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I've recently switched from Firefox to Vivaldi, for one reason: Firefox extensions must use javascript injection to capture keyboard shortcuts and mouse gesture

I've recently switched from Firefox to Vivaldi, for one reason: Firefox extensions must use javascript injection to capture keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures. This basically kills all shortcuts+gestures that quickly change tabs, which is how I navigate 95% of the time. I was a big fan of Opera, so I decided to try Vivaldi, which has built-in features for this. After a few months I'm probably switching back again due to two problems: - Vivaldi runs a lot of stuff on the main UI thread, leading to unresponsive interfaces (try the History Panel with a large history, it takes several seconds to type each character in the search bar, and just having the panel open slows down every other tab). - The Android browser doesn't support extensions, and the ad-blocking is not as good as Firefox Mobile + uBlock Origin. If not for those two problems, I would keep it. It's a great browser and I admire its passion for its own power users.

idoubtit 6y ago
- My Vivaldi interface is responsive, YMMV. I just opened my History Panel, checked that several thousands of entries were present, then searched for various characters, then navigated in several tabs. Everything was instant. - Vivaldi Android has its own ad-blocking system. IIRC, it can load external lists. Though it has less features than uBlock Origin, it's enough for me. I prefer the desktop Vivaldi to other web browsers because of its features: - Vertical tab list - Mouse gestures (click-right-left to go back, down-up to duplicate a tab...) - Sane download manager (compared to Firefox) - The features above are native. No need for shady extensions (or clean extension that could become shady on a future upgrade). - More customization than most browsers (not counting the undocumented config of FF)
- BoppreH 6y ago
  My history has hundreds of entries per day for two years (imported from Firefox). Opening the History Panel takes 6 seconds and the whole browser is completely unresponsive in the meantime. Your list of features is the same reason why I started using Vivaldi. I have a lot of respect for the team, and I'm glad to be using a tool that explicitly caters to power users too.
jjordan 6y ago
I've also tried twice over the last few years to switch full-time to Vivaldi. Once I loaded it up with my usual power user customizations, I would frequently notice UI lock-ups. Incredibly frustrating. With Mozilla's recent comments in support of censorship and de-platforming, I just started giving Brave browser a try, since they appear to be more focused on privacy and freedom of speech rather than making divisive political statements.
- Proven 6y ago
  But they keep adding more and more ads. It started with the stupid reward-coin reminders, then ads on new pages, now the coin icon is constantly present in URL bar and on top of that they also show promoted news sites at the very bottom of empty pages (iOS).
y-c-o-m-b 6y ago
My biggest complaint about Vivaldi on both the PC and Android is the freezing UI; be it tabs or something else. That said, I still use Vivaldi for all my online banking on desktop and I use Vivaldi as secondary browser on mobile to browse reddit or other social media platforms. I have several browsers installed on my Galaxy S7: Firefox, Vivaldi, DuckDuckGo, Naked Browser, and Chrome. Out of all these, Firefox is the worst performing and nearly unusable it's so slow and causes overall system slowness. Vivaldi and Naked Browser are the quickest and least resource intensive. Chrome is a few steps better than FireFox with DuckDuckGo somewhere in the middle. 90% of the time I used DuckDuckGo for general browsing though due its privacy tools.
skynet-9000 6y ago
You might want to re-consider returning to Opera, as it is not the same Opera of olde (unless you are comfortable with a browser that is now at least partly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.)
nsonha 6y ago
This has been my experience too. I kept wanting to like Vivaldi for being the only tree style tabs alternative but everytime I switched to it I encouter lags at some point. I don't remeber the history panel specifically but the thing you said about main UI thread sounds like it. Eventually I decided that tree style tabs are bad for my productivity anw then I stopped seeing the apeal of vivaldi. Atm my favourite browsers are yandex for the minimalistic UI and Edge. Both have big addressbar font which is my thing. Yandex also has an Opera root I believe, it has the "turbo" mode. Privacy wise probably both are as bad as Google Chrome.

idoubtit 6y ago

- My Vivaldi interface is responsive, YMMV. I just opened my History Panel, checked that several thousands of entries were present, then searched for various characters, then navigated in several tabs. Everything was instant. - Vivaldi Android has its own ad-blocking system. IIRC, it can load external lists. Though it has less features than uBlock Origin, it's enough for me. I prefer the desktop Vivaldi to other web browsers because of its features: - Vertical tab list - Mouse gestures (click-right-left to go back, down-up to duplicate a tab...) - Sane download manager (compared to Firefox) - The features above are native. No need for shady extensions (or clean extension that could become shady on a future upgrade). - More customization than most browsers (not counting the undocumented config of FF)

BoppreH 6y ago
My history has hundreds of entries per day for two years (imported from Firefox). Opening the History Panel takes 6 seconds and the whole browser is completely unresponsive in the meantime. Your list of features is the same reason why I started using Vivaldi. I have a lot of respect for the team, and I'm glad to be using a tool that explicitly caters to power users too.

jjordan 6y ago

I've also tried twice over the last few years to switch full-time to Vivaldi. Once I loaded it up with my usual power user customizations, I would frequently notice UI lock-ups. Incredibly frustrating. With Mozilla's recent comments in support of censorship and de-platforming, I just started giving Brave browser a try, since they appear to be more focused on privacy and freedom of speech rather than making divisive political statements.

Proven 6y ago
But they keep adding more and more ads. It started with the stupid reward-coin reminders, then ads on new pages, now the coin icon is constantly present in URL bar and on top of that they also show promoted news sites at the very bottom of empty pages (iOS).

y-c-o-m-b 6y ago

My biggest complaint about Vivaldi on both the PC and Android is the freezing UI; be it tabs or something else. That said, I still use Vivaldi for all my online banking on desktop and I use Vivaldi as secondary browser on mobile to browse reddit or other social media platforms. I have several browsers installed on my Galaxy S7: Firefox, Vivaldi, DuckDuckGo, Naked Browser, and Chrome. Out of all these, Firefox is the worst performing and nearly unusable it's so slow and causes overall system slowness. Vivaldi and Naked Browser are the quickest and least resource intensive. Chrome is a few steps better than FireFox with DuckDuckGo somewhere in the middle. 90% of the time I used DuckDuckGo for general browsing though due its privacy tools.

skynet-9000 6y ago

You might want to re-consider returning to Opera, as it is not the same Opera of olde (unless you are comfortable with a browser that is now at least partly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.)

nsonha 6y ago

This has been my experience too. I kept wanting to like Vivaldi for being the only tree style tabs alternative but everytime I switched to it I encouter lags at some point. I don't remeber the history panel specifically but the thing you said about main UI thread sounds like it. Eventually I decided that tree style tabs are bad for my productivity anw then I stopped seeing the apeal of vivaldi. Atm my favourite browsers are yandex for the minimalistic UI and Edge. Both have big addressbar font which is my thing. Yandex also has an Opera root I believe, it has the "turbo" mode. Privacy wise probably both are as bad as Google Chrome.