Vivaldi 6.0 Web Browser Introduces Tab Workspaces and Custom Icons | Hacker News Reader

Vivaldi 6.0 Web Browser Introduces Tab Workspaces and Custom Icons

macrumors.com

52 pointsbluish2936 comments

For the HN audience, this earlier blogpost from the Vivaldi team has more technical detail, especially in the first comment underneath: https://vivaldi.com/blog/desktop/workspaces-vivaldi-browser-...

Or their blog post on the 6.0 release in general: https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-on-desktop-6-0/

I tried some new browsers. I liked Vivaldi but it phoned home non stop on first launch. I went with Orion by Kagi. Vertical tabs, containers, support for Firefox (and I think Chrome?) extensions, and no weird requests you do not expect.

Orion looks interesting. Do you know if the iOS version will support Ublock?

Just tried. Works fine. Browser itself can be a little buggy, but give it a shot.

Not just first launch, every time. Moreover, Chromium, on which Vivaldi is built, generates a unique id to track every installation (HN discussion - Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236106 ). On their forums, Vivaldi has confirmed that they too need to track the number of users they have to generate revenue, and hence will not disable such automated connections that phone home. Thus, Vivaldi's claim to respecting user privacy is quite questionable.

I really want to use Vivaldi. This makes it even more interesting.

But, iOS sync is something I use daily. Not having sync to a browser on iOS is a limiter.

Seems there was a little movement on iOS Vivaldi "recently": https://www.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/xk6xz3/viva...

I will be so happy if/when it happens.

They have a page on their site where you can signup for notifications, too.

Does Vivaldi still build its UI with HTML/CSS/JS? The last few times I tried it that was the sticking point, because that made it feel unresponsive relative to other Chrome-based browsers. Interestingly Firefox doesn’t have nearly as much of a problem with this despite also using webstuff for UI, which suggests the issue lies in Vivaldi’s implementation.

> Firefox doesn’t have nearly as much of a problem with this despite also using webstuff for UI

Oh, so that's the reason firefox UI also feels much slower than chrome? It must have been when they switched to button like tabs. I use firefox rarely, don't like new tabs and they feel slower too.

Does Chrome not use web stuff for its UI?

Chrome and most of its derivatives (Edge, Brave, etc) use a custom C++ UI framework[0] that does most of its graphics drawing with Skia[1]. It even has a dedicated documentation page with some simple examples[2].

[0]: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/chro... [1]: https://skia.org/ [2]: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/heads/...

Yeah, saw a comment that their UI does some stupid stuff like enumerate all tabs way too often, so the UI becomes less responsive with more tabs

Though customization benefit is nice, wish we didn't have to pay so much in perf for it...

So that's why it feels clunky when interacting with the UI.

In doing it by creating virtual desktops per customer and a couple of them for me, then grouping everything I need for that customer in its desktop. That includes a Firefox window with all the tabs I need. I use the builtin container tabs, to be able to log into some services multiple times with different accounts. Some customers give me accounts @their.com

I see Vivaldi is checking Arc's notes.

Wish they fixed the poor UI performance and extension keybinds their UI also breaks instead of embedding a mail client and adding custom icons

There is no escape from Zawinski's Law.

Vivaldi mobile is quite nice. It has the speed of Chrome but with adblocking and customization.

Is this equivalent to Firefox Multi-account containers?

That was my immediate question as well.

Given it's been a leading feature request on Vivaldi forums for a long time, I would've expected them to mention that up-front in the article (even in the title tbh). The fact there's no mention of it, nor of cookies/sessions, makes me suspect that this feature is not implemented (yet???...).

Not sure how to tell for sure though. Possibly if the team replies to this comment[0]

Edit

It seems this blog-post has a lot more technical details & confirmed that this is not implemented in Workspaces[1]

[0] https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-on-desktop-6-0/#comment-658...

[1] https://vivaldi.com/blog/desktop/workspaces-vivaldi-browser-...

No, this is closer to the (removed) Firefox feature called Tab Groups/Panorama.

Firefox determined that it was little used. Jon Tetzchner never removes anything, Vivaldi has an embedded side-scroller game and integration with Hue bulbs (-_-).

I use the Tab Tiling feature in Vivaldi heavily, it is unique to that browser (there was a Firefox extension that implemented the concept pre-Web Extensions but it needed internal changes in Firefox to work as a Web extension that dev team tabled) but the sheer amount of frivolous feature support in Vivaldi is sure to reach a point where it is unmaintainable and everything will be broken all the time.

Yeah Vivaldi is quite a substantial browser in that sense, there's a lot everywhere you look.

It is interesting however that this feature is making its way back around, Vivaldi, Arc, Opera, Edge, are all browsers that added it. Firefox offloaded it to an extension (not maintained by Firefox), and Chrome doesn't officially have it but like Firefox there are extensions around.

I guess the little feature just needed a bit of a rebrand!

Moved to Arc which already supports this.

https://arc.net/ ? If I didn't already knew about it, looks like vaporware. No download, only a link that brings you to a form asking bunch of random personal questions, no screenshots (the ones that exists are censored? What).

Arc is real. I got the download link emailed to me a few weeks after signing up.

I know this, have friends who've tried it. Doesn't make the website any less vaporware-y looking.

It’s intentionally vague; it’s a marketing trick. The growth is happening through the five invites a week users get, spread through forums, Discord, etc.

Agreed. I’ve been an Arc enjoyer for quite a while now.

Same, Arc has been pretty great so far, and they just launched their iOS "version" which has been neat too. It's become my default on my macOS machines.

honest question, who needs another web browser?

No one. Until a better one comes along to capture the entire market for a while. See Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome for various examples of "no one needing a browser until a better one comes along".

Competition and diversity is good for innovation. Many of the features in whatever browser you're using now come from the one you've never heard of.

who needs another car? laptop computer? mattress for sleeping on?

those people

Reply on news.ycombinator.com