Vivaldi – A Browser for Our Friends | Hacker News Reader

Vivaldi – A Browser for Our Friends

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209 pointsmatthberg183 comments

I check in on Vivaldi every few months to see how it's coming along, and there are some things that I like. However, I think they're a bit TOO fixated on Opera as it was 15 years ago.

I keep waiting for bookmark sync, which today is a fundamental browser feature rather than a nice-to-have. But the Vivaldi guys insist on pouring resources into an integrated desktop email client instead, because that was a signature feature of Opera back in the day. However, it's probably no exaggeration to say that most users haven't used a desktop email client in over a decade. So why is such a retro throwback feature prioritized so high?

Another example is right-clicking a link in Vivaldi, to open it in a new tab. Every other major browser opens the link in a background tab, keeping the focus in the tab you're currently on. However, Vivaldi automatically jumps the focus over to that tab right away... because that was default Opera behavior 15 years ago. This is frequently brought up in Vivaldi forums, and the response from the devs is simply to grumble that old-school Opera was best and all other browsers today have bad defaults.

I'm a huge Opera fan, and have been for years. However, the thing is... I just don't WANT a re-implementation of Opera from 15 years ago. I'm sorry, but desktop email is dead for most of us. I'm sorry, but Chrome has acclimated us to some slightly different default behaviors, and at this point those are the defaults that I expect and want other browsers to mirror.

You want to enable a whole new level of customization for power users? That sounds AWESOME! You want to provide some security and an alternative path forward, for Opera fans who worry about that company's ownership changes? Great! But please don't be so beholden to the Opera of 2002 that you don't make an offering well-suited for 2017.

Man, I really miss the skins in Opera 12, there were some gorgeous ones. I agree that the email client is not necessarily a priority, however

> Every other major browser opens the link in a background tab, keeping the focus in the tab you're currently on.

Oh wow, that's pretty bad for every other major browser. We have two use cases: 1) I want to open the link in a new tab and switch focus (presumably to read right now). 2) I want to open the link in a new tab and not switch focus (presumably to read later). In Vivaldi you can achieve (1) by "open link in new tab", and (2) by "open link in background tab". In Chrome you can achieve (2) but no way of achieving (1) without touching the keyboard. And even when using the keyboard the shortcuts are clunkier (ctrl+shit+click vs shift+click in Vivaldi), which is probably not even relevant since I regularly observe Chrome users (programmers nonetheless) using "open link in new tab" and then clicking the new tab. We should keep in mind that most browser users are not power users. Which leads me to

> but Chrome has acclimated us to some slightly different default behaviors

It's the wrong default behaviors, and ~8 years ago I could have listed you a dozen epic failures of Chrome/Firefox usability. I sincerely doubt there's some elaborate reasoning for why they behaved badly, most likely it was just inertia and "works good enough". One of my pet peeves is that Chrome/Firefox don't restore your last tab session by default, which I find extremely annoying: a regular user who doesn't even know how to open the browser options will always have to reopen the previous tabs when restarting the PC.

Nowadays I rarely use Chrome/Firefox so I can't make a detailed browser comparison anymore, but from what I've been seeing there's no reason to think they're anywhere near as good as Opera 12 used to be. I agree that the usability changes could be a shock for new Vivaldi users but it shouldn't be too hard to adapt to a better way of doing things.

Indeed, you CAN get to the common behavior by clicking an item further down on the context menu... or by pressing some unholy keyboard combination.

But to be frank, it's clunky and I'm simply not going to bother so long as Opera is being actively developed. If Opera did stop, or turned into Chinese malware or something, then I would probably just jump over to Firefox and use plugins for the most Opera-like experience possible. Because sync is a must-have (including desktop and mobile)... and we'll just have disagree on whether 99.8% of the browser market has made "incorrect" UX choices on how to open a link.

This reaction IS what I was talking about, and does seem at odds with Vivaldi's branding and marketing. The website slogans include, "It's your web. Surf it the way you want!", " A million ways to customize everything!", etc. But suggest letting users customize Vivaldi so that common new tab behavior is the default, and ancient Opera behavior is the one requiring extra clicks... and suddenly customization is bad, and the way people want to surf the web is objectively wrong.

Come ON. Figure out what the purpose of Vivaldi is, and proceed accordingly. If the purpose is to re-implement Opera 12 out of spite toward a former employer, then that's fine... but don't have the marketing revolve around customization. If the purpose really IS customization, then don't be so hostile or dismissive when users request customization options that depart from Opera 12.

All disagreements aside, I would really like understand why you feel "open in new tab" should not focus the new tab (apart from habit). In my experience Chrome users click "open in new tab" and then click the newly opened tab anyway, which is one extra mouse click and more mouse movement than in Vivaldi/Opera12 where you only have to click 'open in new tab' (fewer clicks and less mouse movement overall, it's obviously more efficient). I'm pretty sure you don't intend to argue that non-power users will employ the ctrl+shift+click shortcut. And if you don't want to focus the tab then you can simply use the middle mouse button (same results on all browsers), or you can go 15 pixels lower and click 'open in background tab'.

If I want to shift focus to a different page immediately, then I simply click the link. Then use the "back" button when I want to return.

If I'm right-clicking to open in a new tab, then it's usually because I want to open multiple links on a page while scrolling through it. So I want those loaded up in the background, and I want to remain on the original page until I've finished reading the material there.

Yes, you CAN do these things in Vivaldi... by using three-finger keyboard shortcuts, scrolling further down in a context menu, or using a wonky middle mouse button that most non-Solaris users never use.

I'm a bit perplexed by the response, though. This is Hacker News. We nod in approval as people reject text editors over the most obscure and trivial of UX preferences. We anticipate that when a blog link is posted, half of the discussion will revolve around its font kerning rather than its content. Etc.

So here you have a web browser, the application that most of us spend the overwhelming majority of our computer-time using. It's primary marketing pitch is extensive support for customization. It has some UX quirks that are out of step with the other major browsers, and it's baffled that anyone might want to customize that.

Hey, implement the suggestion or not, that's their call. But dismissing a customization out-of-hand as "incorrect" sure does cut against its own marketing. I think that's a bigger deal than my 15 pixels. It's an indication that the real goal is creating the perfect successor for Opera 12 die-hards. Which is awesome for that tiny group of individuals, but I don't think it's going to lead to any serious traction beyond them.

> Yes, you CAN do these things in Vivaldi... by using three-finger keyboard shortcuts, scrolling further down in a context menu, or using a wonky middle mouse button that most non-Solaris users never use.

Ummm, the middle mouse button is the way to open links in a background tab (the right button is for opening up a context menu, with links as with anything else on the computer). AFAIK, every modern mouse comes with a middle mouse button, disguised as the scroll wheel.

What perplexes me is why anyone would want anything else.

> a wonky middle mouse button that most non-Solaris users never use.

I've read through your other comments in this thread, and while most of them contain some form of generalization or another, to me this is the most baffling.

As I read his replies, I was immediately thinking "why not just use middle click"?

Then I saw that line and was just confused. Maybe he has a mouse with a really terrible scroll wheel and has assumed that all scroll wheels are terrible and that no one ever middle clicks?

> or using a wonky middle mouse button that most non-Solaris users never use

.... What?

I've always used windows, OSX and occasionally linux (have never used solaris) and I've always found middle click to open links in the background to be incredibly convenient, and I highly doubt that it's as rarely used as you're implying (especially considering that every single browser I can think of implements that behavior, I doubt they would bother if no one used it).

Middle clicking to close tabs is also incredibly convenient.

> If I want to shift focus to a different page immediately, then I simply click the link. Then use the "back" button when I want to return.

There are lots of cases where you want to keep your original tab and the new tab, e.g. reading an article which contains references to other articles, going through a list of tickets in a bug tracker (the list pattern can be applied to anything - games, amazon items, whatever). I also keep the original tab because I might not be finished reading it or because I want to use it for a later reference, and opening a new page in the same tab might make me forget that I was reading another page to begin with.

> It has some UX quirks that are out of step with the other major browsers, and it's baffled that anyone might want to customize that.

I'm not against customization, just saying that for most people the Vivaldi/Opera way might make more sense. I can see why you in particular would dislike this work flow, and it makes sense there should be a checkbox allowing you to maintain your way of using the browser.

> It's an indication that the real goal is creating the perfect successor for Opera 12 die-hards.

I think it actually might be their official goal, as the browsers on the market don't offer what Opera 12 used to. And it's probably the right thing to do as a business too, since it's unlikely anyone would pay attention to a Chrome/Firefox clone.

> but I don't think it's going to lead to any serious traction beyond them.

It won't, but that has nothing to do with the product's intrinsic quality. Unless Vivaldi's marketing budget matches Google's I don't see their market share getting into double digits. But you know what? That's ok. Opera 12 used to do relatively fine with 3-4%.

Sorry, this turned into a typical 90s flame war. I think you have a valid point that Vivaldi should provide options despite what you and I might think are the correct defaults.

Funny that I also came up with the 15 pixels value in my answer to steveperkins, though I second guessed myself and replaced it by "few" pixels.

Is it 15 pixels really a valid approximation ?

Probably just a coincidence (in my case it might be related to how 14 used to be a common font size in my documents). On my current monitor (2560x1600) the value is more like 25-30 pixels.

This is how teachers spot cheaters on tests. And no, 30 pixels is a better approximation.

This reaction IS what I was talking about, and does seem at odds with Vivaldi's branding and marketing. The website slogans include, "It's your web. Surf it the way you want!", " A million ways to customize everything!", etc. But suggest letting users customize Vivaldi so that common new tab behavior is the default, and ancient Opera behavior is the one requiring extra clicks... and suddenly customization is bad, and the way people want to surf the web is objectively wrong.

I don't think the Vivaldi team has said anything against letting you customize that option. Probably that customization is just not implemented yet.

I wonder what you are talking about, Opera did stop and turned into a Chrome clone which brought vivaldi and otter into existence to close the gap it left.

I don't get Where the extra click you are talking about is, either click on open in new tab or open in background tab, same number of click.

I'm not sure what kind of customization you are asking for, you want to remove the choice of opening in background tab ?

What is this common / default behavior you are talking about ? AFAIK the common, default, standard behavior of right clicking has always been to bring up the contextual menu. Where is it not like that ?

I am not aware of vivaldi users requesting a change of the expected behavior to be more chrome like, AFAIK it is the other way around: keep the old opera goodness and keep catering to power users and provide choice.

> I don't get Where the extra click you are talking about is, either click on open in new tab or open in background tab, same number of click.

Vivaldi: right click -> "Open in new tab" = two clicks

Chrome: right click -> "Open in new tab" -> click the newly opened tab = three clicks

If you're only opening a single link, then sure.

But if you're only opening a single link, then why use a new tab to begin with? Just click the link ("one click!"), and go back to the previous page if and when you want. If I'm opening links in new tabs, its generally because I'm reading a page, and queuing up things to read after I finish that initial page.

Some of the old-Opera diehards in this thread are acting like 99% of the browser market has made an objectively "incorrect" UX choice. That is absolute nonsense. You guys don't prefer the old-Opera new tab behavior because of some objective truth, you prefer it simply because that was the old-Opera behavior and you're used to it.

Objectively speaking, it is already the behavior of a default single-click to change focus. So if users take extra steps to open links in some different manner, then it's actually kinda weird to expect them to want the same focus-change behavior as if they hadn't taken those extra steps. Which is probably why every other browser has gone in that direction over the past decade. But I can acknowledge that preferences may vary.

Are you sure you replied to the right comment? I was correcting a misconception that three clicks equals two clicks, not stating an opinion about the issue. It takes me 30 seconds at most to readjust to a different browser's context menu, and I don't complain about it. I'm certainly not an "old-Opera diehard" as you suggested; I haven't used that browser in over a decade and the only thing I ever liked about it was the email integration, as I stated in another comment.

As an aside, what is a "power user" of a web browser? Almost everyone these days in any kind of office job makes very heavy use of the web for research and apps. People proclaiming themselves as "power users" are just trying to imagine that they have some sort of weird superiority because of their idiosyncratic UI preferences. What a strange thing to be proud of.

You obviously never used Opera 12 :) power user in a browser has the same meaning as everywhere else - someone who is more skilled at using a tool than the average user. For example a regular user will go back to the previous page by pressing the 'back' button, or 'backspace' if they're keyboard inclined. A power user would use the "hold right click - press left click" mouse gesture (or a different variant that involves holding right click down and moving the mouse), which shaves some time off from the whole operation. Same for switching tabs (hold right click + scroll mouse wheel), opening new tabs (mouse gesture), customizing tabs (e.g. on the left side if you have the screen space) and generally knowing what options and features your browser offers. This basically means that as a power user you can do whatever a regular user can do, but more efficiently.

It's not a thing to be proud of, or some sort of weird imagined superiority as you put it, it's a fact that in a browser I can do stuff much more efficiently than most of my peers. Of course, this doesn't really matter unless your job revolves around a browser, in which case you could probably shave 10 or more minutes per day (relevant when juggling with tabs a lot, for managers/P.O.s/Scrum masters and such).

Of course, the term "power user" doesn't make sense when talking about barebones browsers (like the old IE), just like it doesn't make sense in Git (where everywhere needs to be a power user, you can't just casually use it like in Hg, without spending lots of time learning it).

>I want to open the link in a new tab and switch focus (presumably to read right now)

So click the link and read it - if you want to go back use the back button. I think 2) is by far more common for me and makes sense as a default - but maybe that's just because I got used to it.

GP: and the response from the devs is simply to grumble that old-school Opera was best and all other browsers today have bad defaults

P: It's the wrong default behaviors

You're talking past each other.

Almost everyone I know using email for business uses a desktop client - usually Mac Mail, sometimes thunderbird.

A new client that isn't quite so neglected would be very welcome.

Another use case is someone like me. I absolutely love Fastmail's web client, it's better than any other web client I've used including Gmail. However, I also have a few email addresses for domains that I own, and I don't want to deal with clunky forwarding; I prefer to use them as-is. For those it's much, much easier to use a good desktop client rather than set up and maintain Roundcube or even SquirrelMail on my servers.

Windows 10's Mail app is not quite up to the task; it's fine for Outlook.com webmail but I need something much more powerful on Windows without having to buy Outlook proper (on Linux this obviously isn't an issue, there is a wealth of good desktop email clients for X and the console). So far I've been doing well with Thunderbird, but I'm tempted to give Vivaldi a shot since I was always a fan of Opera's email integration.

My circle of Friends and Family contains a few Outlook[0] diehards as well.

I sympathize, as I was an Evolution loyalist for a very long time. It started crashing under the load of multi-GB folders, so I migrated to GMail.

I was considering switching to Thunderbird when they dissolved Mozilla Messaging[1]. Now my G-Suite storage is running up against the free limits, so I will probably be looking at migrating email back to the desktop this year.

[0] No, not Outlook Express (with it's support for NNTP), I mean the version of Outlook that is part of Office.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Messaging

I'm using Thunderbird and I can't wait for a mail client comparable to the old Opera's to switch. It would be fantastic.

Check out polymail.co

it would be nice if Trojita was ready for everyday use.

> the Vivaldi guys insist on pouring resources into an integrated desktop email client instead, because that was a signature feature of Opera back in the day.

Really? That's dumb. Why would I want my browser to check my email? That should be another program, or just a webpage. The browser browses the internet.

Perhaps I'm not the audience, as I've always liked the Unix "do one thing and do it well" approach.

> The browser browses the internet.

You mean 'the World Wide Web' [1] since 'the Internet' includes other protocols than HTTP(S) such as SMTP, POP3, and IMAP.

Nowadays, Node is everywhere. Slack, using JavaScript, is replacing IRC. One of the best e-mail clients is Nylas N1 which uses JavaScript under the hood. Hyper is a terminal using JavaScript. Discord is becoming the defacto standard for VoIP gaming, and uses JavaScript under the hood. In a way, the WWW -via JavaScript- is invading the space of the traditional protocols.

You may find that bloat, but all of the above applications provide an excellent user experience. The UIs work very well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web

I'm not sure about the excellent user experience and UIs working well.

Im my experience of fixing computers for everyday people with not so fast DSL connections, those javascript based things usually have terrible performance and causes problems by breaking basic web browser functionalities such as history and bookmarks that those people rely on.

Then there are the UI issue of too small resolution, or increased font size to help with bad vision and many other accessibility concerns.

But I suppose that if you are using a recent computer, on a large flat screen, on high speed internet connection, and do not use privacy related features such as ublock, noscript or policy control you probably enjoy a flawless experience.

To me relying only on javascript for your web service or site is akin to answering the customer phone line 0.5% of the time by saying "f* ck you * ssh* le, I sh*t on your ugly face".

Fair enough regarding websites, but I was talking about rich feature clients for usage other than the WWW ie. other protocols than HTTP(S).

If you prefer, you're free to use more lightweight applications.

I could mention you're free to put JS off, but I know that isn't always feasible. I agree w/you that this sucks. Majorly.

> The UIs work very well.

Maybe on your top-of-the-line computer. On my two-year-old Macbook Air, browsing the web is pure frustration, because everything is slow. Don't even get me started on how inferior Slack is compared to a local IRC client.

> Maybe on your top-of-the-line computer. On my two-year-old Macbook Air, browsing the web is pure frustration, because everything is slow.

I recently replaced my 15" MBP 2010 with a 15" MBP 2015, but that wasn't because of the speed of applications.

Try to use some browser addons to make the web work quicker, like uBlock.

> Don't even get me started on how inferior Slack is compared to a local IRC client.

Slack is just one example. Personally, I'm not a proponent of a proprietary software client based on open standards (stuff like Electron, JS, etc). IRC is just a protocol, with many clients available.

Kind of off-topic, but is a two year old Mackbook Air having problems with just browsing the web? Because if it's not a "top-of-the-line computer", it sure costs more than one.

This thread spurred me to do some testing, and it turned out that the "HTTPS everywhere" extension was slowing down pageloads in Firefox by MULTIPLE SECONDS. https://www.tithess.gr/ loaded in 1.3 seconds in Chrome and 6.8 in Firefox. Disabling HTTPS everywhere brought them to parity, but I'm going to switch to Vivaldi, I think.

I've been having problems with slowness for years with this. I dreaded having to open the browser every time. Hopefully now it will be a better, and it's looking much better so far...

> Another example is right-clicking a link in Vivaldi, to open it in a new tab.

I've always used the middle click to open a new tab in background. Vivaldi has the same behavior in this regard.

>I just don't WANT a re-implementation of Opera from 15 years ago. I'm sorry, but desktop email is dead for most of us.

Well, those "most of you" clearly are not the target audience. And you're not the majority either, I should add.

Sounds like you just want Chrome, to be frank.

Nope. Like I said, I use Opera:

* It still has a more impressive array of power user features than Chrome or Firefoxv

* It's sync service is more reliable than the other two.

* It works with Chrome extensions, and has no compatibility issues with websites (unless a site is stupid enough to check with User-Agent headers, and those can be spoofed with an extension in the worst-case).

* Last but not least, Opera has the best mobile browser on the planet (something that isn't even on Vivaldi's radar yet), supporting sync between your desktop and mobile instances.

Basically, it's the perfect blend of power and acknowledgment of contemporary reality today.

Now don't get me wrong... I'm nervous about Opera's recent sale to China, and I certainly could be swayed toward something else. But Vivaldi feels like little more than a "protest" of Opera changes since ver. 12, and I believe that the protesters are in the minority of what is already a small community to begin with.

I wish them well, but would love to see them be something truly different. Go truly open source, instead of making your code publicly visible yet still proprietary. Give more customization options, so users can choose between old-Opera or modern-browser behaviors. No one seriously expects you to "take over the world", but don't just be Opera 12.1 forever out of spite.

From what you say, it seems to me you don't use opera, but the chrome skin they decided to keep the name of the actual browser for marketing reasons.

I use opera since version 8.5 and I had to pin the v12.16 package to keep using it, which I still do today because there is no alternative to the features it had. And I have no idea what you are talking about, the whole opera supporters who supported it through the years pretty much agree the blink based opera sucks really hard and are happy to have vivaldi as an attempt to get back the awesomeness opera lost when it switched to making profit first.

Hey man, Opera has a tremendous legacy of innovation in the WWW, and I'm honestly glad that some entity is carrying on the old Opera spirit for you guys. You're a tiny community, but a passionate one.

I'm just saying that it's not realistic to expect Vivaldi to significantly influence the industry today, the way that old Opera did 15 years ago. If you desire serious adoption, then you're making choices that set you up for a battle you're not going to win.

If you don't care whether Vivaldi gets any traction at all, and are just glad that someone's keeping Opera 12.x going, then that's cool too. But I dunno... if Opera 12.x wasn't a viable business model, then how is Vivaldi going to financially sustain itself over the long term either?

>I use Opera

You might want to be more specific than that. Are you using version 12 or earlier, or 15 and later (currently sitting at about 43)?

>Opera has the best mobile browser on the planet

I haven't checked recently, but last I remember you couldn't disable Opera Turbo.

>don't just be Opera 12.1 forever out of spite

Well, Vivaldi already has some features O12 does not have, while at the same time not having some features O12 does have (Dragonfly, IRC, nice page info, etc.) and probably never getting those...

Again, you don't seem like the audience Vivaldi targets to.

From the context of everything I've been saying, obviously I'm using the current Blink-based version of Opera. Not deliberately using an older version, for which you have search Google to even find a download link. I suspect that Vivaldi's target audience is limited to the niche of people who would think to ask.

BTW, you can disable Turbo in the current versions of both desktop and mobile.

> However, it's probably no exaggeration to say that most users haven't used a desktop email client in over a decade.

Almost everyone that uses macOS uses Apple Mail. Actually, I prefer that from having to (keep ) open a tab for Gmail.

And on windows 10, I now use the built-in Mail app, which is almost there for home/casual use (except notably that we still can't right-click on a file and Send to Mail. Really, Microsoft!?).

I usually open the browser for better searching, such as email and google talk logs with a certain person, and somehow I doubt a third-party will implement that feature as well as gmail does.

I wonder if there are actual statistics about this. I only know one person who uses Apple Mail.

If you run a mailing list on Mailchimp, it provides stats on the email clients that subscribers are using, presumably detected from the User-Agent that HTML email clients send when downloading images.

My tiny email list (at indieconference.com) has 8% of my subscribers using Apple Mail, and 75% still use desktop/laptop for checking email.

Email Client Marketshare also shows Apple Mail with 7% marketshare as of 1 January 2017: https://emailclientmarketshare.com/

My tiny email list (at indieconference.com) has 8% of my subscribers using Apple Mail, and 75% still use desktop/laptop for checking email.

Does this breakdown take into account the OS? Is that 8% of macOS subscribers running Apple Mail, or of all subscribers? I'm unfamiliar with what data you have avialable, so I'm not sure if this is even possible.

Thanks for the link to emailclientmarketshare.com. As you noted, Apple Mail is at 8%. The Apple iPhone figure is pretty amazing, at 33%!

Oh, I meant 8% of all subscribers use Apple Mail. It isn't 8% of macOS users, but 8% of any device. So the percentage of Mac users with Apple Mail would be higher than 8%.

You could try calculating something similar with the Email Client Marketshare figures: remove all the iPhone / iPad / Android / Windows clients and calculate from what's left. If I do that I estimate 15 - 20% of macOS folks using Apple Mail, with the rest mostly using Gmail.

> remove all the iPhone / iPad / Android / Windows clients and calculate from what's left

Does it say anywhere if "Gmail" refers to only the web app, or if that includes the native apps for iOS and Android?

Edit: This blog post explains the grouping. All native email clients on the iPhone count as "iPhone", not just Apple Mail.

https://litmus.com/blog/mobile-holds-at-56-for-october-email...

That's what I suspected. Thanks for confirming!

I don't think it's something that anyone's tried to quantify, no. I know a few people who use Apple Mail, though, including people who are pretty technically savvy. I don't (in my last job I used MailPlane, and at home I was using Postbox but recently switched to Spark), but my impression is that for many people Mail is in the "good enough" category.

I even use Postbox

I love Postbox as a mail client but the lack of calendar integration with meeting invitation support is a deal breaker for my work with corporate clients. I got by with the Lightning plug in for a while but it looks like they've discontinued it. I'm planning on moving back to outlook, sadly.

I also use Postbox, it'll take quite a lot to get me away from it.

In my corporation people usually use Outlook.

> I keep waiting for bookmark sync, which today is a fundamental browser feature rather than a nice-to-have.

Is it really ? I have not used bookmarks since del.icio.us and never need any bookmarks sync as my bookmarks are not in the browser but in my wallabag.

> it's probably no exaggeration to say that most users haven't used a desktop email client in over a decade. So why is such a retro throwback feature prioritized so high?

my grandma, my grandpa, my mum, my dad, ... well everyone but my little cousin who only use a smartphone uses an email client, mostly thunderbird. This feature is prioritized so high because it is one, if not the most requested feature through user feedback

> Another example is right-clicking a link in Vivaldi, to open it in a new tab.

I don't know what you are talking about. Just click a few pixels below on "open link in a background tab" instead of "open link in a new tab", problem solved.

> I just don't WANT Opera from 15 years ago. (...) I want other browsers to mirror Chrome.

Well then Vivaldi is not for you, just use any other browser. What I like about vivaldi is that it does not try to be like chrome and instead cater to power users like me and try to fulfill needs that other browser do not because they are too busy trying to be like chrome (which I dislike and never used on my boxes).

>never need any bookmarks sync as my bookmarks are not in the browser but in my wallabag

Most people have never even heard of "wallabag" and yes, having your bookmarks synced across browser instances on various devices is a fundamental feature. If I bookmark something on a mobile device or a laptop, I want it to be available on my desktop (and vice-versa), without having to use third party tools.

Bookmark sync should be provided by an add-on (so that it can sync cross-browser as well). There's Xmarks and given that Vivaldi has some compatibility with Chrome Addons, this should work (if it doesn't, improving addon compat should be top priority).

Right click -> open in background tab has been in Vivaldi for as long as I can remember. Sure it's the SECOND menu item but so?

Background tab is middle click, all browsers support it and it was in Opera for ages.

I've been using Vivaldi now for over a year (since early beta days), and finding it a great experience.

A couple of things I really like - (1) that the browser chrome changes to suit the colour scheme of the website that you have loaded when flicking through tabs. Makes it really easy to identify what site you are on especially if you have scrolled down past the header. (2) that they have a slider on the bottom toolbar for zooming in/out of websites. For this old guy with failing eyesight, that is a killer feature that I use all the time.

Happy to also see that the number of sites reporting "You are not using an approved browser" has reduced to nearly 0 when browsing via Vivaldi, but that is more a problem for lazy web designers who only create sites specifically for a particular rendering engine, I guess.

EDIT: Interesting Observation - I remember that in the early days, their main selling point was their command line functionality for power users. That was what made me change over back then, although ironically I never ever use their CLI tool set at all these days, and just use the mouse like always.

I note that they have downplayed the CLI functionality on their current website, so perhaps it wasn't such a drawcard for other users either?!?

> Makes it really easy to identify what site you are on especially if you have scrolled down past the header.

You find using browser chrome color is easier than using URL bar for identifying the site?

LOL, next you'll be saying that we should replace coloured traffic lights with black and white "STOP" and "GO" signs?

I'd suggest you do a Google search on the human ability to discern colour as an indicator way faster than reading text. Especially if on the peripheral vision outside of direct line of sight. NASA and USAF research papers on layouts of aircraft/spacecraft instrumentation etc. too might be helpful to you.

Real world example - Right now, as I type this in another browser in the foreground, my Vivaldi browser is 80% obscured by this window, but I can tell by the right edge of the window colour that the currently active tab on it is my Google Mail.

> I'd suggest you do a Google search

> on the human ability to discern colour

> as an indicator way faster than reading text.

"In psychology, the Stroop effect is a demonstration of interference in the reaction time of a task. When the name of a color (e.g., "blue", "green", or "red") is printed in a color that is not denoted by the name (e.g., the word "red" printed in blue ink instead of red ink), naming the color of the word takes longer and is more prone to errors than when the color of the ink matches the name of the color.

...

This is based on the idea that word processing is significantly faster than color processing."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect

Interesting, true; but then repeat the experiment with your peripheral vision.

It could also prove that text recognition has more priority than color recognition.

Your analogy is so broken I'm surprised you even suggested it. If there were as many traffic light colors as there are websites, obviously a sign with words is superior to some color-coded nonsense.

Let's say for argument that you frequent 5 sites and we'll maintain your traffic analogy. What's easier: memorizing 5 colors and their associated speed limit or just looking at numbers on the sign?

Not broken at all. If you do even rudimentary UX analysis with people, even taking cultural differences into consideration, you will find that most people equate a red coloured button with something dangerous or that can cause an adverse effect, and green/blue with a positive outcome.

Hence why in most cases, a save button will be green or blue or another cool colour, whereas a cancel or delete button will generally be red or yellow to stand out, or else a very muted colour so as not to draw attention.

And speaking of the NASA and USAF research, I used to be a commercial pilot, and studied those UX principles that were done way back in the 40's and 50's because they are still relevant today. Most aircraft instrumentation is very colour oriented, so that in the busy working conditions of a cockpit, you know almost instantly when gauges are 'in the red' or 'in the green'. There is simply no time to read the numbers in some cases, so you tend to get used to seeing either the colours, or the relative angle of gauge needles to ascertain whether you are in trouble or not.

Similarly, if I am tabbing through Vivaldi windows, I can tell far quicker whether I am on HN by noticing the quintessential "Hacker News Orange" colour on the frame of the browser, than I can by trying to parse something like: "https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=13334188&goto=item%3Fi... on a 1cm high URL bar with my 50 year old eyesight.

I browse several other sites that use the same fawn colour for the main body of the site, but HN always has the orange outline in Vivaldi, even if the header bar is out of sight on the page.

Same for the Facebook deep blue, or the Twitter light blue, or any of my 6 different web apps, which are all Bootstrap based but have a different Vivaldi coloured frames based on their logo and other interface colouring.

There is a reason why most big brands are fussy about the colours of their logos and image assets. The fact that Vivaldi actually USES that branding in their general UI to further identify that site is a positive move IMO.

We will obviously always use the url bar to tell for sure what site we are on right now. But the color thing makes it possible to much faster tell the difference. It's a very useful feature.

Glad you like our browser. We are working hard to continue to add really useful features, cool stuff and more flexibility. Our philosophy is that we all deserve a browser that works in the way we want it to. This means we listen to input and gradually add the features and options you want.

Cheers, Jon of Vivaldi

Hi Jon!

I know you are a stand-up guy [0]. Have you considered working with the free software community to create a truly free and modern browser?

No-one trusts Chromium since it's filled with Google-specific bits and tweaks, even analytics. Assuming you've trimmed all of that away, releasing your add-ons as free software (e.g. GPL or BSD) would create some real traction around Vivaldi as a browser alternative.

This also avoids the "Opera mistake". If Presto had been open sourced, it would still be alive and kicking today. With Blink things are different, and I don't see how keeping a proprietary user interface is going to sustain a browser company.

Suggestion: make the core browser slim, pluggable and free, and sell extensions and infrastructure parts necessary for sync, updates etc with a GPL and/or proprietary license.

Oh, and [0]: https://i.imgur.com/UFh2M.png

I knew which picture it was before i even opened it :) the Opera community used to be so amazing.

Any plans for an Android version?

As an old Opera user I really want to like Vivaldi, but the weird titlebar without title and especially the non-native menubar really turn me off (in a native menubar under Windows, once you click a menu, you can just move your mouse without clicking to navigate the rest of the menus. In Vivaldi's menubar, you can't, making the menus way clunkier to navigate). For this reason, I actually find the experience of Otter Browser (http://www.otter-browser.org/) to be closer to Opera's than that of Vivaldi: even if Otter is more bare-bones in terms of functionality, it really gets the efficient UX feel better. I encourage old Opera fans to check it out as well.

I hope the Vivaldi team fixes these so I can really like it. Some of my previous turnoffs (like lack of "click tab to minimize") were implemented so I'm hopeful... although not too hopeful because this menu implementation has been there for quite long so they don't seem to take the menubar too seriously.

I was asking for a proper native title bar possibly a year ago since I'm using the "classic" Windows theme and that's just ideal. It doesn't take up much space and it shows the whole page title.

http://puu.sh/tcYJ7/b7479e05cd.png

Have you seen this setting? Apperance -> Window Appearance -> Use Native Window https://www.dropbox.com/s/d4ew5ptyusm4cjb/Screenshot%202017-...

You can also choose between horizontal menu on top, or "Vivaldi Menu" in the top left.

Doesn't work properly on Windows, you just just get a blank title bar with only the window controls at right (not even the window icon / menu on the left appears).

Does work correctly on Mac OS though.

> I encourage old Opera fans to check it out as well.

Did something happen to Opera to make it lose fans? I tried it a long time ago (pre-Chrome) and enjoyed it then but eventually ended up on Chrome. Are there any particular criticisms of the current version of Opera?

The last true version of Opera was 12.18, which is slowly bit-rotting to death, e.g. a number of modern https ciphers simply don't work.

Opera ASA then jumped to v15, which was a chrome fork with some branding, half-heartedly added a handful of features, and tried to pretend Opera 12 never happened.

Then the browser part of the business was sold to a chinese malware company.

And the tragedy is that Opera was the most innovative and light browser out of all of them. I used to run Opera on my old machine with 16 MB of RAM because it was literally the only browser that was usable.

Mouse gestures, tabs, integrated mail/rss/newsgroups client, and even a fricking web app platform for personal use made it the best browser then, and even now. It was always standards-compliant, but got a bad rap because of lazy designers who just tested in FF and IE and called it a day.

Opera Unite, in particular, the web app platform, was fantastic. They gave you a dynamic hostname with Opera and allowed you to run apps like photo albums and blogs straight from your browser (which had an embedded webserver if you enabled the feature), so people could publish their content completely decentralized, right from their computer and browser.

I switched to Vivaldi as my default browser 6+ months ago after new-Opera became such an overwhelming disappointment I felt I had to abandon what it had become after fifteen or more years of use. Vivaldi definitely has the old Opera spirit, but not the performance. On original Opera I could have hundreds of tabs open, in Vivaldi I can have 60? not such a big deal, right!? well it's partly that, partly just a constant reminder that software has become horribly inefficient even with scads of system resources - Opera always felt extremely small and efficient. Vivaldi feels big and heavy like emacs (that I also love and use) but less performant.

I feel that came off negatively! Vivaldi is a fantastic modern browser.

On Arch: yaourt -S vivaldi-snapshot

I fear this is largely due to modern websites. If you used old Opera on modern websites they would be broken (lack of new features) and still pretty slow.

JS and image sizes have gone up exponentially. I remember discussion on Slashdot a decade ago about average page size going above 100KB - now the average is easily into multiple megabytes. It "works fine" in chrome on a macbook pro so who gives fuck, right? We can't go back to an older web - we can't get off this train, and we can't slow it down, it's inexorably pulled forward by market mechanisms way bigger than we are.

+1. I noticed the other day that a single Medium blog post downloaded MORE assets (in terms of MBs) that a multi user ERP application that I used to maintain in a large multi million dollar turnover business network back in the 80's. (And I am including the ERP database file sizes as well.)

Enjoy this metric: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11548816

And nowadays* Chrome unloads "old" tabs from memory, which must be a frustrating user experience for low memory users, open something in a new tab, try to go to the previous tab, and the browser had to load it again.

* Maybe they've fixed this

Of course it all works on the developer's machine, it has 16GB RAM, full HD screen and a connection straight to the backbone...

Well. To be fair the developer is upset that the MacBook pro doesn't come with 32GB RAM.

What's the alternative in this situation though? If you don't have enough RAM to hold everything you don't have enough RAM.

This seems like a decent solution, because the user experience is "wait a bit when loading stale tabs", rather than "have the entire browser choke without being really sure why"

Have you tried firefox with a tab unloading extension?

So what's the business model here? This is a "free" product, so how does Vivaldi intend to ensure its continued existence?

Right now, it's the same as ubuntu: personal funds of the founder.

Afaik as I know plan is to use an affiliate-deal but Jon Von Tetzchner said the business model is not based on understanding a user’s online behavior and profiling users to monetize. The focus is on providing superior experience and not maximizing profit per user.

For example vivaldi has partnership with phillips to work with their phillips Hue wireless lighting, and deals with ebay and booking.com on click on link basis.

I'm wondering this too. Mozilla has tons of sponsorship from Yahoo and others. Google invests in Chrome to give them leverage for their own products. Since Vivaldi is closed source, how do I know they aren't selling my data?

Vivaldi is allegedly free software: https://vivaldi.com/source/

Looks like you're right. The original Vivaldi code is a BSD-style license, and although I didn't check all the dependencies, it seems to be mostly Chromium + lots of original code.

No. no it's not. see vivaldi://about/

Vivaldi Technologies AS. A Browser For Our Friends Copyright 2017 Vivaldi Technologies AS. All rights reserved. Vivaldi is made possible by the Chromium open source project and other open source software. Vivaldi Terms of Service

and vivaldi://terms

Vivaldi End User License Agreement

Last updated: November 18, 2016 1. This End User License Agreement ("EULA") governs your use ("You") of the browser software in executable form ("Software") and any ancillary services ("Services") provided to You by Vivaldi Technology AS ("Vivaldi") to the exclusion of all other terms and conditions. Source code used in the Software, under open source license agreements, can be obtained at https://vivaldi.com/source. (...)

AFAIK that's only a part of it, specifically the layout engine-related one.

As a web developer using chrome and emacs all day, I was very skeptical. Decided to give it a try and looks really good so far. It's got a lot of the good chrome stuff and so far I haven't found absolutely anything I miss.

So far I really like:

- Ctrl-P-like tab switcher / command thingy

- fast (but that may be just how different new browsers always feel like at first)

- the web page size indicator on the address bar

- tabs can be configured to be wherever the hell i want them

- the regular, good chrome debugger

- can run chrome extensions straight from the store

I don't know who the devs are and how long this browser will be around for, but it's seriously well done!

Set as default.

Developers of Vivaldi used to work on Opera browser.

Thank you for your kind words about Vivaldi.

I was the co-founder of Opera and now co-founder of Vivaldi. A big part of the team is former Opera people. We are based in Norway and Iceland, mostly, with team members in a couple of other locations.

Thank you for the Opera, it was my primary browser for a number of years. And good luck to you with your new endeavor, you certainly have some right ideas in Vivaldi :)

Thanks. We aim to please. :)

There is a lot more cool stuff in the pipeline. :)

I know it's a lot to ask, but is there any timeline for the release of the mail client?

And a separate question, would it be possible to include a light calendar app in it? (ICS)

Vivaldi is frustrating, as it nearly implements all the bits of Opera I use, but there are odd bits where it falls short

The main thing for me is the fact that tab minimisation doesn't work correctly, sometimes tabs you've minimised get selected, sometimes even when there are unminimised tabs. It's just wrong, and the tab handling was one of the main reasons I used Opera

Beyond that there's a lack of a bookmark menu, the fact that toolbars aren't customisable, no click-to-active for plugins and no site preferences, but they're less important things that don't mess up my workflow as much. Also it's rather ugly, but I fear we'll have to wait for several more years before flat design goes out of fashion to fix that.

I really want to get rid of my current Firefox + a load of extensions setup, especially as I haven't a clue if it'll survive Mozilla's next round of extension breaking updates. But Vivaldi just isn't quite there yet. I really want it to be...

One of the most frustrating things for me is the lack of Dragonfly...

and live editing of html source from cache.

A lot more interesting information on the Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivaldi_(web_browser)

Looks like it uses Blink engine, first release was 8 months ago. Looks like you can also use Chrome extensions with it.

I was blown away by the customizability, I used Firefox with a split tab extension, yet this has native support.

Unfortunately you can't resize the split. I almost never want an exact 50-50 split. One webpage always scales better then the other in split mode.

You guys need to rotate your screen 90 degrees.

Don't know about you, but on the latest release (1.6) I can resize the split to be between 10-60%

You could have one site set as a panel and resize.

Thanks. That is what we are all about. We believe we all deserve to get a browser that can be made to work just right. Thus we have the motto : when in doubt, make it an option.

For context: behind Vivaldi there is part of the original Opera team. Vivaldi indeed really resemble to Opera 12: and that's awesome. But they are using Blink instead of the defunct Presto.

I've used Vivaldi as my primary (Chrome as secondary) browser the past 3 months (along using Vivaldi.net as my e-mail address – thank you for offering this, Vivaldi team).

I love the browser so far, and think it deserves many accolades for what it has and is attempting to accomplish. I do run into the occasional issues that remind me this is a newer browser, though. Mostly these are only noticeable because they completely break your concentration from what you were doing.

For instance, if you attempt to bookmark the current page but realize you want to put it in a new folder, then you'll have to break your flow of bookmarking by going to the Bookmarks page, create the folder, then go back to page again to add it to the newly created folder.

Right-clicking on a link and opening in a new tab will immediately take you to that new tab, even if you wanted to save it for after you finished the current page. There may be a chrome setting for this, but a cursory glance at the preferences window didn't show any kind of wording that would indicate "open new tab in background".

The only main gripe I really have is in retrieving saved passwords. Yes, I can put the URL directly into the bar and go there that way, but it's an inconvenience I don't have to deal with in Chrome (or Firefox).

Even with these few issues, Vivaldi has been my favorite browser these past months, and I can't wait to see how it matures.

Been using it for 6 months now and I love it. Verticals tabs were literally the only thing keeping me on Firefox.

Love the search bar which splits suggestions into Typed, Bookmarks, History categories.

So many great details and customization features in this browser.

It still doesn't nest tabs like Tree-Style tabs addin for FF though right? When they get that I'll switch at least part time, FF for me is getting so laggy (due to inefficient JS on certain websites like twitter) it is extremely painful to use.

EDIT:

https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/3255/tree-style-tab/16

One page 4:

https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/3255/tree-style-tab/67

"I do know that internally, there is discussion as to various ways TST might be implemented. Nothing has been settled on, but there is discussion."

You can stack tabs in Vivaldi. It's pretty similar, good enough for me. One thing I miss from firefox is the tab groups feature though.

Would switch to this immediately but it still doesn't support any sort of sync. People use browsers on multiple devices these days. Not sure why this isn't a priority for the Vivaldi team?

This is a priority for sure. We are getting there.

Can I point out that we want to have our cake and eat it too? I really really want password sync, but I also really don't want you to know any of my passwords. This is going to be hard for you to pull off successfully. How are you planning to achieve it?

Same. I was occasionally running it last year, but lacking all of my bookmarks it fell out of use after a couple of weeks when the novelty wore off.

The level of customizability is great for sure. Sidebar tabs supported natively, and the whole browser UI can be restyled with CSS.

Yeah, same here.

Hope they will not repeat fatal error of Opera - closed bug-tracker.

Coming from Firefox, it's got a very nice default UI - I love the loading animations and such. It seems easy to customize, though puzzlingly the icons don't seem to be themeable even though colors, address bar appearance, etc are - which is a bummer because the default icons are ugly Windows 8-style/Metro things.

Also, it seems to be implementing its own scrollbars that are stylized differently than everything else on my computer. Firefox also uses my GTK theme for things like checkboxes, etc (right out of the box), which is pretty cool. Vivaldi's doing some cool things, but it's still got a ways to go.

How is Vivaldi's power consumption and memory footprint? Those were the biggest motivators to switch from Chrome to Safari on macOS for most browsing (I still use Chrome for some front-end dev stuff). I can browse the web forever with Safari on my 2012 MacBook Air, Chrome not so much (haven't tried FF as a daily driver in ages so would love to hear about it too).

Off-topic aside: is power consumption even a concern for engineers these days? Looking at what's possible with technologies that are somewhat fringe, it's hard not to think about how much power we're gobbling up that we really don't need.

One thing i like about Vivaldi is that i can set a whole UI scaling factor. Because this makes it easy to adapt for touch input (just crank the factor up until the elements are of a practical size).

Just wish it didn't have frequent issues with touch screens on my Windows tablet, leading to it not responding to any input until i switch to different window and back.

Also, it never seems able to bring up the on-screen keyboard when tapping input areas on sites. But it comes up (unless the previously mentioned unresponsiveness kicks in) when tapping the url field.

I'd become your friend if your browser became open source.

Just installed it. Reading this on Vivaldi. Looks great so far.

Just gonna leave this here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11830326

There are a ton of great ideas in Vivaldi's user interface. And it's built on Chrome, so you still get all the standards and extension compatibility. They regularly add clever new features that materially improve tab management and navigation. I'm looking forward to making it my default browser at some point in the future when they add sync for bookmarks etc.

No source, no deal.

There's this: https://vivaldi.com/source/ (don't know what's inside)

AFAIK, this is mostly Chromium and their patches. The interface itself (that is mostly build in something similar to Electron, i.e. JavaScript, CSS and HTML) is completely closed source.

Until proper mobile sync comes about for passwords and bookmarks I'm going to have to stick to Safari, unfortunately.

I could've given it a try if it was opensource. But because it's closed I immediately classify it as vaporware, and as the browser is one of the two centers of my daily computing (the other being emacs), I won't invest in vaporware. I believe that opensourcing is the best choice of the company behind this.

You are using the word vaporware in a very odd way. Vaporware is stuff that won't actually come into existence. Vivaldi has already been publically available for nearly a year.

Sorry, yes, I intended "software that'll become useless, unmaintained and outdated rather quickly".

<snark>If I had a penny for every useless, unmaintained, and outdated open source project...</snark>

The great thing about useless, unmaintened, and outdated open source projects, is that anyone can pick it up, and turn it into a useful, maintained and updated project.

If it was a closed source project you'd have to start from scratch every time if you wanted to restart the project.

This is quite a bold statement to make. Instead of anyone you should have said someone, particularly someone with a large amount of money, free time and will, in other words very few people. Depending on the size and complexity of the project it could be too much for a single someone to attempt.

It is not unheard of that someone tried and abandoned but would probably have achieved their goal by starting from scratch rather that attempting to revive an outdated unmaintained project.

...you'd have more pennies than me if I had a penny for every unmaintained commercial software.

Whoops, meant to say "fewer" but now I can't edit. I just negated my point.

Abandonware.

That's pre-abandonware

I.e. "software".

The source is available at https://vivaldi.com/source/?lang=en_US

That is not the source, that's just their chromium patches.

Why is everyone so confused about this, is it really so difficult to read the about of vivaldi or the first paragraph of the EULA ?

What about the licence? There are five-six xz'ed tarballs there, each ~600 MBs.

1. This End User License Agreement ("EULA") governs your use ("You") of the browser software in executable form ("Software") and any ancillary services ("Services") provided to You by Vivaldi Technology AS ("Vivaldi") to the exclusion of all other terms and conditions. Source code used in the Software, under open source license agreements, can be obtained at https://vivaldi.com/source.

I've read their site and I can't figure out what they're selling me, what's the business model here?

Edit: Never mind, homepage ads I see. Eh easy enough to close them out..

> Closed source = vaporware

Then why has Firefox been the 'shit' browser for the better part of a decade now?

Best battery life (usually by a 2-4h difference!) -> use Edge/Safari

Best stability -> use Chrome

Best performance -> use Blink-based browser

Most extensions -> use Firefox (Chrome has 90% of the FF extensions available though)

Hell, Firefox still doesn't have e10s fully working, so one tab takes down the entire browser. Slow sites lock up the UI. Scrolling sometimes still isn't smooth. Plus, Firefox is ugly, especially on mobile. and whilst its admirable they still prop up Gecko, its a substandard rendering engine compared to Webkit, Blink or Trident/EdgeHMTL.

You want to give domination of the internet to one giant tax evading transnational advertising company -> use chrome / blink based browser.

Sorry but not everyone thinks in short term personal interest, some prefer to see the internet and web as a collective good that has to be preserved with a long term vision.

I have a lot of criticism of mozilla and firefox but I would not ever advise anyone to use a GAFM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft) product or service.

Given your interest in rendering engines, you may be interested in the work being done by Mozilla folks on Servo: https://servo.org/

Low memory usage is a Firefox win at least, partially because they don't have true multi process yet.

I would gladly switch to Firefox on my dev machine (opening both Photoshop, Visual Studio and Chrome in a 8GB RAM system is a recipe to disaster), if their development tools didn't suck.

Do you you use macOS, Linux or Windows? Because if it's the first, that's pretty weird behavior. macOS is very good at compressing and vacating memory as necessary..

Been using Vivaldi for probably a year, but I am now looking for a new browser. Too many media/crash issues have started popping up with running the browser without hardware acceleration enabled. And the options that let me disable it in the first place have been removed.

I guess all I really want is chrome without the tracking.

What you want is iron, which was available since pretty much the early day of chrome.

here: https://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php and this: https://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iro...

You could also have a look at epic over there: https://www.epicbrowser.com/

First time I heard or used Vivaldi; the whole 2-panels in 1 browser chrome side by side looked interesting, but using it, docking/undocking tabs and resizeing the area's just feels very slow, especially when you're used to how snappy Google Chrome feels. Too bad because I want to like this :)

This is a sad problem that has come with developers using Javascript for everything. Development might be faster, but the end product is simply slow even on high-end machines.

Same thing happens with Visual Studio Code, Brackets and Atom when compared to Sublime Text, for instance.

I really like Vivaldi, but I cannot use it as my main browser because I really miss browser synchronization. With Chrome, I have everything synchronized, so setting up my browser environment I'm used to on new computer takes just few clicks. I hope Vivaldi will have this too soon.

Is it possible to arrange the tabs in the side bar in a hierarchical list view? It seems it is possible to make stacks of tabs, but the individual tabs in the hover menu are not very accessible IMHO ("out of sight, out of mind"). Otherwise this browser looks really nice.

Vivaldi uses chrome extensions, if there's one that would provide that, it looks like it can be used.

Waits patiently for the mail client.

One thing that always turns me off is the lack of proper popup support (last I checked).

Some addons I like don't like that and that one website I need for studying doesn't like it any more either.

But otherwise it's a solid browser.

Is it bad to say at this point I've spent so much time with Chrome that I am not interested in switching? Things work well for me.

I've decided to roll out and use my own browser;

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" --Isaac Newton

My only concern is that it does not have settings / history sync yet.

But that will mean that you probably have to set up an account with Vivaldi.com, similar to how you have to do it on Google.com for Chrome.

Personally, I like not having to remember yet another set of login credentials for every app I use. Perhaps if they supported syncing of browser setups via DropBox, G-Drive etc. then it may be a way to (a) backup your browser settings in one place and (b) share it among your devices or even among work colleagues.

No FreeBSD support. No go.

aren't we kinda passed the days of closed source browsers?

Well what browser are you using ? AFAIK there's not a plethora of popular free software web browsers around.

Safari and Edge are closed-source, Google Chrome (not Chromium) is too, in some way.

I wonder in which way chrome is not proprietary. AFAIK it is 100% proprietary freeware, at least this my understanding of the legal terms in the ToS / EULA: https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/privacy/eula_t...

In the way that you can build a very similar version of it (Chromium) from source code released under OSS licenses. You can't do that with Edge, Safari or Vivaldi.

Vivaldi is awesome! Thank you Vivaldi team!

Uh oh. They made the browser mistake.

Care to elaborate?

They made the browser mistake, which part do you need elaborated?

This is part of the team behind Opera. Sounds like they have the chops

Right now, searching for "the browser mistake" just leads to this page.

What is the browser mistake?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com