Opera's Developer Relations Team

Carakan F.A.Q.

By Bruce Lawson. Thursday, 5. February 2009, 09:47:24

What is Carakan?

Carakan is Opera's new JavaScript engine. It's still in development, but is already 2.5 times faster than our Opera 10 alpha engine (which itself is 30% faster on real websites than previous versions of Opera). Some aspects are between 5 and 50 times faster!

Why are we developing it?

Because we can! Opera has always been about speed, security and a small memory footprint, so we're constantly improving these aspects of the browser. Many of today's web applications depend heavily on JavaScript, and we're developing what will be the fastest ECMAscript engine on the market.

When will Carakan be available?

Soon. We've chosen to talk about it now as we're discussing it at the Web Directions North conference, but we're still combing its hair and straightening its tie before we're ready to let you see it.

How does it work?

It's a combination of brilliant coding and Scandinavian voodoo magic ("Snowdoo"). If you want more details about the brilliant coding, you can read all about register-based bytecode, automatic object classification and native code generation on the Opera Core Concerns Blog. We're sworn to secrecy about the Snowdoo. By a ~~Yeti~~ troll.

What does "Carakan" mean?

We thought about naming it "Unicorn-badger", "StackDonkey" or "Shouting Otter". But, we've chosen the name "Carakan" (pronounced "Jarakan"), which is the original alphabet from the Indonesian island of Java.

In other words, it's the purest Java Script. When you try it, you'll agree.

Opera web standards curriculum: JavaScript in town!Surfing at BONDI

Comments

Anonymous # 5. February 2009, 10:01

Anonymous writes:

zibin says:

Fabulous. Snowdoo's the thang

AOTEAROAnz # 5. February 2009, 10:44

Anonymous # 5. February 2009, 11:58

patrick h. lauke writes:

sounds swish.

gr1b0k # 5. February 2009, 13:44

Opera is hot!

pablogrb # 5. February 2009, 13:47

I love the Opera attitude, rock on devs, can't wait for Opera 10 (and a wii browser update... pretty please)

haavard # 5. February 2009, 14:29

You'll have to ask Nintendo about Wii updates...

athrun # 5. February 2009, 14:32

Why the name is "Carakan" not "Hanacaraka"??

I'm from Indonesia

kilsmo # 5. February 2009, 15:34

Yes, we found out about the alternative name Hanacaraka after a few days (I'm not from Indonesia), but Carakan was the one that we got first, and Carakan sounds cooler to me.

Chas4 # 5. February 2009, 16:53

FataL # 5. February 2009, 17:02

...we're developing what will be the fastest ECMAscript engine on the market

Oh, please don't say so, because I'm already waiting for the best web developer tools on the market.

sandalian # 5. February 2009, 20:45

All thumbs for you guys, I really love the name since I'm a Javanese

sandalian # 6. February 2009, 07:36

FYI, 'carakan' in Indonesian and Javanese language is pronounced as 'carakan'. Some articles wrote 'carakan' as 'tjarakan' because 'tj' is an old way to write letter 'c' in Indonesian language (prior 1970s).

The letter 'c' in 'carakan' is pronounced like 'c' in 'charm'.

ste-ven # 6. February 2009, 12:49

i imagined j can't be c

Anonymous # 7. February 2009, 01:10

Anonymous writes:

opera 10----please.

Anonymous # 7. February 2009, 16:20

leksa writes:

NICE!!

Honour to be Indonesian and leave in Java Island, Bruce :)

maybe, i'll try build some plugin on it and name it "Keris" or "Gamelan"

Anonymous # 7. February 2009, 19:57

Anonymous writes:

When!!???

kilsmo # 18. February 2009, 22:16

sandalian, thank you very much for the information about how it should be pronounced. The good thing is that is how we have been pronouncing it, so we do not have to change.

Anonymous # 19. February 2009, 03:19

aleefus writes:

A love Opera! And I am from Java Indonesia, ha ha... Carakan? may be honocoroko kali.... walah, opo tumon..

Anonymous # 26. February 2009, 10:57

Anonymous writes:

Why does it only seem to be Indonesian people posting comments :P
Anyway, cant wait for the new version of Opera :) I'm already using 10 Alpha and its so much better than any other browser I have ever tried.

ste-ven # 27. February 2009, 00:24

10 has check speller for english, only

haavard # 27. February 2009, 15:01

ste-ven: Not really, but spell checking is off-topic. Please do not post off-topic comments.

mirac1e # 3. March 2009, 06:39

* I am late to read this *

i am very proud to hear that opera using carakan.

i will put this post into my Javanese Group

Anonymous # 9. March 2009, 14:45

Jonas writes:

LOL at poking fun at Mozilla's TraceMonkey code name, and Apple's SquirrelFish. ;)

lucideer # 11. March 2009, 11:38

StackDonkey would have been brilliant!

(joking)

Anonymous # 27. March 2009, 00:36

nakuragen writes:

i`m from indonesia :D

i see carakan is hanacaraka.hanacaraka is Ha, Na, Ca, Ra, ka , Da , tha, sa, wa, la, ma, gha, Ba, Tha, Nga, & bla.. bla..

heheheh

nice , i use opera too.Opera is good browser.

yen iso opera di support boso jowo juga ya.. kekek

chirag64 # 2. July 2009, 18:22

been waitin since ages now :'(

Anonymous # 12. July 2009, 17:55

Anonymous writes:

Carakan will be available in opera 10 final?

Anonymous # 25. July 2009, 05:09

Anonymous writes:

@ abuv

no i dont think so.

they say it will be 2.5x faster in sunspider. it is still slower than safari, chrome and firefox(3.5)

lucideer # 26. July 2009, 22:14

Originally posted by anonymous:

they say it will be 2.5x faster in sunspider

They said, almost 6 months ago, that it WAS between 2.5 and 50 times faster in SunSpider. In initial tests back then.

Anonymous # 10. August 2009, 14:38

Mike writes:

I like the idea. I just hope that you aren't targetting this at some pretentious stupid benchmark. Mentioning SunSpider doesn't bode too well there.
You might as well do what google and mozzerella did and write your own benchies to prove you're quickest.

I have used Opera for over a decade because it feels the fastest and most responsive. It feels safe and sleek. Also it has a much smaller footprint in memory and on disk than any other browser (Save IE where most of it is in the OS).

As I said I hope this is real world performance enhancing. Also Fx only comes out better in benchies not real world apps. Thats why all the Fx users thought chrome was fast when it was released - had they been using Opera they wouldn't have been so wowed.

lucideer # 10. August 2009, 15:24

Opera is still the fastest browser around, but the Sunspider benchmark, while obviously completely irrelevant in the "real" world, has become a de-facto statistic for blogs and those of influence to quote when comparing browsers. So targeting it is good for marketing, which is inevitably good for Opera users.

Anonymous # 14. August 2009, 09:09

Anonymous writes:

"They said, almost 6 months ago, that it WAS between 2.5 and 50 times faster in SunSpider. In initial tests back then."

When we worked on ff 3.5 the initial tests yielded much better results

Keldian # 17. August 2009, 01:17

Good info to read. Wish you the best, Opera devs.

Anonymous # 18. August 2009, 11:42

Anonymous writes:

"When we worked on ff 3.5 the initial tests yielded much better results"

Yeah, and it ended up sucking. At least Opera knows how to deliver on performance.

Anonymous # 26. August 2009, 00:27

Anonymous writes:

Thank you Opera team for continuing to develop great software! =) Keep up the good work!

Anonymous # 6. September 2009, 10:04

Guti writes:

Any update about it?
Can't wait for a release in the Opera Desktop Team blog!

Anonymous # 20. October 2009, 08:34

galeh g13 writes:

ouw yeaaahh xD