

Opera Ice – New Smartphone Browser from Opera Software - twapi
http://browserfame.com/1079/opera-ice

======
wilhelm
This is a sad day, although probably inevitable. This is the beginning of the
end for Presto. I put years of my life into that engine. A fool's errand, of
course, since we were completely outgunned and outmanned by the competition.

I'm glad I jumped ship when I did. But it was a fun ride.

~~~
noibl
> since we were completely outgunned and outmanned by the competition

I wouldn't be so sure about that:

<http://html5test.com/results/desktop.html#fsCanvas>

Opera has always been outmanned and yet consistently been close to or ahead of
the curve.

I would say this is more about arbitrary and unhelpful platform restrictions
and Opera being characteristically pragmatic about that (lawsuits
notwithstanding).

Going forward, are Microsoft and Opera now _both_ to be contributors to the
WebKit project? :)

~~~
wilhelm
> Opera has always been outmanned and yet consistently been close to or ahead
> of the curve.

No, not the last three or four years.

Although Opera has been doing great in minor areas due to the sheer brilliance
of individual engineers, the topic of every single roadmap meeting in the Core
department has been "How can we catch up to the competition? Which missing
feature hurts the most right now?".

Given the resource constraints, they've done _great_. But it's not
sustainable. When I left a year ago, there were about 60 developers and 30
testers working on the actual engine, supported by a pitiful array of
hardware. Upper management could have played their cards differently five
years ago, but now it's too late.

(I used to be core test manager of this fine organization.)

------
michael_miller
This is a very cool app, simply because it eliminates most of the browser
chrome. Taking out browser chrome is a very important step for making web apps
first class citizens. It might be a minor visual difference, but it's a huge
psychological one.

On another note, it sounds like Opera was forced to use UIWebViews due to
Apple's restrictions. I'm curious to know if anyone has ever hacked up another
rendering engine (even WebKit) to run on iOS. Obviously it wouldn't be able to
make it on the app store, but it would be cool to play around with on a
development device!

------
unicornporn
I love Opera Mobile on Android, so them making advances makes me happy.

Although other Android browsers might be slightly faster and have a more
native look and feel (hello Chrome), Opera Mobile has the most impressive Text
wrapping (text reflow) feature of all the browsers. For me that is one of the
single most important features in a mobile browser as much of the time
browsing is spent with websites that are not mobile friendly.

I can't believe the other browser vendors haven't worked harder to achieve
better text reflow results.

------
tgandrews
I read the article and whilst it claims Opera are going to be using webkit the
cnet article it references indirectly
([http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20121236-264/hybrid-
browse...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20121236-264/hybrid-browser-to-
lead-operas-android-charge-exclusive/)) does not mention webkit or the lack of
presto.

I don't understand why Ice implies webkit, it could be presto like Opera
Mini/Mobile (rendered on server).

~~~
michael_h
Opera mobile doesn't render on the server, just Opera mini.

------
sergiotapia
I love using Opera Mobile on my Kindle Fire. It's a fantastic experience and I
can watch any flash content I want!

Seeing it move from Presto to Webkit kind of makes me nervous though. Is
Webkit an open standard or it controlled by Google (a single entity?).

Competition is good and I would love to see Opera flourish like that.

The swipe features looks gorgeous.

~~~
Sayter
WebKit was initially developed (as a fork of KHTML) by Apple, not Google. It
is open source, though.

------
Supermighty
My guess is that they are only using webkit on iOS devices where they are
unable to use their own rendering engine. I can't see them throwing away
Presto.

~~~
barredo
Opera Mini in iOS does the rendering in Opera servers and does not use webkit.

Most websites look way different in Opera Mini in iOS compared with Safari or
Chrome for iOS (which uses UIWebView's).

Edit: I just thought maybe you meant Opera Mobile (not Mini) who is not out
for iOS yet I think

~~~
sjwright
I was under the impression that Opera Mini iOS uses the Opera servers to
transmogrify pages into a simpler form, but that UIWebView is still used to
present this simpler form.

~~~
prumek
It isn't. It uses a compact Opera-developed engine which interprets the binary
markup language coming from the Opera Mini servers.

------
thesash
The invisible UI is such a wonderful and logical pattern, especially when
constrained by a mobile platform. As touch interfaces reach maturity and users
are more comfortable with the general paradigm, I think we'll be seeing a lot
more applications forgo chrome in favor of an experience that relies on touch
but is largely invisible to the user.

------
snarkyturtle
Great news! Glad to see Opera adopting webkit, since many mobile html5
frameworks use webkit features that Opera Mini/Mobile wasn't able to use. That
way we can get full compatibility with the mobile web and get to use Opera
Link and Opera Turbo.

~~~
jarek
I'm not sure Turbo would be available on the Webkit version. It seems like a
feature quite deeply integrated into the engine.

~~~
mtgx
Isn't enabling Turbo just saying "now the content will run through our servers
and be compressed"? Amazon's Silk browser can switch between the 2 modes, too,
as far as I know, although it uses the server compression by default.

~~~
tobylane
The website is sent to Opera's servers to be compressed into opera binary
markup language, not gzipped html. Probably presto-specific.

~~~
prumek
If Presto can convert pages to the binary markup language, why can't WebKit?

~~~
jarek
It can, of course, if you put in the work to make it do so. Presto already has
had that work done. I'm not sure doing the work for Webkit would be worth the
reward, especially considering they wouldn't be in control of iOS Webkit
(controlled exclusively by Apple) including their changes. But that's just
idle guesswork based on a subjective view of costs and benefits involved.

