5 ms·

Vivaldi makes History

81 points by arunmib 9y ago

partycoder 9y ago
I have used tools like this in the past, to track how I spend my time while browsing. I made it a habit to look at the tool after a session of browsing, and try to understand if my browsing was productive or not. Then try to think what I would to differently the next time. This can help improving your browsing habits. Now, the title feels a bit like clickbait (had to click to get an idea of what it was about).
Aeyris 9y ago
As nice as all the features they've added are, I can't help but see Vivaldi as "Chromium but Blink probably isn't completely up to date", and it worries me more than a little to use a browser where the latest (potentially high impact) changes to the browser rendering engine aren't remedied until the next browser patch.
- thewhitetulip 9y ago
  So, can we use this extension & install it in Chrome?
- dzek69 9y ago
  I'm using Vivaldi since first public release and I haven't encountered any issue regarding to Blink stability. I'm using only newest snapshots (so they should be considered unstable) as my daily work & private browser and never had a reason to roll back. IIRC they using even nightlies from Blink in their snapshots, so "getting behind" shouldn't be considered a problem I think. But putting everything aside, let's assume they're 40 days behind Blink always - are you THAT geeky that you need these new Blink features instantly, when noone actually implements them anywhere (I'm taking about new JS stuff for example), because noone would be able to use this features, as this is cutting-edge-blink-only-feature?
  - Aeyris 9y ago
    I'm talking about security issues, specifically. A lot of the vulnerabilities found within Chrome[0] would be actually within Blink. 0: http://www.cvedetails.com/product/15031/Google-Chrome.html?vendor_id=1224 http://www.cvedetails.com/product/15031/Google-Chrome.html?v...
org3432 9y ago
It's good to see a company trying to push browsers forward again. Seems like once again things have stagnated a bit with the current browser experiences.
timonovici 9y ago
While I rarely looked at the code behind a browser (mostly webkit, to debug some weird stuff with capybara-webkit), it is highly uncomfortable to me to use a non-free browser... Does it track my behavior, do they sell that information - I don't have time to mess around with Wireshark and see what it does; On the "history" upgrade idea - that's a really cool one; It's quite often that I'm looking for that page I accessed last year, or that youtube video somebody sent me a few months ago, and I forgot it's name - hopefully chromium/firefox steal this idea and improve upon it;
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  Agreed. This is an interesting approach, and I look forward to seeing something like it in a browser I can trust.
- z3t4 9y ago
  There's a middle ground between FOSS and closed source, like having the source code open, and let power users compile it themselves, while keeping the copy-rights. Most code on the web works like this, as you can just right click and "view source", and easily debug and inspect. Does anyone have any experience with open sourcing, but with a restrictive (all rights reserved) license ? And would this be enough for people like the parent poster to run such a software ?
- pasta 9y ago
  Your argument about the closed source is weak. Messing around with Wireshark is probably quicker than reading thousands of locs. I understand the value of open source. But I'm still not sure if it matters. A lot of people think that open source software does not track personal data. But how do they know? Have they read all the code? Do they even understand all code? It's much easier to run Wireshark to check what the program does. That's how the world found out about what Windows 10 is sending to MS. In the end it's about trust.
  - vanviegen 9y ago
    I don't believe wireshark will tell you that much since everything is encrypted with forward secrecy nowadays. So the browser would need to be able to output negotiated keys for data tracking connections. That seems unlikely, especially if what's being tracked is a bit shady.
notum 9y ago
What happens tomorrow, if Vivaldi becomes history? Do we own this data? How is it stored? Where is it located? Can we access this with any other tool? I know I'm begging for down-votes but I simply cannot understand how people can commit something as personal as web browsing to a closed source solution.
- aembleton 9y ago
  Under the heading `For your eyes only` "Vivaldi Technologies doesn’t collect your history data. All of this information is strictly private and local to your computer."
- red023 9y ago
  Where is your claim that vivaldi is close source coming from? https://vivaldi.com/source/ https://vivaldi.com/source/ // later edit below Excuse me but I am just reading on this and it seems its real open source it that sense. I did not even know this, so thank you for this. This makes Vivaldi a total no go for me. https://vivaldi.net/userblogs/entry/a-few-words-about-open-source-vivaldi https://vivaldi.net/userblogs/entry/a-few-words-about-open-s... It has in fact a proprietary license: "18 November 2016. "Subject to the terms and conditions herein, Vivaldi hereby grants You a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable license to install and use the Software and Services for its intended purpose. [...] Without limiting the foregoing, you are neither allowed to (a) adapt, alter, translate, embed into any other product or otherwise create derivative works of, or otherwise modify the Software ; (b) separate the component programs of the Software for use on different computers; (c) reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise attempt to derive the source code for the Software, except as permitted by applicable law; or (d) remove, alter or obscure any proprietary notices on the Software or the applicable documentation therein."
  - theGimp 9y ago
    The license in the LICENSE file looks like BSD 2.0. The proprietary license you mention is only in the Windows installer (according a quick grep) ... but it's still legally murky in my uneducated opinion. Anyway, license notwithstanding, they do not publish the latest source. The download page has version 1.8, whose source is not available for download. There is also no repository and so no public history of changes on a per-commit basis. It might technically be open source, but certainly not in spirit.
mynewtb 9y ago
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13984122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13984122
jpalomaki 9y ago
One so-far-unsolved problem for me in browsers is how to make using multiple profiles at the same time smooth without adding many windows to desktop. I'm using Chrome and run several profiles: personal, work, social media etc. Since I tend to use all of these throughout the day, I have several browser windows and several tabs. This is not very convenient. I would prefer system where I could share the same window with multiple profiles, maybe even having a list a combined list of tabs from different profiles on the left side.
- Vinnl 9y ago
  Mozilla is actually working on this for Firefox, and you can try it right now through their Test Pilot extension. I've been using it for a while now and it's pretty great: https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- richardboegli 9y ago
  Ghost Browser [0] already supports this. It allows two (maybe three?) profiles in free version. [0] https://ghostbrowser.com/ https://ghostbrowser.com/
digitalshankar 9y ago
Vivaldi looks so stable and rock solid, uses Blink engine, although the title is a clickbait. About the history feature, if a website is important i will bookmark it, i want history only for that session, not save it for future search, again that's my opinion. However the features like tab muting, taking notes are very good and that's what the user needs. Wish it would have been Open Source. I prefer Vivaldi over IE. But Firefox MasterRace!
- vorticalbox 9y ago
  > About the history feature, if a website is important i will bookmark it, i want history only for that session, not save it for future search, again that's my opinion. 100% on this, Though I will say it is a very cool feature.
PleaseHelpMe 9y ago
Syncing feature is still missing while a lot of things are being introduced, which is hard to tolerate.
callesgg 9y ago
Would prefer it, if it was simply a plugin.
buro9 9y ago
Wouldn't it be great if the browser could be configured to simply sync this information to a calendar app of your choosing? This way, be it local or an online service like Google Calendar, the data would be under your control and would make sense across computers, and could be viewed in relation to other time-based data. i.e. if your tweets also ended up in a calendar you could see the tweets that led to a browse, that led to a bookmark, that led to a new tweet. You could later on make sense of your own activities. If I were at Google, this is what I'd want to work on: How to bring together data to make it useful for the user, rather than just useful as part of a profile for advertisers. History is a lot less scary when it provides the user with the bulk of the value.
- userbinator 9y ago
  History is a lot less scary when it provides the user with the bulk of the value. On the other hand, I'd argue that showing it at that level of detail to the user makes it more scary.
aluhut 9y ago
My first thoughts on this: - I still won't use it because googling/favorites are faster. - Somebody might find this useful if he/she wants to spy on the user. Not sure if the time investment was worth it. I only use it as a reference browser.
DanielBMarkham 9y ago
Meta: I find it odd that we live and work on an internet where everything we do is tracked and logged in fine detail. Huge companies do this every second of every day. Many folks, including me, don't like it. Each day my feed is full of news from these companies offering new products and services. But when a new company comes along that is trying to break that cycle? Suddenly a ton of people pop out of the woodwork to warn us there might be a privacy concern. Ok sure, but where the hell were you guys when Apple talked about it's new file system, or LG released new smart TVs, or when a dozen other newsworthy things happened in the last week from big companies who are scooping up all of our data? These are not companies that might scoop up data. These are companies that are already doing it. Look, I'm full-bore tinfoil hat guy, but after watching this for years, there seems to be a lot of selective outrage going on online. Some folks get a free pass. Some folks get trashed for much less. I find that very odd.

81 points by arunmib 9y ago

I have used tools like this in the past, to track how I spend my time while browsing. I made it a habit to look at the tool after a session of browsing, and try to understand if my browsing was productive or not. Then try to think what I would to differently the next time. This can help improving your browsing habits. Now, the title feels a bit like clickbait (had to click to get an idea of what it was about).

Aeyris 9y ago

As nice as all the features they've added are, I can't help but see Vivaldi as "Chromium but Blink probably isn't completely up to date", and it worries me more than a little to use a browser where the latest (potentially high impact) changes to the browser rendering engine aren't remedied until the next browser patch.

thewhitetulip 9y ago
So, can we use this extension & install it in Chrome?
dzek69 9y ago
I'm using Vivaldi since first public release and I haven't encountered any issue regarding to Blink stability. I'm using only newest snapshots (so they should be considered unstable) as my daily work & private browser and never had a reason to roll back. IIRC they using even nightlies from Blink in their snapshots, so "getting behind" shouldn't be considered a problem I think. But putting everything aside, let's assume they're 40 days behind Blink always - are you THAT geeky that you need these new Blink features instantly, when noone actually implements them anywhere (I'm taking about new JS stuff for example), because noone would be able to use this features, as this is cutting-edge-blink-only-feature?
- Aeyris 9y ago
  I'm talking about security issues, specifically. A lot of the vulnerabilities found within Chrome[0] would be actually within Blink. 0: http://www.cvedetails.com/product/15031/Google-Chrome.html?vendor_id=1224 http://www.cvedetails.com/product/15031/Google-Chrome.html?v...

org3432 9y ago

It's good to see a company trying to push browsers forward again. Seems like once again things have stagnated a bit with the current browser experiences.

timonovici 9y ago

While I rarely looked at the code behind a browser (mostly webkit, to debug some weird stuff with capybara-webkit), it is highly uncomfortable to me to use a non-free browser... Does it track my behavior, do they sell that information - I don't have time to mess around with Wireshark and see what it does; On the "history" upgrade idea - that's a really cool one; It's quite often that I'm looking for that page I accessed last year, or that youtube video somebody sent me a few months ago, and I forgot it's name - hopefully chromium/firefox steal this idea and improve upon it;

JoshTriplett 9y ago
Agreed. This is an interesting approach, and I look forward to seeing something like it in a browser I can trust.
z3t4 9y ago
There's a middle ground between FOSS and closed source, like having the source code open, and let power users compile it themselves, while keeping the copy-rights. Most code on the web works like this, as you can just right click and "view source", and easily debug and inspect. Does anyone have any experience with open sourcing, but with a restrictive (all rights reserved) license ? And would this be enough for people like the parent poster to run such a software ?
pasta 9y ago
Your argument about the closed source is weak. Messing around with Wireshark is probably quicker than reading thousands of locs. I understand the value of open source. But I'm still not sure if it matters. A lot of people think that open source software does not track personal data. But how do they know? Have they read all the code? Do they even understand all code? It's much easier to run Wireshark to check what the program does. That's how the world found out about what Windows 10 is sending to MS. In the end it's about trust.
- vanviegen 9y ago
  I don't believe wireshark will tell you that much since everything is encrypted with forward secrecy nowadays. So the browser would need to be able to output negotiated keys for data tracking connections. That seems unlikely, especially if what's being tracked is a bit shady.

notum 9y ago

What happens tomorrow, if Vivaldi becomes history? Do we own this data? How is it stored? Where is it located? Can we access this with any other tool? I know I'm begging for down-votes but I simply cannot understand how people can commit something as personal as web browsing to a closed source solution.

aembleton 9y ago
Under the heading `For your eyes only` "Vivaldi Technologies doesn’t collect your history data. All of this information is strictly private and local to your computer."
red023 9y ago
Where is your claim that vivaldi is close source coming from? https://vivaldi.com/source/ https://vivaldi.com/source/ // later edit below Excuse me but I am just reading on this and it seems its real open source it that sense. I did not even know this, so thank you for this. This makes Vivaldi a total no go for me. https://vivaldi.net/userblogs/entry/a-few-words-about-open-source-vivaldi https://vivaldi.net/userblogs/entry/a-few-words-about-open-s... It has in fact a proprietary license: "18 November 2016. "Subject to the terms and conditions herein, Vivaldi hereby grants You a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable license to install and use the Software and Services for its intended purpose. [...] Without limiting the foregoing, you are neither allowed to (a) adapt, alter, translate, embed into any other product or otherwise create derivative works of, or otherwise modify the Software ; (b) separate the component programs of the Software for use on different computers; (c) reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise attempt to derive the source code for the Software, except as permitted by applicable law; or (d) remove, alter or obscure any proprietary notices on the Software or the applicable documentation therein."
- theGimp 9y ago
  The license in the LICENSE file looks like BSD 2.0. The proprietary license you mention is only in the Windows installer (according a quick grep) ... but it's still legally murky in my uneducated opinion. Anyway, license notwithstanding, they do not publish the latest source. The download page has version 1.8, whose source is not available for download. There is also no repository and so no public history of changes on a per-commit basis. It might technically be open source, but certainly not in spirit.

mynewtb 9y ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13984122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13984122

jpalomaki 9y ago

One so-far-unsolved problem for me in browsers is how to make using multiple profiles at the same time smooth without adding many windows to desktop. I'm using Chrome and run several profiles: personal, work, social media etc. Since I tend to use all of these throughout the day, I have several browser windows and several tabs. This is not very convenient. I would prefer system where I could share the same window with multiple profiles, maybe even having a list a combined list of tabs from different profiles on the left side.

Vinnl 9y ago
Mozilla is actually working on this for Firefox, and you can try it right now through their Test Pilot extension. I've been using it for a while now and it's pretty great: https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
richardboegli 9y ago
Ghost Browser [0] already supports this. It allows two (maybe three?) profiles in free version. [0] https://ghostbrowser.com/ https://ghostbrowser.com/

digitalshankar 9y ago

Vivaldi looks so stable and rock solid, uses Blink engine, although the title is a clickbait. About the history feature, if a website is important i will bookmark it, i want history only for that session, not save it for future search, again that's my opinion. However the features like tab muting, taking notes are very good and that's what the user needs. Wish it would have been Open Source. I prefer Vivaldi over IE. But Firefox MasterRace!

vorticalbox 9y ago
> About the history feature, if a website is important i will bookmark it, i want history only for that session, not save it for future search, again that's my opinion. 100% on this, Though I will say it is a very cool feature.

PleaseHelpMe 9y ago

Syncing feature is still missing while a lot of things are being introduced, which is hard to tolerate.

callesgg 9y ago

Would prefer it, if it was simply a plugin.

buro9 9y ago

Wouldn't it be great if the browser could be configured to simply sync this information to a calendar app of your choosing? This way, be it local or an online service like Google Calendar, the data would be under your control and would make sense across computers, and could be viewed in relation to other time-based data. i.e. if your tweets also ended up in a calendar you could see the tweets that led to a browse, that led to a bookmark, that led to a new tweet. You could later on make sense of your own activities. If I were at Google, this is what I'd want to work on: How to bring together data to make it useful for the user, rather than just useful as part of a profile for advertisers. History is a lot less scary when it provides the user with the bulk of the value.

userbinator 9y ago
History is a lot less scary when it provides the user with the bulk of the value. On the other hand, I'd argue that showing it at that level of detail to the user makes it more scary.

aluhut 9y ago

My first thoughts on this: - I still won't use it because googling/favorites are faster. - Somebody might find this useful if he/she wants to spy on the user. Not sure if the time investment was worth it. I only use it as a reference browser.

DanielBMarkham 9y ago

Meta: I find it odd that we live and work on an internet where everything we do is tracked and logged in fine detail. Huge companies do this every second of every day. Many folks, including me, don't like it. Each day my feed is full of news from these companies offering new products and services. But when a new company comes along that is trying to break that cycle? Suddenly a ton of people pop out of the woodwork to warn us there might be a privacy concern. Ok sure, but where the hell were you guys when Apple talked about it's new file system, or LG released new smart TVs, or when a dozen other newsworthy things happened in the last week from big companies who are scooping up all of our data? These are not companies that might scoop up data. These are companies that are already doing it. Look, I'm full-bore tinfoil hat guy, but after watching this for years, there seems to be a lot of selective outrage going on online. Some folks get a free pass. Some folks get trashed for much less. I find that very odd.