Opera moves to WebKit and V8 [LWN.net]

Opera moves to WebKit and V8

Posted Feb 16, 2013 21:52 UTC (Sat) by elanthis (guest, #6227)
In reply to: Opera moves to WebKit and V8 by philipstorry
Parent article: Opera moves to WebKit and V8

> I'd agree that the software monoculture aspect of it is less attractive - webkit is going to have to be very secure!

WebKit is already the de facto standard mobile browser. Opera switching is affecting only a tiny fraction of the market. WebKit already needed to be super secure to keep safe 80+% of the mobile market. Safari has 60% of the market and Android Browser has 25%. Third place is held by the Java browsers on feature phones.

Opera moving over only makes sense as a business, and barely affects the mobile browser space; they are tiny and wasting a lot of resources just trying to stay compatible with WebKit browsers as is.

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Opera moves to WebKit and V8

Posted Feb 18, 2013 23:51 UTC (Mon) by Drongo (guest, #60513) [Link]

I agree. It is easy for us diehard Opera fans (user since 1997) to overlook the fact that we are among -- what? -- 1% of brower users. I value Opera for its features, not its rendering engine. Whenever I use Firefox or Chrome it is not as if I end up thinking "Gee, these pages sure look odd." More common, I find certain javascript scripts not working in Opera, necessitating (if I care) opening the page in an alternative.

My concern, justified or not, is just how isolated the MVC elements are from each other, and thus whether the rendering engine conversion will blow back to the interface in ways I regret. We will soon see.