Opera Desktop 18 released, with support for WebRTC

Opera Desktop 18 released, with support for WebRTC(my.opera.com)

45 points by dagingaa 12 years ago | 29 comments

andyking 12 years ago |

I assume at this point that Opera have decided to quietly drop ongoing support for Linux.

There have been no updates to the Linux browser since the last one based on their old rendering engine - none of the Chromium/Blink based versions have made it across, even in beta.

Spittie 12 years ago | |

I really want to try and see what's the deal with Opera >15, but they just won't allow me.

Oh well, I'm already happy with Firefox.

yareally 12 years ago | | |

From trying it on Windows, you're not missing much. It's mostly Chrome with a different skin as most of the features users liked on Opera < 12 are gone or have lost functionality. I still use Opera 12 for that reason.

Some of that functionality may return in the future, but they have said that things like bookmarks will never be like they were exactly on Opera < 12. If they had lived up to making it Opera 12, but with a Chromium Engine, it wouldn't be a problem, but as many long term users were afraid, someone at Opera is using it as an excuse to radically change what Opera is.

JohnTHaller 12 years ago | |

It's still relatively early (they're on rapid release, so 15, 16, 17, 18 don't mean what they used to) and Linux is a tiny sliver of a market for the Opera folks. Opera seems more focused on achieving commercial success across modern mobile devices (as opposed to the dying feature phone business) as well as desktop browsers. Dropping the old rendering engine helps them towards that goal (for good or ill). Delivering on a Linux build at this point probably doesn't.

They have a lot of development time to still put into the new Opera builds full stop. And making them work on the most popular platforms (with the most users and thus the most revenue from partnering) makes sense. Mac is about 1/12th the userbase of Windows. Linux is about 1/5th the market share of Mac. So, it would be the last in line to get work put into it.

sirius87 12 years ago | |

yeah, I really miss this. I gave up Opera 12.16 and switched to FF recently. Looking forward to the new UI customization features in Australis, but there was so much more to Opera. Maxthon is coming to Linux as well, so that'll be interesting

SkyMarshal 12 years ago | |

I'm hoping that they'll bring it back eventually, and that right now they're just focusing all their resources on getting the Win and Mac clients back up to feature-parity with 12.x, plus whatever else webkit brings to the mix.

They're basically in somewhat of a sprint right now, but /fingerscrossed that once they're out of it, they'll port it to Linux too. They're building on Chromium, which has a Linux version, so hopefully it's in the realm of possibility.

That said, will be interesting to see how long Opera 12.x lasts on Linux. I'm on Ubuntu 12.04 now and it's fine, next OS upgrade will be to 14.04 next Spring (or some other Debian distro if I decide to ditch Ubuntu). I wonder if Opera 12.x will work on that.

anopows 12 years ago | |

In their blog they mentioned that their will be a Linux version, but I don't think it's a priority for them

cabbeer 12 years ago | |

Moving to blink must my draining all their resources, their linux market share probably doesn't justify it yet.

WhitneyLand 12 years ago |

What does Opera offer that you don't already get with Chrome/FF + a couple plug-ins?

I mean what is compelling enough to make you choose it over the above options?

anopows 12 years ago | |

For me the user interface was always snappier and felt just all around better. Now with webkit they have a faster render engine and feel like a lighter and faster version of Chrome (plus you can install all addons from Chrome with this extension: https://addons.opera.com/de/extensions/details/download-chro... )

pornel 12 years ago | |

Mouse gestures. I've tried gestures extensions in every other browser and found them all flawed or limited in some way.

Unfortunately other than that the new Opera is just a skin on Chromium. In the switch they've ruined password manager, fast DOM-preserving back navigation, and tons of others goodies.

SkyMarshal 12 years ago | |

I haven't used the new one yet, but the old one had a superior tab interface to everything out there, which they called MDI (Multiple Document Interface). For serial tab abusers like myself, it was a noticeable difference that always had me scratching my head why the other browsers didn't copy the idea.

manojlds 12 years ago | | |

Small things like clicking a tab again to go back to the previous tab are excellent settings in the older versions.

rch 12 years ago | |

Beyond tab management (which was exceptional), the side panel was and is my favorite UI widget hands-down. In the same vein as hot-corners, being able to 'toss' the pointer into the edge of the screen to open mail, notes, etc. felt just plain better than other methods.

upthedale 12 years ago | | |

Emphasis on was. Now tab management and the side panel are non-existent.

tommoor 12 years ago |

Tested in our WebRTC app for remote teams, Sqwiggle (https://www.sqwiggle.com) - it works flawlessly.

From a developer standpoint it's only good news that Opera has moved to webkit at this point.

wendel 12 years ago |

getUserMedia is not WebRTC support. Let us know when you have full support for PeerConnections and DataChannels.

dagingaa 12 years ago | |

Actually, they do have that. Check it out on http://iswebrtcready.appear.in/, or try to create a room on https://appear.in/

mtgx 12 years ago |

IE still has no support for WebRTC, right? Just checking.

angularly 12 years ago | |

No, I think they disagree with Google about how to implement it. I suppose having paid 8+ bill for Skype might have something to do with it.

dagingaa 12 years ago | |

Not yet, neither does Safari. Maybe with IE12?

asdasf 12 years ago |

But still no support for being opera instead of a crappy chrome clone? What happened to that whole "we're not going to make the webkit based releases the official releases until we've added back all the missing features from opera 12" thing?

oblio 12 years ago | |

Market pressure.

Even so, the rate at which they're adding back the features is unbelievable - I think it 12 months they'll have all the old Opera features back sans IRC client and mail client (which they said they'd drop anyway).

Opera's future looks really promising if they can survive this very bumpy ride.

upthedale 12 years ago | |

Came to say the same thing. Bring back mouse chording damnit! (Not to mention all of the little things that made Opera, Opera).

mrweasel 12 years ago | |

You still can't make a search engine like DuckDuckGo the default and DragnFly is still missing in action :-(

V-2 12 years ago | |

Bookmarks are older than Opera 12 and they're gone as well

stinos 12 years ago | |

this. And the absence of the mail client, of course.