David Storey - Opera Dragonfly

Opera Dragonfly

Sunday, 24. February 2008, 22:17:06

Astute readers noticed that in the interview with Digi.no, one of the photos of my office contained what we affectionally call the Dragonflyer. The photo is a bit blurry to see the URL, but it is pretty easy to guess.

So what exactly is Opera Dragonfly? I wont say quite yet, but I do think that, in my opinion, it is the most important project we have on going at the moment, and probably since I've been at the company. It wont directly affect everybody, but will hopefully become invaluable for those that it does. We'll likely have more to say about it at SxSW in Austin Texas.

Dragonflys inspire a number of things. It is the name of a US reconnaissance aircraft - the A-37 Dragonfly and a superheroine in AC comics. It is also a song by Swedish rocker Yngwie Malmsteen, and a Blondie song on the album The Hunter.

Dragonflies are predators that are capable of hovering, followed by rapid acceleration, that is similar to the speed of some birds. Wikipedia says that It is said in some Native American beliefs that dragonflies are a symbol of renewal after a time of great hardship. They are used in traditional medicine in both China and Japan.

In Japan dragonflies are symbols of courage, strength, and happiness, and they often appear in art and literature, especially haiku. In ancient mythology, Japan was known as Akitsushima, which means "Land of the Dragonflies". The love for dragonflies is reflected by the fact that there are traditional names for almost all of the 200 species of dragonflies found in and around Japan. - Wikipedia

Interview with Norwegian mediaKachi-mushi

Comments

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rmccabe916 # 24. February 2008, 22:49

Ahh, so it's probably like a sort of search engine-thing-ama-jiggy that helps you find stuff where you are? Use Opera Mini to find something, then move on to where you need quickly?

Probably not, but just a bit of a guess.

hartley231 # 24. February 2008, 23:33

It is the arrival of Google Gears support for Opera 9 months after the glorious press release - http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/gears_20070530.html

?

Khadgar # 25. February 2008, 00:25

Tell me more about it or Community Girl gets it.

serious # 25. February 2008, 07:59

hm, what can this be?
my guess:
1) offline webapps
2a) a project like Fedoras 1-second-x
2b) having an option to start opera at startup so you can use it without any loading delay (but 9.5 allready has blazing fast startup allready, so this is not too likely) or to have things as mail monitored in background.
3) a new download manager with some nice speed enhancements (but why should they make a flier for that?)

or an opera sattelite network, so you can just fire your computer/cellphone up everywhere and get blazing fast internet

capable of hovering, followed by rapid acceleration, that is similar to the speed of some birds

or translated: standby followed by rapid download speeds

dstorey # 25. February 2008, 13:04

No one is even close yet.

Fyrd # 25. February 2008, 14:01

Seems to me that it's Opera's Firebug.

"It wont directly affect everybody, but will hopefully become invaluable for those that it does"

Sounds like it's talking about web developers right there. Add to that the fact that you (David)'s been talking about this before, and Jon von Tetzchner's mentioning it being something specifically lacking in Opera in that recent interview, and it all adds up.

On the other hand, that might be a bit too obvious.

p01 # 25. February 2008, 14:06

Just love the name and identity.

What a fresh breath of air from all the boring corporate-ish names and branding. Seriously thanks to each and everyone who was involved!

GreyWyvern # 25. February 2008, 15:03

I, too, think it is the dev toolset answer to Firebug. The name makes sense, too: [Fire][bug] and [Dragon][fly] are kind of analogous.

shoust # 25. February 2008, 15:41

I thought this post was about post peregrine

Daedalus # 25. February 2008, 15:53

This is so obvious:

Opera + Dragonfly BSD = Opera Dragonfly

;-)

Anonymous # 25. February 2008, 17:35

Omnomnom writes:

Opera OS?

Anonymous # 25. February 2008, 19:20

graste writes:

+1 for the dev tools. yehaa :D

Anonymous # 25. February 2008, 19:31

b3RnY writes:

Dragonfly could be a new renderer, which will replace current Presto engine :) Opera 10? :)

Anonymous # 25. February 2008, 19:31

b3RnY writes:

Dragonfly could be a new renderer, which will replace current Presto engine :) Opera 10? :)

Lawmune # 25. February 2008, 19:38

The GI Joe helicopter was also called the Dragonfly, piloted by Wild Bill (appropriately from Texas): http://www.yojoe.com/vehicles/83/dragonfly/

Maulkin # 25. February 2008, 19:58

We already know that Presto will be no more in Opera 10, there's Core2 now.(already used by Operamini 4 and the Wiibrowser)

I think it will be dev tools!

shoust # 25. February 2008, 20:00

Opera's underlying engine is Presto, the codename for the latest version is Core2 (at least for wii browser or/and mini).

I've heard nothing about Presto being scrapped and a new engine being built.

haavard # 25. February 2008, 20:28

Core-2 is Presto, too. The engine used since 7.0, and which is still in use in 9.5 and likely in all versions in the foreseeable future, is Presto.

Maulkin # 25. February 2008, 21:27

Ok thank you for the explanation!

WildEnte # 26. February 2008, 00:21

just in case noone noticed yet, the norwegian pop-band a-ha has made a song called dragonfly a couple of years ago. Probably not very opera related but I thought maybe opera's marketing people'd like to know (c;=

http://www.last.fm/music/a-ha/_/Dragonfly

decimal # 26. February 2008, 00:48

is dragonfly just a new browser that will replace opera?

it sound to me like a name so very suited for a big open source project

liorean # 26. February 2008, 03:41

I'm just trying to figure out if this is a to-be official name for what we volunteers have seen lately or if it's some additional new goodies that we haven't seen yet...

Rijk # 26. February 2008, 09:03

@WildEnte: I didn't want to know that. I'm allergic for A-ha

Enhanced # 26. February 2008, 10:33

Dragonfly was originally a solo effort by Magne Furholmen (made for the norwegian movie "Øyenstikker"), but it also became a song by A-ha eventually.

Beging allergic to A-ha is horrendous; one of the best bands there is.

Anonymous # 26. February 2008, 14:34

Anonymous writes:

True plugins platform like in Firefox ?

Anonymous # 26. February 2008, 14:34

Anonymous writes:

True plugins platform like in Firefox ?

WildEnte # 26. February 2008, 14:38

Rijk, I have to agree with Enhanced here. Apart from gravlaks A-ha is one of the best norwegian exports. They are definitely better than (swedish) ABBA!

Rijk # 26. February 2008, 16:21

@WiltEnte: Give me Roxette anytime over both... I'm sorry, but I haven't heard much Norwegian and Swedish music and none of it appealed much to my taste

The most played Scandinavian music in my playlist is from collegue Nicklas "Kilsmo" Larsson.

WildEnte # 26. February 2008, 16:48

Roxette? Goodness. Plus, they never sang of dragonflies for all I know.

How about Lenny Kravitz with 'fly away' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAeYTC_uY54 ? The lyrics are not super-elaborate though:

"I wish that I could fly - into the sky - so very high - just like a dragonfly"

but it is a cool rock song and would sure be good marketing for Opera Dragonfly

dstorey # 26. February 2008, 17:34

You guys all guessed it - its a mini CD for Rock Opera, featuring A-Ha, Blondie, Lenny Kravitz, Magne Furholmen and Yngwie Malmsteen. We are shutting down operations and turning into a record label. Or maybe not.

rmccabe916 # 26. February 2008, 20:19

Well, that would fit the name of the company pretty well...

You all going to be selling old recordings of Pavarotti too?

Luchio # 26. February 2008, 22:12

Yngwie Malmsteen! Me wants!

GT500 # 27. February 2008, 04:27

You guys are all missing the important question here. Why does David Storey have and Internet Explorer 7 sticker on his computer? Or has this already been answered somewhere else?

pfelelep # 27. February 2008, 09:02

the new opera release?

dstorey # 27. February 2008, 12:39

GT500: The more important question is why do I have a picture of a fluffy cat?

The computer is my second computer, and not used so much as it is Windows. My main computer is a Mac. As IE comes with eevery Windows computer, it gets to have its own IE sticker

Plus the nice guys at IE gave it to me.

Anonymous # 27. February 2008, 17:26

Anonymous writes:

Is it a branded name for your next gen web browser? Dragon Fly = Fire Fox ?

eestlane # 27. February 2008, 19:46

I hoped the article had something to do with Dragonfly CMS I'm using and for what I have my community site, but saddenly not.

leomajko # 27. February 2008, 21:28

A new clue ?
The source of the page ( http://dragonfly.opera.com/ )have been changed.
These lines have been added at the end of the file :
-* Generated by mod-xslt 1.3.9; http://www.mod-xslt2.com/
-* Copyright (C) 2002,2003 Carlo Contavalli - <ccontavalli at masobit.net>
-* derived from work by Philipp Dunkel and others (http://www.mod-xslt2.com/main/credits.xml)
-* Thanks to http://www.masobit.net/ for paying me while working on mod-xslt
-* and for providing resources to the project.

Meaby someone could fine something with this.

dstorey # 27. February 2008, 21:49

Opera uses XSLT to transform the xml to html, so that is likely the reason. I'm not sure why that comment was injected though - it has appeared on all Opera web sites.

GT500 # 28. February 2008, 06:06

Someone mentioned dev tools, right? That's the #1 suggestion over at OperaWatch so far.

Personally, I don't care what it is. I'm excited.

Anonymous # 28. February 2008, 18:01

Lowel writes:

I read that opera wants to make a substitute of Adobe flash, right ?

WildEnte # 28. February 2008, 19:04

lowel, they don't. They want to include native support of ogg theora (a video format) in the browser. Many sites like youtube use flash to show videos, maybe that's how you got that idea.

dstorey # 29. February 2008, 09:24

Lowel: We already have a substitute for Flash. It is called SVG. It was also Adobe's substitute for Flash, until they bought Macromedia.

danchr # 1. March 2008, 14:43

1) Opera releasing Presto as open source?
2) Opera releasing a browser for Mac OS X that doesn't suck?
3) Opera updating the Wii browser?
4) Opera answer to WebKit's Inspector & Firefox' 'bug?
5) Opera has fixed Internet Explorer?

Maulkin # 1. March 2008, 17:23

Number 5 pleased me greatly, what a soft dream!

Anonymous # 2. March 2008, 11:44

Anonymous writes:

Who is the author of that page ( http://dragonfly.opera.com/ )?

Nice joke, isn't? :D

pchander # 3. March 2008, 03:07

Who is C S Starkweather, and whats the joke?

GreyWyvern # 3. March 2008, 14:46

A comment in the code now says:

...it surged forth with speed and grace, devouring all before it. The landscape left behind it was perfect, calm, free of defect. Such a gift with powers unfortold...

Sounds more and more like a debug tool suite to me

fearphage # 3. March 2008, 15:47

All i hope is that its not another speed dial or widgets. Nothing really wrong with them but I hope it is something that I can get some benefit out of. If that suffices, then I'll be happy.

Is it one of the secret projects that a milestone was made on in 2007?

Anonymous # 3. March 2008, 17:23

DOOOMKULTUS writes:

I found out that dragonfly is some multimedia registered company,so i hope this is not a cause for concern for the opera guys.Is it?

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