Slightly ajar

Opera Dragonfly arriving soon

Thursday, April 24, 2008 11:48:42 AM

,

We've finally announced that Opera Dragonfly is our web developer tools. It will launch as an alpha release on the 6th of May (fingers crossed). It is the first product where I've been acting as the lead of the launch, so it was quite exciting to announce it. The second beta of Kestrel leaked early, and included very major hints that Opera Dragonfly was indeed the developer tools, so there was a mad rush to get the web page up, and the server set up correctly, but everything worked out eventually.

Opera has been lacking real developer tools far too long, so it fantastic that Opera Dragonfly is ready to launch soon. It won't be feature complete by the first alpha, but we are actively working to improve the tools and adding more functionality as time goes on. We're committed to making Opera Dragonfly the best application in its class.

With this, and the improvements in standards support in Core-2.1 our offerings to web developers looks like they are shaping up nicely.

Jeremy and Eric on the Acid 3 raceIt's here

Comments

Sami Serolaserola Thursday, April 24, 2008 11:52:55 AM

So, does it mean that I can finally say goodbye for Firefox and tools like Firebug?

DavidSchalandra Thursday, April 24, 2008 12:27:39 PM

Hah! Finally I will get my all-in-one-solution for web-development! yes

Can't wait to get my hands on it! Gimme! GIMMEEE!! ninja

Steve DarkenDarken Thursday, April 24, 2008 12:42:08 PM

Wooohoooo!! cheers

Øyvind ØstlundNoteMe Thursday, April 24, 2008 2:06:26 PM

This is great news. Looking forward to go bughunting^2 (both on web pages, and in the the alpha release of DevTools them selves). Keep up the good work.

"In 'Opera' we trust" smile


- ØØ -

Robin_reala Thursday, April 24, 2008 2:48:29 PM

You aiming for Firebug parity, or have you got some tricks up your sleeve? smile

GuillermoGuille Thursday, April 24, 2008 2:59:38 PM

Great News!, this is what I was waiting for.

Mmm, the Tools > Advanced > Developer tools menu item on Opera 9.5b2 leads you to the dragonfly site. I wanted to see a sneak peek!

FavDjiXas Thursday, April 24, 2008 4:15:28 PM

Knew That :-P

David Storeydstorey Thursday, April 24, 2008 4:37:46 PM

Robin: We are certainly not aiming to just clone Firebug. There are things we feel we can do better, or things we can do differently. There will also be some things Firebug and other tools don't do. Bear in mind though that this release will be the first alpha, so it certainly wont have the feature parity or polish of Firebug just yet.

Anonymous Thursday, April 24, 2008 5:03:08 PM

Anonymous writes: if it is going to be web based - it will fail (no company is going to develop their intranets/corporate sites with a tool that requires to send sensitive data outside) if it is going to be weaker than firebug (hiding it as a 'different approach' wont cut) - it will fail if it is not good enough - it will fail (people need to test in FF and in IE anyway, but can use Opera for common tasks, not neccesarily heavily browser-dependant - if your tools are not better than FF/IE' - noone is going to use them, because webdevs mostly dont even have Opera installed) if it is JS based, without direct plugs into the Core - it will fail (debugging JS with JS.. yeah right) if there is no REAL JS debugger - dont even bother if there is no XHR logger/profiler - dont even bother truth is, that you had almost 3 years to do it, and now you are going to show us some.. what exactly? remember, that firebug was writen by ONE guy as a side-project in 13 months. it is possible to do it again, so why you didnt? you said that yourself - for TOO long there were no tools for Opera. in critical phase, when web changed from one-browser-oriented to many-browser-oriented Opera did nothing (widgets, yay! speed dial, yay!), and now there is two-browser-oriented web and that is not going to change anytime soon. there is no place for Opera. JUST because of tools.

DavidSchalandra Thursday, April 24, 2008 6:16:53 PM

Oh get real. The people love programs (they call it browser or "internet") that do not even fully support CSS1.

There are webdevs that do not care about anything else but ONE Browser (not even different version), and still think they are true heroes. Graphic artists create their screendesigns with MacOS and wonder why some things look so "different". Customers ask for browser support down to Netscape 3 and don't give a s**t about CSS, the next one wants to forward all IE users to Firefox no matter what, another one wants you to turn off the whole web until his website is ready. Server admins ask you to send files only on CD, as encrypted email isn't secure enough...

Reality in webdev business is just freakin' strange. Every day. I'm glad for any useful tool that helps me to survive (preventing me from hitting a wall with my forehead). Furthermore: I use Firebug too. It is good, but still far away from perfect. According to your logic Firebug should have already failed months ago.

Your arguments aren't all wrong, but a good webdev-kit wouldn't have changed anything in the "critical phase". FF didn't needed it to grow, the word about FF wasn't spread any faster because of it and no newspaper article was ever written about it.

Instead see it that way: If Dragonfly becomes a great tool (which I do not doubt), it will also inspire Firebug vice versa. Webdevs get more power to improve websites and webbased tools. There are still so many places for tools like that. Not just because of Opera.

Anonymous Thursday, April 24, 2008 7:16:29 PM

Anonymous writes: if mainstream pages would fail in firefox (like google, yahoo, hotmail, deviantart etc) - firefox would never surpass few % marketshare. there are only so many geeks that care about opensource/alternative software. but there are tens of % of users that care about good product - ie. that 'just works' like expected. opera never just worked, and it still doesnt but these were not failing - mainly because of how easy it was to create these pages in firefox-friendly way - ie. Firebug + webDevToolbar (in the early stages). and tell me, what points Firebug fails? it has all of them covered (and many, many more). opera NEVER had such tools. btw. I know about webdev reality from a mainstream company. we are talking about profs there, not kids with HTML wysiwig editor. they think with money - opera was very costly to support (it isnt any more, we serve opera the same content as firefox and dont really care about if it works) because there were no tools. without tools you need much more skilled stuff (more $$$) and more time. sorry, it wasnt worth it. along the same lines google/yahoo/ms etc companies are ignoring opera. not because they dont like it (stakes are too high for such stupid thing as emotions there), but because it isnt economicaly viable to care about it. it is a bit too late now, but hey, Im really interested in what you did - three years of hard work must have produced something really amazing..

David Storeydstorey Thursday, April 24, 2008 7:18:07 PM

anonymous is a serial Opera troll, that follows around posts about Opera and criticises anything we do, so pay no heed to him. He has far too much time on his hands it seems.

It is certainly not strictly true that Firebug was developed in 13 months by one guy. It relies on infrastructure that was developed over years in Firefox. We've had to build all that, which is a large amount of the work. If you compare the first Firebug to the latest ones, you'll also note it is far better than it first was after the initial development.

Cyro Thursday, April 24, 2008 9:15:15 PM

Good job!

DavidSchalandra Thursday, April 24, 2008 10:07:46 PM

Don't worry David, there are troll playgrounds everywhere. I assume, that anonymous is a team leading webdev in a tremendous webapplication producing combine, while I'm just sitting here with my Frontpage editor and wonder how to optimize my yellow three site table layout by clicking here... or maybe here? That's a funny imagination, as I never ever used anything else then text-based editors and a simple graphics editing tool. lol

The company I'm working at creates CSS-compliant code, so that any CSS-compliant browser can display it correctly. Right now I'm working on a medium sized project and my CSS works well on all current browsers, without any hacks or ugly layer stuff. For this project the page has to be optimized for MacSafari for example. It costs no time to optimize a page for Firefox, Safari and Opera. You do it for one and just check the others. If it doesn't look the same, you should hit the books again.

To me the most displeasing point of Firebug is its stability... or more the lack of it. If I really need to debug some JS/Ajax it crashes every now and then. That goes for both my work- and my home-PC.

if it is not good enough - it will fail

Firebug IS not perfect. So according to your own rules, Firebug would fail.

And now I get back to my real life. I've got better things to do than arguing. coffee

Anonymous Friday, April 25, 2008 5:26:24 AM

Anonymous writes: "You do it for one and just check the others. If it doesn't look the same, you should hit the books again." CSS is and never was a problem - if you know the IE quirks you can do it even without serious testing JS on the other hand.. is complex and buggy in ALL browsers. you HAVE to make sure you steer around the bugs in all browsers. any complex webapplication that is not tested against certain browser will fail in that browser. that is simple fact, but you need to create at least one app the size of webmail or similar to know it. working on that size of a project, with so heavy use of JS makes you think different about many things. btw. funny, because my firebug never crashed on me.. btw2. maybe try to refute the 'troll' arguments if that is so easy

Øyvind ØstlundNoteMe Friday, April 25, 2008 7:14:01 AM

if it is JS based, without direct plugs into the Core - it will fail (debugging JS with JS.. yeah right)



Why would that be so bad? Although I have a feeling DragonFly isn't JS based, Firebug is after all a Fx extension, hence using JS (and XUL).


- ØØ -

Anonymous Friday, April 25, 2008 7:35:24 AM

JJPrince writes: This is the best dev news I've heard all year. And just another reason to love Opera.

DavidSchalandra Friday, April 25, 2008 7:39:50 AM

#btw2:

opera never just worked, and it still doesnt

not true = trolling

opera NEVER had such tools.

not true = trolling

if mainstream pages would fail in firefox (like google, yahoo, hotmail, deviantart etc)

Opera doesn't fail on any of them. In fact deviantART even fixed several CSS bugs of their layout in v5 to make the site available for opera too. See suggestion #690092.
Ergo: not true = trolling

webdevs mostly dont even have Opera installed

I made different experiences. At least you're adding "mostly", as it prevents you from trolling again.

I know it's friday (troll day) again, but if you really have nothing to do, go home and relax. You take all of this far too personal. cool

Let's just wait and see...coffee

Simon Houstonshoust Saturday, April 26, 2008 11:34:30 PM

@dstorey , when dragonfly is released, will there be a way that users can create their own tools (say someone wanted google pagerank in the sidebar), assuming that dragonfly is html/css/js based and may be able to access the active tab etc?

Also will dragonfly be able to debug other things apart from webpages(irc client is dynamically html based, for example)? Or is the general consensus only on web sites itself?

Hallvord R. M. Steenhallvors Sunday, April 27, 2008 8:30:24 PM

firebug was writen by ONE guy as a side-project in 13 months.



Might be troll fodder, but.. as David pointed out, this is a completely misleading comparison. Ever heard of the Venkman debugger? Mozilla already had APIs and core support for a JavaScript debugger since they had developed Venkman many years before Firebug was made. Firebug simply had to hook into that existing work, which is one of the reasons it could be written so quickly. (Besides.. tried using an *early* version of Firebug for heavy lifting JS debugging? I have. Neither stability nor functionality was good enough for real work - for me, YMMV of course..)

shoust: I think creative minds will find there is some hacking potential in the Dragonfly architecture smile though it seems to only deal with regular web page tabs for now.

Anonymous Monday, April 28, 2008 10:36:49 AM

Anonymous writes: [quote]firebug was writen by ONE guy as a side-project in 13 months[/quote] Um no, it wasn't. Stop lying, troll. [quote]but these were not failing - mainly because of how easy it was to create these pages in firefox-friendly way - ie. Firebug + webDevToolbar (in the early stages).[/quote] Um no, these were not failing because Firefox got compatibility all for free because it used the new Netscape engine which just about all sites needed to be compatible with for historical reasons. Opera has no such historical behemoth with 100% web developer mindshare to piggyback off of. But who cares about actual facts, eh?

kurt duyckiland Friday, May 2, 2008 11:30:59 PM

looking forward 2 it, 3 days countdown from now up

DavidSchalandra Saturday, May 3, 2008 12:04:06 AM

Can't wait to use it in my first project. I hope we are encouraged to bugtrack and suggest. I really want it to become a great tool. happy

Captain ZeroCaptainZero Saturday, May 3, 2008 3:14:41 AM

Sadly, we don't use Opera in our QA lab. Even as a very senior tech director I was unable to justify it, the numbers were just never there but I routinely tested our sites with it - even on MiniOpera 4.1b on my Blackberry.

With the addition on a devkit, we may see an increase in Opera users which would be very nice - not because I'm partial to it but because the net is more fun without the monopolies.

Anyone complaining about the lack of a devkit should read an ebook about the early/mid 90's; The old Netscape/IE 3.2 wars, those were good times. Devkits? We had to make our own with Notepad.

Soumitrasoumitram4u Saturday, May 3, 2008 8:49:47 AM

Good news! up

joe buddcodebyjoe Saturday, May 3, 2008 3:21:38 PM

Congratulations to all of the opera developers involved and thank you for your accomplishments.

As far as im concerned opera is already an important tool for web site user interface development. I'm very pleased with the opera dev tools and i look forward to using dragonfly and watching it develop.

Lead the way!

ЌίИΦ VίРΣЯΘ(KingVipero)VIPERO Sunday, May 4, 2008 5:23:53 AM

hey so its a website developing tool????

DavidSchalandra Sunday, May 4, 2008 11:19:35 AM

More a website debugging tool I think.

ЌίИΦ VίРΣЯΘ(KingVipero)VIPERO Sunday, May 4, 2008 4:37:35 PM

oh allright

Pierrera-mon Sunday, May 4, 2008 5:15:35 PM

hey so its a website developing tool????



it's possible: see option
opera:config#DeveloperTools|DeveloperToolsURL

joe buddcodebyjoe Sunday, May 4, 2008 8:12:03 PM

opera doesn't write any code for me.

i use opera to test and debug my xhtml+voice and javascript code.

Yeni Setiawansandalian Monday, May 5, 2008 3:14:33 AM

I've been waiting so long!

Shaunak DeShaunak Monday, May 5, 2008 5:37:01 AM

1 Day 10 hours 23 mins to go...
Imm so excited...

Alex Mwangiheon Monday, May 5, 2008 8:37:13 PM

"The proof of the pudding,is in the eating"-can't wait to try it.

LeiaOrgana Monday, May 5, 2008 11:43:46 PM

It sounds great! bigsmile We are waiting for it anxiously yikes

Not foundluKanium Tuesday, May 6, 2008 4:44:30 AM

Woooohoooo ... just like the power of the dragon flame bigsmile

Anonymous Tuesday, May 6, 2008 2:47:27 PM

armchaircritic writes: 1hr 15 mins left to go... I hope the server copes with the downloads..

DavidSchalandra Tuesday, May 6, 2008 3:17:47 PM

45min... 44min... 43... left right

Anonymous Tuesday, May 6, 2008 5:55:11 PM

Anonymous writes: it is here one wish - dont kill the old 'dev console' js tool. sorry to say, but js scope inspection is WAY WAY faster in that primitive tool than in dragonfly dragonfly isnt a dissapointment, however it is too alpha to have ANY real world use. necesity to reload a tab on error is LAME. sometimes it is so tedious to get to error (race conditions, problems with external conent) that demanding me to keep dragonfly always open is a bit too much. reloading must go, however it wont because it is js based. things that are missing - better interface (firebug inspect ability), net logging, any form of performance testing and that reloading MUST GO away btw that interface is.. bad. too many tabs in tabs in tabs. i DO like new address bar colors

Anonymous Tuesday, May 6, 2008 5:56:29 PM

Anonymous writes: oh, what is so great and new in opera error console? error messages are so vague as ever, but ocupy more space.

Haavardhaavard Wednesday, May 7, 2008 7:24:59 AM

If you take the time to read the documentation and blog, you will see that many things aren't in yet. That might be useful to keep in mind before posting feedback...

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