I check the Opera Desktop Team blog almost daily and until they issued two release candidates (bug fixes of 12.1x) over the last couple of weeks there hadn't been much activity since February.
I've looked around Opera's site and didn't see any announcements, at least none that were easy to find, so I Googled "Opera" to find out, via a third party news source, they are apparently re-writing the browser from scratch using Webkit as the rendering engine.

Has anyone heard any further news on when the "New and Improved Open Source Opera" will be available?
Thanks.

It is nice to hear that opera is moving to opensource, seems like android based Opera Ice is already using Webkit. However you can ask on opera blog, or forums if there are any.

I could tell you but then I would have to kill you.

The desktop version will not use Webkit for long but if you blinked, you might have missed the news.

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@ruario,
Many Thanks!


PS: I was hoping you would join the discussion.

After reading a little more about it, I'm not so sure crawling into bed with
google is the right way to go.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...dering-browser

Then again staying with Webkit rather than Blink may also have been a mistake

https://medium.com/my-ideas/25a947158087

Not my personal opinion, just showing there is always more than one way to look at this.

Why not keep Presto and improve it?

http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/300-mi...move-to-webkit

"Instead of tying up resources duplicating what's already implemented in WebKit (now Blink), we can focus on innovation to make a better browser."


And we are not talking about an insignificant amount of resources. Presto is millions of lines of code.

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Yeah, but can you trust google anymore than you can trust mickeysoft? I wouldn't trust either one of them any further than I could pick up one of their headquarters' buildings and throw it. Just look at the little scheme google has talked* adobe into with flash for Linux.


*"When all else fails, follow the money."

Blink and Webkit are Open Source and we have shown we can maintain this kind of stuff on our own if needs be.

So, when might we get a glimpse at the "new and improved" Opera?

Sorry I am not permitted to comment on stuff like that in any detail.

Opera is a for-profit company, and it should be assumed they will run their business in a way that optimizes their income stream. Google is the other big player in the unstable triad of Microsoft, Apple, and Google, and I don't see Opera becoming partners with either Apple or Microsoft.

I'm actually surprised they've been able to stay afloat. I used to LOVE their browser, but it's been like 4 years since I could even use it that it's performance has been so awful. Displays pages completely wrong, slow, just awful. The android version was even worse. Anything they do to start it from scratch is an improvement. However, using the same engine as Chrome kinda makes it redundant. Just use Chrome and install extensions to do what you want.