5 ms·

Vivaldi 2.6

51 points by jonmccull 7y ago

frabert 7y ago
The title is mildly confusing right now, I parsed it as "Abusive (Ad Blocker)" instead of "(Abusive ad) blocker" and wondered why they would want to boast that on their blog
- latexr 7y ago
  I run uBlock Origin in hard mode[1]. It’s pretty close to an “Abusive (Ad Blocker)”, and I like it. Most websites break on first visit, which makes me more aware of all the extraneous crap. [1]: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-hard-mode https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-hard-m...
askl 7y ago
Oh, I first thought they added an ad blocker that is abusive.
saagarjha 7y ago
The "abusive ads" text links to Google's guidelines for abusive ads: is this what Vivaldi is using to determine what's "abusive"?
skrebbel 7y ago
I really love Vivaldi's features and how they're designed/UX'ed. But I've had to move away from it, back to Firefox, because it was simply too sluggish and weird right where it matters. Like, I'm never entirely sure whether a page is loading. Is my connection bad, or is Vivaldi in a weird lockup state? I mean, the latter is totally imaginable. I've had pages suddenly render entirely white, while stuff is still clickable (i.e. the mouse becomes a hand icon when I move over where I expected to see buttons). I had to copy the url into a new tab and all was good again. Quirks like these compared with the slight slowness of the UI make Vivaldi feel like a pre-iphone smartphone. I wish they would address this. I don't even think I'd need for the UI to be much faster - I'm ok with a slightly less snappy UI in exchange for all the power user features (and the speed with which Vivaldi has been adding them). But you have to improve the visual feedback. Little loading spinners can get you a long way. Don't just freeze stuff. When I click "stop", make the stop button become the reload button immediately again. Show proper error pages when stuff goes wrong, I don't mind, I can reload. Ditch the limbo states. I truly wonder whether the Vivaldi team actually uses Vivaldi. Or maybe they all use enormously powerful 32 core workstations on amazing internet? C'mon guys, fix your browser. It's worth it.
- bayesianbot 7y ago
  For me it's one of the snappiest (on Linux mint / i7 / 16GB). I changed to Vivaldi about year ago and it's the first browser ever which isn't constantly slowing down with time and I'm not constantly thinking should I change again.
  - skrebbel 7y ago
    Hm! Maybe it's all Windows specific then. That's a pretty polar opposite experience you got there.
- Slashbot 7y ago
  dunno where you get that, for me Vivaldi is better than chrome and firefox, along with providing decent ux (ie addons firefox used to have) fireefox is complete garbage now, its not any faster and the ux is absolute shit, and no more decent addons to fix it. and I use vivaldi at work on a piddly 2core 2.4ghz laptop..so wtf are you running vivaldi on to be saying its sluggish.. total bs
- yalooze 7y ago
  On Windows the new tab experience feels very sluggish for me, although I don't use Vivaldi as my main browser so can't comment on the rest. Chrome, by comparison, feels completely smooth and instant. Firefox is a touch slow compared to Chrome but noticeably better than Vivaldi. It's such a small thing but trying to move away from Chrome it was the first thing I noticed and it still irks me.
Nux 7y ago
Bit of a letdown really, I've been waiting since forever for an Android browser and now they come up with this "selected ads" thing.. I don't think they are serious.
GaurVimen 7y ago
So, basically, it will pass more of your data to Google, not block tracking, but remove a lot of the visual noise that reminds you you're being tracked...all while raising the stakes for advertisers to circumvent current and largely effective ad blocking methods.
- jrvxo 7y ago
  >So, basically, it will pass more of your data to Google Where exactly do you get this from?
snvzz 7y ago
On the topic of browsers, netsurf[0] (which implements its own engine, rather than being yet another webkit/chrome/gecko frontend) is close[1] to making a new release. [0] http://www.netsurf-browser.org/ http://www.netsurf-browser.org/ [1] https://listmaster.pepperfish.net/pipermail/netsurf-dev-netsurf-browser.org/2019-June/003988.html https://listmaster.pepperfish.net/pipermail/netsurf-dev-nets...
- joyjoyjoy 7y ago
  "Small as a mouse, fast as a cheetah and available for free." Looks interesting for sure. But I would miss a lot of privacy plug ins.
- stOneskull 7y ago
  i prefer this to WebPositive in Haiku (edit for haiku)
- cantcomplain 7y ago
  Look I'm not asking for the most modern bloated web design, I like simplicity, but that website looks pretty outdated an ugly for a modern web browser. As a user if their website looks that outdated why should I trust their browser?
  - snvzz 7y ago
    While understandable, that's just one opinion. I actually do like the classic design, and how the page doesn't require downloading several megabytes of data to display.
thunderbong 7y ago
I'm seriously thinking of switching to Vivaldi as my default development browser. It has incredible keyboard support and feature wise closest to the old Opera browser, which till date is the first browser I feel in love with
- Slashbot 7y ago
  should, vivaldi is the only decent browser I use now.. used to be firefox pre quantum garbage until moztard corp went full retard in turning there browser into chrome clone complete with web shit extensions, and proceeded to break every damnn addon that ever made firefox good in the first place.
as2019 7y ago
I switched from Chrome to Vivaldi and back to FF for two reasons: 1) Vivaldi rendering performance is the worst I've ever seen in a browser. No idea how they managed that using webkit, but some sites would make tabs crash on a high end system. 2) The web developer tools are unusable due to bugs. 3) Fixing simple but impactful bugs takes too long. I really like their useful and plenty settings for everything, but 1) and 2) make it a no go for me.
- Gustomaximus 7y ago
  Vivaldi using Webkit... Its Chromium isnt it?
  - as2019 7y ago
    They're using Webkit, yes, but I guess it's highly customized. The performance is so much worse than Chrome and FF It's even possible to create pages in a way that reproducibly freezes and crashes Vivaldi. Their rendering process handles pages with many elements and multimedia objects very poorly.
    - pseudalopex 7y ago
      Vivaldi uses Blink.[1] [1] https://help.vivaldi.com/article/user-agent-spoofing/ https://help.vivaldi.com/article/user-agent-spoofing/
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 7y ago
  >Vivaldi rendering performance is the worst I've ever seen in a browser. No idea how they managed that using webkit, but some sites would make tabs crash on a high end system. That's what happens when you build your UI using HTML, CSS and node.js.
onyva 7y ago
This monetization of web content first as a business model for browsers is pathetic when considering what are the stakes. I will pay for Firefox premium (VPN and cloud) and will always block ads no matter what. I’m not interested in content that’s only published to generate revenue. Vivaldi or Brave whom ever... I don’t need a to streamline online advertisement, I want it to die together with the industry that’s based on it.
- janpot 7y ago
  Exactly, why are we so ok with businesses trying to manipulate us into buying things that we don't ask for? I mean I understand that a business needs to make money, but that shouldn't excuse you for doing this manipulation. You can't excuse unethical behavior just "because I needed to make money". And if it was only about buying things, but this whole industry has become a mass manipulation machine for politicians with bad intententions.
  - onyva 7y ago
    I wish Mozilla would offer a DNS level content blocker (pihole, NextDns..) with lists curated by the public/volunteers (Sleeping Giants...?). Could be set as default in Firefox, but can be used by anyone, for free. I think it could undermine the monetary incentive social media drives out of hate speech and fake news, while users can still use these platforms (and sites in general) for their intended purpose.
- blfr 7y ago
  I completely agree with you. I block ads on principle and will do so even if they're unobtrusive and backed by blockchain-based profit sharing. Judging by this being the top comment, many HN-ers agree with you as well. The Internet population at large, however, doesn't. People would rather watch ads than pay and until it changes there will be many businesses online relying on ads.
  - stOneskull 7y ago
    i want neither ads or paying. i'd like to see everyone with their own website. peer-to-peer can handle a lot like video, as well as a decentralized news feed, and a new type of web-ring, adding each other's websites instead of adding fb friends. it's easy to set up free hosting for someone's website, and to supply a free domain, even if a subdomain off another person's site. there are ways.
Hamuko 7y ago
> We’ve got great feedback on our support for User Profiles and based on that we’ve added new ways to customise those for you. Are user profiles the same kind of dumb shit that is in Chrome? As in, it's completely forced upon you even on a single-user machine with every way to disable it removed years ago.
- brianpgordon 7y ago
  Yeah, what's the deal with that? There have to be at least 2 nines in the percentage of end-user systems used by only a single person. The only explanation I can think of is that they're angling for a Chrome-like cross-device experience that conveniently stores all of your browsing data on their servers.
sudeepj 7y ago
How much of a payoff is there in browser business given that browser development is not trivial at all and it has become a commodity?
- zerr 7y ago
  Nowadays, browser development means rebasing your changes on top of Chromium periodically.
- oblio 7y ago
  Browser development can't both be non trivial and a commodity. Or I'm misunderstanding you.
  - Youcandothis 7y ago
    It can. Lot of commodities today is highly non-trivial.
  - pitkali 7y ago
    Browser development is non-trivial, but browsers themselves are a commodity. There is no money in browser itself as an app, or at the very least not enough to support development.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ivanstegic 7y ago
But how do you make money to pay your devs?
- gmueckl 7y ago
  Thw only credible statement I found regarding that was that they sell the spots on the default start page for money. However, I have no idea how much these are worth in a browser with approximately 0 percemt marketshare.
arusahni 7y ago
> [Tabs] Releasing middle mouse button on a tab closes it, even when the actual click was somewhere else VB-43962 I filed this bug two years ago. I guess there are fewer and fewer mouse-users.
- as2019 7y ago
  Same. Very disappointed something like that takes so long to fix. It's the kind of bug that makes you question if the developers actually use their own browser.

51 points by jonmccull 7y ago

The title is mildly confusing right now, I parsed it as "Abusive (Ad Blocker)" instead of "(Abusive ad) blocker" and wondered why they would want to boast that on their blog

latexr 7y ago
I run uBlock Origin in hard mode[1]. It’s pretty close to an “Abusive (Ad Blocker)”, and I like it. Most websites break on first visit, which makes me more aware of all the extraneous crap. [1]: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-hard-mode https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-hard-m...

askl 7y ago

Oh, I first thought they added an ad blocker that is abusive.

saagarjha 7y ago

The "abusive ads" text links to Google's guidelines for abusive ads: is this what Vivaldi is using to determine what's "abusive"?

skrebbel 7y ago

I really love Vivaldi's features and how they're designed/UX'ed. But I've had to move away from it, back to Firefox, because it was simply too sluggish and weird right where it matters. Like, I'm never entirely sure whether a page is loading. Is my connection bad, or is Vivaldi in a weird lockup state? I mean, the latter is totally imaginable. I've had pages suddenly render entirely white, while stuff is still clickable (i.e. the mouse becomes a hand icon when I move over where I expected to see buttons). I had to copy the url into a new tab and all was good again. Quirks like these compared with the slight slowness of the UI make Vivaldi feel like a pre-iphone smartphone. I wish they would address this. I don't even think I'd need for the UI to be much faster - I'm ok with a slightly less snappy UI in exchange for all the power user features (and the speed with which Vivaldi has been adding them). But you have to improve the visual feedback. Little loading spinners can get you a long way. Don't just freeze stuff. When I click "stop", make the stop button become the reload button immediately again. Show proper error pages when stuff goes wrong, I don't mind, I can reload. Ditch the limbo states. I truly wonder whether the Vivaldi team actually uses Vivaldi. Or maybe they all use enormously powerful 32 core workstations on amazing internet? C'mon guys, fix your browser. It's worth it.

bayesianbot 7y ago
For me it's one of the snappiest (on Linux mint / i7 / 16GB). I changed to Vivaldi about year ago and it's the first browser ever which isn't constantly slowing down with time and I'm not constantly thinking should I change again.
- skrebbel 7y ago
  Hm! Maybe it's all Windows specific then. That's a pretty polar opposite experience you got there.
Slashbot 7y ago
dunno where you get that, for me Vivaldi is better than chrome and firefox, along with providing decent ux (ie addons firefox used to have) fireefox is complete garbage now, its not any faster and the ux is absolute shit, and no more decent addons to fix it. and I use vivaldi at work on a piddly 2core 2.4ghz laptop..so wtf are you running vivaldi on to be saying its sluggish.. total bs
yalooze 7y ago
On Windows the new tab experience feels very sluggish for me, although I don't use Vivaldi as my main browser so can't comment on the rest. Chrome, by comparison, feels completely smooth and instant. Firefox is a touch slow compared to Chrome but noticeably better than Vivaldi. It's such a small thing but trying to move away from Chrome it was the first thing I noticed and it still irks me.

Nux 7y ago

Bit of a letdown really, I've been waiting since forever for an Android browser and now they come up with this "selected ads" thing.. I don't think they are serious.

GaurVimen 7y ago

So, basically, it will pass more of your data to Google, not block tracking, but remove a lot of the visual noise that reminds you you're being tracked...all while raising the stakes for advertisers to circumvent current and largely effective ad blocking methods.

jrvxo 7y ago
>So, basically, it will pass more of your data to Google Where exactly do you get this from?

snvzz 7y ago

On the topic of browsers, netsurf[0] (which implements its own engine, rather than being yet another webkit/chrome/gecko frontend) is close[1] to making a new release. [0] http://www.netsurf-browser.org/ http://www.netsurf-browser.org/ [1] https://listmaster.pepperfish.net/pipermail/netsurf-dev-netsurf-browser.org/2019-June/003988.html https://listmaster.pepperfish.net/pipermail/netsurf-dev-nets...

joyjoyjoy 7y ago
"Small as a mouse, fast as a cheetah and available for free." Looks interesting for sure. But I would miss a lot of privacy plug ins.
stOneskull 7y ago
i prefer this to WebPositive in Haiku (edit for haiku)
cantcomplain 7y ago
Look I'm not asking for the most modern bloated web design, I like simplicity, but that website looks pretty outdated an ugly for a modern web browser. As a user if their website looks that outdated why should I trust their browser?
- snvzz 7y ago
  While understandable, that's just one opinion. I actually do like the classic design, and how the page doesn't require downloading several megabytes of data to display.

thunderbong 7y ago

I'm seriously thinking of switching to Vivaldi as my default development browser. It has incredible keyboard support and feature wise closest to the old Opera browser, which till date is the first browser I feel in love with

Slashbot 7y ago
should, vivaldi is the only decent browser I use now.. used to be firefox pre quantum garbage until moztard corp went full retard in turning there browser into chrome clone complete with web shit extensions, and proceeded to break every damnn addon that ever made firefox good in the first place.

as2019 7y ago

I switched from Chrome to Vivaldi and back to FF for two reasons: 1) Vivaldi rendering performance is the worst I've ever seen in a browser. No idea how they managed that using webkit, but some sites would make tabs crash on a high end system. 2) The web developer tools are unusable due to bugs. 3) Fixing simple but impactful bugs takes too long. I really like their useful and plenty settings for everything, but 1) and 2) make it a no go for me.

Gustomaximus 7y ago
Vivaldi using Webkit... Its Chromium isnt it?
- as2019 7y ago
  They're using Webkit, yes, but I guess it's highly customized. The performance is so much worse than Chrome and FF It's even possible to create pages in a way that reproducibly freezes and crashes Vivaldi. Their rendering process handles pages with many elements and multimedia objects very poorly.
  - pseudalopex 7y ago
    Vivaldi uses Blink.[1] [1] https://help.vivaldi.com/article/user-agent-spoofing/ https://help.vivaldi.com/article/user-agent-spoofing/
xeeeeeeeeeeenu 7y ago
>Vivaldi rendering performance is the worst I've ever seen in a browser. No idea how they managed that using webkit, but some sites would make tabs crash on a high end system. That's what happens when you build your UI using HTML, CSS and node.js.

onyva 7y ago

This monetization of web content first as a business model for browsers is pathetic when considering what are the stakes. I will pay for Firefox premium (VPN and cloud) and will always block ads no matter what. I’m not interested in content that’s only published to generate revenue. Vivaldi or Brave whom ever... I don’t need a to streamline online advertisement, I want it to die together with the industry that’s based on it.

janpot 7y ago
Exactly, why are we so ok with businesses trying to manipulate us into buying things that we don't ask for? I mean I understand that a business needs to make money, but that shouldn't excuse you for doing this manipulation. You can't excuse unethical behavior just "because I needed to make money". And if it was only about buying things, but this whole industry has become a mass manipulation machine for politicians with bad intententions.
- onyva 7y ago
  I wish Mozilla would offer a DNS level content blocker (pihole, NextDns..) with lists curated by the public/volunteers (Sleeping Giants...?). Could be set as default in Firefox, but can be used by anyone, for free. I think it could undermine the monetary incentive social media drives out of hate speech and fake news, while users can still use these platforms (and sites in general) for their intended purpose.
blfr 7y ago
I completely agree with you. I block ads on principle and will do so even if they're unobtrusive and backed by blockchain-based profit sharing. Judging by this being the top comment, many HN-ers agree with you as well. The Internet population at large, however, doesn't. People would rather watch ads than pay and until it changes there will be many businesses online relying on ads.
- stOneskull 7y ago
  i want neither ads or paying. i'd like to see everyone with their own website. peer-to-peer can handle a lot like video, as well as a decentralized news feed, and a new type of web-ring, adding each other's websites instead of adding fb friends. it's easy to set up free hosting for someone's website, and to supply a free domain, even if a subdomain off another person's site. there are ways.

Hamuko 7y ago

> We’ve got great feedback on our support for User Profiles and based on that we’ve added new ways to customise those for you. Are user profiles the same kind of dumb shit that is in Chrome? As in, it's completely forced upon you even on a single-user machine with every way to disable it removed years ago.

brianpgordon 7y ago
Yeah, what's the deal with that? There have to be at least 2 nines in the percentage of end-user systems used by only a single person. The only explanation I can think of is that they're angling for a Chrome-like cross-device experience that conveniently stores all of your browsing data on their servers.

sudeepj 7y ago

How much of a payoff is there in browser business given that browser development is not trivial at all and it has become a commodity?

zerr 7y ago
Nowadays, browser development means rebasing your changes on top of Chromium periodically.
oblio 7y ago
Browser development can't both be non trivial and a commodity. Or I'm misunderstanding you.
- Youcandothis 7y ago
  It can. Lot of commodities today is highly non-trivial.
- pitkali 7y ago
  Browser development is non-trivial, but browsers themselves are a commodity. There is no money in browser itself as an app, or at the very least not enough to support development.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ivanstegic 7y ago

But how do you make money to pay your devs?

gmueckl 7y ago
Thw only credible statement I found regarding that was that they sell the spots on the default start page for money. However, I have no idea how much these are worth in a browser with approximately 0 percemt marketshare.

arusahni 7y ago

> [Tabs] Releasing middle mouse button on a tab closes it, even when the actual click was somewhere else VB-43962 I filed this bug two years ago. I guess there are fewer and fewer mouse-users.

as2019 7y ago
Same. Very disappointed something like that takes so long to fix. It's the kind of bug that makes you question if the developers actually use their own browser.