300 million users and transition to WebKit

Simultaneously with the announcement of a new achievement - 300 million Opera users! - we also announce that all of our new products will use the WebKit engine for rendering and  V8 to handle javascript. They will be based on the open source Chromium browser and its components. Of course, the browser is much more than just an engine, so all these changes for ordinary users will happen somewhere far under the hood. Such users will only notice improved compatibility with sites, especially mobile ones, most of which have been properly tested only in WebKit browsers. The first new product will be a smartphone browser, which we will show at the World Mobile Congress (MWC) in Barcelona in late February. Opera for the desktop and other products will make the transition later.

If you are too lazy to read further

• This will not require changes in your development process.
• Extensions developed for previous versions of Opera will continue to work.
• Opera will be involved in the development of Webkit and Chromium projects.
• We will continue to work on developing standards for the benefit of the web.

What does this mean for web developers?

In short, this should not somehow affect your daily work. Continue writing code according to standards, and not for individual engines; test in different browsers: Opera, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer; use all the necessary browser prefixes along with unrefixed properties in your CSS and JavaScript code. However, there are some things to keep in mind:

• Chromium, like Opera, has built-in support for WebM, Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis media codecs, but there is no built-in support for H.264 and MP3 formats (however, if these codecs are available in the device’s OS, it will work). The correct way to determine support is the canPlayType method from HTML5 . The easiest way to ensure that each browser gets the right codec is to prepare the video in two WebM and H.264 formats and add two elements to the code or use it canPlayTypefor verification (see the Introduction to HTML5 video article for details ).
• The object window.operawill not exist in future versions of Opera. We still strongly recommend that developers do not use browser definitions, but instead determine supported features: either using third-party solutions like Modernizr , or simply manually .

What does this mean for extension developers?

Extensions have gained immense popularity among Opera users and will certainly continue to work in the new browser version. We have developed a tool for converting the familiar OEX extensions to a format that can work in the new version of Opera for a desktop based on the Chromium engine (you should have seen this huge script in Python!) In addition, we will write conversion manuals and documentation for new extensions and of course we will answer your questions. In general, we will be happy to continue supporting developers and users of extensions and will try to make the transition process as smooth as possible.

Why is Opera changing the engine?

When we first started in 1995, we had to create our own engine in order to compete with the Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers and move the web standards and the whole Internet forward. When we started developing the HTML5 specification, we wanted to write a document that would improve overall browser compatibility.

The WebKit project today has such standards support that we could only dream of when we started working on our browser. And instead of spending all our energy repeating what has already been implemented in WebKit, we can focus on inventing something new to make a better browser. Tabs invented in Opera, express panel, data compression, accelerating page loading, were later successfully picked up and implemented by many browser manufacturers. By sending patches directly to the WebKit project, we can improve support for standards not only in Opera, but also in many other browsers.

We will certainly continue our work to improve the web through technology standardization. We have 17 years of experience in creating browsers and new standards. Standards launched in Opera, like HTML5, HTML5 video , Media Queries are a vital part of the modern web.

We will continue to develop web technologies and will participate in WebKit and Chromium projects. We have extensive experience in creating cross-platform products. In our internal builds, we are experimenting with the addition of new standards and missing technologies that Presto supports, such as full support for multi-column CSS. In recent weeks, we have contacted the WebKit project and its contributors to discuss our intentions to participate in the development of the project.

Therefore, this year we send two valentines at once: one, as usual, to the open and compatible web, and the second to WebKit project.

PS first patchposted to WebKit this morning fixes CSS multi-column support.