Opera officially announcestransition from Presto to WebKit and Chromium

[arsenaloyal]

To provide a leading browser on Android and iOS, this year Opera will make a gradual transition to the WebKit engine, as well as Chromium, for most of its upcoming versions of browsers for smartphones and computers.

"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," says CTO of Opera Software, Håkon Wium Lie. "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

Source : Opera Webstie

 

[malbky]

Wrote a whole thread about at TBT.
Sad to see presto die loved Opera but in recent times it lost its dev pace. Accidently found the news while trying to download opera for android.

 

[Littlebits]

Opera to Release a Google Chrome Clone in the Coming Months

The official Opera Browser for Windows has been discontinued probably will not receive anymore updates.

Too bad, it was a good browser. Hopefully they will release its source code as open-source because other developers can keep it alive.

Thanks.

 

[woomera]

actually never fan of their slow development but now if they include some of their ideas into chromium it might become a contender to chrome and might worth trying out...

im actually looking forward to their first chromium release!

 

[Nomad]

This is really sad news and it has upset me

 

[arsenaloyal]

time to move on to firefox.

Only three engines left now... Microsoft's Trident, Mozilla's Gecko and Webkit.

 

[Ink]

There's a petition I found to make the Presto engine open-source. If anyone is interested:

Sign Here

 

[arsenaloyal]

It is imperative that there must be more than 3 browser Engines, 2 of them are supported by major corporations and one is a non-profit organization.
The question now is how long can Mozilla and gecko survive ?

 

[Coffeeman]

Until they will fall to a bigger corporation and will implement other engine. Maybe they will survive with gecko if they make some kind of partnership with other company, but the funding on Chrome and IE is enormous.

 

[arsenaloyal]

Mozilla is actually supported indirectly by google

Excerpt " In a report released in November of 2012, Mozilla reported that their total revenue for 2011 was $163 million, which was up 33% from $123 million in 2010. Mozilla noted that roughly 85% of their revenue comes from their contract with Google."

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla

Perhaps in future only 2 Will remain. IE and Bing and Chrome and Google... and then Google will be the evil one and not IE.

 

[Littlebits]

time to move on to firefox.

Only three engines left now... Microsoft's Trident, Mozilla's Gecko and Webkit.

There are actually two versions of Webkit, the Safari default Webkit and Chromium Webkit. And they are much different.

Maxthon 3 & Maxthon 4 and SlimBoat Browsers are examples of the ones that use Safari's Webkit but have did their own development to make them different.

It makes me wonder if Opera will just make another Chromium clone (like SRWare Iron, Comodo Dragon, CoolNovo) or will they actually develop the Webkit like Maxthon and SlimBoat have and make it their own.

Thanks.

 

[Plexx]

I take it KHTML does not exist (as in updated) anymore correct? If I recall correctly Webkit was a fork from KHTML.

On topic, it would be interesting to see Opera use the Wbkit as a base and modify accordingly to their taste. There are already enough Chromium clones lying around.

 

[Coffeeman]

We really have to give them credit for Opera browser and how they made everyone to copy in some way, I mean some of the features. Maybe Opera people will make another great browser from Webkit.

 

[Littlebits]

I take it KHTML does not exist (as in updated) anymore correct? If I recall correctly Webkit was a fork from KHTML.

On topic, it would be interesting to see Opera use the Wbkit as a base and modify accordingly to their taste. There are already enough Chromium clones lying around.

It is still used on Konqueror Web Browser for Linux distributions, other then that I believe it is dead.

Isn't it ironic that first KHTML started off on Linux (Konqueror), moved to Mac (Apple Safari), now is probably going to be the most popular browser for Windows (Chromium). All because of open-source development.

Enjoy!!

 

[arsenaloyal]

As it says in the fine print opera desktop will be based on chromium.

 

[Gnosis]

I only use Opera about 10 percent of the time, but when I do, I really like it. I plan to stick with it as my secondary browser.

 

[Coffeeman]

Right now, I am willing to give Opera a second(whatever number) chance as a backup browser. And, when it will came up on webkit I will test it to see of it fits my needs.

 

[Ink]

I think Opera will make it their own, I don't think Opera would sacrifice their unique UI for a Chromium-clone UI.

It makes me wonder if Opera will just make another Chromium clone (like SRWare Iron, Comodo Dragon, CoolNovo) or will they actually develop the Webkit like Maxthon and SlimBoat have and make it their own.

 

[House_maniac]

i think this is a good decision for opera! i was using it as my main browser long time ago its a nice browser it just have some issues with some website! now that will be fixed and i'm sure they will provide a decent browser with more options than the current chrome clones