The story of the browser will continue as the seasons change

Summary: Bring up this browser from Norway, opera, the total love to hate intertwined Tan Yongwen and opera software company belong to special era, special place, but no explanation, including language, music or memory, can say that he lived there

Bring up this browser from Norway, opera, always love and hate intertwined

Tan Yongwen and Opera software company belong to special era, special place, but no explanation, including language, music or memory, can tell the feeling that he lived there. It's just the corner of the world in the last time. There, there are crazy moves everywhere. At that time there was a feeling that everything we did was right and we were winners. I think maybe that's a life bet. The inevitable sense of success goes beyond the old, rigid Microsoft. Yes, we were very motivated. We are catching up to the peak of the tide. So now, as you climb the steep slopes of Norway to the West, as long as you use the angle of view, you can see the climax of the sign-the trend of the surge and the retreat of the place.

--adapted from the movie "Fear Las Vegas" lines.

Browsers are the eternal story of the Internet, each of us can name several browsers, but when it comes to opera, it always makes love and hate.

He is a great browser, from Norway. He has created a lot of new ideas, and has been trying to hold on, never to be swayed by a very low share. But this time, he had his own life, announced that he gave up his engine and turned to WebKit. The failure of former innovators to hold their ground is indeed a pity for countless Lotus. (Lotus: Opera loyal users)

Industry innovators who are ignored

The technology innovator who says opera is a browser is not a bit. As early as the first public release of opera browser, they have implemented a window to open multiple pages at the same time, which is popular in modern browsers "tabbed browsing" predecessor. In 2001, opera implemented mouse gesture control for the first time and changed the way many people surf the Internet.

As a software company that is only thousands of people, it has a lot of features and technological innovations in browsers, it has to say it is a miracle.

Browsers are specialized tools, but they are not an inevitable choice for connoisseurs. Opera's innovation has not been able to change the market's favor. In fact, the opera desktop version has long maintained a global share of less than 2%. For nearly 20 years as a famous old, such figures can only be described as "too embarrassing." Of course, they don't want to keep this kind of performance forever, except for competitors.

Despite the near-ignored desktop market, opera faces a host of strong rivals in the Mobile world. Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Safari are eating away at opera's share. In the past two years, Opera Mini shares face stagnation or even shrinking, has been in the former wolf after the tiger situation. Opera wants to make a breakthrough and it has to change.

Technical pragmatism and passive marketing

Few users care about which rendering engine the browser uses, and what kernel is used. Most users only care about the experience and features of the browser, such as the speed of Web page opening, bookmark management, plug-in extensions, and so on.

It has been said that opera is an artifact of the era of narrowband dial-up Internet. Yes, with the help of opera Turbo and the updated Presto rendering engine, opera's web surfing was faster than IE and Firefox seemed to feel.

At home, opera desktop users are mostly from Microsoft IE conversion from. Compared with other similar products, opera is not difficult to start. However, in order to adapt to the original habit, users still need some skill and time to polish it. Even professionals, it is not easy to fully master and familiarize yourself with opera's setup methods. Some of opera's advanced settings do not appear as a graphical interface, but require users to modify the INI configuration file to achieve, which virtually increases the difficulty of getting started. and the corresponding community support online slow, but also hindered opera in the domestic popularity.

Compatibility is also a mishap for opera. Presto engine compatibility should be good enough, but in the domestic environment, often appear powerless, not to mention the lack of necessary plug-ins support (such as net Silver plug-in).

Opera introduced new features, new technologies and a lot, almost every big update has amazing new features appear, but each time is wool, such as the general silent, marketing action is not to force is also the fact that.

Of course, they didn't try. In Europe, opera and other peers have worked together to push the EU to pressure Microsoft to integrate the browser selection box into Microsoft's next-generation operating system, allowing users to choose which browsers to use when they turn on their phones. But this seemingly bull approach has not made a significant contribution to opera's share growth.

Core Camp and competition

As Firefox project director Jonathan Nan Nightingale said: "The internet needs to be agile and responsive." Currently, the gecko and WebKit browser engines have a wide range of support and activity, and the popular gecko browsers and WebKit kernel browser distributions are blossoming. The open source features of Gecko and WebKit's two main rendering engines attract developers to improve their share of the expansion.

In particular, with the popularity of Chrome, the WebKit engine, which was almost only used by Safari, is catching up with other rivals. In Mobile, WebKit is the iOS platform's only typesetting engine, with Google and Apple's strong marketing capabilities, WebKit and its branches now occupy nearly half of the company has enough to match the Microsoft Trident engine capital.

Opera's Presto engine, although the version is constantly updated, but the market share is too low, a lot of manpower and financial resources to maintain, it is inevitable to entertain the suspicion. The characteristics of closed source also shut out the developers, Presto became a flower of narcissism.

For opera, abandoning closed Presto to WebKit may be the last bet. First of all, open WebKit can let opera face the mobile Internet competition, focus on supporting the Android and iOS platform, the development of excellent experience products. Second, opera full range of products using the WebKit kernel, not only reduces the developer's code maintenance, reduce costs, but also will benefit the end users, such as compatibility issues may disappear from now on.

Of course, Presto is not no need, I think opera will presto open source may be better than now live.

By the way, Opera 12.14 may be the Presto core of the finale, interested reader can be downloaded here (http://down.tech.sina.com.cn/content/1365.html).

Three points in the world who Potence

After opera uses the Webkit engine, the browser kernel will be left with only three: Webkit, Trident and gecko.

Let's comb through the main members of the three camps.

Webkit:chrome, Safari and Opera

Trident:internet Explorer

Gecko:firefox

10 years ago, we talked about browser warfare, where winners or losers refer to a product or brand, such as Netscape or IE. Today, the war has been qualitatively changed. WebKit is backed by a strong background of Apple and Google, and WebKit is the web, whether you're using Android or iOS devices.

At home, Maxthon (AO) has been synonymous with IE, long-term use of Trident kernel. Starting with 3, the WebKit core is also used, compatible with Trident. In addition, such as 360, Sogou and other multi-core browser products are also used WebKit core. They have basically the same functional experience, with the help of WebKit's performance advantages, the impact on the Trident and gecko is undoubtedly enormous.

If one day WebKit form a single big situation, in front of Microsoft and Mozilla I am afraid is a big question mark, is to make compromises or sit still?

The story of the browser will continue as the seasons change.