What if we built a Vivaldi on a Presto engine?
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I know that this idea is probably impossible, but I would like to know the answer to the question asked in the title of the post. Let's assume theoretically that Opera gives back the Presto engine for @Jon and Vivaldi.
What would you do with this option? Hide the engine for later? In the meantime, they were upgrading and updating it to new standards? They were building Vivaldi on chrome and translating the elements into Presto on the side? What would it bring to the team itself ? Are you ready for this eventuality?
I would really like to read the opinions about this @Jon and the whole team. Whether here in the forum or on the blog. I just want to know your opinion about it.#bringbackpresto
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@MattSolo45 , From Opera Forum:
"Opera Presto always has compatibily problems with many sites (browser.js was bigger), and it was getting harder and harder to add new features and improvements because the code was messed up with lots of features. So they decided to build a new browser from nothing using Chromium."
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_browser_engines
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The only way presto could "come back" would be with an unreasonable amount of work. There are thousands of employees working each on engines like blink or gecko/servo. That won't ever happen for a discontinued old engine like presto.
It would be difficult to imagine what, if anything, would be done if it was being developed. Given all the work put into getting vivaldi to work with chrome, I don't see that sunk cost being transferred to getting it to work on an older engine as well.
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Presto's source code was leaked on Github, Bitbucket and the darkweb few years ago, so it makes no sense acquiring it now, as everybody knows how it is built and which parts are vulnerable for exploitation. If it was not leaked it would require gigantic work to bring it to the current standards, a waste of time and money. It's a rotting corpse, just forget it.
P.S. Jon has already made some comments regarding Presto you can find them via the search feature https://forum.vivaldi.net/search?term=Presto&in=posts&matchWords=all&by[]=jon&sortBy=relevance&sortDirection=desc&showAs=posts
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backend isn't an issue, it's frontend (and middleware in case of extensions) that needs most of the work to become usable
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@npro This does not make sense. Opening the code does not make a project more vulnerable (see Linux, Chromium->Vivaldi, ...).
@zakius Of course presto was a lot better performing than chromium. Of course backend is the issue.
arch linux. swaywm. vivaldi-snapshot. m3.
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Presto was not a very good rendering engine. There were lots of situations where it did not work properly. The most notable thing I saw was its treatment of online forms. The form would look as if someone slashed it a few times vertically, tore out alternating strips and glued the rest back together.
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I see that most of the sentences are against this idea or the successor to Presto. But in my opinion, great or innovative things were created from scratch and the effort put into them always paid off. And Vivaldi disappoints me in terms of innovation despite having a man at the helm who was responsible for one of the best browsers ever. It is simply hopeless. We go back to a time similar to the Internet Explorer monopoly and Vivaldi doesn't even raise a glove but gives up before the fight. And immediately write that Vivaldi is trying to stand out. And I'll say from the experience and opinions of various people that he has nothing but personalisation itself, which for many people is of marginal importance. Well, there's still your email, but most people either use Gmail or Protonmail as a security measure. Initially I liked the concept of the browser created for the user very much, but after a few years of looking at the development of Vivaldi I have to say that this great browser was made on a nicely speaking weak and limited foundation. Boasting about high speed scores or high continuity is like a child bragging about high marks for the homework done by his father (here google) who changed a few things so that it wouldn't come out who the creator of the work is really here. I appreciate Firefox more than anything else, which despite the difficulties is trying to fight with its work and I hope it will get better. And let Vivaldi continue with his translations that in the future he may do his own engine because you probably won't do it anyway because you will either continue with another popular engine or lose your audience. So far you are standing on the shelf below Chrome (except Brave which deserves more respect) and you can't even take care of your good name by introducing yourself as Chrome because it was due to difficulties with the pages. But what can I know there. And I wish Vivaldi would finally grow your balls to fight for his own brand.
P.S. You could have called yourself @Jon Broswer. At least you wouldn't insult that famous "musician." -
@jumpsq said in What if we built a Vivaldi on a Presto engine?:
@npro This does not make sense. Opening the code does not make a project more vulnerable (see Linux, Chromium->Vivaldi, ...).
It does not make sense to you because you have separated "open source" from OP's suggestion of Vivaldi buying/getting the code of Presto. Again, Presto was not officially open-sourced in the proper way, meaning various developers around the world could also use the code and work on it and not only Vivaldi, it was leaked in various sites and the dark web, forcing Opera to fill a DMCA Takedown notice to the sites to remove it. If Vivaldi buys Presto from Opera -which means Vivaldi buys the proprietary code (closed-source software) and continues work on it, the leaked code acts as a liability to it.
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This has already be answered by the Vivaldi Team and is not worth discussing any further. The team is too small to write their own rendering engine.
Different browsers use different engines and when it came to picking ours, we found that the Chromium engine code was secure and the most widely used – things that were important to us. Other pieces of code were either unavailable or undergoing significant re-writes. Developing a new engine from scratch would not have allowed us to focus on what mattered to us the most – it would have taken far too long to do and required significant resources. There is a reason why no-one has built a new engine from scratch in 20 years.
The large community around the Chromium project also meant that Vivaldi could benefit from code improvements many developers – including ourselves – report and upstream (Vivaldi devs regularly report issues and are about to start upstreaming code).
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@jumpsq of course it was much slower even back then, as a dev I liked how strict it was but users would hate it
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@zakius said in What if we built a Vivaldi on a Presto engine?:
@jumpsq of course it was much slower even back then, as a dev I liked how strict it was but users would hate it
What do you mean by "slower"? Presto Opera was the fastest browser around. Webkit Opera has gotten slower and slower. It is now the slowest thing around.
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@Streptococcus said in What if we built a Vivaldi on a Presto engine?:
@zakius said in What if we built a Vivaldi on a Presto engine?:
@jumpsq of course it was much slower even back then, as a dev I liked how strict it was but users would hate it
What do you mean by "slower"? Presto Opera was the fastest browser around. Webkit Opera has gotten slower and slower. It is now the slowest thing around.
I also did not get the point. Opera is clearly still the smoothest browser around.
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Reminder: Presto is not Open Source.
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@jumpsq said in What if we built a Vivaldi on a Presto engine?:
@npro This does not make sense. Opening the code does not make a project more vulnerable (see Linux, Chromium->Vivaldi, ...).
Open sourcing does not, by itself, bring any security benefits. It requires a lot of popularity, enough such that really smart people with the right skills are willing to give their time to audit the code. Just because anyone can read the code doesn't mean they are.
@MattSolo45 said in What if we built a Vivaldi on a Presto engine?:
But in my opinion, great or innovative things were created from scratch and the effort put into them always paid off.
Always? Come on, now, be honest with yourself. The reality is it usually doesn't pay off. Look at any industry. Startups fail at an enormous rate. Most restaurants are closed within 2 or 3 years, while franchises have a much greater success rate. Occasionally, very rarely, the new thing built from scratch makes an enormous impact. That makes far too many people think it's easy, that you just need a good idea and to build it well. A few years later the secondhand market is flooded with barely used equipment.
Edit: typo (should -> skills, stupid autocorrect)
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Presto is owned by Opera, even if Vivaldi would use Presto, it would mean relying on a Chinese company that does not stand out precisely for respecting user privacy, unless Google.Apart from Vivaldi, it would be time to pay for the license, without having a real advantage, on the contrary.
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