29 ms·

Vivaldi browser v1.8 released, with calendar-style browsing history

232 points by jonmccull 10y ago

jonmccull 10y ago
Lots of nice touches here to visualise your browsing data in Vivaldi, and adding History as a side panel in the browser. It's part of the 1.8 release of the browser launched today.
agumonkey 10y ago
Good, I don't think the visualisations are that helpful, but the timeline/calendar part is. Lots of things to do in browsing history.
arianvanp 10y ago
I'm a bit hesitant to use a closed source browser. Browsers these days have such a large attack surface... I wouldn't trust something that is not developed and updated in the open
- chairmanwow 10y ago
  I wonder if for a company with less security resources than Google, it actually more secure to develop to develop close-sourced? Is source helpful when developing exploits? Intuitively it seems that it would be extremely helpful for the devious minded-individual.
  - SXX 10y ago
    Their browser based on Chromium and when there is source available it's at least possible to see how fast they apply security fixes from upstream. For end-user of product there no way closed source browser can ever be more secure.
    - throwaway2048 10y ago
      to clarify be more secure _because_ it is closed source.
    - garyx 10y ago
      https://vivaldi.com/source/ https://vivaldi.com/source/
      - smhenderson 10y ago
        Huh, so what it the license then? I notice that 1.8 is the latest version for downloading but on the source page you linked to the latest is 1.7. Do they release source for previous version only? I looked around a bit and didn't see anything about the license on their site. If I missed it and someone has a link that would be appreciated!
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  - pjc50 10y ago
    Security researchers are very used to attacking binaries. The small bit of obscurity you get from hiding the source buys you very little security. And the most insecure internet-facing bits of code of the past decade - Flash and Acrobat PDF viewer - have always been closed source.
- gjjrfcbugxbhf 10y ago
  I would have moved to vivaldi a while ago if it were open source. I've tried it out and it seems nice and powerful. Yes I know they publish some source and no I don't use Chrome - for the same reason.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
    They actually haven't published much at all - just their chromium patches, not even close to enough to build the browser with.
- mtgx 10y ago
  As an "alternative browser" I prefer Brave. It seems to load tabs the fastest, even faster than Opera with its own native ad-blocking. I used to like Opera before, but I stopped using it when it was bought by that Chinese group, and after seeing what they did to Opera Max, and app I found essential for saving data roaming costs. But they pretty much killed its usefulness when they started pushing their ads through it all the time. https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/
  - balladeer 10y ago
    I wish http://midori-browser.org http://midori-browser.org would run on macOS natively. This is one app that I miss from my few months with (unstable) Elementary OS. Clean, simple, light, very functional.
  - sspiff 10y ago
    I second Brave! It's pretty fast, they have some smart security people on board to prevent them from making dumb mistakes (though that doesn't mean there can't be security flaws, obviously). Best of all, it's open source: https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/blob/master/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/blob/master/LICENSE....
  - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
    Brave is awful. It removes ads on websites and replaces them with their own ads, which is incredibly unethical. Please, please don't use it.
    - jpttsn 10y ago
      It's about as unethical as removing the packaging from groceries and serving them on your own plates.
      - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
        What?
      - lucideer 10y ago
- leni536 10y ago
  There is "Otter Browser"[1] that is FOSS. It aims to be an Opera 12 clone (it doesn't use presto of course). I don't use it but it seems to have active development. [1] https://otter-browser.org/ https://otter-browser.org/
- Accacin 10y ago
  I always used and loved Firefox because it was open source, but there have been a few articles now showing exactly how insecure Firefox is compared to Chrome. For this reason I've started to use Chrome until Firefox ups it's game.
  - deckiedan 10y ago
    Could you share those links, please?
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    Apologises in advance for using sarcasm and an analogy: Cars without the very very very best armour are completely unsafe. Don't use this nice, good, performant, practical and mostly bulletproof van, instead settle for the google armoured car because think if someone starts shooting at you with a 50 cal sniper rifle from a perfect angle! PS: for extra goodness the hood of the google car is welded (closed source even if we know the engine from chromium), pulling trailers (real extensions) is not possible and by default it records your every turn of the wheel and sends it to Google because you never know... PPS: Oh, at close range even the google car yields to a sniper rifle. Me: happily using Firefox. Happily driving a reasonable family car. There are certain places I won't drive that car at night but I can live with that. (Feel free to bookmark and reuse. : )
    - sigmar 10y ago
      You could have saved yourself some typing by just writing "risk assessment." Also- I think you vastly underestimate how often people get hacked through their browser.
      - reitanqild 10y ago
        Also- I think you vastly underestimate how often people get hacked through their browser. As a seasoned IT pro I should know. Yet in the last 20 years I was hit by a drive by exploit once. Other people: tons of times. By some weird coincidence this seems to be the same people who insist on trying to run the latest crack of Photoshop etc. I do explain to people that just as there are certain places you won't go at night there are certain places they shouldn't necessarily visit on the Internet. Other than that it is tech support scams, driver update scams etc, but not many drive by exploits on places I frequent (HN, occacionally dzone, reddit and slashdot, technical blogs, mainstream and not so mainstream (both very correct and somewhat uncorrect ones) news in my language etc.
- Osiris 10y ago
  You can open and edit all the UI JavaScript and CSS. While it's not open source, it does allow for local modifications of the entire code.
- lucideer 10y ago
  The most striking thing about Vivaldi's decision to remain closed-source is its provenance. Granted, von Tetzchner does have a history of working with closed-source software, but one would think after the loss of Presto (excepting that one brief leak[1]), that any ex-Opera heads would understand the potential value of open source and community contribution. As someone who put a lot into the old pre-12 Opera community, I will never use a closed-source browser again. This is not a commentary on quality - Opera was hands down the best browser ever built, despite being closed-source - but rather on commitment. If Vivaldi fails, all of its users will be left out in the cold. Again. Admittedly, it is not quite so bad a situation as Opera 12. Vivaldi is mostly/largely open source[2]. It still seems like a massive missed opportunity though. [1] https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2017/2017-01-12-Presto.md https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2017/2017-01-12-P... [2] https://vivaldi.net/userblogs/entry/a-few-words-about-open-source-vivaldi https://vivaldi.net/userblogs/entry/a-few-words-about-open-s...
  - jug 10y ago
    Yes, this is a bit concerning as Vivaldi development was last I heard self funded by Jon von Tetzchner (http://www.wionews.com/science-tech/wionspecial-ceo-explains-how-vivaldi-is-different-from-other-popular-browsers-9268 http://www.wionews.com/science-tech/wionspecial-ceo-explains...). He claims it's otherwise meant to get funds from search engine and bookmark bundle deals. Sounds like a fragile base to build on in a niche browser aimed for power users, who tend to be unusually quick at removing/reverting exactly such features? Isn't the way out of this via open source and community efforts essentially why Firefox has been successful despite not being OS bundled or backed by a huge search engine company like Google?
    - Touche 10y ago
      No, Firefox is successful because it's lineage from Netscape, and then subsequently releasing its browser during a time when the only competition was terrible. If Firefox had started today it would have the same problems as Vivaldi. Firefox definitely does benefit from community contributions (a lot), but the vast majority of the important code is written by paid employees.
- Endy 10y ago
  Given that I don't write code, I'm happier with the idea of a closed-source browser. The problem I have with using Vivaldi is that it's too much like any other Chrome hack without really bringing back the stuff that made Opera a wonderful browser in a fundamental and meaningful way. Then again, I feel that Presto (and the "limitations" of that engine) was one of the greatest strengths, along with a built-in mindset that the user should control all of what they load and/or see.
  - kiliankoe 10y ago
    > happier with the idea of a closed-source browser How come? Is there an upside to this I'm not seeing?
    - Normal_gaussian 10y ago
      After reading it a few times I presume the author is happier than 'somebody who writes code', in the same way that I'm happier to have my car stolen than somebody who needs their car every day.
      - kiliankoe 10y ago
        Ah thanks, that makes a lot more sense.
      - Endy 10y ago
        No, it's simple - if I don't know what I'm looking at, I don't want anybody who DOES know to get to look at it, either. The person who does know how to program in whatever language has an inherent advantage in that situation. Frankly, they also have no real ethical or legal imperative to prevent using whatever possible weakness they can exploit against me; doubly so if they can profit by it. Rather than the idea of "happier to have my car stolen, etc.", it's more, I'm happier to be the guy who rides the train rather than the bus. I don't know exactly how the train is operated (even if I know the concepts that make it work) - my knowledge extends only so far that I know that it does what it's supposed to. I'd go so far as to suggest that relatively few rail transit riders do know how to properly operate a train - and add to that, trains can only run on rails; i.e. they do one thing well (generally speaking - let's not discuss the number of issues NJTransit's had recently). The potential for hijacking is significantly reduced by inherent limitation and obscurity of control. So too do I want software along that same thought process. Relatively few users know how to do more than what they need to know; and even so those that would hijack it are locked into a specific set of operations.
- rimliu 10y ago
  Honest question: do you personally inspect the code of the browser of your choice; trust others to do that; or are just are you feeling better about having that possibility? Given the last few years of adventure in the OpenSSL land I make no assumption about superiority of the open sourced solutions security-wise. Hence the curiosity, what is the motivation of others.
  - jasonkostempski 10y ago
    Being hacked is only one of many security concerns. The authors of software don't always value the users wishes over their own, open source at least keeps them honest about what they're doing. A closed source browser (that I'm sure has some "telemetrics") who's main goal is to analyze browsing patterns is a privacy nightmare.
  - Veen 10y ago
    No software is perfect, but I'm more confident that vulnerabilities will be discovered and dealt with on open source projects. Proprietary projects have different incentives. I wouldn't have a clue what to do with browser code, and I don't inspect the code of the browser I use, but I am happier if people who can understand the code and who aren't dependent on the project for their living can check it.
- vasili111 10y ago
  Here are sources of old versions: https://vivaldi.com/source/ https://vivaldi.com/source/
- K_REY_C 10y ago
  Agree, but beyond attack surface I just don't want to become accustomed to something that can be shut down, aqui-hire/closed down, or otherwise disappeared via the ongoing advance of technology. This feature looks nice and I hope other browsers adopt and adapt and make more meaningful end-user advancements like this that are visible to the eye.
chairmanwow 10y ago
This seems like one of the first features that will make me want to use Vivaldi. It's a project I've been rooting for a while, and this might be the turning point for me.
- kagamine 10y ago
  I personally like the built-in notes app with folders, it opens in a sidebar. It's a nice looking browser too. Been using it on Win & Linux for the last few months and it's grown on me a lot.
nonsince 10y ago
> There is a reason for that – as a rule, browsers don’t really want you to use history. They want you to search and find things multiple times because search royalties are part of their business model. I think that that's a little paranoid. There's just little demand for a revamped history tab. I like this change a lot, but it's certainly a case of not knowing I wanted it until I saw it.
- napoleoncomplex 10y ago
  It might be paranoid from the aspect of history, but this is something that I definitely noticed with the URL bar when moving from Firefox to Chrome. Chrome will often offer the first result as a search query, instead of a website I visited before. Feels very clear that it's a big part of their business model. Firefox is much more aggressive in serving history URLs. If I type "videos" in Firefox, it will give me "reddit.com/r/videos" as the first result, since I've been there plenty of times, but Chrome insists on offering the first result as a generic Google query for "videos". Related sidenote, Firefox was also way superior in remembering which letters I type to go to which site in a more broad way. Chrome does it on a very basic level, prioritizing the sites that have the same string on the top level domain. Example, if I type "news" Chrome is always going to offer me sites that begin with "news" such as "news.ycombinator.com", even if I more often end up going to "randomsite.com/news" or "randomsite.com" whose page title is "News!" when typing that. Firefox remembers my preference, which means that after a few days of Firefox use, I'll have a bunch of 2 letter combos that take me to the exact site I want ("ne" to Hacker News, "vi" to reddit videos, "ap" to an apartment listing website which has "ap somewhere deep in their URL, or just in the title of the website, etc.), while Chrome will only give me top level URLs, and feels as useless on week 10 as it did on week 1. For sites where I don't remember the URL, I'll usually end up googling the page title in Chrome, while Firefox would serve me exactly what I need from history. Part of all of that is just shit UX on Chrome's part, but it's a safe bet that shit UX drives significant revenue for Google.
  - morsch 10y ago
    I never made the connection that the poor UX leads to more search results traffic (makes sense), but I've definitely noticed that the URL bar in Chrome is much worse than the one in Firefox. I remember the ridicule Mozilla got when they introduced the "awesome bar" (doesn't look like they're still calling it that), but it really did turn out pretty awesome. It replaces both bookmarks and history for me -- which is incredible if you think about it, those are both two very heavyweight interfaces. It also makes using Chrome very frustrating, since I keep entering keywords that I know Firefox would have indexed (such as a ticket number in a bugtracker), while Chrome sometimes does and sometimes doesn't.
nerform 10y ago
It would be great if Vivaldi implements all the features available in Vimium (chrome extension) natively.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jonmccull 10y ago
  Looks like the only thing missing is the shortcuts to select URLs to follow on the current page (which is pretty cool, btw). Otherwise you can do everything Vimium can by customising keyboards shortcuts and using the "Quick Commands" menu (similar function as the menu brought up when typing "O" in Vimium). Keyboard Shortcuts settings: vivaldi://settings/keyboard/ Quick Commands menu: https://help.vivaldi.com/article/quick-commands-menu/ https://help.vivaldi.com/article/quick-commands-menu/
sengork 10y ago
I am sure that Chrome users have similar if not higher level of history analytics/statistics but most of it seems to be only available to Google itself and not the end user. Yes there is the web history Google provides but it is very basic level of access.
mhaymo 10y ago
I've always wondered why browsers don't put the contents of pages I visit into something like clucene, so I can search pages in my history by their contents, not just their titles and metadata. I'm sure there are security and storage tradeoffs, but to me this seems like a much more complete solution than this revamped history UI.
- yread 10y ago
  Opera used to do that from 10.50 http://help.opera.com/Mac/10.50/en/history.html http://help.opera.com/Mac/10.50/en/history.html
- dingaling 10y ago
  There is a recoll extension for Firefox, which updates an index visible from the desktop program. Not quite as neat as integrated history searching in the browser but still useful. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/recoll-indexer-1/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/recoll-indexe... The one complication I found was ensuring that I blacklisted sensitive websites such as banks.
- waldir 10y ago
  You might be interested in https://worldbrain.io https://worldbrain.io
- NoGravitas 10y ago
  Back around 2000, I wrote a web proxy server that did this. It was a proxy server mainly because browser extensions were not a thing back then. I never released it because I never solved some performance issues (it was using a very naive implementation in a lot of ways). I did get a lot of use out of it for about a year, though. I'm sure there are security/privacy trade-offs. Storage is not such a big thing. I found that index size leveled off somewhat after a point. It probably would use enough storage to make it unreasonable for mobile browsers.
  - mistermann 10y ago
    Man, if this was a thing I would definitely run it. All the plugin approaches fall down for me as I use FF and Chrome interchangeably for different tasks. This would be a good additional feature for Pinboard perhaps (which I've been intending to subscribe to for ages but never get around to).
kuschku 10y ago
Now, this is an example of what an extension could provide in Firefox. And still can, today. But in a few weeks, in Firefox stuff like this will be impossible – as the browser devs refuse to implement these features, and refuse to give extension devs the ability to override such browser-native features while still feeling native. I built a similar extension for Firefox which I didn’t publish (the reasons will be obvious at the end of this paragraph), where I log the entire browser history on my own server, transform all loaded pages via reader mode, also log them, then provide fulltext search in all of them, which sites were visited after another, how did I open tabs, etc, forever. This means I can search history for years, with postgres fulltext search, and find anything I’ve visited or read about, pages I saw before or after, etc. It’s an amazing tool, but obviously once Firefox enforces WebExtensions, it’s useless, because I can’t integrate it with the omnibar or with the history tool anymore.
- philbo 10y ago
  I've read similar complaints to this before, yet when I look at the documentation for WebExtensions it seems like there's plenty of scope to do what's wanted. In this case, what is wrong with the history [1] and omnibox [2] APIs? [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/history https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/AP... [2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/omnibox https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/AP...
  - kuschku 10y ago
    I don’t want to expand on the history the browser provides. I want to completely replace every bit. I want to be the history API. That’s the problem. I don’t want to glue a new frontend on top of what exists, I want to completely replace every history API the browser provides, and replace it with my own. I, as extension dev, can’t remove the history API’s implementation, and build my own implementation. I can’t change what backend the browser’s history UI uses, or replace that UI. I can’t hijack the history button in the menu, or replace it. With Firefox, today, with lots of hackery, I can get pretty close. But I still can’t fully get there. With the new WebExtensions, I can only add UI – but not replace UI, or add backend functionality, or replace backend functionality.
notum 10y ago
Where's the GitHub link? I usually download my browsers using a repository.
bshimmin 10y ago
This seems very cool and all, but surely 99.99% of regular users have never really thought about seeing their browsing history in a calendar view, or wanted or cared for statistics about it. I am fairly sure a significant proportion of users aren't even totally sure how to access their history - apart from during brief moments of paranoia when they want to keep nefarious things from a partner - and, if they really were looking for something they know they'd seen before, surely they'd just think, "I found this before, I'll just google for it again." (Similarly bookmarks, frankly.) I guess my point is that this probably appeals to a very small subset of users, but it seems like a massively over-engineered solution for the majority of people, and feels a little bit like the result of trying to answer the question "What can we do that's different?" with a "Wouldn't it be cool if...", rather than solving problems that people genuinely face. Am I being unfair?
- lucideer 10y ago
  > 99.99% of regular users My read on the philosophy of Vivaldi is that it's deliberately developed for the minority of users. It's a reaction to the trend of browser features tending towards a generic middle. They make take it too far (developing features that 1 or 2 users want), but it's still somewhat refreshing to see anyone set out with that kind of mindset.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  Is making a browser for power users a bad thing? Does all software have to be lowest common denominator?
  - bshimmin 10y ago
    Absolutely not - and I didn't mean my post to come across as negative. If this is purely a feature intended for power users - or if the whole piece of software is intended for them - then that's totally fine. Aside from the slightly meaningless strapline, a lot of the copy on the Vivaldi homepage is definitely promoting the sort of customisation only power users care about - so perhaps you're bang on the money there. From my own perspective, I can't quite decide whether I'm not a power user because this feature doesn't much interest me (which I'm fine with), or whether it would interest me more if I actually tried it; I guess I am interested in the product journey that led to this being built, because it is clearly a large amount of effort for a - to me - quite unusual tent-pole. Likewise, for me, it's hard to see a doughnut chart of "Link transition types" as anything more than a novelty that you would look at once and then hide.
mdekkers 10y ago
I switched to Vivaldi from Firefox a few weeks ago, and like it a lot. I am missing tree-style tabs a lot but the horizontal tabs come close.
- jonmccull 10y ago
  You can vote for new features on the Vivaldi forum here: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/14250/feature-requests-for-1-8-1-9/3 https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/14250/feature-requests-for-1...
  - mdekkers 10y ago
    Yeah, I know, thanks :) Somebody actually released a treestyle extension yesterday which I found a few hours ago, and it is really quite decent already! https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/15332/tree-tabs/14 https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/15332/tree-tabs/14
    - mistermann 10y ago
      Wow....any chance you could post a screencap????
    - dvdgsng 10y ago
      very interesting, thanks!
duiker101 10y ago
I really like Vivaldi, I just would like if they allowed for custom start pages.
- jonmccull 10y ago
  Do you mean custom URL for Startpage? Setting for that here: vivaldi://settings/startup/ Or something different, e.g. customising the "Speed Dial" pages further?
  - duiker101 10y ago
    You just saved my life, I see I can put an extension URL in the start page. This is perfect. Vivaldi is now my go-to browser ;) Thanks!
    - jonmccull 10y ago
      Nice!
towb 10y ago
Nice, but… This is not the history update I wanted from Vivaldi. The url autocompletion is annoying. I think it goes for the sub pages I clicked my way to, that shows up the most in history, instead of just the domain and the home page. I may click myself to my facebook profile 10 times during a fb session, but I don't want to land there. Anyway, I'm using Vivaldi on Linux because the clean looks. No ugly borders or any of the other ugly Linux things. That and tab stacking.
- nhumrich 10y ago
  Almost every Linux WM let's you disable borders on certain windows. That's what I do on firefox.
  - towb 10y ago
    Yeah, but there is a lot of uglyness going on with linux programs over all, where different settings and themes doesn't really help. Vivaldi looks good on it's own and has decent settings for changing the looks, thats what I like. Maybe FF is the same.
konart 10y ago
The most notable feature is the partial links selection, line in old Opera. Now we need sync and attachable dev tools window.
lloydatkinson 10y ago
What a crappy title. Why isn't it "Vivaldi browser releases calendar view mode for history"?
- sctb 10y ago
  Thanks, a moderator updated it a little while ago from “Vivaldi browser v1.8 released, with more useful browsing history”.
chrismorgan 10y ago
I just want my browser to save every page that I load and make it full-text searchable.
jorams 10y ago
One alternative view on history that I think could be very useful, is a graph showing not just where I was, but also how I got there and where I went. It happens fairly often that I remember reading something through, say, HN, but I have no clue where the actual post was. Right now the best solution is to search for related words in my history and hope there isn't too much noise, or to search the site I remember coming from. That's incredibly suboptimal. In fact, this is probably the reason I like Tree Style Tab[1] so much. Instead of a simple list, it shows my tabs in the context I opened them from. [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
- nachtigall 10y ago
  > but also how I got there and where I went The tails project experiments with this in Servo and browser.html: https://medium.freecodecamp.com/lossless-web-navigation-with-trails-9cd48c0abb56 https://medium.freecodecamp.com/lossless-web-navigation-with... Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13518919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13518919
- lmkg 10y ago
  Ok, this is one of those ideas that is clearly dumb but still just might work... you could hack a personal history report out of Google Analytics. You create a browser extension that adds the GA pagetag to every site you visit. Have the Client ID isolated by tab, but persist from one domain to another, so every tab is reported as a different "User." Then you can use the Behavior Flow reports to see the next-page/previous-page/next-domain/previous-domain data for everything you viewed! This of course has the enormous caveat that now all your browser history is setting in a Google Analytics account, instead of just only on the browser. But considered Congress just allowed your ISP to sell that data anyways, maybe that's not such a big drawback anymore?
  - cpeterso 10y ago
    Mozilla prototyped something like that back in 2014 called the "Interest Dashboard". The extension is no longer supported however. http://www.ghacks.net/2014/11/14/firefoxs-interest-dashboard-provides-you-with-internet-interest-information/ http://www.ghacks.net/2014/11/14/firefoxs-interest-dashboard...
pingec 10y ago
Any news on the mail client? They have been "working on it" for a long time now...
msimpson 10y ago
I've found Vivaldi is becoming slower and slower with each update to the point that I'm starting to lose confidence in the browser itself. https://forum.vivaldi.net/search?term=slow&in=titlesposts&sortBy=relevance&sortDirection=desc&showAs=posts https://forum.vivaldi.net/search?term=slow&in=titlesposts&so... http://www.pcworld.com/article/3052560/browsers/vivaldi-browser-review-powerful-features-outshine-slightly-sluggish-performance.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3052560/browsers/vivaldi-brow... https://thequo.wordpress.com/2016/04/23/one-glaring-problem-of-the-new-vivaldi-browser/ https://thequo.wordpress.com/2016/04/23/one-glaring-problem-... etc...
NoGravitas 10y ago
I love the idea of doing something to make history more useful. Firefox is doing experiments with this, too (activity stream), but this is a lot more comprehensive. I've tried Vivaldi and really like it, but I'm pretty dedicated to Firefox. I'd probably play with Vivaldi more if they had a Mozilla sync adapter.
nhumrich 10y ago
All these features are pretty cool, but why can I still not dock the dev tools? Developers are the most likely early adopters, like myself. But not being able to dock the dev tools is seriously a killer. I've been watching Vivaldi from beta, and have enjoyed watching it, but every version I open it up, remember I can't dock dev tools, then close it. If you want to get me using Vivaldi, it's really simple: let me dock the dev tools.
- Touche 10y ago
  Brave has the same problem. I think it's a problem with Electron that makes doing that difficult.
- jonmccull 10y ago
  Docked dev tools is in active development at Vivaldi at the moment, so fingers crossed it will be included in an upcoming release. It's easily one of the most requested features we get, understandably, and definitely not being ignored. :)
johnchristopher 10y ago
If looked for a URL I visited two days ago and click it does the URL jump to today or is there now two entries for that same URL ? (I wish it's the second option)
mrcactu5 10y ago
it looks beautiful. sometimes applications like this are hesitant to share their source code b/c of their business model or something. are there any good "hackable" web browsers these days?
- C0d3r 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbl
inthewoods 10y ago
I'm kept on Chrome just because of it's ability to have multiple browser profiles - e.g. work and personal - from what I've seen, neither Safari, Opera, Vivaldi or Brave support this - am I wrong? My main beef with Chrome isn't privacy - it's battery usage. I keep looking for a browser that doesn't kill my battery (MBP) but allows for multiple profiles.
- JohnTHaller 10y ago
  It's worth noting that Firefox offers multiple profiles support (since before Chrome existed). I can't speak to battery life on the MBP, though, as I'm a Windows user.
  - inthewoods 10y ago
    Yeah Firefox isn't much better sadly in terms of battery.
- cpeterso 10y ago
  Mozilla is developing a feature (currently) called Containers that allows you to easily maintain different cookie jars (work, personal, shopping, etc) per tab. I have multiple Google accounts and this Container feature is the only way I can use the effectively in the same browser session. :) You can install the Containers experiment extension here: https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers
flippyhead 10y ago
At the risk of self promotion I made http://fetching.io http://fetching.io to solve exactly this problem across all the browsers I use.
digi_owl 10y ago
Sadly the touch screen support is still more miss than hit. the address bar brings up the Win10 OSK just fine. But any input areas in pages require that i bring up the keyboard manually. And the whole browser seems to go unresponsive to touch input at irregular intervals. Sad really, as they give me the ability to scale the UI as i see fit. Thus making the various elements that much easier to hit with a finger.
known 10y ago
Not much difference in http://arewefastyet.com http://arewefastyet.com
innocentoldguy 10y ago
I like Vivaldi well enough. The features I use most are tab stacking, page tiling, and full-page screenshots.
anigbrowl 10y ago
This is innovative and might be enough to get me to switch browsers. I'm perplexed at why Firefox, Chrome and IE only ever seem to innovate the engine and have basically given up on doing anything novel with UI. OK performance is nice to have but frankly I think that's just managers shoving resources at that because they know how to measure it and a 10.3% increase in speed or memory efficiency or something is easy to sell in a meeting. UI innovation is much harder to quantify, requires more work to sell, and the payoff takes much longer to manifest, not least because every change will generate a certain number of complaints from people who think their pet issue should have been addressed first, like UI designers are interchangeable with performance specialists. Chrome shot to first place because it kicked Firefox's ass on performance and IE's ass on reliable rendering (an opinion which you may or may not agree with). But while extensions are wonderful they can't and don't replace core UI innovation. And tbh I'm really bored with Chrome at this point; from a user point of view nothing significantly new has happened for a really long time. Look at the bookmark management, for instance. It's been the same since forever, and if I want to socialize that information or turn it into a feed or something I have to go looking for third-party solutions, which are thin on the ground because people are reluctant to develop too much for a platform over which they have little or no control.
- talklittle 10y ago
  Firefox Test Pilot [1] is a more recent approach to testing new UI in Firefox. It's entirely extension based. I think this is a smart approach because it lets Mozilla quickly test new UI features without building it into the core browser before it's been vetted. However its full potential is not ready yet, since Firefox has been migrating to WebExtensions, and this has not fully stabilized yet. Long term I think the WebExtensions move also makes sense, since it gives extension authors a stable API to work with, instead of XUL which can break with each Firefox update. And the architecture makes it easier to optimize threading performance and some form of security sandboxing. So the point is, I think more UI experimentation is on Firefox's horizon, but they have to first stabilize the technical architecture before they can go full throttle on that. [1]: https://testpilot.firefox.com/ https://testpilot.firefox.com/
  - 10y ago
DeepYogurt 10y ago
BRILLIANT!

232 points by jonmccull 10y ago

Lots of nice touches here to visualise your browsing data in Vivaldi, and adding History as a side panel in the browser. It's part of the 1.8 release of the browser launched today.

agumonkey 10y ago

Good, I don't think the visualisations are that helpful, but the timeline/calendar part is. Lots of things to do in browsing history.

arianvanp 10y ago

I'm a bit hesitant to use a closed source browser. Browsers these days have such a large attack surface... I wouldn't trust something that is not developed and updated in the open

chairmanwow 10y ago
I wonder if for a company with less security resources than Google, it actually more secure to develop to develop close-sourced? Is source helpful when developing exploits? Intuitively it seems that it would be extremely helpful for the devious minded-individual.
- SXX 10y ago
  Their browser based on Chromium and when there is source available it's at least possible to see how fast they apply security fixes from upstream. For end-user of product there no way closed source browser can ever be more secure.
  - throwaway2048 10y ago
    to clarify be more secure _because_ it is closed source.
  - garyx 10y ago
    https://vivaldi.com/source/ https://vivaldi.com/source/
    - smhenderson 10y ago
      Huh, so what it the license then? I notice that 1.8 is the latest version for downloading but on the source page you linked to the latest is 1.7. Do they release source for previous version only? I looked around a bit and didn't see anything about the license on their site. If I missed it and someone has a link that would be appreciated!
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- pjc50 10y ago
  Security researchers are very used to attacking binaries. The small bit of obscurity you get from hiding the source buys you very little security. And the most insecure internet-facing bits of code of the past decade - Flash and Acrobat PDF viewer - have always been closed source.
gjjrfcbugxbhf 10y ago
I would have moved to vivaldi a while ago if it were open source. I've tried it out and it seems nice and powerful. Yes I know they publish some source and no I don't use Chrome - for the same reason.
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
  They actually haven't published much at all - just their chromium patches, not even close to enough to build the browser with.
mtgx 10y ago
As an "alternative browser" I prefer Brave. It seems to load tabs the fastest, even faster than Opera with its own native ad-blocking. I used to like Opera before, but I stopped using it when it was bought by that Chinese group, and after seeing what they did to Opera Max, and app I found essential for saving data roaming costs. But they pretty much killed its usefulness when they started pushing their ads through it all the time. https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/
- balladeer 10y ago
  I wish http://midori-browser.org http://midori-browser.org would run on macOS natively. This is one app that I miss from my few months with (unstable) Elementary OS. Clean, simple, light, very functional.
- sspiff 10y ago
  I second Brave! It's pretty fast, they have some smart security people on board to prevent them from making dumb mistakes (though that doesn't mean there can't be security flaws, obviously). Best of all, it's open source: https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/blob/master/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/blob/master/LICENSE....
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
  Brave is awful. It removes ads on websites and replaces them with their own ads, which is incredibly unethical. Please, please don't use it.
  - jpttsn 10y ago
    It's about as unethical as removing the packaging from groceries and serving them on your own plates.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
      What?
    - lucideer 10y ago
leni536 10y ago
There is "Otter Browser"[1] that is FOSS. It aims to be an Opera 12 clone (it doesn't use presto of course). I don't use it but it seems to have active development. [1] https://otter-browser.org/ https://otter-browser.org/
Accacin 10y ago
I always used and loved Firefox because it was open source, but there have been a few articles now showing exactly how insecure Firefox is compared to Chrome. For this reason I've started to use Chrome until Firefox ups it's game.
- deckiedan 10y ago
  Could you share those links, please?
- reitanqild 10y ago
  Apologises in advance for using sarcasm and an analogy: Cars without the very very very best armour are completely unsafe. Don't use this nice, good, performant, practical and mostly bulletproof van, instead settle for the google armoured car because think if someone starts shooting at you with a 50 cal sniper rifle from a perfect angle! PS: for extra goodness the hood of the google car is welded (closed source even if we know the engine from chromium), pulling trailers (real extensions) is not possible and by default it records your every turn of the wheel and sends it to Google because you never know... PPS: Oh, at close range even the google car yields to a sniper rifle. Me: happily using Firefox. Happily driving a reasonable family car. There are certain places I won't drive that car at night but I can live with that. (Feel free to bookmark and reuse. : )
  - sigmar 10y ago
    You could have saved yourself some typing by just writing "risk assessment." Also- I think you vastly underestimate how often people get hacked through their browser.
    - reitanqild 10y ago
      Also- I think you vastly underestimate how often people get hacked through their browser. As a seasoned IT pro I should know. Yet in the last 20 years I was hit by a drive by exploit once. Other people: tons of times. By some weird coincidence this seems to be the same people who insist on trying to run the latest crack of Photoshop etc. I do explain to people that just as there are certain places you won't go at night there are certain places they shouldn't necessarily visit on the Internet. Other than that it is tech support scams, driver update scams etc, but not many drive by exploits on places I frequent (HN, occacionally dzone, reddit and slashdot, technical blogs, mainstream and not so mainstream (both very correct and somewhat uncorrect ones) news in my language etc.
Osiris 10y ago
You can open and edit all the UI JavaScript and CSS. While it's not open source, it does allow for local modifications of the entire code.
lucideer 10y ago
The most striking thing about Vivaldi's decision to remain closed-source is its provenance. Granted, von Tetzchner does have a history of working with closed-source software, but one would think after the loss of Presto (excepting that one brief leak[1]), that any ex-Opera heads would understand the potential value of open source and community contribution. As someone who put a lot into the old pre-12 Opera community, I will never use a closed-source browser again. This is not a commentary on quality - Opera was hands down the best browser ever built, despite being closed-source - but rather on commitment. If Vivaldi fails, all of its users will be left out in the cold. Again. Admittedly, it is not quite so bad a situation as Opera 12. Vivaldi is mostly/largely open source[2]. It still seems like a massive missed opportunity though. [1] https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2017/2017-01-12-Presto.md https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2017/2017-01-12-P... [2] https://vivaldi.net/userblogs/entry/a-few-words-about-open-source-vivaldi https://vivaldi.net/userblogs/entry/a-few-words-about-open-s...
- jug 10y ago
  Yes, this is a bit concerning as Vivaldi development was last I heard self funded by Jon von Tetzchner (http://www.wionews.com/science-tech/wionspecial-ceo-explains-how-vivaldi-is-different-from-other-popular-browsers-9268 http://www.wionews.com/science-tech/wionspecial-ceo-explains...). He claims it's otherwise meant to get funds from search engine and bookmark bundle deals. Sounds like a fragile base to build on in a niche browser aimed for power users, who tend to be unusually quick at removing/reverting exactly such features? Isn't the way out of this via open source and community efforts essentially why Firefox has been successful despite not being OS bundled or backed by a huge search engine company like Google?
  - Touche 10y ago
    No, Firefox is successful because it's lineage from Netscape, and then subsequently releasing its browser during a time when the only competition was terrible. If Firefox had started today it would have the same problems as Vivaldi. Firefox definitely does benefit from community contributions (a lot), but the vast majority of the important code is written by paid employees.
Endy 10y ago
Given that I don't write code, I'm happier with the idea of a closed-source browser. The problem I have with using Vivaldi is that it's too much like any other Chrome hack without really bringing back the stuff that made Opera a wonderful browser in a fundamental and meaningful way. Then again, I feel that Presto (and the "limitations" of that engine) was one of the greatest strengths, along with a built-in mindset that the user should control all of what they load and/or see.
- kiliankoe 10y ago
  > happier with the idea of a closed-source browser How come? Is there an upside to this I'm not seeing?
  - Normal_gaussian 10y ago
    After reading it a few times I presume the author is happier than 'somebody who writes code', in the same way that I'm happier to have my car stolen than somebody who needs their car every day.
    - kiliankoe 10y ago
      Ah thanks, that makes a lot more sense.
    - Endy 10y ago
      No, it's simple - if I don't know what I'm looking at, I don't want anybody who DOES know to get to look at it, either. The person who does know how to program in whatever language has an inherent advantage in that situation. Frankly, they also have no real ethical or legal imperative to prevent using whatever possible weakness they can exploit against me; doubly so if they can profit by it. Rather than the idea of "happier to have my car stolen, etc.", it's more, I'm happier to be the guy who rides the train rather than the bus. I don't know exactly how the train is operated (even if I know the concepts that make it work) - my knowledge extends only so far that I know that it does what it's supposed to. I'd go so far as to suggest that relatively few rail transit riders do know how to properly operate a train - and add to that, trains can only run on rails; i.e. they do one thing well (generally speaking - let's not discuss the number of issues NJTransit's had recently). The potential for hijacking is significantly reduced by inherent limitation and obscurity of control. So too do I want software along that same thought process. Relatively few users know how to do more than what they need to know; and even so those that would hijack it are locked into a specific set of operations.
rimliu 10y ago
Honest question: do you personally inspect the code of the browser of your choice; trust others to do that; or are just are you feeling better about having that possibility? Given the last few years of adventure in the OpenSSL land I make no assumption about superiority of the open sourced solutions security-wise. Hence the curiosity, what is the motivation of others.
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  Being hacked is only one of many security concerns. The authors of software don't always value the users wishes over their own, open source at least keeps them honest about what they're doing. A closed source browser (that I'm sure has some "telemetrics") who's main goal is to analyze browsing patterns is a privacy nightmare.
- Veen 10y ago
  No software is perfect, but I'm more confident that vulnerabilities will be discovered and dealt with on open source projects. Proprietary projects have different incentives. I wouldn't have a clue what to do with browser code, and I don't inspect the code of the browser I use, but I am happier if people who can understand the code and who aren't dependent on the project for their living can check it.
vasili111 10y ago
Here are sources of old versions: https://vivaldi.com/source/ https://vivaldi.com/source/
K_REY_C 10y ago
Agree, but beyond attack surface I just don't want to become accustomed to something that can be shut down, aqui-hire/closed down, or otherwise disappeared via the ongoing advance of technology. This feature looks nice and I hope other browsers adopt and adapt and make more meaningful end-user advancements like this that are visible to the eye.

chairmanwow 10y ago

This seems like one of the first features that will make me want to use Vivaldi. It's a project I've been rooting for a while, and this might be the turning point for me.

kagamine 10y ago
I personally like the built-in notes app with folders, it opens in a sidebar. It's a nice looking browser too. Been using it on Win & Linux for the last few months and it's grown on me a lot.

nonsince 10y ago

> There is a reason for that – as a rule, browsers don’t really want you to use history. They want you to search and find things multiple times because search royalties are part of their business model. I think that that's a little paranoid. There's just little demand for a revamped history tab. I like this change a lot, but it's certainly a case of not knowing I wanted it until I saw it.

napoleoncomplex 10y ago
It might be paranoid from the aspect of history, but this is something that I definitely noticed with the URL bar when moving from Firefox to Chrome. Chrome will often offer the first result as a search query, instead of a website I visited before. Feels very clear that it's a big part of their business model. Firefox is much more aggressive in serving history URLs. If I type "videos" in Firefox, it will give me "reddit.com/r/videos" as the first result, since I've been there plenty of times, but Chrome insists on offering the first result as a generic Google query for "videos". Related sidenote, Firefox was also way superior in remembering which letters I type to go to which site in a more broad way. Chrome does it on a very basic level, prioritizing the sites that have the same string on the top level domain. Example, if I type "news" Chrome is always going to offer me sites that begin with "news" such as "news.ycombinator.com", even if I more often end up going to "randomsite.com/news" or "randomsite.com" whose page title is "News!" when typing that. Firefox remembers my preference, which means that after a few days of Firefox use, I'll have a bunch of 2 letter combos that take me to the exact site I want ("ne" to Hacker News, "vi" to reddit videos, "ap" to an apartment listing website which has "ap somewhere deep in their URL, or just in the title of the website, etc.), while Chrome will only give me top level URLs, and feels as useless on week 10 as it did on week 1. For sites where I don't remember the URL, I'll usually end up googling the page title in Chrome, while Firefox would serve me exactly what I need from history. Part of all of that is just shit UX on Chrome's part, but it's a safe bet that shit UX drives significant revenue for Google.
- morsch 10y ago
  I never made the connection that the poor UX leads to more search results traffic (makes sense), but I've definitely noticed that the URL bar in Chrome is much worse than the one in Firefox. I remember the ridicule Mozilla got when they introduced the "awesome bar" (doesn't look like they're still calling it that), but it really did turn out pretty awesome. It replaces both bookmarks and history for me -- which is incredible if you think about it, those are both two very heavyweight interfaces. It also makes using Chrome very frustrating, since I keep entering keywords that I know Firefox would have indexed (such as a ticket number in a bugtracker), while Chrome sometimes does and sometimes doesn't.

nerform 10y ago

It would be great if Vivaldi implements all the features available in Vimium (chrome extension) natively.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jonmccull 10y ago
Looks like the only thing missing is the shortcuts to select URLs to follow on the current page (which is pretty cool, btw). Otherwise you can do everything Vimium can by customising keyboards shortcuts and using the "Quick Commands" menu (similar function as the menu brought up when typing "O" in Vimium). Keyboard Shortcuts settings: vivaldi://settings/keyboard/ Quick Commands menu: https://help.vivaldi.com/article/quick-commands-menu/ https://help.vivaldi.com/article/quick-commands-menu/

sengork 10y ago

I am sure that Chrome users have similar if not higher level of history analytics/statistics but most of it seems to be only available to Google itself and not the end user. Yes there is the web history Google provides but it is very basic level of access.

mhaymo 10y ago

I've always wondered why browsers don't put the contents of pages I visit into something like clucene, so I can search pages in my history by their contents, not just their titles and metadata. I'm sure there are security and storage tradeoffs, but to me this seems like a much more complete solution than this revamped history UI.

yread 10y ago
Opera used to do that from 10.50 http://help.opera.com/Mac/10.50/en/history.html http://help.opera.com/Mac/10.50/en/history.html
dingaling 10y ago
There is a recoll extension for Firefox, which updates an index visible from the desktop program. Not quite as neat as integrated history searching in the browser but still useful. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/recoll-indexer-1/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/recoll-indexe... The one complication I found was ensuring that I blacklisted sensitive websites such as banks.
waldir 10y ago
You might be interested in https://worldbrain.io https://worldbrain.io
NoGravitas 10y ago
Back around 2000, I wrote a web proxy server that did this. It was a proxy server mainly because browser extensions were not a thing back then. I never released it because I never solved some performance issues (it was using a very naive implementation in a lot of ways). I did get a lot of use out of it for about a year, though. I'm sure there are security/privacy trade-offs. Storage is not such a big thing. I found that index size leveled off somewhat after a point. It probably would use enough storage to make it unreasonable for mobile browsers.
- mistermann 10y ago
  Man, if this was a thing I would definitely run it. All the plugin approaches fall down for me as I use FF and Chrome interchangeably for different tasks. This would be a good additional feature for Pinboard perhaps (which I've been intending to subscribe to for ages but never get around to).

kuschku 10y ago

Now, this is an example of what an extension could provide in Firefox. And still can, today. But in a few weeks, in Firefox stuff like this will be impossible – as the browser devs refuse to implement these features, and refuse to give extension devs the ability to override such browser-native features while still feeling native. I built a similar extension for Firefox which I didn’t publish (the reasons will be obvious at the end of this paragraph), where I log the entire browser history on my own server, transform all loaded pages via reader mode, also log them, then provide fulltext search in all of them, which sites were visited after another, how did I open tabs, etc, forever. This means I can search history for years, with postgres fulltext search, and find anything I’ve visited or read about, pages I saw before or after, etc. It’s an amazing tool, but obviously once Firefox enforces WebExtensions, it’s useless, because I can’t integrate it with the omnibar or with the history tool anymore.

philbo 10y ago
I've read similar complaints to this before, yet when I look at the documentation for WebExtensions it seems like there's plenty of scope to do what's wanted. In this case, what is wrong with the history [1] and omnibox [2] APIs? [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/history https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/AP... [2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/omnibox https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/AP...
- kuschku 10y ago
  I don’t want to expand on the history the browser provides. I want to completely replace every bit. I want to be the history API. That’s the problem. I don’t want to glue a new frontend on top of what exists, I want to completely replace every history API the browser provides, and replace it with my own. I, as extension dev, can’t remove the history API’s implementation, and build my own implementation. I can’t change what backend the browser’s history UI uses, or replace that UI. I can’t hijack the history button in the menu, or replace it. With Firefox, today, with lots of hackery, I can get pretty close. But I still can’t fully get there. With the new WebExtensions, I can only add UI – but not replace UI, or add backend functionality, or replace backend functionality.

notum 10y ago

Where's the GitHub link? I usually download my browsers using a repository.

bshimmin 10y ago

This seems very cool and all, but surely 99.99% of regular users have never really thought about seeing their browsing history in a calendar view, or wanted or cared for statistics about it. I am fairly sure a significant proportion of users aren't even totally sure how to access their history - apart from during brief moments of paranoia when they want to keep nefarious things from a partner - and, if they really were looking for something they know they'd seen before, surely they'd just think, "I found this before, I'll just google for it again." (Similarly bookmarks, frankly.) I guess my point is that this probably appeals to a very small subset of users, but it seems like a massively over-engineered solution for the majority of people, and feels a little bit like the result of trying to answer the question "What can we do that's different?" with a "Wouldn't it be cool if...", rather than solving problems that people genuinely face. Am I being unfair?

lucideer 10y ago
> 99.99% of regular users My read on the philosophy of Vivaldi is that it's deliberately developed for the minority of users. It's a reaction to the trend of browser features tending towards a generic middle. They make take it too far (developing features that 1 or 2 users want), but it's still somewhat refreshing to see anyone set out with that kind of mindset.
kalleboo 10y ago
Is making a browser for power users a bad thing? Does all software have to be lowest common denominator?
- bshimmin 10y ago
  Absolutely not - and I didn't mean my post to come across as negative. If this is purely a feature intended for power users - or if the whole piece of software is intended for them - then that's totally fine. Aside from the slightly meaningless strapline, a lot of the copy on the Vivaldi homepage is definitely promoting the sort of customisation only power users care about - so perhaps you're bang on the money there. From my own perspective, I can't quite decide whether I'm not a power user because this feature doesn't much interest me (which I'm fine with), or whether it would interest me more if I actually tried it; I guess I am interested in the product journey that led to this being built, because it is clearly a large amount of effort for a - to me - quite unusual tent-pole. Likewise, for me, it's hard to see a doughnut chart of "Link transition types" as anything more than a novelty that you would look at once and then hide.

mdekkers 10y ago

I switched to Vivaldi from Firefox a few weeks ago, and like it a lot. I am missing tree-style tabs a lot but the horizontal tabs come close.

jonmccull 10y ago
You can vote for new features on the Vivaldi forum here: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/14250/feature-requests-for-1-8-1-9/3 https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/14250/feature-requests-for-1...
- mdekkers 10y ago
  Yeah, I know, thanks :) Somebody actually released a treestyle extension yesterday which I found a few hours ago, and it is really quite decent already! https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/15332/tree-tabs/14 https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/15332/tree-tabs/14
  - mistermann 10y ago
    Wow....any chance you could post a screencap????
  - dvdgsng 10y ago
    very interesting, thanks!

duiker101 10y ago

I really like Vivaldi, I just would like if they allowed for custom start pages.

jonmccull 10y ago
Do you mean custom URL for Startpage? Setting for that here: vivaldi://settings/startup/ Or something different, e.g. customising the "Speed Dial" pages further?
- duiker101 10y ago
  You just saved my life, I see I can put an extension URL in the start page. This is perfect. Vivaldi is now my go-to browser ;) Thanks!
  - jonmccull 10y ago
    Nice!

towb 10y ago

Nice, but… This is not the history update I wanted from Vivaldi. The url autocompletion is annoying. I think it goes for the sub pages I clicked my way to, that shows up the most in history, instead of just the domain and the home page. I may click myself to my facebook profile 10 times during a fb session, but I don't want to land there. Anyway, I'm using Vivaldi on Linux because the clean looks. No ugly borders or any of the other ugly Linux things. That and tab stacking.

nhumrich 10y ago
Almost every Linux WM let's you disable borders on certain windows. That's what I do on firefox.
- towb 10y ago
  Yeah, but there is a lot of uglyness going on with linux programs over all, where different settings and themes doesn't really help. Vivaldi looks good on it's own and has decent settings for changing the looks, thats what I like. Maybe FF is the same.

konart 10y ago

The most notable feature is the partial links selection, line in old Opera. Now we need sync and attachable dev tools window.

lloydatkinson 10y ago

What a crappy title. Why isn't it "Vivaldi browser releases calendar view mode for history"?

sctb 10y ago
Thanks, a moderator updated it a little while ago from “Vivaldi browser v1.8 released, with more useful browsing history”.

chrismorgan 10y ago

I just want my browser to save every page that I load and make it full-text searchable.

jorams 10y ago

One alternative view on history that I think could be very useful, is a graph showing not just where I was, but also how I got there and where I went. It happens fairly often that I remember reading something through, say, HN, but I have no clue where the actual post was. Right now the best solution is to search for related words in my history and hope there isn't too much noise, or to search the site I remember coming from. That's incredibly suboptimal. In fact, this is probably the reason I like Tree Style Tab[1] so much. Instead of a simple list, it shows my tabs in the context I opened them from. [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

nachtigall 10y ago
> but also how I got there and where I went The tails project experiments with this in Servo and browser.html: https://medium.freecodecamp.com/lossless-web-navigation-with-trails-9cd48c0abb56 https://medium.freecodecamp.com/lossless-web-navigation-with... Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13518919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13518919
lmkg 10y ago
Ok, this is one of those ideas that is clearly dumb but still just might work... you could hack a personal history report out of Google Analytics. You create a browser extension that adds the GA pagetag to every site you visit. Have the Client ID isolated by tab, but persist from one domain to another, so every tab is reported as a different "User." Then you can use the Behavior Flow reports to see the next-page/previous-page/next-domain/previous-domain data for everything you viewed! This of course has the enormous caveat that now all your browser history is setting in a Google Analytics account, instead of just only on the browser. But considered Congress just allowed your ISP to sell that data anyways, maybe that's not such a big drawback anymore?
- cpeterso 10y ago
  Mozilla prototyped something like that back in 2014 called the "Interest Dashboard". The extension is no longer supported however. http://www.ghacks.net/2014/11/14/firefoxs-interest-dashboard-provides-you-with-internet-interest-information/ http://www.ghacks.net/2014/11/14/firefoxs-interest-dashboard...

pingec 10y ago

Any news on the mail client? They have been "working on it" for a long time now...

msimpson 10y ago

I've found Vivaldi is becoming slower and slower with each update to the point that I'm starting to lose confidence in the browser itself. https://forum.vivaldi.net/search?term=slow&in=titlesposts&sortBy=relevance&sortDirection=desc&showAs=posts https://forum.vivaldi.net/search?term=slow&in=titlesposts&so... http://www.pcworld.com/article/3052560/browsers/vivaldi-browser-review-powerful-features-outshine-slightly-sluggish-performance.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3052560/browsers/vivaldi-brow... https://thequo.wordpress.com/2016/04/23/one-glaring-problem-of-the-new-vivaldi-browser/ https://thequo.wordpress.com/2016/04/23/one-glaring-problem-... etc...

NoGravitas 10y ago

I love the idea of doing something to make history more useful. Firefox is doing experiments with this, too (activity stream), but this is a lot more comprehensive. I've tried Vivaldi and really like it, but I'm pretty dedicated to Firefox. I'd probably play with Vivaldi more if they had a Mozilla sync adapter.

nhumrich 10y ago

All these features are pretty cool, but why can I still not dock the dev tools? Developers are the most likely early adopters, like myself. But not being able to dock the dev tools is seriously a killer. I've been watching Vivaldi from beta, and have enjoyed watching it, but every version I open it up, remember I can't dock dev tools, then close it. If you want to get me using Vivaldi, it's really simple: let me dock the dev tools.

Touche 10y ago
Brave has the same problem. I think it's a problem with Electron that makes doing that difficult.
jonmccull 10y ago
Docked dev tools is in active development at Vivaldi at the moment, so fingers crossed it will be included in an upcoming release. It's easily one of the most requested features we get, understandably, and definitely not being ignored. :)

johnchristopher 10y ago

If looked for a URL I visited two days ago and click it does the URL jump to today or is there now two entries for that same URL ? (I wish it's the second option)

mrcactu5 10y ago

it looks beautiful. sometimes applications like this are hesitant to share their source code b/c of their business model or something. are there any good "hackable" web browsers these days?

C0d3r 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbl

inthewoods 10y ago

I'm kept on Chrome just because of it's ability to have multiple browser profiles - e.g. work and personal - from what I've seen, neither Safari, Opera, Vivaldi or Brave support this - am I wrong? My main beef with Chrome isn't privacy - it's battery usage. I keep looking for a browser that doesn't kill my battery (MBP) but allows for multiple profiles.

JohnTHaller 10y ago
It's worth noting that Firefox offers multiple profiles support (since before Chrome existed). I can't speak to battery life on the MBP, though, as I'm a Windows user.
- inthewoods 10y ago
  Yeah Firefox isn't much better sadly in terms of battery.
cpeterso 10y ago
Mozilla is developing a feature (currently) called Containers that allows you to easily maintain different cookie jars (work, personal, shopping, etc) per tab. I have multiple Google accounts and this Container feature is the only way I can use the effectively in the same browser session. :) You can install the Containers experiment extension here: https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers

flippyhead 10y ago

At the risk of self promotion I made http://fetching.io http://fetching.io to solve exactly this problem across all the browsers I use.

digi_owl 10y ago

Sadly the touch screen support is still more miss than hit. the address bar brings up the Win10 OSK just fine. But any input areas in pages require that i bring up the keyboard manually. And the whole browser seems to go unresponsive to touch input at irregular intervals. Sad really, as they give me the ability to scale the UI as i see fit. Thus making the various elements that much easier to hit with a finger.

known 10y ago

Not much difference in http://arewefastyet.com http://arewefastyet.com

innocentoldguy 10y ago

I like Vivaldi well enough. The features I use most are tab stacking, page tiling, and full-page screenshots.

anigbrowl 10y ago

This is innovative and might be enough to get me to switch browsers. I'm perplexed at why Firefox, Chrome and IE only ever seem to innovate the engine and have basically given up on doing anything novel with UI. OK performance is nice to have but frankly I think that's just managers shoving resources at that because they know how to measure it and a 10.3% increase in speed or memory efficiency or something is easy to sell in a meeting. UI innovation is much harder to quantify, requires more work to sell, and the payoff takes much longer to manifest, not least because every change will generate a certain number of complaints from people who think their pet issue should have been addressed first, like UI designers are interchangeable with performance specialists. Chrome shot to first place because it kicked Firefox's ass on performance and IE's ass on reliable rendering (an opinion which you may or may not agree with). But while extensions are wonderful they can't and don't replace core UI innovation. And tbh I'm really bored with Chrome at this point; from a user point of view nothing significantly new has happened for a really long time. Look at the bookmark management, for instance. It's been the same since forever, and if I want to socialize that information or turn it into a feed or something I have to go looking for third-party solutions, which are thin on the ground because people are reluctant to develop too much for a platform over which they have little or no control.

talklittle 10y ago
Firefox Test Pilot [1] is a more recent approach to testing new UI in Firefox. It's entirely extension based. I think this is a smart approach because it lets Mozilla quickly test new UI features without building it into the core browser before it's been vetted. However its full potential is not ready yet, since Firefox has been migrating to WebExtensions, and this has not fully stabilized yet. Long term I think the WebExtensions move also makes sense, since it gives extension authors a stable API to work with, instead of XUL which can break with each Firefox update. And the architecture makes it easier to optimize threading performance and some form of security sandboxing. So the point is, I think more UI experimentation is on Firefox's horizon, but they have to first stabilize the technical architecture before they can go full throttle on that. [1]: https://testpilot.firefox.com/ https://testpilot.firefox.com/
- 10y ago

DeepYogurt 10y ago

BRILLIANT!