Opera is working on a new JavaScript engine
10 CommentsPublished February 5th, 2009 11:04 AM EST By Daniel Goldman
On its Core blog, Opera posted some of the details of its new JavaScript engine, called Carakan.
The new engine, which likely won’t be available in the upcoming Opera 10 release, is 2.5 times faster than the Opera 10 alpha engine, according to Opera.
All the details are up on the Core blog and the short Carakan FAQ they posted.
My observation:
My guess is that Opera decided to put much effort into making its JavaScript engine faster not for bragging purposes, but rather for its increasingly popular embedded browser and SDKs in devices and mobile phones.
Opera, of course, is going full force in promoting Opera Widgets for devices and mobile phones as a way to build web applications that are platform independent and that are cheap to build (using plain old HTML and JavaScript). By improving its JavaScript engine, it is directly improving the performance of Opera Widgets.
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using
Typo: “JDKs” ought to be “SDKs”
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“The new engine, … is 2.5 times faster than the Opera 10 alpha engine…”
Yes, without native codes. With them it’s even faster, they say, 5-50x depending on testcase.
You may be right with that Widget idea, I shoud have think about that…
Anyway, we made a small interview with Jon S. von Tetzchner recently, and we decided to publich it in English also. You may link it from you’re site, in cas you find it interresting.
The link: http://magyaropera.blog.hu/2009/02/07/magyaropera_s_interview_with_jon_s_von_tetzchner
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@cousin333: Thanks for the interview link. Questions are very good – the ones I’ve always wanted to ask
But unfortunately most of the answers are just marketing ******** :/
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Grin, yup. SDK is what I meant. I’ve been doing Java for a bit
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please someone devellop a freemail notifier within opera-desktop! would be tooo great.
example: Firefox webmail notifier …
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I’m waiting eagerly. I hope it comes out this year. We will end up making those that don’t support opera feel silly for not doing do
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problem is, that no one cares any longer about widgets. iPhone browser shows that you do not need to constraint yourself to ‘poor man’ version of internet’ (widgets) when you can run full-fledged webApps with no problems.
widgets werent that hot even two years ago, when there were not so many smartPhones, now widgets are things of a past, noone needs them – phones are MUCH more powerfull, they can cope with normal javascript, some with flash etc. no need for stopgap solutions
as for the JS engine – good to hear, but if it isnt going to be in 10 final, then there is nothing to talk about. look at dragonfly, it was released (it wasnt released really, but anyway) one year too late, and nobody gives a damn..
“We will end up making those that don’t support opera feel silly for not doing do”
my company doesnt support opera in our products, and we dont feel silly, it is a matter of business decision – is 4% worth spending 30% more? in our case it wasnt.
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j4, I think you’ve misunderstood widgets. That widgets should be less resource intense than web pages have never been an objective.
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it might be true, but what is the point of widgets then?
I saw some explainations to their existence as a ‘way to create rich applications’.. why to develop YET another standard, instead use existing rich applications like gmail, yahoo mail or so many other sites (that do not work properly in opera..) can now be launched on iphone or g1 or other webkit-enabled phones with ABSOLUTELY no problems?
maybe the time spent on widgets should have been used to make opera rendering engine better or ‘less strict’ or ‘more in line with leading ones (gecko) in terms of standard interpretation’. Opera’ many problems are caused by opera taking its own way in ‘gray areas’ of w3c specs. sadly, noone cares about it, and in these areas opera fails.
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@j4
Widgets aren’t supposed to be a replacement. Widgets are a platform to develop applications. Instead of developing native applications for each platform, which is expensive and time-consuming, you can develop widgets, and they will run on all platforms that the browser runs on. In addition to that, widgets are cheaper and faster to make than native apps.
Way to miss the point.
In case you didn’t notice, Opera offers a full browser and widgets at the same time. They complement each other.
Widgets use normal JavaScript. Clueless much?
Applications are “stopgap solutins”? Huh?
Nonsense. It’s good to know that Opera is not going to give up on the speed race. Opera has a history of being the fastest browser, and they clearly intend to keep it that way.