10 ms·

Vivaldi 1.2 release

131 points by timlyo 10y ago

rplnt 10y ago
Yesterday's post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11820795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11820795
throwaway0209 10y ago
But does it have waitblock?
seyz 10y ago
Do you plan to release vivaldi opensource or not?
- pinkbatman 10y ago
  From the AMA on reddit > We have the C++ code as open source now. As far as making the rest of Vivaldi open source, we're still discussing the implications and want to make the best possible decision. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4ebgom/iama_jon_von_tetzchner_cofounder_and_ceo_of/d1yoama https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4ebgom/iama_jon_von_t...
  - pritambaral 10y ago
    I think it's mostly the C++ code that was already open source (Chromium etc.).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
petra 10y ago
A month ago Vivaldi's CEO did a reddit AMA, with tons of questions and answers: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4ebgom/iama_jon_von_tetzchner_cofounder_and_ceo_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4ebgom/iama_jon_von_t...
- JasonSage 10y ago
  > The biggest features we are working on are sync and mail Okay, I have to question this. Why is a browser vendor spending precious time and money adding a mailbox to their browser? I used Vivaldi a little bit ago during the beta/1.0 period for a few months—at that time at least, the UX needed more polish and there were bugs and usability issues that were daily pain points. So I find this it concerning that they're building a mail client. They already have a browser and I already have a mail client. Why take developers off of working on the browser to provide me with a new mail client? It gives me the impression that this is fundamental to their strategy for building their browser UX—constant integration. What does this say about the future of Vivaldi development? I think I'd rather have a flexible UI that works for whatever I'm doing—NOT a bunch of integrations to various workflow points, some of which I really want and others I couldn't care for. As if you did not already have the ability to put a mail client on your sidebar in Vivaldi. Using web panels, you can pin the email provider of your choice to an icon and open it in a sidebar at any point you like.
  - oblio 10y ago
    The first stage for them is rebuilding Opera 12. They're still be missing the IRC and torrent clients :)
  - notalaser 10y ago
    There are those of us who prefer having a well-integrated "Internet suite" (web browser, mail client), a la what Mozilla used to provide prior to the Firefox - Thunderbird split, or what Opera used to provide prior to being turned into a Chrome clone. > As if you did not already have the ability to put a mail client on your sidebar in Vivaldi. Using web panels, you can pin the email provider of your choice to an icon and open it in a sidebar at any point you like. I... uh, I'm not sure, or at least I hope that's not what they mean by building a mail client. Not having to use a shitty web-based interface is about 75% of why I'm using a mail client.
    - oblio 10y ago
      The whole browser is a "web-based interface". Vivaldi is built using HTML/JS.
mrmondo 10y ago
Where can I find the source for the project?
- tachyons 10y ago
  This isn't an open source project
  - dzek69 10y ago
    this is open source. https://vivaldi.com/source/ https://vivaldi.com/source/
    - folksonomy 10y ago
      Is it easy to get a reproducible build? Has anyone tried?
    - pritambaral 10y ago
      That is visible source. Without a license, it's not "open source". Nor is the source provided there complete. The last time they were asked, they said only the C++ code is open and available to the public.
      - striking 10y ago
        It's the LGPL parts of Chromium that they needed to modify to run their engine. So it's LGPL'd, but only the specific parts that they need to release.
        fapjacks 10y ago
        Right. They're waving that around like they're saying the stuff is open source, and it's very much not open source. Building a bunch of stuff on top of an open source project and then claiming your source is open because some base amount of the source forced them under its license to be open is a total cop-out. No, Vivaldi is not open source, and no they do not have plans to ever open source Vivaldi.
tachyons 10y ago
They should make their browser more native to os in look
- dzek69 10y ago
  they dont want to. but you can enable native window decorator from your os. theming (for icons) will be available some day in the future
walkingolof 10y ago
Recently Vivaldi have started to hang after opening the lock screen in Fedora (23), you have to wait for the Force Quit Window to restart it. Otherwise, excellent browser.
wslh 10y ago
> One of the things that makes Vivaldi unique is that it is built on modern web technologies. If a company is making this stupid statement on the first page I can imagine the rest.
- kristofferR 10y ago
  It's not stupid, it's true - a lot of the UI is written in HTML/CSS/Javascript.
  - evook 10y ago
    What he calls out as stupid was the mistake of using those technologies for the UI. Although I defended Vivaldi as the Opera Successor since its Beta, I stopped to support and suggest it because it failed to fix the js/css/HTML sluggishness with Version 1, and even more sadly with Version 1.2. I started using unofficial stable Chromium Builds with Codecs and Sync disabled via ChrLauncher and couldn't be happier.
    - Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
      Try Otter too, it's promising as an Opera successor, although it's still lacking some stuff like password manager.
    - CelticSuperhero 10y ago
      What do you expect from a non native UI which is rendered by the Chromium extensions system? It only can be as fast as the used System is. So, Vivaldi is nothing at all for people who value speed more than functions. But for people who value functions over speed, i can see that these could be drawn to it.
  - wslh 10y ago
    Like Atom? So it is not unique. We can say this statement for a lot of software products being Chromium more special and from a third party.
    - 10y ago
frik 10y ago
The browser is fast, based on Chromium, has a nice Opera 12 inspired UI but is closed source.
- zerr 10y ago
  Similarly to Opera, the startup time (even hot) is far behind Chrome. This is a deal breaker.
  - dzek69 10y ago
    it was way better several builds ago
  - levesque 10y ago
    Your browser stays open for 99% of the day, I don't see why a slow startup would be a deal breaker.
    - zerr 10y ago
      No, my browser gets closed/opened a lot during the day.
      - tauchunfall 10y ago
        Why?
        angry-hacker 10y ago
        Different people use browsers differently? We're humans after all. I never understood people whining about memory usage and having 120 tabs opened - - having so many tabs sounded silly - - now I'm one of those people. I just happened to start using my browser that way. Different people, different needs.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
wildchild 10y ago
OMG yet another desktop application in javascript.
- oblio 10y ago
  What's so wrong about that? All the heavy browser lifting is done by the browser engine, which is native, and everything else is just... chrome. Which doesn't really have huge performance requirements.
  - bob8 10y ago
    UI is very latency sensitive, even a couple of frames of delay can be detrimental to the feel of a UI.
    - dvdgsng 10y ago
      Comparing the delay of the UI with many tabs (30+) Vivaldi wins easily over Firefox and Chrome.
      - bob8 10y ago
        I did not say Vivaldi was slow, just that performance is relevant in UI. I'll give Vivaldi a try.
petepete 10y ago
I must admit, I do like the thought of `theme-color` support being integrated into desktop browsers. It works really well on mobile. I know it's a more complex task on the desktop where there are a multitude of browser customisiations and themes to take into consideration, but this looks like a good attempt. https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/design-and-ui/browser-customization/theme-color?hl=en https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/design-and-ui...
partycoder 10y ago
There is a lot of security considerations to make a browser. JavaScript based technologies are not well known for their security.
- oblio 10y ago
  In practice any kind of technology is only as good as its developers. And I doubt that the security record of "Javascript based technologies" is better or worse than the security record of "C/C++ based technologies", for that matter. As a purely theoretical point, "Javascript based technologies" have the advantage of automatic memory management, which, again, theoretically, removes an attack vector almost entirely. Getting back on track, a browser is engine + UI. Vivaldi uses Chromium as the engine. HTML/JS are used just for the UI.
  - jeffreyjflim 10y ago
    I am waiting for the Rust-based Firefox :}
    - steveklabnik 10y ago
      Firefox 45, the current release, has a tiny bit on Linux and OS X. In a few releases, it will be on Windows as well. I don't know what percentage you need to have it be "based", but we're getting there...
TruthAndDare 10y ago
> We use JavaScript and React to create the user interface with the help of Node.js and a long list of NPM modules. Does this make any difference to the user?
- Narretz 10y ago
  They are aiming to please power-users, some of which might be pleased to know which stack is used.
  - dingdingdang 10y ago
    In that case they failed horribly, knowing what a security nightmare NPM modules are and having that embedded in my browser is 110% turning me off from ever wanting to install Vivaldi on anything that's not securely sandboxed away from the world at large.
- gorm 10y ago
  Yea, its alot quicker to develop and experiment with new features.
Narretz 10y ago
I wonder why basically all new browser projects use Webkit / Blink, and none use Gecko)? This only strenghtens Google's position regarding the implementation of web standards. Recently Microsoft open sourced Chakra, their JS Engine, and there's to hope that it can compete with V8 to prevent the same for JavaScript.
- jarcane 10y ago
  Because Gecko is a performance disaster so bad that Mozilla had to invent a new programming language just to create a replacement.
- robin_reala 10y ago
  Because embedding Gecko is markedly more difficult than embedding Blink / WebKit, and now that we’re heading towards a WebKit / Blink monoculture there’s no incentive to choose against that. Interestingly, Servo is basing itself on Chromium’s embedding framework, so that should hopefully be a valid choice when it reaches maturity.
  - _pmf_ 10y ago
    > Interestingly, Servo is basing itself on Chromium’s embedding framework, so that should hopefully be a valid choice when it reaches maturity. Rust introduces several new toolchain requirements, though.
    - colemickens 10y ago
      ? When you use CEF, you're not building Chromium so I don't understand why Servo's compilation toolchain would affect an application that just wants to embed. Libraries written in Rust can be easily called from C code.
StevePerkins 10y ago
It feels like they're trying to serve two competing goals with this: 1) Be a faster, lighter, more customizable competitor to Chrome 2) Be a full "Internet suite" with browser and email client I'm sure how well you can accomplish #1 while pouring resources into #2. Moreover, I'm not sure how much of an audience there even is for #2. The minority who want a desktop email client are very vocal about it, but most of us haven't used an email fat client in years (save for perhaps Outlook when forced to at work). I was a huge fan of Opera back in the day, and still use it as the primary browser on my phone. But even in its heyday, Opera's mail client was pretty weak compared to Thunderbird or other options. Bolting-on a "meh" email client to a web browser is like a digital wristwatch that prominently display the current YEAR on the main screen... a largely unnecessary feature that just takes up room. I toyed around with an earlier release of Vivaldi, and thought it looked promising. But at this point I wouldn't even consider a browser that doesn't sync bookmarks and other data across my devices. In terms of prioritizing resources, I care about that 1,000x more than re-implementing Opera features from the late 90's that most people won't use.
- ahoka 10y ago
  They are kinda repeating the mistakes of Opera. I used Vivaldi for a few weeks and I really wanted to like it but it has (at least currently) to many quirks. For example not being able to delete addresses from the history which is given for every other browser. All I want is a Chrome with a nicer GUI.
  - Mithaldu 10y ago
    Your example doesn't make a lot of sense. Opera can delete adresses from history. In fact, there are many things Opera does that other browsers can't.
    - angry-hacker 10y ago
      But we are talking about Vivaldi!
    - ahoka 10y ago
kevinSuttle 10y ago
A closed-source browser that's built on Chromium. In 2016. Why.
- nacs 10y ago
  I see the source here: https://vivaldi.com/source/ https://vivaldi.com/source/
  - gsnedders 10y ago
    That's only the partly LGPL Chromium code. From https://vivaldi.net/userblogs/entry/a-few-words-about-open-source-vivaldi https://vivaldi.net/userblogs/entry/a-few-words-about-open-s... > Our source code package is available here: vivaldi.com/source. This links to a copy of the Chromium source code with the changes we made to allow our HTML/CSS/JS UI to run. > All our changes to Chromium source code are under a BSD license and hence can read by anyone. The details are explained in the the README and LICENSE files, within that package. > In addition, all of our UI code (included in normal packages) is written in plain, readable text. This means that all parts of Vivaldi are full audit-able and open from that perspective.
krabpaaltje 10y ago
After using it for 10 minutes - Chrome plugins - tabs configurable at the side instead of on top - native (?) mousegestures So far so good!
- dvdgsng 10y ago
  Try tab tiling: ctrl-select two (or more) tabs and select "Tile tabs" from their context menu.
- hs86 10y ago
  I remember seeing the mouse gestures in Opera and wanting the same feature in my Firefox. I used this in Firefox with an extension for several years and later did the same with Chrome. Now with Vivaldi I accidentally performed a mouse gesture due to muscle memory and to my surprise it worked out of the box. With the same people behind it this browser seems to be the real successor for Opera. :)
thebigspacefuck 10y ago
I was excited about Vivaldi until I had to get on IRC to ask how to pull tabs out of and back into a window. I've been loving Opera lately.
- kevindeasis 10y ago
  Funny that I've just deleted Opera a few weeks ago and possibly will not install it again. Since they've sold their company
asksol 10y ago
I really like the browser, but still doesn't work with Apple Keychain so using it is not an option here. Guess I'm too lazy but it would take weeks to migrate over, and then I'd need to store the passwords in dual locations, which seems like a bad idea.
tqkxzugoaupvwqr 10y ago
What is the experience on laptops? I tried Vivaldi 1.0 or 1.1 and it drained the battery like nothing I have seen before as far as browsers go. Not sure if that is a Chromium or Vivaldi issue.
- Sylos 10y ago
  I haven't yet seen any benchmarks for Vivaldi, but yeah, Chrome/-ium is known for criminally eating through battery life.
djloche 10y ago
Vivaldi is my new browser of choice.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
CelticSuperhero 10y ago
Vivaldi features are not that bad, but the fact that this "browser" is only a combination of some extensions bundled with Chromium is a big downside. Also, not being able to implement more privacy for example fingerprint block is also rather bad. All they do is work inside their extensions related code with avoiding to touch actual Chromium code base. When these guys have finally more knowledge about Chromium to either enhance it or remove unused parts - Vivaldi UI exists outside of Chromium and they carry all that Chromium luggage around which they also not using at all which means tons of dead weight - then this browser COULD be useful - of course only when Open Sourcing it 100% - but before, not even worth thinking about it.
- kahnpro 10y ago
  Also the whole fact that their internet is JS/Electron. This really puts a damper on the performance their UI will be able to achieve.
kevindeasis 10y ago
How is the memory & cpu usage compared to GChrome? Especially if you have 20+ tabs open Can you use chrome plugins for vivaldi?
- rikrassen 10y ago
  You can use chrome plugins/the chrome webstore and the devs have actually pushed bug fixes that address compatibility with prominent plugins, i.e. Chromecast and LastPass
korginator 10y ago
I've been on Vivaldi from the beta days, and am glad to see it's been steadily improving. On my Mac, it's extremely responsive, probably as good as Safari. It feels snappier than chrome or (god forbid) firefox. Page load speeds feel quicker than other browsers. It's as stable as anything else I've used. The chrome extensions I use all work well. All in all, a very positive experience. I just switched to Vivaldi as my main browser after using v1.2 for a couple of days now. I only wish they bring some of the old opera features like text reflow, user CSS for page rendering, etc.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

Vivaldi 1.2 release

131 points by timlyo 10y ago

rplnt 10y ago

Yesterday's post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11820795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11820795

throwaway0209 10y ago

But does it have waitblock?

seyz 10y ago

Do you plan to release vivaldi opensource or not?

pinkbatman 10y ago
From the AMA on reddit > We have the C++ code as open source now. As far as making the rest of Vivaldi open source, we're still discussing the implications and want to make the best possible decision. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4ebgom/iama_jon_von_tetzchner_cofounder_and_ceo_of/d1yoama https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4ebgom/iama_jon_von_t...
- pritambaral 10y ago
  I think it's mostly the C++ code that was already open source (Chromium etc.).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

petra 10y ago

A month ago Vivaldi's CEO did a reddit AMA, with tons of questions and answers: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4ebgom/iama_jon_von_tetzchner_cofounder_and_ceo_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4ebgom/iama_jon_von_t...

JasonSage 10y ago
> The biggest features we are working on are sync and mail Okay, I have to question this. Why is a browser vendor spending precious time and money adding a mailbox to their browser? I used Vivaldi a little bit ago during the beta/1.0 period for a few months—at that time at least, the UX needed more polish and there were bugs and usability issues that were daily pain points. So I find this it concerning that they're building a mail client. They already have a browser and I already have a mail client. Why take developers off of working on the browser to provide me with a new mail client? It gives me the impression that this is fundamental to their strategy for building their browser UX—constant integration. What does this say about the future of Vivaldi development? I think I'd rather have a flexible UI that works for whatever I'm doing—NOT a bunch of integrations to various workflow points, some of which I really want and others I couldn't care for. As if you did not already have the ability to put a mail client on your sidebar in Vivaldi. Using web panels, you can pin the email provider of your choice to an icon and open it in a sidebar at any point you like.
- oblio 10y ago
  The first stage for them is rebuilding Opera 12. They're still be missing the IRC and torrent clients :)
- notalaser 10y ago
  There are those of us who prefer having a well-integrated "Internet suite" (web browser, mail client), a la what Mozilla used to provide prior to the Firefox - Thunderbird split, or what Opera used to provide prior to being turned into a Chrome clone. > As if you did not already have the ability to put a mail client on your sidebar in Vivaldi. Using web panels, you can pin the email provider of your choice to an icon and open it in a sidebar at any point you like. I... uh, I'm not sure, or at least I hope that's not what they mean by building a mail client. Not having to use a shitty web-based interface is about 75% of why I'm using a mail client.
  - oblio 10y ago
    The whole browser is a "web-based interface". Vivaldi is built using HTML/JS.

mrmondo 10y ago

Where can I find the source for the project?

tachyons 10y ago
This isn't an open source project
- dzek69 10y ago
  this is open source. https://vivaldi.com/source/ https://vivaldi.com/source/
  - folksonomy 10y ago
    Is it easy to get a reproducible build? Has anyone tried?
  - pritambaral 10y ago
    That is visible source. Without a license, it's not "open source". Nor is the source provided there complete. The last time they were asked, they said only the C++ code is open and available to the public.
    - striking 10y ago
      It's the LGPL parts of Chromium that they needed to modify to run their engine. So it's LGPL'd, but only the specific parts that they need to release.
      - fapjacks 10y ago
        Right. They're waving that around like they're saying the stuff is open source, and it's very much not open source. Building a bunch of stuff on top of an open source project and then claiming your source is open because some base amount of the source forced them under its license to be open is a total cop-out. No, Vivaldi is not open source, and no they do not have plans to ever open source Vivaldi.

tachyons 10y ago

They should make their browser more native to os in look

dzek69 10y ago
they dont want to. but you can enable native window decorator from your os. theming (for icons) will be available some day in the future

walkingolof 10y ago

Recently Vivaldi have started to hang after opening the lock screen in Fedora (23), you have to wait for the Force Quit Window to restart it. Otherwise, excellent browser.

wslh 10y ago

> One of the things that makes Vivaldi unique is that it is built on modern web technologies. If a company is making this stupid statement on the first page I can imagine the rest.

kristofferR 10y ago
It's not stupid, it's true - a lot of the UI is written in HTML/CSS/Javascript.
- evook 10y ago
  What he calls out as stupid was the mistake of using those technologies for the UI. Although I defended Vivaldi as the Opera Successor since its Beta, I stopped to support and suggest it because it failed to fix the js/css/HTML sluggishness with Version 1, and even more sadly with Version 1.2. I started using unofficial stable Chromium Builds with Codecs and Sync disabled via ChrLauncher and couldn't be happier.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
    Try Otter too, it's promising as an Opera successor, although it's still lacking some stuff like password manager.
  - CelticSuperhero 10y ago
    What do you expect from a non native UI which is rendered by the Chromium extensions system? It only can be as fast as the used System is. So, Vivaldi is nothing at all for people who value speed more than functions. But for people who value functions over speed, i can see that these could be drawn to it.
- wslh 10y ago
  Like Atom? So it is not unique. We can say this statement for a lot of software products being Chromium more special and from a third party.
  - 10y ago

frik 10y ago

The browser is fast, based on Chromium, has a nice Opera 12 inspired UI but is closed source.

zerr 10y ago
Similarly to Opera, the startup time (even hot) is far behind Chrome. This is a deal breaker.
- dzek69 10y ago
  it was way better several builds ago
- levesque 10y ago
  Your browser stays open for 99% of the day, I don't see why a slow startup would be a deal breaker.
  - zerr 10y ago
    No, my browser gets closed/opened a lot during the day.
    - tauchunfall 10y ago
      Why?
      - angry-hacker 10y ago
        Different people use browsers differently? We're humans after all. I never understood people whining about memory usage and having 120 tabs opened - - having so many tabs sounded silly - - now I'm one of those people. I just happened to start using my browser that way. Different people, different needs.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]

wildchild 10y ago

OMG yet another desktop application in javascript.

oblio 10y ago
What's so wrong about that? All the heavy browser lifting is done by the browser engine, which is native, and everything else is just... chrome. Which doesn't really have huge performance requirements.
- bob8 10y ago
  UI is very latency sensitive, even a couple of frames of delay can be detrimental to the feel of a UI.
  - dvdgsng 10y ago
    Comparing the delay of the UI with many tabs (30+) Vivaldi wins easily over Firefox and Chrome.
    - bob8 10y ago
      I did not say Vivaldi was slow, just that performance is relevant in UI. I'll give Vivaldi a try.

petepete 10y ago

I must admit, I do like the thought of `theme-color` support being integrated into desktop browsers. It works really well on mobile. I know it's a more complex task on the desktop where there are a multitude of browser customisiations and themes to take into consideration, but this looks like a good attempt. https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/design-and-ui/browser-customization/theme-color?hl=en https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/design-and-ui...

partycoder 10y ago

There is a lot of security considerations to make a browser. JavaScript based technologies are not well known for their security.

oblio 10y ago
In practice any kind of technology is only as good as its developers. And I doubt that the security record of "Javascript based technologies" is better or worse than the security record of "C/C++ based technologies", for that matter. As a purely theoretical point, "Javascript based technologies" have the advantage of automatic memory management, which, again, theoretically, removes an attack vector almost entirely. Getting back on track, a browser is engine + UI. Vivaldi uses Chromium as the engine. HTML/JS are used just for the UI.
- jeffreyjflim 10y ago
  I am waiting for the Rust-based Firefox :}
  - steveklabnik 10y ago
    Firefox 45, the current release, has a tiny bit on Linux and OS X. In a few releases, it will be on Windows as well. I don't know what percentage you need to have it be "based", but we're getting there...

TruthAndDare 10y ago

> We use JavaScript and React to create the user interface with the help of Node.js and a long list of NPM modules. Does this make any difference to the user?

Narretz 10y ago
They are aiming to please power-users, some of which might be pleased to know which stack is used.
- dingdingdang 10y ago
  In that case they failed horribly, knowing what a security nightmare NPM modules are and having that embedded in my browser is 110% turning me off from ever wanting to install Vivaldi on anything that's not securely sandboxed away from the world at large.
gorm 10y ago
Yea, its alot quicker to develop and experiment with new features.

Narretz 10y ago

I wonder why basically all new browser projects use Webkit / Blink, and none use Gecko)? This only strenghtens Google's position regarding the implementation of web standards. Recently Microsoft open sourced Chakra, their JS Engine, and there's to hope that it can compete with V8 to prevent the same for JavaScript.

jarcane 10y ago
Because Gecko is a performance disaster so bad that Mozilla had to invent a new programming language just to create a replacement.
robin_reala 10y ago
Because embedding Gecko is markedly more difficult than embedding Blink / WebKit, and now that we’re heading towards a WebKit / Blink monoculture there’s no incentive to choose against that. Interestingly, Servo is basing itself on Chromium’s embedding framework, so that should hopefully be a valid choice when it reaches maturity.
- _pmf_ 10y ago
  > Interestingly, Servo is basing itself on Chromium’s embedding framework, so that should hopefully be a valid choice when it reaches maturity. Rust introduces several new toolchain requirements, though.
  - colemickens 10y ago
    ? When you use CEF, you're not building Chromium so I don't understand why Servo's compilation toolchain would affect an application that just wants to embed. Libraries written in Rust can be easily called from C code.

StevePerkins 10y ago

It feels like they're trying to serve two competing goals with this: 1) Be a faster, lighter, more customizable competitor to Chrome 2) Be a full "Internet suite" with browser and email client I'm sure how well you can accomplish #1 while pouring resources into #2. Moreover, I'm not sure how much of an audience there even is for #2. The minority who want a desktop email client are very vocal about it, but most of us haven't used an email fat client in years (save for perhaps Outlook when forced to at work). I was a huge fan of Opera back in the day, and still use it as the primary browser on my phone. But even in its heyday, Opera's mail client was pretty weak compared to Thunderbird or other options. Bolting-on a "meh" email client to a web browser is like a digital wristwatch that prominently display the current YEAR on the main screen... a largely unnecessary feature that just takes up room. I toyed around with an earlier release of Vivaldi, and thought it looked promising. But at this point I wouldn't even consider a browser that doesn't sync bookmarks and other data across my devices. In terms of prioritizing resources, I care about that 1,000x more than re-implementing Opera features from the late 90's that most people won't use.

ahoka 10y ago
They are kinda repeating the mistakes of Opera. I used Vivaldi for a few weeks and I really wanted to like it but it has (at least currently) to many quirks. For example not being able to delete addresses from the history which is given for every other browser. All I want is a Chrome with a nicer GUI.
- Mithaldu 10y ago
  Your example doesn't make a lot of sense. Opera can delete adresses from history. In fact, there are many things Opera does that other browsers can't.
  - angry-hacker 10y ago
    But we are talking about Vivaldi!
  - ahoka 10y ago

kevinSuttle 10y ago

A closed-source browser that's built on Chromium. In 2016. Why.

nacs 10y ago
I see the source here: https://vivaldi.com/source/ https://vivaldi.com/source/
- gsnedders 10y ago
  That's only the partly LGPL Chromium code. From https://vivaldi.net/userblogs/entry/a-few-words-about-open-source-vivaldi https://vivaldi.net/userblogs/entry/a-few-words-about-open-s... > Our source code package is available here: vivaldi.com/source. This links to a copy of the Chromium source code with the changes we made to allow our HTML/CSS/JS UI to run. > All our changes to Chromium source code are under a BSD license and hence can read by anyone. The details are explained in the the README and LICENSE files, within that package. > In addition, all of our UI code (included in normal packages) is written in plain, readable text. This means that all parts of Vivaldi are full audit-able and open from that perspective.

krabpaaltje 10y ago

After using it for 10 minutes - Chrome plugins - tabs configurable at the side instead of on top - native (?) mousegestures So far so good!

dvdgsng 10y ago
Try tab tiling: ctrl-select two (or more) tabs and select "Tile tabs" from their context menu.
hs86 10y ago
I remember seeing the mouse gestures in Opera and wanting the same feature in my Firefox. I used this in Firefox with an extension for several years and later did the same with Chrome. Now with Vivaldi I accidentally performed a mouse gesture due to muscle memory and to my surprise it worked out of the box. With the same people behind it this browser seems to be the real successor for Opera. :)

thebigspacefuck 10y ago

I was excited about Vivaldi until I had to get on IRC to ask how to pull tabs out of and back into a window. I've been loving Opera lately.

kevindeasis 10y ago
Funny that I've just deleted Opera a few weeks ago and possibly will not install it again. Since they've sold their company

asksol 10y ago

I really like the browser, but still doesn't work with Apple Keychain so using it is not an option here. Guess I'm too lazy but it would take weeks to migrate over, and then I'd need to store the passwords in dual locations, which seems like a bad idea.

tqkxzugoaupvwqr 10y ago

What is the experience on laptops? I tried Vivaldi 1.0 or 1.1 and it drained the battery like nothing I have seen before as far as browsers go. Not sure if that is a Chromium or Vivaldi issue.

Sylos 10y ago
I haven't yet seen any benchmarks for Vivaldi, but yeah, Chrome/-ium is known for criminally eating through battery life.

djloche 10y ago

Vivaldi is my new browser of choice.

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CelticSuperhero 10y ago

Vivaldi features are not that bad, but the fact that this "browser" is only a combination of some extensions bundled with Chromium is a big downside. Also, not being able to implement more privacy for example fingerprint block is also rather bad. All they do is work inside their extensions related code with avoiding to touch actual Chromium code base. When these guys have finally more knowledge about Chromium to either enhance it or remove unused parts - Vivaldi UI exists outside of Chromium and they carry all that Chromium luggage around which they also not using at all which means tons of dead weight - then this browser COULD be useful - of course only when Open Sourcing it 100% - but before, not even worth thinking about it.

kahnpro 10y ago
Also the whole fact that their internet is JS/Electron. This really puts a damper on the performance their UI will be able to achieve.

kevindeasis 10y ago

How is the memory & cpu usage compared to GChrome? Especially if you have 20+ tabs open Can you use chrome plugins for vivaldi?

rikrassen 10y ago
You can use chrome plugins/the chrome webstore and the devs have actually pushed bug fixes that address compatibility with prominent plugins, i.e. Chromecast and LastPass

korginator 10y ago

I've been on Vivaldi from the beta days, and am glad to see it's been steadily improving. On my Mac, it's extremely responsive, probably as good as Safari. It feels snappier than chrome or (god forbid) firefox. Page load speeds feel quicker than other browsers. It's as stable as anything else I've used. The chrome extensions I use all work well. All in all, a very positive experience. I just switched to Vivaldi as my main browser after using v1.2 for a couple of days now. I only wish they bring some of the old opera features like text reflow, user CSS for page rendering, etc.

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