A Qt5 Opera-Inspired Browser To Ring In The New Year

Launching on 1 January 2014 to kick-off the new year is yet another open-source web-browser. What this latest open-source browser is about is having a new Qt5-based web-browser for power users that's inspired by the old Opera browser.

Michał Dutkiewicz wrote into Phoronix this morning to share that on 2014.01.01 he's launching the Otter Browser. "While still young (conceived in June, really started in November) it is already usable for basic browsing and has some specific goals, it aims to fill gap created after departure of classic Opera while leveraging power of Qt5 and do not making it overcomplicated for regular users...There are other browsers that use QtWebKit but this one differs, for one it is not descendant of example browser, is done using Qt5 instead of Qt4 (that is pretty big difference) and does not use QML (since it is still not up to the task). More information can be found in FAQ section."

Otter Browser has seen some 400 Git commits in its GitHub repository that will form tomorrow's Alpha 1 release. The code is already available if you wish to build it yourself.

Otter is designed to support multiple web-browser back-ends, which may be possible with Qt 5.3+ using QtWebEngine over QtWebKit. The Polish open-source developer has been inspired by Opera -- when based on the Presto Engine -- and Maxthon in some of his design choices for Otter.

Those wishing to learn more about this new open-source browser project can find details at Otter-Browser.org and look for its alpha one release after celebrating the New Year.