15 ms·

Vivaldi Browser 5.0

171 points by philonoist 5y ago

quaffapint 5y ago
I've read their business model... https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/ https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/ I just wonder how well it works in supporting them vs asking for money from their customers to support a decent/private browser stack.
- webmobdev 5y ago
  Honestly, what is there to support? Once you strip Chromium of all the code that uses any Google services, more than half the job is done.
  - bogwog 5y ago
    Vivaldi is not just another repackaged Chromium, it has it's own completely custom UI and special features. For example, it has built-in mail, rss, calendar, and contacts "apps", and a built in screenshot tool that lets you capture an entire page or a single element. Features like that are why you would want to use Vivaldi over another Chromium-based browser. I don't even know if they actually went through the effort of a thorough de-Googling. Also, their custom UI is not open source, so the browser is partially proprietary.
- bstar777 5y ago
  That was an interesting read, I was not aware that we got this info from the horse's mouth. Vivaldi has been criticized because it appears to phone home a lot. I've not tested that myself, but I assumed it was true. I might give it another shot because I do enjoy its Opera-like feel over Chrome or Chromium.
pseudalopex 5y ago
Themes and the translation panel are the highlights according to their blog. And speed improvements.[1] [1] https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-5-0-desktop-themes-translate-panel/ https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-5-0-desktop-themes-translat...
- zamadatix 5y ago
  "Speed improvements" in every release but there must be something about the way the browser is implemented that just kills performance/efficiency vs other Chromium browsers. Even a basic test like Speedometer 2.0 shoots out that DOM manipulations are 75% the speed of the same benchmark on Chrome, what on earth is it doing to cause that? The interface is great but between performance and bugs I've never been able to stay on it for more than a couple of months.
  - jadbox 5y ago
    Is this still true of v5?
    - zamadatix 5y ago
      That's where I pulled the 75% result from just now, not sure if it's as systemic as it was originally as that's where I gave up bothering to test further this time.
      - thanatos519 5y ago
        It's fine on my 4-core Haswell Xeon desktop but I really notice the lag on my Haswell 2-core laptop. I suspect there's a bit too much Electron-type stuff in the UI. It's a small price to pay for a browser that lets me configure the UI the way I want it. If Chrome supported tabs on the side as well as Vivaldi, even with an extension, I might not have switched. The rest of the configurability is just gravy for me.
  - cturtle 5y ago
    The UI is written in React, and apparently runs as a sort of an extension to chromium[0] according to a Vivaldi dev. I expect that would be a large source of performance decreases with a JS powered UI. It's certainly an impressive UI though. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/f9ui2b/is_the_ui_for_vivaldi_really_built_with_css_html/ https://www.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/f9ui2b/is_t...
mdrzn 5y ago
I've been using Vivaldi for about 3 months and I'm so close to going back to Chrome. RTX 2060, 32GBs RAM and YouTube still lags???
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kangaroozach 5y ago
Is it built on chromium?
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  Yes.
  - TheDesolate0 5y ago
    No, they are not. They use open source code, but are not open source.
- sandreas 5y ago
  https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-open-source/ https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-open-source/
SwiftyBug 5y ago
I don't understand that obsession browser developers have with themes. To the point it's a highlight in a major version.
- KarlKemp 5y ago
  Agreed… there’s very little surface that isn’t taken up by the website, so it makes far less sense than, say a terminal. It’s a uniquely bad fit for theming. A useable method of styling webpages, however, would be quite interesting. CSS just doesn’t quite work when used generically on all sites, except for maybe font sizes. Chrome’s in-beta automatic dark modes are maybe one working example. I’d appreciate, for example, some way to make better use of the 6000px of screen width I have. Unfortunately, with mobile-first and portrait-mode prevalence, the trend seems to be going back to optimizing for 800px.
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    Yes, the last thing I want are things competing with the page I’m reading.
  - riidom 5y ago
    That#s what I like most about this browser I think. I have the UI scaled down to 80% (would recommend to anybody to give this a try as well!).
- wussboy 5y ago
  Agree. I've never used one for longer than it took to briefly click to it to see what it looked like.
- webmobdev 5y ago
  Users like it, especially if you can customise it. (Winamp comes to mind - themes were a huge deal with it and one of the reasons behind its popularity). And it also generates a lot of community activity around the software, which adds value and provides free publicity.
  - 5y ago
Nux 5y ago
Fun fact, Microsoft (Skype) will not accept user@vivaldi.net as a personal email address for new accounts. It needs to be gmail/yahoo/outlook etc. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FETZDicXEAEjlSQ?format=jpg&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FETZDicXEAEjlSQ?format=jpg&name=...
- roody15 5y ago
  That is complete garbage. Lame Microsoft
- webmobdev 5y ago
  This seems to be a new trend - even IBM doesn't allow you to create accounts with non-American / non-BigTech email IDs (for their free cloud offering). Makes you wonder what is going on behind the scenes.
  - usr1106 5y ago
    The Linux foundation is in the same league: They are sending me spam^Hmarketing communication, but when I want to unsubscribe they tell me that I have an invalid email. The provider of that address ended up on some self-declared blacklist years ago for some time, which might explain part of it. But not stopping to sending email to those you don't want to deal with is nonsense. Not accepting unsubscribes probably illegal in many countries.
  - handrous 5y ago
    What's going on behind the scenes is that very few people don't use an email address with one of a handful of TLDs, and that restricting signups to a known-good list solves some support and a lot of abuse problems. Not saying it justifies it, but that's for-sure one reason places do that.
- mattl 5y ago
  They also won't take hey.com
- luke2m 5y ago
  I don’t think it’s anything against competition, just that they don’t have vivaldi.net on their public email allowlist. They want enterprise customers to pay for enterprise Microsoft services.
amyjess 5y ago
Have Vivaldi's devs said whether or not they'll be requiring Manifest V3? I'd hope that if anyone rejects V3 it would be Vivaldi...
- gildas 5y ago
  If Vivaldi doesn't have a store, then they won't have the choice to follow Google because developers won't be able to make their Manifest V2 extensions available for download.
  - amyjess 5y ago
    There's always sideloading at least.
- rasz 5y ago
  They declared building their own declarative adblocker, with blackjack and hookers. They have no money to maintain own fork.
jernejzen 5y ago
So guess that if you want extensions you need to go through Google machinery.. and your back to their telemetry empire?
- jadbox 5y ago
  I don't follow- Doesn't Vivaldi support any chrome extension?
  - mthoms 5y ago
    Yes, but you have to get them through the Chrome Web Store. It's the same with Brave.
    - sva_ 5y ago
      You can also just add the extensions by temporarily turning the "Developer mode" switch on and dragging the archive into the extensions pane.
cute_boi 5y ago
No container support? It was the most requested feature. I use vivaldi instead of brave when firefox fails to support website. But having no container is kinda sad :(
freediver 5y ago
Congrats to Vivaldi! There is a good interview with Vivaldi founder on Tedium [1] where he basically says that because most browsers are built on Chromium nowadays, you have to innovate on features and that is the direction they took. And really the number of features in Vivaldi is staggering including some great ones like Tab Stacking and Tab Tiling. But adding this many features took a toll on performance and it is about 25% slower than other Chromium based browsers. Also I assume that is the reason why is there no Vivaldi on iOS. [1] https://tedium.co/2021/02/05/vivaldi-browser-history-profile/ https://tedium.co/2021/02/05/vivaldi-browser-history-profile...
- therealmarv 5y ago
  There is not even one Chromium (or Firefox) based browser on iOS because it's not allowed to publish other browser engines on iOS!
  - ajhurliman 5y ago
    I'm using Brave on my iPhone right now.
    - speedgoose 5y ago
      It's safari with a skin and some cryptoscams.
      - RankingMember 5y ago
        I really wish the crypto garbage would be dropped from Brave. Makes it feel jumbled and spammy after a fresh install.
    - PixyMisa 5y ago
      Well, yes, except no. Brave on iOS is Webkit with a fancy wrapper.
      - ajhurliman 5y ago
zaiste 5y ago
Congrats on the release! I like this browser a lot; it's a comprehensive, battery-included solution. If they supported Firefox-like multi-account containers [1], it'd switch entirely to Vivaldi. Their tab grouping is really good, the session separation is the only thing missing here. :) [1]: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/25289/multi-account-containers/148?lang=en-GB&page=8 https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/25289/multi-account-containe...
throwaway123x2 5y ago
With FireFox becoming more and more unusable, does anybody with experience know if Vivaldi or Brave are objectively better (or faster or more stable)?
- maccam912 5y ago
  I switched from firefox to vivaldi about a year ago. So far it's been an improvement, tab stacks especially in my opinion.
- Scarbutt 5y ago
  Mozilla should switch to chromium.
  - laumars 5y ago
    No. Competition is healthy and that includes browser rendering engines too.
- ibdf 5y ago
  I switched to Brave this past year... so far so good. Firefox is fine, but I need a chromium browser for development, so chromium - google seems like a good alternative. I tried Vivaldi a couple of years ago but it didn't stick... will try again.
- malermeister 5y ago
  What's your problem with FF specifically? I keep hearing people complain, but it seems like the same ol browser to me?
- patall 5y ago
  Honest question, how is FireFox becoming unusable for you? I am using it on both Linux and Windows and do not really have any problems with it. Sure, sometimes a web site does not load properly but more often than not is because some add-ons like ad-blocker and no-script are intervening for me. In other cases, its obvious that the website was never tested in anything but chrome. In those cases where I really need it, I have some chromium-based browser as backup on all my devices. But daily work on FireFox is just fine for me. Your comment reminds me of how people were complaining for a long time that FireFox had become so slow, while I was browsing with multiple dozens of open tabs on my 8GB system all along. I do not want to say that this is not the case for you, but I honestly cannot reproduce it on three different laptops.
st3fan 5y ago
"Can't use $ in password" - i'm curious what the story is
drcongo 5y ago
Vivaldi is the exact opposite of what I want from a browser. I want a rendering engine and some tabs, that's pretty much it. Vivaldi decided to encumber those two good things with a 1000 features and some horrific themes, making the entire application 1000 times slower than it could have been. Every time I've tried it it's just reminded me of that old screenshot of MS Word with all the toolbars switched on [0], a ton of unnecessary cognitive load that 0.1% of their users will find useful. Browser design by committee. [0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/content/images/uploads/2006/02/6a0120a85dcdae970b0120a86d6311970b-pi.png https://blog.codinghorror.com/content/images/uploads/2006/02...
- RussianCow 5y ago
  > a ton of unnecessary cognitive load that 0.1% of their users will find useful. Maybe it's been designed specifically for that 0.1%? There's nothing wrong with not catering to the masses.
  - drcongo 5y ago
    Yeah, sorry, wasn't meaning to hate on Vivaldi. I'm sure it's great for those who want those features.
    - Tempest1981 5y ago
      Usually folks on HN are mad when they cater to the masses and ignore the 0.1% power-users. Can't win.
- kunagi7 5y ago
  There's a lot of browsers out there that already give the experience you want. Like Ungoogled Chromium (or regular Chromium). I always see a lot of power users being enraged to other browsers when they remove features that the 1~5% of their users use so it's a bit weird to see protests against one of the few browsers that attempt to reverse the oversimplification trend. Vivaldi's main deal is allowing the user to customize most of their browser. Themes, buttons, custom CSS, even side menu options. Even if they have improved it quite a bit there's still a performance hit.
pixelgeek 5y ago
So two questions for the groupmind here. 1) I asked this previously but is it really that difficult to take a screenshot on Windows? "Vivaldi’s built-in Capture tool lets you capture either a Full Page screenshot, or a Selection of the screen that you define. It can be accessed in a number of ways through the Vivaldi UI to give you flexibility in how you implement the tool." 2) The fully loaded version of the browser comes with a mail client, calendar and contacts. Didn't Netscape Navigator already show us that this confluence of features was a disaster for a browser?
- wejick 5y ago
  I personally can't live without Firefox capture functionality. Control + shift + S. Very convenient. It may be similar situation for vivaldi user.
  - rpdillon 5y ago
    Yes! The ability to hover over parts of the DOM and grab screenshots is a big upgrade from the built-in OS functionality on Mac and Linux, since it removes the fiddling I normally have to do to grab the optimal region. I don't use Windows, so I'm not sure about the comparison there.
- stetrain 5y ago
  I think the point of that feature is to take a screenshot of the full web page, even the part that is currently scrolled out of view. That's not something that the OS screenshot tool can do.
  - pixelgeek 5y ago
    I get it now
- Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
  > "Vivaldi’s built-in Capture tool lets you capture either a Full Page screenshot, or a Selection of the screen that you define. It can be accessed in a number of ways through the Vivaldi UI to give you flexibility in how you implement the tool." Not difficult, it is the limitation of the OS. Desktop OSes don't have a way to tell the browser to take a screenshot of the full page. So it is limited of what it can do. This is where Firefox and Vivaldi comes in, they provided the tools that allows them to scroll the entire page internally and take a screenshot. If there is a website with 5 pages, the OS only can take a picture of what is actively displaying. The browsers itself can barrow deeper to get a full pages. There is one issue I have with Vivaldi Capture, it seems to capture the webpage with lower DPI than OS capture tools. Windows and macOS capture tool looks crisp and clean. In Vivaldi, it is not crisp and I have a hard time to read the text in it. Not sure if they improve it lately.
kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
Used it for a while, but unfortunately performance was degrading eventually (earlier version). However I really miss one simple feature, that they have a search field above the vertical tabs that can be used to filter the tabs.
nice_byte 5y ago
i've been using vivaldi for the past 3 years, and it's fantastic. i really like the customizability, the stacked tabs feature, the builtin rss reader (which by the way, lets you subscribe to youtube channels!). really hope they make it, because the thought of going back to chrome makes me shudder now.
csomar 5y ago
I've been using Vivaldi for a few months now and basically forgot about Firefox. 1. Address Bar abd Tabs in the bottom without having to hack Firefox XUL/CSS. 2. Tabs. I have 7-8 stacks at any point. For example, I can start reading HN articles, leave the tabs open and them move to another stack for work, research, whatever. I have around 100+ tabs open at any time (and they consuming a little over 12Gb of memory). The tabs stick at restarts. 3. Email. Simple notifications. Useful since I'm running on Arch with no desktop/notifications, etc... 4. Chromium. I'm sorry but as of right now it's better than Firefox Quantum. 5. Screen Capture, Transaction, QrCode support, Chrome plugins, etc...
- skrowl 5y ago
  Rather than tab stacks, try Firefox Containers + https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/conex/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/conex/ It gives you the option to hide all tabs that aren't in your current container. The other advantage it gives over tab stacks in Vivaldi / Edge / Chrome is that they're actually containerized. Tabs in container A can't access anything from tabs in container B. If you're running a device with low RAM, you can add https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-discard https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-disc... with the option turned on to discard tabs as soon as they're hidden.
  - stereoradonc 5y ago
    Possibly the only advantage that Firefox has over Chrome.
  - smartbit 5y ago
    > Rather than tab stacks, try Firefox Containers + https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/conex/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/conex/ conex hasn’t been updated for 3 years. Are you sure you want to recommend it?
    - skrowl 5y ago
      No need if it still works. It would probably take a breaking change in containers itself for conex to really need to update. There may be another similar extension if you're of the "completely working code must be updated for it to be of good quality" mindset though.
pndy 5y ago
The ability to set texture beneath tabs bar and have it colored according to either theme color or site accent color remains still broken, since few major versions already. Shame because I really liked that little feature; despite of my reports, nobody dared to see what's up with this issue. Overall, it's a really good browser that fits my needs with few extensions. I've moved to Vivaldi after Firefox released version 60 - my heavily customized profile was damaged beyond recovery; luckily I had already bookmarks backed up and passwords stored outside.
Chevalier 5y ago
Vivaldi is easily the best browser I've ever used, bar none. But for lacking two-factor authentication on the account itself, I have no complaints - the vertical tabs, web panels, bookmark tree, and the Human theme are unrivaled by any other browser. I didn't discover Vivaldi until recently, but I'm a fanatical convert now. Strongly recommended.
nsonha 5y ago
A speed chart on the Downloads panel? The same reaction I had when windows 8 added a chart for file copying speed: who cares? I get that there are nerds who like a number for everything. Just a speed number is fine, but almost no one just sit there and watch a live chart of file copying/downloading speed, as if they have nothing else to do with their computer.
zmix 5y ago
I once liked Vivaldi. However, a few months ago I started to dislike it, since it adds more and more useless stuff instead of being innovative: * Graphics RGB color diagram * Mail client * Calendar client * Since over a year I can't play back video, that ha audio, because then the browser hangs for minutes. * Theme editor * Philips Hue integration * Razor Chroma intergration * (sophisticated) time based theme changes * built in Vivaldia computer game and these were just the things I found in the first four settings categories... Oh, Notes comes to mind... that doesn't belong into the browser, it belongs into a separate application...and so on... Yes, the tabs are nice, the quick command (F2) is nice, there is a few other things (it doesn't crash, which is a big one!) but the only reason I am still with it, is, that I have already stored so much information in it and I am too lazy to switch. It's a browser, that is slowly getting infantile.
- yborg 5y ago
  Agree with the bloat issue, I use Vivaldi because tab tiling, which is unique to this browser, but the additional functionality seems like it will become a crippling maintenance burden for a small team. I get that Tetzchner is trying to stand out in a sea of Chrome clones, but things like the Hue bulb integration and especially the not really fun or interesting embedded minigame are particularly egregious examples of things which are just wasting time, as well as introducing bugs and attack surface. Just shows a lack of discipline from the product management. Make this stuff an optional extension or something.
zafiro17 5y ago
Every time a vivaldi post shows up on HN it attracts a lot of negative comments (and some positive ones). Will just add my voice to the mix - Vivaldi is my primary browser and I love it. On my 5 year old laptop I experience no slowness, and I generally enjoy it's very user-focused features. I also enjoyed Opera prior to version 12. I recognize it's not the browser for everyone, but on my Linux boxes it's the second app I install (mutt is the first one). Your experience may vary.
CynicusRex 5y ago
Hands down the best browser I've ever used because of their customizability and speed, and the support on their forum is swift and effective. Moreover, the developers are staunchly against crypto“currencies”. Seldom, some websites break, but that's because I extensively use uMatrix.

171 points by philonoist 5y ago

I've read their business model... https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/ https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/ I just wonder how well it works in supporting them vs asking for money from their customers to support a decent/private browser stack.

webmobdev 5y ago
Honestly, what is there to support? Once you strip Chromium of all the code that uses any Google services, more than half the job is done.
- bogwog 5y ago
  Vivaldi is not just another repackaged Chromium, it has it's own completely custom UI and special features. For example, it has built-in mail, rss, calendar, and contacts "apps", and a built in screenshot tool that lets you capture an entire page or a single element. Features like that are why you would want to use Vivaldi over another Chromium-based browser. I don't even know if they actually went through the effort of a thorough de-Googling. Also, their custom UI is not open source, so the browser is partially proprietary.
bstar777 5y ago
That was an interesting read, I was not aware that we got this info from the horse's mouth. Vivaldi has been criticized because it appears to phone home a lot. I've not tested that myself, but I assumed it was true. I might give it another shot because I do enjoy its Opera-like feel over Chrome or Chromium.

pseudalopex 5y ago

Themes and the translation panel are the highlights according to their blog. And speed improvements.[1] [1] https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-5-0-desktop-themes-translate-panel/ https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-5-0-desktop-themes-translat...

zamadatix 5y ago
"Speed improvements" in every release but there must be something about the way the browser is implemented that just kills performance/efficiency vs other Chromium browsers. Even a basic test like Speedometer 2.0 shoots out that DOM manipulations are 75% the speed of the same benchmark on Chrome, what on earth is it doing to cause that? The interface is great but between performance and bugs I've never been able to stay on it for more than a couple of months.
- jadbox 5y ago
  Is this still true of v5?
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    That's where I pulled the 75% result from just now, not sure if it's as systemic as it was originally as that's where I gave up bothering to test further this time.
    - thanatos519 5y ago
      It's fine on my 4-core Haswell Xeon desktop but I really notice the lag on my Haswell 2-core laptop. I suspect there's a bit too much Electron-type stuff in the UI. It's a small price to pay for a browser that lets me configure the UI the way I want it. If Chrome supported tabs on the side as well as Vivaldi, even with an extension, I might not have switched. The rest of the configurability is just gravy for me.
- cturtle 5y ago
  The UI is written in React, and apparently runs as a sort of an extension to chromium[0] according to a Vivaldi dev. I expect that would be a large source of performance decreases with a JS powered UI. It's certainly an impressive UI though. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/f9ui2b/is_the_ui_for_vivaldi_really_built_with_css_html/ https://www.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/f9ui2b/is_t...

mdrzn 5y ago

I've been using Vivaldi for about 3 months and I'm so close to going back to Chrome. RTX 2060, 32GBs RAM and YouTube still lags???

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

kangaroozach 5y ago

Is it built on chromium?

pseudalopex 5y ago
Yes.
- TheDesolate0 5y ago
  No, they are not. They use open source code, but are not open source.
sandreas 5y ago
https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-open-source/ https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-open-source/

SwiftyBug 5y ago

I don't understand that obsession browser developers have with themes. To the point it's a highlight in a major version.

KarlKemp 5y ago
Agreed… there’s very little surface that isn’t taken up by the website, so it makes far less sense than, say a terminal. It’s a uniquely bad fit for theming. A useable method of styling webpages, however, would be quite interesting. CSS just doesn’t quite work when used generically on all sites, except for maybe font sizes. Chrome’s in-beta automatic dark modes are maybe one working example. I’d appreciate, for example, some way to make better use of the 6000px of screen width I have. Unfortunately, with mobile-first and portrait-mode prevalence, the trend seems to be going back to optimizing for 800px.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  Yes, the last thing I want are things competing with the page I’m reading.
- riidom 5y ago
  That#s what I like most about this browser I think. I have the UI scaled down to 80% (would recommend to anybody to give this a try as well!).
wussboy 5y ago
Agree. I've never used one for longer than it took to briefly click to it to see what it looked like.
webmobdev 5y ago
Users like it, especially if you can customise it. (Winamp comes to mind - themes were a huge deal with it and one of the reasons behind its popularity). And it also generates a lot of community activity around the software, which adds value and provides free publicity.
- 5y ago

Nux 5y ago

Fun fact, Microsoft (Skype) will not accept user@vivaldi.net as a personal email address for new accounts. It needs to be gmail/yahoo/outlook etc. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FETZDicXEAEjlSQ?format=jpg&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FETZDicXEAEjlSQ?format=jpg&name=...

roody15 5y ago
That is complete garbage. Lame Microsoft
webmobdev 5y ago
This seems to be a new trend - even IBM doesn't allow you to create accounts with non-American / non-BigTech email IDs (for their free cloud offering). Makes you wonder what is going on behind the scenes.
- usr1106 5y ago
  The Linux foundation is in the same league: They are sending me spam^Hmarketing communication, but when I want to unsubscribe they tell me that I have an invalid email. The provider of that address ended up on some self-declared blacklist years ago for some time, which might explain part of it. But not stopping to sending email to those you don't want to deal with is nonsense. Not accepting unsubscribes probably illegal in many countries.
- handrous 5y ago
  What's going on behind the scenes is that very few people don't use an email address with one of a handful of TLDs, and that restricting signups to a known-good list solves some support and a lot of abuse problems. Not saying it justifies it, but that's for-sure one reason places do that.
mattl 5y ago
They also won't take hey.com
luke2m 5y ago
I don’t think it’s anything against competition, just that they don’t have vivaldi.net on their public email allowlist. They want enterprise customers to pay for enterprise Microsoft services.

amyjess 5y ago

Have Vivaldi's devs said whether or not they'll be requiring Manifest V3? I'd hope that if anyone rejects V3 it would be Vivaldi...

gildas 5y ago
If Vivaldi doesn't have a store, then they won't have the choice to follow Google because developers won't be able to make their Manifest V2 extensions available for download.
- amyjess 5y ago
  There's always sideloading at least.
rasz 5y ago
They declared building their own declarative adblocker, with blackjack and hookers. They have no money to maintain own fork.

jernejzen 5y ago

So guess that if you want extensions you need to go through Google machinery.. and your back to their telemetry empire?

jadbox 5y ago
I don't follow- Doesn't Vivaldi support any chrome extension?
- mthoms 5y ago
  Yes, but you have to get them through the Chrome Web Store. It's the same with Brave.
  - sva_ 5y ago
    You can also just add the extensions by temporarily turning the "Developer mode" switch on and dragging the archive into the extensions pane.

cute_boi 5y ago

No container support? It was the most requested feature. I use vivaldi instead of brave when firefox fails to support website. But having no container is kinda sad :(

freediver 5y ago

Congrats to Vivaldi! There is a good interview with Vivaldi founder on Tedium [1] where he basically says that because most browsers are built on Chromium nowadays, you have to innovate on features and that is the direction they took. And really the number of features in Vivaldi is staggering including some great ones like Tab Stacking and Tab Tiling. But adding this many features took a toll on performance and it is about 25% slower than other Chromium based browsers. Also I assume that is the reason why is there no Vivaldi on iOS. [1] https://tedium.co/2021/02/05/vivaldi-browser-history-profile/ https://tedium.co/2021/02/05/vivaldi-browser-history-profile...

therealmarv 5y ago
There is not even one Chromium (or Firefox) based browser on iOS because it's not allowed to publish other browser engines on iOS!
- ajhurliman 5y ago
  I'm using Brave on my iPhone right now.
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    It's safari with a skin and some cryptoscams.
    - RankingMember 5y ago
      I really wish the crypto garbage would be dropped from Brave. Makes it feel jumbled and spammy after a fresh install.
  - PixyMisa 5y ago
    Well, yes, except no. Brave on iOS is Webkit with a fancy wrapper.
    - ajhurliman 5y ago

zaiste 5y ago

Congrats on the release! I like this browser a lot; it's a comprehensive, battery-included solution. If they supported Firefox-like multi-account containers [1], it'd switch entirely to Vivaldi. Their tab grouping is really good, the session separation is the only thing missing here. :) [1]: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/25289/multi-account-containers/148?lang=en-GB&page=8 https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/25289/multi-account-containe...

throwaway123x2 5y ago

With FireFox becoming more and more unusable, does anybody with experience know if Vivaldi or Brave are objectively better (or faster or more stable)?

maccam912 5y ago
I switched from firefox to vivaldi about a year ago. So far it's been an improvement, tab stacks especially in my opinion.
Scarbutt 5y ago
Mozilla should switch to chromium.
- laumars 5y ago
  No. Competition is healthy and that includes browser rendering engines too.
ibdf 5y ago
I switched to Brave this past year... so far so good. Firefox is fine, but I need a chromium browser for development, so chromium - google seems like a good alternative. I tried Vivaldi a couple of years ago but it didn't stick... will try again.
malermeister 5y ago
What's your problem with FF specifically? I keep hearing people complain, but it seems like the same ol browser to me?
patall 5y ago
Honest question, how is FireFox becoming unusable for you? I am using it on both Linux and Windows and do not really have any problems with it. Sure, sometimes a web site does not load properly but more often than not is because some add-ons like ad-blocker and no-script are intervening for me. In other cases, its obvious that the website was never tested in anything but chrome. In those cases where I really need it, I have some chromium-based browser as backup on all my devices. But daily work on FireFox is just fine for me. Your comment reminds me of how people were complaining for a long time that FireFox had become so slow, while I was browsing with multiple dozens of open tabs on my 8GB system all along. I do not want to say that this is not the case for you, but I honestly cannot reproduce it on three different laptops.

st3fan 5y ago

"Can't use $ in password" - i'm curious what the story is

drcongo 5y ago

Vivaldi is the exact opposite of what I want from a browser. I want a rendering engine and some tabs, that's pretty much it. Vivaldi decided to encumber those two good things with a 1000 features and some horrific themes, making the entire application 1000 times slower than it could have been. Every time I've tried it it's just reminded me of that old screenshot of MS Word with all the toolbars switched on [0], a ton of unnecessary cognitive load that 0.1% of their users will find useful. Browser design by committee. [0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/content/images/uploads/2006/02/6a0120a85dcdae970b0120a86d6311970b-pi.png https://blog.codinghorror.com/content/images/uploads/2006/02...

RussianCow 5y ago
> a ton of unnecessary cognitive load that 0.1% of their users will find useful. Maybe it's been designed specifically for that 0.1%? There's nothing wrong with not catering to the masses.
- drcongo 5y ago
  Yeah, sorry, wasn't meaning to hate on Vivaldi. I'm sure it's great for those who want those features.
  - Tempest1981 5y ago
    Usually folks on HN are mad when they cater to the masses and ignore the 0.1% power-users. Can't win.
kunagi7 5y ago
There's a lot of browsers out there that already give the experience you want. Like Ungoogled Chromium (or regular Chromium). I always see a lot of power users being enraged to other browsers when they remove features that the 1~5% of their users use so it's a bit weird to see protests against one of the few browsers that attempt to reverse the oversimplification trend. Vivaldi's main deal is allowing the user to customize most of their browser. Themes, buttons, custom CSS, even side menu options. Even if they have improved it quite a bit there's still a performance hit.

pixelgeek 5y ago

So two questions for the groupmind here. 1) I asked this previously but is it really that difficult to take a screenshot on Windows? "Vivaldi’s built-in Capture tool lets you capture either a Full Page screenshot, or a Selection of the screen that you define. It can be accessed in a number of ways through the Vivaldi UI to give you flexibility in how you implement the tool." 2) The fully loaded version of the browser comes with a mail client, calendar and contacts. Didn't Netscape Navigator already show us that this confluence of features was a disaster for a browser?

wejick 5y ago
I personally can't live without Firefox capture functionality. Control + shift + S. Very convenient. It may be similar situation for vivaldi user.
- rpdillon 5y ago
  Yes! The ability to hover over parts of the DOM and grab screenshots is a big upgrade from the built-in OS functionality on Mac and Linux, since it removes the fiddling I normally have to do to grab the optimal region. I don't use Windows, so I'm not sure about the comparison there.
stetrain 5y ago
I think the point of that feature is to take a screenshot of the full web page, even the part that is currently scrolled out of view. That's not something that the OS screenshot tool can do.
- pixelgeek 5y ago
  I get it now
Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
> "Vivaldi’s built-in Capture tool lets you capture either a Full Page screenshot, or a Selection of the screen that you define. It can be accessed in a number of ways through the Vivaldi UI to give you flexibility in how you implement the tool." Not difficult, it is the limitation of the OS. Desktop OSes don't have a way to tell the browser to take a screenshot of the full page. So it is limited of what it can do. This is where Firefox and Vivaldi comes in, they provided the tools that allows them to scroll the entire page internally and take a screenshot. If there is a website with 5 pages, the OS only can take a picture of what is actively displaying. The browsers itself can barrow deeper to get a full pages. There is one issue I have with Vivaldi Capture, it seems to capture the webpage with lower DPI than OS capture tools. Windows and macOS capture tool looks crisp and clean. In Vivaldi, it is not crisp and I have a hard time to read the text in it. Not sure if they improve it lately.

kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago

Used it for a while, but unfortunately performance was degrading eventually (earlier version). However I really miss one simple feature, that they have a search field above the vertical tabs that can be used to filter the tabs.

nice_byte 5y ago

i've been using vivaldi for the past 3 years, and it's fantastic. i really like the customizability, the stacked tabs feature, the builtin rss reader (which by the way, lets you subscribe to youtube channels!). really hope they make it, because the thought of going back to chrome makes me shudder now.

csomar 5y ago

I've been using Vivaldi for a few months now and basically forgot about Firefox. 1. Address Bar abd Tabs in the bottom without having to hack Firefox XUL/CSS. 2. Tabs. I have 7-8 stacks at any point. For example, I can start reading HN articles, leave the tabs open and them move to another stack for work, research, whatever. I have around 100+ tabs open at any time (and they consuming a little over 12Gb of memory). The tabs stick at restarts. 3. Email. Simple notifications. Useful since I'm running on Arch with no desktop/notifications, etc... 4. Chromium. I'm sorry but as of right now it's better than Firefox Quantum. 5. Screen Capture, Transaction, QrCode support, Chrome plugins, etc...

skrowl 5y ago
Rather than tab stacks, try Firefox Containers + https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/conex/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/conex/ It gives you the option to hide all tabs that aren't in your current container. The other advantage it gives over tab stacks in Vivaldi / Edge / Chrome is that they're actually containerized. Tabs in container A can't access anything from tabs in container B. If you're running a device with low RAM, you can add https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-discard https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-disc... with the option turned on to discard tabs as soon as they're hidden.
- stereoradonc 5y ago
  Possibly the only advantage that Firefox has over Chrome.
- smartbit 5y ago
  > Rather than tab stacks, try Firefox Containers + https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/conex/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/conex/ conex hasn’t been updated for 3 years. Are you sure you want to recommend it?
  - skrowl 5y ago
    No need if it still works. It would probably take a breaking change in containers itself for conex to really need to update. There may be another similar extension if you're of the "completely working code must be updated for it to be of good quality" mindset though.

pndy 5y ago

The ability to set texture beneath tabs bar and have it colored according to either theme color or site accent color remains still broken, since few major versions already. Shame because I really liked that little feature; despite of my reports, nobody dared to see what's up with this issue. Overall, it's a really good browser that fits my needs with few extensions. I've moved to Vivaldi after Firefox released version 60 - my heavily customized profile was damaged beyond recovery; luckily I had already bookmarks backed up and passwords stored outside.

Chevalier 5y ago

Vivaldi is easily the best browser I've ever used, bar none. But for lacking two-factor authentication on the account itself, I have no complaints - the vertical tabs, web panels, bookmark tree, and the Human theme are unrivaled by any other browser. I didn't discover Vivaldi until recently, but I'm a fanatical convert now. Strongly recommended.

nsonha 5y ago

A speed chart on the Downloads panel? The same reaction I had when windows 8 added a chart for file copying speed: who cares? I get that there are nerds who like a number for everything. Just a speed number is fine, but almost no one just sit there and watch a live chart of file copying/downloading speed, as if they have nothing else to do with their computer.

zmix 5y ago

I once liked Vivaldi. However, a few months ago I started to dislike it, since it adds more and more useless stuff instead of being innovative: * Graphics RGB color diagram * Mail client * Calendar client * Since over a year I can't play back video, that ha audio, because then the browser hangs for minutes. * Theme editor * Philips Hue integration * Razor Chroma intergration * (sophisticated) time based theme changes * built in Vivaldia computer game and these were just the things I found in the first four settings categories... Oh, Notes comes to mind... that doesn't belong into the browser, it belongs into a separate application...and so on... Yes, the tabs are nice, the quick command (F2) is nice, there is a few other things (it doesn't crash, which is a big one!) but the only reason I am still with it, is, that I have already stored so much information in it and I am too lazy to switch. It's a browser, that is slowly getting infantile.

yborg 5y ago
Agree with the bloat issue, I use Vivaldi because tab tiling, which is unique to this browser, but the additional functionality seems like it will become a crippling maintenance burden for a small team. I get that Tetzchner is trying to stand out in a sea of Chrome clones, but things like the Hue bulb integration and especially the not really fun or interesting embedded minigame are particularly egregious examples of things which are just wasting time, as well as introducing bugs and attack surface. Just shows a lack of discipline from the product management. Make this stuff an optional extension or something.

zafiro17 5y ago

Every time a vivaldi post shows up on HN it attracts a lot of negative comments (and some positive ones). Will just add my voice to the mix - Vivaldi is my primary browser and I love it. On my 5 year old laptop I experience no slowness, and I generally enjoy it's very user-focused features. I also enjoyed Opera prior to version 12. I recognize it's not the browser for everyone, but on my Linux boxes it's the second app I install (mutt is the first one). Your experience may vary.

CynicusRex 5y ago

Hands down the best browser I've ever used because of their customizability and speed, and the support on their forum is swift and effective. Moreover, the developers are staunchly against crypto“currencies”. Seldom, some websites break, but that's because I extensively use uMatrix.