImage to get around the browser discarding images from memory) in order to give the user a smooth experience. I assume that features like these will be removed which would affect our applications.
You probably have a contract and a long maintenance period. It's not like we can just decided that our business contracts are no longer valid.

Originally posted by drlaunch:

I belong to the small subset that thinks this will have a bad impact on the future of the web.
If there is a bad impact on the web because of WebKit, it is already happening and would have happened without Opera. We are simply not getting through to web developers, and it's hurting us. Using WebKit at least gives us a shot at becoming a more influential player.

Originally posted by thewebdev:

Seems more like a "management" decision.
Obviously, us regular employees don't make these decisions. But it just so happens that we think this was the right decision by our managers. It has overwhelming support among regular employees in the company.

I guess you have to be dealing with the frustration of keeping Presto compatible to understand..

Originally posted by thewebdev:

If "freeing up resources" isn't management speak for firing a bunch of developers, then there is certainly some merit in the idea.
The fact is that maintaining Presto takes up a considerable amount of resources, and far too much of that is spent on trying to catch up with the web and stay compatible. It's holding us back.

Originally posted by Virusboy:

Under the Opera 9 and 10 series, the code was at optimal performance and did not target how other browsers behaved.
Oh, but it did. Even back then, we strived to be compatible with the real web.

By the way, even if I reconsider (and I won't because I fully support this move after careful consideration) it won't help because it is not up to me.
GeocitiesWednesday, February 13, 2013 7:36:47 PM
Presto probably used too much bolts for compatibility reasons.

I had C&C online game working OK, with HWA on some builds before final but than you start adding those NSL clamps on it and everything slowdown again (some German news sites i think), don't have full picture what's was the problem here but it is what it is. I guess Opera can't dictate how a web is build and works in general.

There is no perfect browser or page per say.

If everything did came from Opera, like tabs, speed dial and so on, than what, logical step is to use something in return but are you really sure that you can handle it, fresh pet bugs no thank you.
Guy FlemingWednesday, February 13, 2013 7:40:21 PM
Originally posted by haavard:

Oh, but it did. Even back then, we strived to be compatible with the real web.

not as much as 12 is. Webkit will not make things better. I'm sorry to hear that Havaard.
Pallab DeWednesday, February 13, 2013 7:51:03 PM
Good for Opera and its users, but still can't help but feel sad to see it go. Perhaps things would have been different if Opera had open sourced Presto 6 or 7 years back.
FransWednesday, February 13, 2013 8:47:40 PM
Originally posted by Tenno Seremel:

I'd say useless quotes and commas are worse. However, for plain 1 level configuration you don't need anything other than INI-style. When you've got trees, that's a different matter entirely. It's easier to parse XML with my eyes rather than JSON. Well, for me anyway

With syntax highlighting the tags are easy to ignore, without definitely not. For me, of course.

So I would say about equally bad with syntax highlighting.
aguiadouradaWednesday, February 13, 2013 9:32:13 PM
I voted "bad idea". I use Opera not just because it has always been a light browser (all the "light" a browser can be those days...), but I also liked the engine. Maybe because it was different from the big ones, but it just worked great. Average users may not notice the change, but I think you can really get used to Presto's smoothness.

Lets see what happens, but I hope Opera doesn't just become another webkit decoration window. And as others said before, it would be a nice thing to have its source code released under a free license, given it's not going to be used anywhere anymore.
myownfriendWednesday, February 13, 2013 10:51:02 PM
With Chrome already having a huge market share, many that might consider switching to Opera now, won't have any reason to switch over.

Why? Because they likely already have Chrome.

As a developer, I test my sites in Opera, IE, Chrome, and Firefox (Not Safari) because they each have different rendering engines and are the used most used browsers with their engines.

Opera going Webkit knocks it off the list. Stick with Presto and open source it. You need the market share, you have a dedicated user base that are willing to get you that market share, and are thus your cheapest employees. We would help you guys with Presto if given the chance.
crash71Thursday, February 14, 2013 12:20:40 AM
If Opera is able to retain its UI and ability to handle hundreds of tabs - while using WebKit to display the web-content then this will be quite awesome --- as it feels like many Opera Innovations of the past have gotten completely sidelined.

E.g. Session Management, Password Management, Real Multi-level Tab-stacks, etc. etc. I went into more detail in response to Haavard asking what defines Opera.
alexvodaThursday, February 14, 2013 12:30:48 AM
I voted "Bad Idea" because one less browser engine will be bad for the development of the web.

IF THE DECISION IS FINAL PLEASE
OPEN SOURCE PRESTO!!!!!!!!!!!

With Presto gone all we have left is Webkit (the multi-corporate supported engine), Trident (the Microsoft engine) and Gecko (the only browser organization engine). Presto was great in part because Opera is a browser-focused company just the way Mozilla is browser-focused. There were no side interests to derail browser making.
Google, Apple and Microsoft can NOT be assumed to have the best interest for the web. Look no further than the video tag fiasco, when after Google didn't remove h264 as it said it would do(because this was against Googles main interest) the result was that even Mozilla had to capitulate on the issue and support h264.

I fear that against MS, Appl and Goog (in control of 3 browsers, 3 OS's, and the 3 major mobile platforms) Mozilla will simply not have leverage, and will be pushed aside.
Already alternative browsers are forbidden on 2 of the 3 major mobile platforms and partially forbidden on Windows 8.
JimThursday, February 14, 2013 12:33:02 AM
Webkit has a slow software render and its hardware acceleration is second rate compared to geko.

Not to mention it hardlocks every computer I have tried it on if I browse like I do in Opera!
EricJHThursday, February 14, 2013 1:25:27 AM
Thank you for your comments Haavard. Along with one by Bruce Lawson the only official responses that I have seen and as such highly appreciated.

I am not sure what I will vote. May be that is a bad idea as the loss of Presto is a loss for the world of the web. Which does not mean that it was a bad choice from Opera's position.

Do I understand things correctly that the developmental pull by Webkit/Chromium world on HTML5/CSS was so strong that it was no longer feasible for Opera to keep up (even though two or three years ago extra devs were hired)?

Given the earthquake magnitude change I, and most likely many others, would like to hear more from Opera staff. More details about why and defend that why and what can be expected for the future.

Other than Opera there is one software that I "religiously" use and that is the Comodo Internet Security suite; I am a moderator at the Comodo forums. The Comodo CEO is also active at the forums especially around releases and will participate and when needed defend choices and changes made to products or newly introduced products.

The mores here at the Opera blogs and forums are different. However, in this particular case it seems to me that Opera's CEO has a world to win among the long term users by participating, talking about, explaining, answering, defending choices and very important give an outlook on the future by providing more details about what can be expected in the future.
SetiroNThursday, February 14, 2013 1:42:59 AM
It's not just a good idea, it's the best thing since Opera 10.
Who says otherwise is absolutely clueless of what's important for a good browsing experience; everything from being scared about Opera features disappearing to evil management hypothesis make no sense at all.

Opera only has one fatal flaw: website compatibility. The problem isn't Presto itself of course, it's the web: unfortunately opera's market share is too small for websites to care about full functionality in Opera, and new development on open source engines is evidently too fast for it to keep up.

Compatibility issues are what drive users away, and I'm not talking just about new users, I'm talking about people who were using Opera since version 6 or 7: every single one of the persons I converted to Opera has since moved to Chrome or Firefox, only because of how hassle-free they are with everything from their banking accounts to google services to facebook to N random websites.

I expect Opera's market share to grow substantially starting with version 13 (or whatever the webkit-based version will be called).

Yes, Presto was an amazing engine and it will be missed; I also do frown upon its disappearance from the market. Let's keep in mind though that we can expect many of its strengths to be patched onto Webkit by Opera's engineers, who will bring their standard web philosophy with themselves. Personally I would have preferred a switch to Gecko for web plurality reasons, but I understand the management's decision to have a single rendering engine on every platform (apple's fault here).

All in all,if you're voting "Bad Idea" here, you are being close minded and stupidly afraid of change.
crash71Thursday, February 14, 2013 2:04:14 AM
Oh no, I never thought about DragonFly...I find all the other browsers code-inspectors to be thoroughly subpar to Opera's vision.
CarvedInsideThursday, February 14, 2013 2:10:59 AM
Been a opera superuser for 10 years. I think that dropping Presto:rip: is a bad idea. Hope you guys reconsider.

But I guess this beats Facebook buying Opera.

Anyway you should make Presto open source as somebody,somewhere might want to carry on with it.
LinuxMint7Thursday, February 14, 2013 3:23:35 AM
I personally would really like to know what the security implications are regarding moving over to the webkit engine. The reason i am asking, Is that i have been using Opera exclusively for around 12 years. In that time, I have never used any other browser for any of my on-line transactions ever. And have never had any security issues or suffered any loss or consequences because of this personal decision i have made. Now whether this is down to Opera, Presto, Luck, Trust or total paranoia on my behalf, I don't really care. Would going over to webkit make Opera any less secure than it is at the moment ?. If so, Then i may have to either stay with the final Presto version of Opera until it's not viable to use any more, Or give up on-line transactions altogether. Trust, You earn it, You can't buy it.
иsᴀɴᴇThursday, February 14, 2013 5:21:22 AM
Incredible. After all these years, you guys finally decided to put the final nail in the Presto, and maybe Opera's engine.

Since the departure of von Tetzchner, who himself is a visionnaire, everything went downhill for Opera.
They couldn't grasp the mobile market as hard as they did. They couldn't even get a stable browser, Opera 12 was one of the worst browsers I've ever tried, please see my previous posts regarding this.
You guys even had to postpone the whole HWA idea due to unstability, after almost a year of promoting it! You can see where the problem is.

It's not the browser itself, it's not the marketing. It's the politics, why everyone who was so important at Opera, left? Only you, haavard, hallvord and olli remain, of the old gang. Of course Hakom is always there, but it's not the same.
Everyone jumped the boat.

---

As a personal word, thanks for ditching Presto. Embrace webkit, I've been using Comodo Dragon for a year and it's awesome, Opera can't handle rendering tons of heavy websites (just open theverge.com, and the whole UI locks up for minutes), while Webkit can. Don't mind the Webkit memory usage, Opera is doing the same thing.

And please, please, please, keep all the cool Opera features alive. Develop M3. Develop Opera Turbo 2, Opera Notes 2, Opera Dragonfly 2. All your users won't be using Opera otherwise, and that... that will be the end of Opera Software ASA.

Thanks for reading.
Keiv M.Thursday, February 14, 2013 5:45:04 AM
I get to work every morning about an hour before work starts. Every morning i open opera and, from bookmarks folder nicknames, open hundreds of pages at a time. so many some times that the "X" to close the tab is wider than the tab, and this is on a monitor with resolution at 1900+ pixels.

It loads all these pages rather quickly, in that i am able to start reading the first one almost right away. and even with all the content loaded and all the 1GB+memory used up the computer NEVER gets sluggish. NEVER!

a few tabs (facebook, words with friends, youtube, OWA mail) in chrome and everything stutters, switching from tab to tab i notice the content of each page being placed on screen. with all the abuse i throw at Presto, switching tabs has NEVER resulted in me seeing the contents of a page being composited once already loaded.

If this is but a taste of what i have to look forward to, then no, this is not a good move at all.
HaavardThursday, February 14, 2013 9:09:14 AM
Originally posted by Virusboy:

not as much as 12 is. Webkit will not make things better.
WebKit will vastly improve compatibility. You are correct that Opera 12 probably contains more compatibility workarounds than ever, but this only shows that moving to WebKit is the right thing to do from a compatibility perspective.

I think you'll agree that being forced to continue to add endless workarounds for broken sites is not sustainable in the long run.

Originally posted by Stahn:

Only you, haavard, hallvord and olli remain, of the old gang.
That is not true. Remember, most of the veterans mostly bury themselves in code and other work, and don't participate much in public discussions.

In fact, the guy who made our first contributions to WebKit is one of the oldest veterans around.
mubaidrThursday, February 14, 2013 9:21:38 AM
Enough talk give us snapshot to play with, its looooong time since we had some interesting Opera Next Snapshot!
morbitThursday, February 14, 2013 11:21:16 AM
Originally posted by mubaidr:

Enough talk give us snapshot to play with, its looooong time since we had some interesting Opera Next Snapshot!

Better wait a bit, you could have only one chance at reclaiming old users trust... But I'm waiting too for it, yes.

Biggest win would be if switch would appear (almost) transparent. But I fear that's simply not possible, especially if, as said "building on top" of Chromium.
mubaidrThursday, February 14, 2013 11:27:00 AM
Originally posted by morbit:

Better wait a bit, you could have only one chance at reclaiming old users trust... But I'm waiting too for it, yes.

Biggest win would be if switch would appear (almost) transparent. But I fear that's simply not possible.

I am not asking for Webkit based Opera(which might not be ready yet, even to be at Alpha stage)
FransThursday, February 14, 2013 12:37:05 PM
Originally posted by morbit:

Better wait a bit, you could have only one chance at reclaiming old users trust... But I'm waiting too for it, yes.

Indeed. I don't think a pre-alpha build would help much, even if abundantly advertised as such.
DoTheEvoThursday, February 14, 2013 12:38:02 PM
What do I think about switch to webkit?

I dunno, maybe if you could tell me how many things from your list in the post "What are the features that define Opera?" will work on the new opera, then I could maybe make up my mind.

If I would only read that its a switch to webkit, I would say OK.

But I keep reading chromium, chromium, chromium....
chromium is a done browser, full, everything, including GUI. I fear that maybe what we get is little re-skinned chromium with here and there extra settings, something like coolnovo, iron, comodo dragon... that will be incomparable in richness of customizations and settings to the presto opera
PeterThursday, February 14, 2013 12:38:53 PM
I voted "not sure", however, I still feel it is a "bad idea"

And what do I think?

Well, from business point of view, I understand such move. In order to increase its market share on mobile devices, Opera sacrifices its desktop product. In other words, Opera wants more users, not fans.

Many of us like Opera simply for being different. Now it will just pretend to be different. So then we shall pretend too

These site compatibility issues were here from the beginning, and not always Presto was to blame. If Opera really thinks it is a good idea, so make Presto open.

I guess many of us are now waiting for the first release of Webkit Opera, let's call it ChrOpera, just to compare it with the last Presto Opera.

If ChrOpera proves to be generally better than Opera, only then I will acknowledge that it was a good idea. If it shows otherwise, then I hope that Opera will return to Presto and will not invest its resources in improving something what is un-improvable
Pablo BellucciaThursday, February 14, 2013 1:10:52 PM
I like the idea of switching to Webkit, in the last 2 versions you spent more time fixing rendering bugs than adding or polishing features.
But please don't use the one-process-per-tab model, Opera was always the best browser to handle several tabs at the same time using very few resources.

I hope after the transition you'll have more time to add and expand the functionality of Opera, the extensions and mail really needs some love
Rafael LuikThursday, February 14, 2013 1:15:28 PM
What I don't want is to lose the lightning speed we have to reopen tabs, go back and forth in actual history without reloading parts of the page which makes Presto unique, the way we can select linked text starting from anywhere click and holding as we move horizontally. Priority of text over style when loading... Spatial navigation with Shift, TAB only cycling through form elements...
eonblueThursday, February 14, 2013 1:26:02 PM
I remember a browser who created, and not one copy.
Mad Scientist (عادل)Thursday, February 14, 2013 1:27:45 PM
Perhaps Opera Software might consider relinquishing the Presto source code to the Community under a GPL?
Anyway, I'm with the, "it's bad for the future of web standards" group!
Kostia RomanovThursday, February 14, 2013 1:36:43 PM
The most worrying things are UI and UX. What will happen with IRC, M2 and RSS? What will happen with Quick? What will happen with the whole user experience? How chropera will carry to 100500 pages, and will the pages stay pages and not tabs? Will it be possible to use spatial navigation? What`s about toolbars, will we remain to adjust tabs as we can now? What`s about userscripts and userCSS? There are thousand of questions, and no answers. And this is really annoying.
CryioThursday, February 14, 2013 2:11:58 PM
This might be the very best dicision Opera has made. Imagine this. What has Chrome going for it? Speed and no compatibility issues, most of the time.

What will Opera have? Speed, no longer any compatiblity issue, Opera specific features and OPORTUNITY for inovation.

Plus, Opera has the best damn user interface ever created
CryioThursday, February 14, 2013 2:11:59 PM
This might be the very best decision Opera has ever made. Imagine this. What has Chrome going for it? Speed and no compatibility issues, most of the time.

What will Opera have? Speed, no longer any compatiblity issue, Opera specific features and OPORTUNITY for inovation.

Plus, Opera has the best damn user interface ever created
CharlieThursday, February 14, 2013 2:31:35 PM
So here's a problem right off the bat. As I was reading this blog post in Chrome for Android, I could not see the right side bar at all - even after checking the option for "request desktop version" of the site. This is one of the reasons Opera Mobile is mandatory on my phone -- to make sure I can actually see the real (desktop) version of a site if I need it.
MaximThursday, February 14, 2013 3:28:52 PM
Haavard, many of your users worried about memory management of WebKit (normal support of 100+ opened tabs). Have you considered this and do you plan to change it in first place?

thank you.
YongShunThursday, February 14, 2013 4:11:35 PM
I like Webkit but I don;t like Chromium.
mubaidrThursday, February 14, 2013 4:18:16 PM
Originally posted by Acryion:

This might be the very best decision Opera has ever made. Imagine this. What has Chrome going for it? Speed and no compatibility issues, most of the time.

What will Opera have? Speed, no longer any compatiblity issue, Opera specific features and OPORTUNITY for inovation.

Plus, Opera has the best damn user interface ever created

+1
SuntanaThursday, February 14, 2013 4:25:08 PM
I'm not remotely Techie / Geeky enough to understand the supposed pluses. But, on the surface it seems like a sellout, a throwing in of the towel. There will now be less competition, less players in the Browser Biz per se. And we all know what THAT yields.

On a more personal level ...
I've always said that I use Opera because it is the only Browser that works well with my computers. Neither IE, Firefox or Chrome work well with my computers.

So, if now Opera in essence becomes on some level Chrome ... I'll wind up with an inferior Browser that on my system will work like ... well, like Chrome, which is NOT Good News. It'll be like going backwards ... Forward into the Past instead of Back to the Future.
J. KingThursday, February 14, 2013 4:52:06 PM
I think this will, ultimately, be a good thinv.

We can only proceed under the assumption that Opera wants to do what's best for their users, and this implies doing what's best to remain solvent, profitable and nimble. Yes, it's a management decision, but it seems the right one for users to me.

I'll admit it does bring us one step closer to monoculture, which is undesirable, but it's obviouly not Opera's first priority to be a bulwark in this regard, and that's fine by me.

It's impossible to predict what will or will not change, but I think it's safe to say there's no reason to assume anything not related to rendering will be affected as a result of the change. I'm sure there will be pain in the short term (and I'm certainly reserving the option not to upgrade; aren't public standards great?), but I'm confident this will be a win for the medium term, and am also hopeful in the long term.
earth01Thursday, February 14, 2013 5:20:40 PM
Too many things are depending on Presto. If you switch to WebCore/V8, you will have to work with a software you do not have hands on. Keep that in mind.

For a very long time, some people were asking "Why don't you make Opera open sourced " and you said "There is no advantage of doing it."
And now you are replacing your own engine with an open sourced one. That's nonsense.

You were important as a browser (like IE, Firefox, Safari and Chrome) because you made your own rendering engine. Now, you're in the category of Maxthon, Lunascape and Avant Browser.

Anyway, I'm optimistic. I'm sure you'll change your mind in a few months. But won't it be already too late ?
SuntanaThursday, February 14, 2013 5:48:10 PM
Haavard, this change will go against the point that you had made in a certain 2010 Post that the more Browser Engines that were out there ... the more "Moving Targets" it made for malware writers. Thus, the more Moving Targets would make it tougher on malware writers.

Now with less Moving Targets, malware writers' job / nefarious activities have gotten easier as far as accomplishing the goal of infecting a wider chunk of computers in one shot.
Guy FlemingThursday, February 14, 2013 7:29:46 PM
Attacks removed by moderator.
earlnuclearThursday, February 14, 2013 7:50:57 PM
It was good 9 years with the Opera for me.
This however is basically throwing a towel. Sure from business standpoint it makes sense, but from the perspective of the future of the web, this is a bad move, at least in my opinion.
At this point all I can imagine is a UI skin ala yandex browser sadly, hopefully opera team can prove me wrong here.

But its good bye for now, good luck to the team.
ayespyThursday, February 14, 2013 10:07:35 PM
Webkit engine? OK. Chromium? Now THAT worries me.

I could not stand a browser which did not have built-in email, and which was as clumsy and unwieldy to customize as the Chromium family of browsers.

I assume if it were possible to have an easily customizable browser+email suite hung on the Chromium frame, someone would have done it by now. All customization of the Chromium family of browsers is clumsy, half-baked, rigid, and disappointing.

I like browser speed. I like compatibility. But if these were my only considerations I would not have used Opera since 1999. What hooked me was the customization and the built-in email client. I cannot be switching windows between mail and web. It would double my time on task for my work, and that is just unacceptable.

Further, NO other email client can handle the volume my wife downloads and stores routinely without breaking. What the hell are we going to do if M2 bites the dust?

And if our framework is the same as the most popular browsers, we will be exposed to the maximum number of potential vulnerabilities.

Figure out a hack for Chrome, and then you can ruin EVERYONE'S day.
ayespyThursday, February 14, 2013 10:11:55 PM
Originally posted by mubaidr:

Plus, Opera has the best damn user interface ever created

I don't know what makes you think this UI is even possible on a Chromium frame. All Chromium UIs are carbon copies of each other.
teresaejuniorThursday, February 14, 2013 10:25:26 PM
Originally posted by NightMayor:

Where's the Gecko option?

Opera has already announced the switch formally, so this poll has no real value, it is just a discussion.

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Poll: What do you think about Opera switching to WebKit? comments

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