back to article Top Firefox OS bloke flames Opera for WebKit surrender

A top bod at Firefox-maker Mozilla has ruled out replacing its web browser's brains with WebKit - and lamented Opera’s surrender to the web engine favoured by Apple and Google. Opera revealed last week that it will eventually dump its own web browser's engine Presto after 18 years for the one-two-punch of WebKit - the open- …

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  1. Patrick O'Reilly
    Mushroom

    All smoke and no flame

    Not much of a flame...

  2. Anonymous Coward 15

    WebKit alone

    is as bad as <whatever IE uses> alone.

    1. Greg J Preece

      Re: WebKit alone

      Exactly! Mozzy stormed up the market share charts through a fight-back against a monoculture. Why the hell would they willing step back towards one?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: WebKit alone

      No it's not, because it's free and open...

      In an ideal world, everything would be Webkit based, and everything would only require testing on Webkit, consumers would finally get a fully working web, rather than the broken web we have today.

      "The web needs multiple implementations of its evolving standards to keep them interoperable" If everyone used Webkit, they would be not interoperability to worry about.

      Mozilla's problem is they see how this is going. I would bet money that Firefox will be using Webkit in the next couple of years, despite what he said.

      1. jonathanb Silver badge

        Re: WebKit alone

        Just like there was no problem when everyone was using Trident back in the bad old days?

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

          1. toadwarrior

            Re: WebKit alone

            You can just fix WebKit in android or even your desktop. The vast majority have to wait for a release. Secondly they all still use different JS engines so using WebKit does nothing for the JS incompatibilities.

      2. Scrote

        Re: WebKit alone

        The web has broken bits because dumb arse developers use non-standard features in public facing sites.

        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
          FAIL

          Re: WebKit alone

          "This interwebsite is optimized for Internet Explorer"

      3. Dan 55 Silver badge
        FAIL

        Re: WebKit alone

        I give you Nokia's WebKit browser. Use it for 10 minutes or so then get back to me.

        One browser engine to rule them all won't fix your problems. There'll always be bad implementations and different versions of WebKit about, and if WebKit is the only engine out there then the incentive to fix problems is gone.

        1. Greg J Preece

          Re: WebKit alone

          One browser engine to rule them all won't fix your problems. There'll always be bad implementations and different versions of WebKit about, and if WebKit is the only engine out there then the incentive to fix problems is gone.

          <u>THIS</u>

          I have nothing against WebKit. I've got plenty of browsers that use it and most of them are fine. I have something against whatever buggy, unfixed version of WebKit they cram into Chrome in order to claim all the latest gadgets and buzzwords.

      4. rhdunn

        Re: WebKit alone

        The first problem with this is that different renderers interpret the standards differently. Case in point: IE5-7 CSS Box Model. They fail the Acid 2 rendering tests. If there is a single renderer, there is no motivation to fix any issues ("our interpretation is correct"). Having multiple renderers helps keep each other sane w.r.t. the standards.

        The second problem is that different renderers implement different parts of the standard at different times. Case in point: MathML and SVG. Mozilla have had MathML implemented for a long time, same with SVG. WebKit is only just adding support for MathML. IE has only added cut-down SVG as of IE9 and a more complete version as of IE10. If there was a single renderer, there would be no incentive to implement the other specs (how long has Microsoft dragged their heels on SVG support).

        The third problem is that having a single renderer, there will be less sway for others to push for standards as they do not have an implementation to base it on. Especially if the single implementation is pushing their own version.

        Also, think about things like eBook readers or text-to-speech/assistive technology programs reading web content. Those have different requirements which may be counter to what the single renderer provides, which that renderer will be reluctant to provide as they go against their goals (think of things like SSML support and the CSS Speech module).

        For Mozilla, their stack is tied to their rendering model. They are using XUL (which takes advantage of CSS and JavaScript), which WebKit does not support; the browser runs as a XUL page. They are working on "Paris" DOM bindings to create fast JavaScript <=> Native bindings, which are dependent on their DOM model and JavaScript model (which would be different if they switched to WebKit). They have a rendering stack that supports Direct2D and DirectWrite for fast rendering on Windows Vista and later (and -- along with Microsoft -- were the first to provide a rendering stack using those technologies).

        Competition is good and fuels progress. Two is good (e.g. Microsoft and Mozilla); Three is better (e.g. Microsoft, Mozilla and WebKit). Think back to the progress made when Google released their fast JavaScript engine with Google Chrome -- all browsers increased in performance as there was competition in that space, with Chrome put pressure on the other browsers.

      5. toadwarrior
        Meh

        Re: WebKit alone

        Assuming everything being WebKit makes life easier is just dumb.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: WebKit alone

          Same with Android on mobile. Monopolies suck and reduce the need to innovate.

      6. Tom 13

        Re: Firefox will be using Webkit in the next couple of years

        Not sure I'd give it more than one. But that doesn't mean Eich is wrong about the monoculture.

        Yes it being open makes it more defensible than being dependent on a closed source binary, but only from the perspective of being able to preserve old versions and fork the code. From the perspective of "the bad guys found a problem in our code base and have an active exploit in the wild" a monoculture in OSS is just as bad as a closed source one.

    3. Piro Silver badge

      Re: WebKit alone

      Trident.

  3. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Go

    Go Gecko Go!

    2013-02-13 NEVER FORGET!

    1. Captain TickTock

      Re: Go Gecko Go!

      pardon my ignorance, but the best I can come up with is dark gecko-shaped clouds found in the Sagittarius constellation last week.

      1. Greg J Preece

        Re: Go Gecko Go!

        Mozilla's rendering engine is called Gecko. IE has Trident, Apple and Google use WebKit (though different versions), and Opera - until now - used Presto.

        1. Captain TickTock
          Holmes

          Re: Go Gecko Go!

          Thanks for explaining the title, but I knew that already. The comment body remains a mystery.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Go Gecko Go!

          Presto and Webkit are LAYOUT engines not rendering engines. Opera has its own as it renders the who UI (nit just the canvas like lesser browsers)

          1. Captain TickTock

            Re: Go Gecko Go!

            Gecko is a layout engine, too, and is also used to render the UI in FF.

  4. james 68

    bah

    mozilla should fix the memory problems (i assume its memory problems though it could be how it interfaces with the plugins container as stopping that in task manager often stops the lock-up) with firefox before bitching about others choice in browser engine.

    im now forced to use chrome (which i hate) because firefox is unstable, and that instability has been getting worse for at least the last 3-4 full revisions. i was a supporter of firefox for years but i dont have time to wait for firefoxs random 5 min lock-ups.

    and before people bitch that its my choice of browser plugins - i have tried it on fresh installs of win7 (x86 and x64) and fresh firefox installs with NO plugins. its worse on the x64 systems though it happens on both. and it occurs on pages with minimal content (ie the google home page) or loaded up with heavy flash content.

    i hope they fix it soon cause id be back to firefox in a heartbeat.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: bah

      What are people doing to their Firefox installs? All I ever hear people say about Firefox these days is that it's full of memory leaks, hogs loads of RAM, is really slow and crashes all the time.

      I've not run into any of those problems and I use FF heavily on a daily basis for web development. I'm loaded up with lots of plugins too.

      1. sabba
        Big Brother

        Re: bah

        Lately FF on the Mac is a pile of poo. It chews up huge amounts of memory; takes ages to start-up and shutdown; frequently falls over / locks up; and won't play nicely with a whole raft of web pages. Ok, some of this is not just down to FF but all the same I expect it to play nicely. No browser is perfect I know. So perhaps it's simply that I have come to expect more from FF than from the others.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: bah

          Ditto Android

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: bah

          I find that it helps to clean out the profile now and then. Export favourites, delete profile and then re-import.

          I think there's a sqllite database behind the scenes that gets bloaty and slow.

      2. Scrote

        Re: bah

        I wouldn't say firefox is awful on my pc, but it is noticeably slower than either chrome or internet explorer. This applies to starting up and rendering pages. It doesn't hang for 5 minutes however.

        1. kit
          Thumb Up

          Re: bah

          I did not know why FF performed so miserably in your computer(s). I normally use FF more then 12 hours every day without a single crash, In addition FF is the fastest web browser in terms of rendering web pages, even faster than Chrome, though its start up time is a bit slower , but no more than a second or two.

      3. Greg J Preece

        Re: bah

        I've not run into any of those problems and I use FF heavily on a daily basis for web development. I'm loaded up with lots of plugins too.

        Snap. I use it under Linux, where it doesn't have some of the Windows-based optimisations, and it's rock solid. And really, on my development machine, which is currently using 1.5GB of my 8GB RAM to run Netbeans and an attached Tomcat instance, do you think I give two shits about my bajillion Firefox tabs using 400MB?

      4. Oninoshiko

        Re: AC@15:18

        You must restart it a lot then. It does leak memory like a sieve.

        The big reason I have up on them, is they want me to restart the damn thing too often. It's disruptive.

        1. Philip Lewis
          Linux

          Re: AC@15:18

          Which is why I always install "Memory Restart"

          A comforting, big red button appears when memory usage grows to an intolerable level.

      5. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: bah

        Agreed. Safari, Chrome and Sleipnir all use WebKit and all use more memory (for the same tasks) on my machine than Firefox. Opera currently uses least.

        1. Ian Johnston Silver badge
          Thumb Down

          Re: bah

          Chrome may use more memory to display a given page, but at least it stops using it when you close the page.

    2. shaolin cookie
      WTF?

      Re: bah

      At one previous work place I had to disable ipv6 in Firefox, otherwise it would do these random lock-ups. Maybe your network is similar? Other than that I'd just have to assume the Windows version is a lot worse... I've been using FF in Linux far longer than I care to remember and (other than that 1 network) never felt any need to change.

      1. james 68
        Thumb Up

        Re: bah

        @shaolin cookie

        that is something i havent tried - didnt think that would even matter since ipv6 is disabled in network settings.

        at this point though i'll give it a try, anything to get rid of chrome and have firefox back.

        thanks for the suggestion.

    3. Mystic Megabyte

      Re: bah

      Firefox 18.0.2 here with six plugins and nine add-ons and no crashing or locking up.

      It's not the fastes browser to load but how many times a day do you do that?

      I forgot to say that I;m using Linux,

      <tries hard not to bash MS>

      1. Don Jefe

        Re: bah

        I do it more than I'd like. Restarting the browser is the only way to get FF to let go of all the memory it has gobbled up.

      2. Fatman

        Re: <tries hard not to bash MS>

        Go Ahead!

        You'll feel better!!!!!

    4. toadwarrior

      Re: bah

      Firefox isn't bad with memory at all these days. There are program's that change that one of which is the popular Adblock but that's not Mozilla's problem.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: bah

      Sadly, you are correct. It pisses me off while FF goes into CPU la-la land and then gets religion and processes the message queue and one ends up totally lost.

      It is, by any measure, a memory hog of biblical proportions. Is it just too hard to write tight code these days, are programmers lazy, is the problem intractable? ... questions questions.

      For a faster, "better" FF try www.palemoon.org (still a memory hog though)

    6. Dan 55 Silver badge
  5. yossarianuk

    Whoever said opensource didn't innovate?

    Its quite amazing the amount of people running a fork of KDE's built in browser.

    Its a shame that more of you aren't running the full desktop though - it is the most usable to work with IMO.

  6. Miek
    Linux

    The upside to the "Webkit Monoculture" is that you have many Companies and individuals contributing to a common codebase. Whilst monocultures can be a "bad thing" in terms of one company controls the code for 'X' software, in this case it is a collaboration success, having Opera's engineers onboard with the project can only be a good thing.

  7. Joe Drunk

    Last nail in the coffin of Opera's irrevelance

    No longer a browser - just a GUI like Maxthon. How much lower can Opera's marketshare go?

    1. Scrote

      Re: Last nail in the coffin of Opera's irrevelance

      The engine itself is not something the average user thinks about. They're more interested in what the favourites or history looks like. If Opera can create a few unique features in their GUI that separate them from the usual bunch then they might do well. It's just a case of marketing it.

    2. Ian Yates
      WTF?

      Re: Last nail in the coffin of Opera's irrevelance

      Just because they use WebKit? Surely the same could be said for Chrome or Safari, then?

  8. Graham Triggs

    He said: “Monoculture remains a problem that we must fight. The web needs multiple implementations of its evolving standards to keep them interoperable.” His lengthy essay continued:

    -- well, the question remains, why? The reason why an IE monoculture is / was bad, is that it's a closed source single platform. When that is a de facto standard, it becomes a major problem for anyone not wishing to be tied to a single company's platform(s).

    But why is there any advantage to having a standard with multiple implementations, versus a single implementation that is itself open and portable across multiple platforms?

    OK, potentially, competing implementations can encourage better implementations of the standards (e.g. faster Javascript), but a single, open, portable implementation could lead to faster evolution / innovation.

  9. Alan W. Rateliff, II
    Paris Hilton

    Who bought Opera?

    So for those people who bought Opera because it was different, did we really, in the end, just buy Safari?

    I remember a time when, while not overwhelmingly adopted by the public, Opera was known for being THE standards-compliant engine, even in the face of those who attempted to redefine standards with broken implementations *cough* Microsoft *cough*.

    Ah, well, life is like a party.

    Paris, the party must end.

    1. Lars Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: Who bought Opera?

      Seems to me Konqueror (KDE) which Apple took and made into Safari is not remembered any more. Opera I think feel they can improve Opera without spending energy on the rendering engine. Why should I doubt it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Who bought Opera?

        WebKit is an open source engine. So they can still improve it. Fork it and publish the forked code. Or extend with a plug-in archecture and only release the plug-in architecture.

  10. Schultz

    Give them a chance...

    Opera did a great job with its browser in the past and always (with a few bumps) delivered pleasant surprises. Lets hope that they'll continue with this, no matter what html engine they use.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    too bad the Gecko engine is half-baked bloatware

    which can't even render correctly half the pages.

    Latest Firefox 18 ? Do a Google search for 'Firefox 18 high cpu usage'.

    No wonder Opera switched to WebKit. It wasn't a 'monocultural' decision - whatever that means. It was purely technical.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Holmes

      Re: too bad the Gecko engine is half-baked bloatware

      18.0.2 has just come out which fixes JavaScript problems.

    2. Greg J Preece

      Re: too bad the Gecko engine is half-baked bloatware

      which can't even render correctly half the pages.

      As a web developer with a not-insignificant amount of front-end experience, bollocks. Gecko is more consistent than anything else. I'm sure some tool will now link me to the Mozzy bug tracker, as if that proved something over every other browser that totally doesn't have a bug tracker.

      But then I'm still wondering how your second sentence is justification for the first.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: too bad the Gecko engine is half-baked bloatware

        > As a web developer with a not-insignificant amount of front-end

        > experience, bollocks. Gecko is more consistent than anything else.

        I don't care about Gecko's consistency - whatever that means. Consistency in rendering pages? Obviously not.

        I care about Firefox not being able to render half the pages Google Chrome or even Konqueror have no problems rendering correctly.

        "Upgrade to the latest Firefox 18". No, thank you. I don't have time to waste upgrading Bloatzilla every two weeks in the hope that some wonderful latest version won't need 2GB of memory and 4 CPUs at 98% on startup. Firefox is the only software which makes my laptop sound like an F-16 taking off because of the cooling fans.

        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
          Coat

          Re: too bad the Gecko engine is half-baked bloatware

          Thank you for playing. Your opinion is valuable to us for continued improvement.

  12. Randy Hudson
    FAIL

    Kettle, black

    This means a lot, coming from the browser that hasn't rendered tables correctly for over 14 years.

    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=915

    Even Internet Explorer does *layout* better than Firefox. Here's another FF layout fail example:

    https://bug736458.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=606729

    1. the spectacularly refined chap

      Re: Kettle, black

      coming from the browser that hasn't rendered tables correctly for over 14 years.

      I'm no FF advocate but fair's fair. If you bothered to read the bug report you would see it is nothing to do with "correct" table handling, but undesired behaviour when presented with invalid table code. There is no "correct" handling that eventuality.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Presto is not 18 years old

    Presto is a decade old, and is the third Opera rendering engine. The first version to be released using it was 7.0, although due to its extensible design, the Presto that exists today is more different from what was called Presto in Opera 7, as that was from Elektra used in Opera 4-6 before it.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    pros and cons

    Sad to see Presto go, I wonder if Opera would release that as open source so any group motivated could carry on with that and keep the ecosystem healthy.

    Both Chrome and Safari have the same lack of customizability. You can't seem to move buttons around or change the behaviour in the same way you can with FF or Opera, despite the rendering engine being excellent. Opera have a real opportunity if they can combine the widespread compatibility and reliability of webkit with a decent interface that actually lets you set it up the way you like.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What an idiot

    "If we were a more conventional business, without enough desktop browser-marketshare, we would probably have to do what Opera has done"

    This has NOTHING to do with desktop marketshare (which is doing just fine at over 70m or so users). It's got EVERYTHING to do with being able to make a proper browser for iPhone.

    We all know Apple only allow browser skins that use their own webkit browser control (a gimped version minus Nitro JS engine, as they don't want a level playing field).

    Moving to Webkit means much easier development on Android, means they can release a proper browser for iOS, and means they have less of a website compatibility headache because lazy developers only test IE/Chrome and FF.

    Me, I can't wait to see Opera ICE browser next week, and when Opera release a webkit based desktop browser with all the features of Opera, AND all the benefits of sharing a common engine with Chrome and Safari, it will surely shut alot of idiots up.

    1. Chris 69
      Facepalm

      Re: What an idiot -Lazy Developers

      It's nothing to do with Lazy... development time has to be PAID for and companies all over the world are having to pay huge amounts every day just to cope with the crap pushed on them by the browser makers and the W3C.

      It's all good money for web devs but the situation is appalling for the actual customers who have to pay for their services.

      If we hadn't spent all those years arguing about interop and the interpretation of poorly specified standards, just think, we might even have a rich-text input box in HTML that included the ability to inline paste pictures and all that other stuff THAT HAS BEEN COMMON IN OTHER PROGS FOR DECADES!

      1. Xoot

        Re: What an idiot -Lazy Developers

        I'm SO with you man! Couldn't have put it better - anyone would think this debate is about saving peace, freedom, democracy and the galaxy - I just want to lay some boxes out on a screen FFS!

        I'm all for the lofty ideals but I hate to break to the idealists, they've failed.

  16. Ian Johnston Silver badge
    WTF?

    Good heavens

    Is Firefox still around? I remember a small, fast, effective browser of that name many years ago, but then it was replaced by a bloated, slow, memory-leaking monstrosity whose developers seemed to be more concerned about grandiose road maps and ten year plans than about "actually getting the fucking thing to work".

    1. asdf

      Re: Good heavens

      Exactly the post I was going to put up. Glad I checked the second page of comments after all.

  17. Prof Denzil Dexter

    chrome is a dirty word word

    Chrome is a dirty word word - but i like it.

    i feel like Max Moseley at a Nazi Spankathon.

    Allegedly

    /filth

  18. Grrzes
    Angel

    Could opensourcing Presto possibly help Opera?

    Instead or giving up and going Webkit. What do you think?

  19. southpacificpom
    Devil

    Lynx

    I use Lynx, what's WebKit again?

  20. 6 inches long, handle.

    Have they opensourced the browser engine? Or are there any plans to opensource it? Would be fun to see new projects based on the software.

  21. Colin Wilson 2

    Write your own browser...

    Every programmer should write their own browser, with it's own layout code, rendering engine, JS interpretter etc. It's not going to work very well - unless you're really talented and really persistent. But it will give you something to do do witter away those long winter nights.

    Grab a copy of the RFCs, your favourite C compiler and get pushing those pixels!

    That's really the point of this discussion. WIthout good standards there's no way to do this. And with a single reference implementation (Webkit) the standards could deteriorate until it becomes 'the standard is what the code does'. At least it's open source.

  22. Dave Lawton

    Other Browsers

    If you don't like the mainstream browsers, here's at least one alternative - NetSurf.

    Up until recently it had no Javascript support, but the devs are now implementing this.

    If you can code, I'm sure the devs would be happy to hear from you.

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