Comment by j_s | Hacker News Reader

Comment by j_s | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone using a non-big-3 (Chrome/Firefox/Safari) browser enough to call it their default? I haven't tried Vivaldi yet but see this non-update hitting the front page as a heads-up that it might be worth checking out; how does this company pay the bills?

I'm interested in hearing about both the options available on different operating systems and/or mobile devices and the primary benefit each provides.

On Android, Firefox Focus has become my normal browser. I really don't use the phone to browse all that much, and prefer to use a clean session each time.

On Windows, I use multiple off-label browsers[0] mostly just to compartmentalize different sessions simultaneously. Now that Firefox is headed towards supporting this as a first-class feature, I may be able to cut down to one again. I just can't bring myself to give Google/Chrome all of my browsing metadata, but I do use it for work-related access since GMail is tied in.

[0] - Qupzilla, with separate-per-window sessions in private browsing mode - no extra work from me; also K-Meleon

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Edit: Thanks for all the testimonials; I will definitely be checking these out!

I use Opera quite extensively, and have been, starting from Opera 7 or so. There was a brief gap in my usage during the time when Opera switched to blink and a lot of the old features were missing, but now it is pretty much back to feature parity (at least for the features I care about).

I think (IMHO) it has the most usable UI and apparent performance. It has nice built-in features like ad-blocking, mouse gestures (including rocker gestures), some nice single key shortcuts for moving around tabs. The V7 tabs extension [1] provides a really good experience for vertical tabs. It has also sufficient customizability, full compatibility with Chrome extensions.

I am aware that all of these are possible in other browsers, and I do use Chrome/Firefox for non-trivial amounts of time for various reasons with all equivalent customizations, but Opera just seems so much more usable and performant for me across platforms, although I can't put my finger down on one single thing that makes it so.

Edit: I have to say I'm really liking the vertical tabs on the new Vivaldi and their new features. Maybe I'll try making it my primary browser for a while.

[1] https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/v7-tabs/

> how does this company pay the bills?

Looks like they aren't making money yet: https://www.proff.no/selskap/vivaldi-technologies-as/oslo/in... (warning, the website is in Norwegian, Vivaldi is based in Oslo).

I don't know if they have raised money yet, but the company has been created by the previous CTO of Opera, who made millions out of it.

Also, former Opera employees told me that the amount of money search engines are willing to pay to be featured in browsers is huge (relatively to the cost of running a browser company, even more so when you don't have to build the rendering engine).

I've often thought Opera should have stayed commercial. They probably would have still maintained 1% market share, but with a cool half-billion in revenue keeping it the browser worth paying for. I wonder if it's too late for Vivaldi to start charging $49 or so.

On my desktop, vivaldi has been the default since 1.10. The amount of features baked in is incredible. The only extension needed is uBlock. Everything else like saved sessions that required extensions in chrome and firefox are just there.

I've used Konqueror (Chrome's grandfather) for about 6-7 years. After Firefox 3 was released I switched to FF and even though I've used Chrome for a year or two at some point, I won't replace Firefox again unless I have an equivalent Awesome bar (Chrome doesn't cut it) and Tree Style Tabs.

We lose tree style tabs by the end of the year

We have Tree Tabs [1] for Firefox 57+

1. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/?sr...

I'm aware but it's complete crap at the moment.

This was very buggy and missed some key features (bookmarking and restoring a tree of tabs) last time I used it (February).

This discussion yesterday covered a lot of the tree style tab options:

"Show HN: Doogie – A Chromium-Based Browser with Tree-Style Pages " | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15277351

Does anyone have experience with the freemium Chrome extension Tabs Outliner mentioned there?

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-outliner/eggk...

Opera (Windows, Android) because I find its UI to be to my personal taste. I am looking to switch (back, a decade later) to Firefox when 57 rolls out, but unless I can get a viable alternative to Opera's brilliant Speed Dial, I might not be able to break the inertia.

Interesting, what makes their speed dial brilliant?

It's polished, it's sufficiently customisable for my likes, it features folders, it's completely integrated in to the bookmarks system, accessible from sync'd devices, and allows for simple drag-and-drop rearrangements. All without needing an extension of any kind.

Firefox's "top sites with pinning" does only some of this, and is clunky. Every Fx Speed Dial extension I have tried is similarly lacking in some way or another.

Just installed it on my Android now, after seeing your comment. It seems to have no tab support, i.e. you can only have one web page open at a time, is that right, or am I missing something? Tried menu at bottom left (hardware) and top right (browser menu).

Correct, that is the primary feature trimmed from Firefox Focus in comparison to the main app. It fits my use case since I typically browse on my phone with a single, quick purpose in mind - like finding an address or the hours a business is open.

Got it, thanks.

I use it daily at work and QuteBrowser. They have worked really great for my needs.

The backend is a basically a Chrome browser I don't see pages render incorrectly like I did with Opera.

Same here. Actually, I find it amazing how much I like it - before, I always had ten to twenty different browser extensions installed on both Chrome and Firefox: Mouse gestures here, an "Omnibar" there, Superdrag... yada yada yada.

Because of that, I suspected that Qutebrowser would be too "bare bones" for my tastes. Interestingly, that isn't the case at all. It's amazing how much extra functionality you can replace with an efficient control scheme.

I experimented briefly with QuteBrowser, but was disappointed when standard cross-browser keyboard shortcuts that have become muscle memory did nothing.

Migrated to Vivaldi after 15 years of Firefox. I highly recommend Vivaldi and would pay for it, given the option.

Opera (on Mac) for daily use, because of 1-key shortcuts, mouse gestures etc that I'm used to from being long time Opera user.

Chrome is on the side for all my webdev work (but references etc are open in either Opera or Dash). Keeps development stuff vs work/private surfing separate.

Definitely Pale Moon, desktop, my ancient mac book and Android phone, all driven by it, synced.

I use qutebrowser as my daily driver and I love it.

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