Presto engine

[sigmark]

sigmark last edited by

I used opera for the very reason that it was not compatible - less spam, less crap jumping out of thin air, less spying by the google almighty. Why oh why have you abandoned us, developers! I already hate chrome thank you very much, and now my opera which was with me since version 3 is gone for good and turned chromish, with all the feats( notes, mail) which made it so lovely and easy to work with dead as a dodo.
I loved opera as it was for 12 years with incremental, but continual improvements. Now i do not think i want to use it anymore.
I realize very well my post is not one of the most constructive ones, but I had to tell it to you. You have traded a legend with devoted fans for another chrome clone, which are heaps of out there.

I will miss my opera 10 a lot, friends

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

Originally posted by rs79:

What exactly is gained by the move to webkit?

A major boost in site compatibility, and freeing up resources to do interesting things instead of constantly having to fight the web.

Originally posted by Vikingen:

I think Presto have less and less compatibility problems.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. It became more and more of an uphill battle to keep Presto compatible with the web.

[stng]

stng last edited by

Vikingen

I think Presto have less and less compatibility problems. Web designers and especially the designers at big websites are using web standards, aren't they? Presto should handle it unless the Presto programmers do something wrong.

Presto as an rendering engine is great. Fast, sleek, standards-compliant with some of unique features such as multiple rendering modes (MSR aka Fit to window width for an example).

I think that Presto's compatibility problems came mostly due to low market share. Low market share is direct consequence of relatively poor marketing and financial power of the Opera Software ASA. Unlike Opera, all mainstream browsers has a monopoly or giant adv investments behind them.
Opera(desktop) was(and still is, AFAIK) a "mainstream" browser in my county. In best times it was even more popular than Firefox with 25%+ of desktop browsers share. But its popularity was earned mostly by "from user to user" as principle of spreading, not by a massive advertising/paid for install campaign. And for those reasons, I am glad to tell you that i almost have no problems related to a web-site compatibility in my native speaking language segment of the internet. Because with its local share (Opera12 still holds nearly 10%) Opera/Presto is STILL the browser to be reckoned with.

[sigmark]

sigmark last edited by

haavard:
you dont mean it do you? chrome opens.every window as a standalone process and in sum it can take up way above 1/2 gigabyte of RAM.

With opera as it was I never.managed to get over 1/4 gigabyte with 40 windows open simultaneously.

at least where the system resources are concerned

[sigmark]

sigmark last edited by

Originally posted by RoadHazard:

Moving to Webkit/Blink was a good idea, it will ensure great compatibility and allow the Opera devs to focus on browser features rather than engine development. They just need to get the features back in there.

aye, and the focus on the browser features bereft us of all the features it had. now it is no better than chrome

[berng]

berng last edited by

Originally posted by Sigmark:

haavard:
you dont mean it do you? chrome opens.every window as a standalone process and in sum it can take up way above 1/2 gigabyte of RAM.

With opera as it was I never.managed to get over 1/4 gigabyte with 40 windows open simultaneously.

at least where the system resources are concerned

Do you have an issue with page faulting? If not it doesn't matter. If the ram is there its to be used, provided the coding is efficient. Unused ram is wasted ram.

I once changed a program that read in buffers of 50 records to a buffer, allowing 20 buffers. Before it read unbuffered one record at a time. It was our nightly input file conversion. A buffer would be read, the 50 records processed in ram and when done the changed buffer would be written to disk. While one buffer was processed, other buffers would be read from the disk drives. This means when I was done with a buffer and the new buffer was being written to disk, a new buffer was being processed in ram. The nightly batch job went from 3 hours to 5 minutes. Then someone criticized because I was using so much "ram." Didn't matter. The ram was used well and operations was ecstatic because that 3 hours batch run which held dozens of other jobs up was reduced to 5 min.

If you can, try to process your data in ram. Its fastest.

[vikingen]

vikingen last edited by

Originally posted by haavard:

Originally posted by rs79:

What exactly is gained by the move to webkit?

A major boost in site compatibility, and freeing up resources to do interesting things instead of constantly having to fight the web.

Originally posted by Vikingen:

I think Presto have less and less compatibility problems.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. It became more and more of an uphill battle to keep Presto compatible with the web.

I didn't know that because my personal experience is a bit different.

Why is it hard to keep Presto compatible? What happened to the standards? There was a time when much of the web was coded to work with IE6 but that was way back in the past.

[frenzie]

frenzie last edited by

Originally posted by Vikingen:

Why is it hard to keep Presto compatible? What happened to the standards? There was a time when much of the web was coded to work with IE6 but that was way back in the past.

Webkit became the new IE6. See e.g. http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/presto2.12/css/aliases/

Blink actually promises not to do that anymore: http://www.chromium.org/blink/developer-faq#TOC-What-s-stopping-Chrome-from-shipping-proprietary-features-

(Then again, they shipped Dart…)

[sigmark]

sigmark last edited by

Originally posted by BernG:

Originally posted by Sigmark:

haavard:
you dont mean it do you? chrome opens.every window as a standalone process and in sum it can take up way above 1/2 gigabyte of RAM.

With opera as it was I never.managed to get over 1/4 gigabyte with 40 windows open simultaneously.

at least where the system resources are concerned

Do you have an issue with page faulting? If not it doesn't matter. If the ram is there its to be used, provided the coding is efficient. Unused ram is wasted ram.

If you can, try to process your data in ram. Its fastest.

youre carrying wood into forrest
If chrome takes ram it forces the system to use swap file, which loads up the drive and slows all operations. its the principle of the thing! I have issue of having sofware junk up my pc when i dont ( didnt) have to. Opera kept the resources lean and did not waste them. wasted ram is as wasted as unused one, but since the browser is only one of the activities simultaneously running, its the share of the cake it fills that annoys me. and we are told resources are being freed by moving to big brother googles chromoid clone

[sgunhouse]

sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer last edited by

There is a command-line option to force Blink into single-process mode, but I've never used it and so can't say how much performance you lose that way.

[greekonsun]

greekonsun last edited by

Originally posted by Vikingen:

Why is it hard to keep Presto compatible? What happened to the standards?

I don't think the switch happened b'coz of compatibility problems
in fact Presto was always best at W3C standards

it was just the fact that webkit became dominant, no matter how shitty it is
so certain pages were either made just for sakes of webkit and started to block Opera completely

try to go to icloud.com with "older opera", you will get "Unsupported browser" error crap and be blocked
now hack your output to lets say Firefox 25, behold the miracle, no error message and webpage works perfectly fine

it is just whole browser wars politics fiasco crap
so normally its easier for Opera devs to jump onto webkit train and do lazy approach instead continuing with their unique engine that "nobody wants"

[vikingen]

vikingen last edited by

So why don't everybody else switch to Presto, perhaps because Opera didn't want to give it away for free? Presto could have become open source. Or maybe it is already? I don't know.

[blackbird71]

blackbird71 last edited by

Originally posted by Vikingen:

So why don't everybody else switch to Presto, perhaps because Opera didn't want to give it away for free? Presto could have become open source. Or maybe it is already? I don't know.

It's not open source, and Opera spent a lot of years and money refining it into what it became. Moreover, it is still paid-licensed to vendors for use in a few non-Opera products. I believe Presto was built during an era when Opera was corporately focused on providing user features and configurability, so Presto incorporated a number of things that made Opera's user interface work better in those areas. As such, and being closed code, other browser makers chose to develop their own code instead, focusing on different target markets. And, being bigger outfits and better at marketing their products in a variety of ways, they came to dominate the non-IE marketplace. At this point, that's all simply history. Presto Opera is over, other than 12.16 which is merely on temporary life-support until Opera pulls that plug.

Some of us as users may not like the way things have worked out, but they are what they are; and we are mere users of a free browser that is being totally redesigned. We need to get over dreaming that Opera is going to somehow change its mind and revert its entire product line back to Presto... after a year or more of pursuing the costly conversion to Blink, it just isn't going to happen, period! End of story! Either we find other browsers to use or we hang in there with Old Opera if and until New Opera becomes palatable to us.

[vikingen]

vikingen last edited by

Originally posted by blackbird71:

Originally posted by Vikingen:

So why don't everybody else switch to Presto, perhaps because Opera didn't want to give it away for free? Presto could have become open source. Or maybe it is already? I don't know.

It's not open source, and Opera spent a lot of years and money refining it into what it became. Moreover, it is still paid-licensed to vendors for use in a few non-Opera products. I believe Presto was built during an era when Opera was corporately focused on providing user features and configurability, so Presto incorporated a number of things that made Opera's user interface work better in those areas. As such, and being closed code, other browser makers chose to develop their own code instead, focusing on different target markets.

I'm thinking that it would be better to give away the source code instead of burying it. Opera Software lose either way.

[stng]

stng last edited by

Originally posted by Vikingen:

Originally posted by blackbird71:

Originally posted by Vikingen:

So why don't everybody else switch to Presto, perhaps because Opera didn't want to give it away for free? Presto could have become open source. Or maybe it is already? I don't know.

It's not open source, and Opera spent a lot of years and money refining it into what it became. Moreover, it is still paid-licensed to vendors for use in a few non-Opera products. I believe Presto was built during an era when Opera was corporately focused on providing user features and configurability, so Presto incorporated a number of things that made Opera's user interface work better in those areas. As such, and being closed code, other browser makers chose to develop their own code instead, focusing on different target markets.

I'm thinking that it would be better to give away the source code instead of burying it. Opera Software lose either way.

Well, according to their PR team member:

1. Licensing work costs too much money and man-hours. Don't forget about patents which were used in Presto's code.
2. They probably won't want to share their intellectual property with everyone.
3. Presto is still here on a various types of devices (e.g.TVs)

So it's likely that Presto source code will be buried. :furious: :rip:

[Deleted User]

Deleted User last edited by

Originally posted by STNG:

...
3. Presto is still here on a various types of devices (e.g.TVs)
...

I've been to Opera's booth at the IBC-2013 show, they were presenting some smart TVs.
According to the guy there - it is not Presto any more. He said the TV team has had to switch to chrome too.

If they bury the Presto/Caracan - it will be the silliest thing to do ever!

[blackbird71]

blackbird71 last edited by

Originally posted by Vikingen:

Originally posted by blackbird71:

Originally posted by Vikingen:

So why don't everybody else switch to Presto, perhaps because Opera didn't want to give it away for free? Presto could have become open source. Or maybe it is already? I don't know.

It's not open source, and Opera spent a lot of years and money refining it into what it became. Moreover, it is still paid-licensed to vendors for use in a few non-Opera products. I believe Presto was built during an era when Opera was corporately focused on providing user features and configurability, so Presto incorporated a number of things that made Opera's user interface work better in those areas. As such, and being closed code, other browser makers chose to develop their own code instead, focusing on different target markets.

I'm thinking that it would be better to give away the source code instead of burying it. Opera Software lose either way.

Think it all the way through. If Opera were to give away Presto to be open source, what would it accomplish? Gain the undying gratitude of what it currently believes is a small component of the market's user base? Perhaps. But for sure and for certain, it will cause to come into existence new browser (and other kinds of software) designs from a variety of directions. And, whether good designs or not, those will act to compete in the marketplace for the marketshare that Opera is already trying to increase with its Blink browsers and remaining Presto products. Apart from a sudden burst of altruism, why would any company freely release code it had spent years and lots of money to develop with the only real prospect of that being increased competition for that company's remaining products? This is one of the key reasons Microsoft has never released any of its old operating systems into the public domain - not even DOS.

[frenzie]

frenzie last edited by

Originally posted by blackbird71:

Apart from a sudden burst of altruism, why would any company freely release code it had spent years and lots of money to develop with the only real prospect of that being increased competition for that company's remaining products?

id Tech 2: released 1997, open-sourced 2001
id Tech 3: released 1999, open-sourced 2005
id Tech 4: released 2004, open-sourced 2011

One can hope.

[vikingen]

vikingen last edited by

Originally posted by blackbird71:

Originally posted by Vikingen:

I'm thinking that it would be better to give away the source code instead of burying it. Opera Software lose either way.

Think it all the way through. If Opera were to give away Presto to be open source, what would it accomplish? Gain the undying gratitude of what it currently believes is a small component of the market's user base? Perhaps. But for sure and for certain, it will cause to come into existence new browser (and other kinds of software) designs from a variety of directions. And, whether good designs or not, those will act to compete in the marketplace for the marketshare that Opera is already trying to increase with its Blink browsers and remaining Presto products. Apart from a sudden burst of altruism, why would any company freely release code it had spent years and lots of money to develop with the only real prospect of that being increased competition for that company's remaining products? This is one of the key reasons Microsoft has never released any of its old operating systems into the public domain - not even DOS.

Opera has to compete with other browsers regardless. If other companies moved to Presto, at least Opera would compete on a platform they know. Perhaps competing on the Presto platform wouldn't be an advantage for Opera, but at least the best platform would win.

Microsoft and DOS is different. Microsoft never had the choice between releasing DOS or converting. Microsoft have no reason to release DOS because DOS is obsolete. And Microsoft would lose money if they released old Windows versions because some people would use them instead of buying win 8. Opera Software don't offer a new browser for money so they would not lose money by releasing Presto. Presto is not technically obsolete, it's going obsolete only because no one will continue to support it.

By the way, are Blink and WebKit related?

[frenzie]

frenzie last edited by

Originally posted by Vikingen:

By the way, are Blink and WebKit related?

For pretty much all intents and purposes, Blink is still a variety of Webkit. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(layout_engine)