Opera Is Dead, Desktop Browser Replaced with Chromium, WebKit on Mobile

**mips** · February 13th, 2013

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Opera...e-329052.shtml

February 13th, 2013, 09:13 GMT · By Lucian ParfeniBLOG
Opera Is Dead, Desktop Browser Replaced with Chromium, WebKit on Mobile

Opera has called it a day. After almost two decades in the browser business, Opera has officially quit.

The company announced that it is going to adopt the WebKit engine for all of its browsers on mobile platforms, something not particularly surprising, but also that it is stopping development of its desktop browser and will start supporting Chromium, the open source version of Chrome.

Basically, this means that Opera will no longer be developing its own HTML layout engine, Presto, and that it will slap an Opera label on Chromium and call that its desktop browser.

There aren't many details, but what is there is enough to know what comes next. Opera as we've known it is dead; the move may turn out to be a great one for the company, but it won't be the same company.

Without its own engine or even its own desktop browser, Opera is now just another company that rebrands Chromium and calls it its own browser, on par with Yandex which makes its own Chrome clone, for example.

In the mobile space, it will be just another company that takes the WebKit engine and slaps some UI elements on top of it. There are now only four major browser makers in the world, Microsoft, Google, Mozilla and Apple, and just three layout engines, Trident, Gecko and WebKit.

Sad...

**linuxyogi** · February 13th, 2013

Really very sad news.

**kc1di** · February 13th, 2013

Sad to hear

**stinkeye** · February 13th, 2013

Been using Opera since it had banner adds in the free version.Started using on windows.
Is WebKit just the rendering engine?
Will the ui and features stay the same?

**MadmanRB** · February 13th, 2013

That is a shame, but Opera has itself to blame here as its presto engine was proprietary.
Still it would be nice if opra could keep its old looks but still use webkit instead of becoming just another face lift of chrome/ium

**LarsKongo** · February 13th, 2013

"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."
http://www.opera.com/press/releases/2013/02/13/

I hope by "transition" they mean that they will keep the UI and settings. If not I'll go mad if I have to port all my scripts, styles and stuff to Firefox or any other browser. Also, there are no other browser that have as smooth mouse gestures as Opera. Last time I tried Chromium it leaked memory, froze the whole UI, was very buggy, and that was only about a year ago.

**sdowney717** · February 13th, 2013

This story is not sad, IMO.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-575...in-transplant/

They already talking about how their value adding to the collective.

Opera's chief technology officer, Håkon Wium Lie, described the company's motives for the change in a statement:

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. 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.

I think they hit a wall in development-direction and decided to join forces.

**Paqman** · February 13th, 2013

Writing had been on the wall for a while really.

**Dry Lips** · February 13th, 2013

Opera could have gone the route that Microsoft has chosen, trying to educate Web developers and providing tools to make cross-platform testing and development easier, but perhaps the company was familiar with Norwegian king Cnut the Great's demand to the tide that it cease rising, and felt that asking Web developers to stick to standards was similarly futile.
Mozilla developer Robert O'Callahan expressed disappointment with Opera's decision, saying that it was a "sad day for the Web" and suggesting that Opera might find its ability to influence Web standards reduced. He also said that it makes Mozilla's job harder, as that group too is endeavoring to promote Web standards over "coding to Webkit."

source: http://arstechnica.com/information-t...hes-to-webkit/

Yes, WebKit is open source, but I still think it's kind of sad in a way. What if they had open sourced Presto instead?

**timbuck** · February 13th, 2013

Awe... I'm using opera now too! Why are they quitting, or not using presto anymore? It seems to work great, and with the opera turbo feature!!! OH it's GREAT on mobile phone speed connections!

Well as long as it's still opera and has most of the same features I think we will all be okay.