12 ms·

Hands-on with Vivaldi, the new Web browser for power users

134 points by Heewg9 12y ago

toothbrush 12y ago
Their website needs Javascript to load. Ugh. I hope that's not an indicator for the rest of their philosophy.
- pselbert 12y ago
  The entire browser is built on JS/React. I'm pretty sure that is an indicator of the rest of their philosophy.
- iLoch 12y ago
  It's 2015 man, get off lynx..
  - 0942v8653 12y ago
    I agree, w3m is much better. More modern. lynx sometimes has trouble making connections on my machine. Sent from my w3m
    - LukeShu 12y ago
      Have you compared w3m to "links" (links2 on Debian/Ubuntu)? links is my preferred TTY browser, but it seems to be neglected by most users.
      - demiol 12y ago
        I compared. w3m is better than links2, elinks better than w3m.
        TeMPOraL 12y ago
        And what do you think about eww, the new browser embedded in Emacs 24? I personally like it.
- emodendroket 12y ago
  I don't understand why there are still people persisting in disabling JavaScript when the vast majority of Web sites today have significant functionality degradation or just plain won't work without it.
  - valvar 12y ago
    If it needs JavaScript to display properly, then it's probably not worth my time. Anyone concerned with privacy and/or security should use noscript.
    - emodendroket 12y ago
      Nobody in their right mind is going to practically double the amount of work they do on a project to support people disabling JavaScript (a tiny minority who also knows how to undo this change if they are so inclined) unless they are absolutely huge. In any case, there are other ways to track you without the use of scripts.
  - Amezarak 12y ago
    > I don't understand why there are still people persisting in disabling JavaScript when the vast majority of Web sites today have significant functionality degradation or just plain won't work without it. Install NoScript and browse for a couple days. Permanently whitelist what you have to on sites you frequent and trust. You'll find that pages load light-years faster, browser hangs/crashes are non-existent, annoying advertisements are a thing of the past, and actually, most web sites work fine without Javascript. Even though some of these websites have literally dozens (I suspect sometimes even hundreds: they sometimes chain each other and the full list takes up my entire screen and scrolls for a while) of scripts from different domains. And then you get used to this web, and all of a sudden there's you run across what should be just a plain-text article - not a web application - and you discover that you have to enable Javascript just to see any text and it feels a little absurd. This is definitely the exception, and not the rule. My whitelist, after years of browsing, is pretty small.
  - marssaxman 12y ago
    The vast majority of web sites are crap. I'd really rather default disable javascript and opt-in if I decide I want to allow their code to run on my machine.
pbowyer 12y ago
This is the worst-written article I've read in a long time. It repeats itself (forgivable), contradicts itself (unforgivable) and I'm pretty sure is factually inaccurate in places (Doesn't Firefox already show the slowest addons?) In spite of that Vivaldi looks interesting, and as a long-time fan of Opera (the original company and the browser) I wish them well.
- wlesieutre 12y ago
  >Doesn't Firefox already show the slowest addons? I don't know about Firefox, but Internet Explorer definitely warns about addons that slow down launch times and opening new windows/tabs.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- icebraining 12y ago
  The claims that there aren't new browsers is wrong as well - there's many of them, it's just that they don't have a marketing team behind them. Uzbl, luakit, surf, jumanji, midori, vimprobable, xombrero, etc.
  - wanda 12y ago
    Well, none of those are new. Breach.cc is relatively new but even that goes back a year. But these highly extensible vim-like microbrowsers you list (excl. midori) have been around for years.
- aroch 12y ago
  FF38+ gives you a popup if it detects an addon is slowing page render: http://www.ghacks.net/2015/02/18/firefox-38-notifies-you-about-add-ons-that-slow-down-the-browser/ http://www.ghacks.net/2015/02/18/firefox-38-notifies-you-abo...
  - ars 12y ago
    Note that the current stable is 36.
jray319 12y ago
"The problem is bad enough that a future version of Firefox will even have a feature dedicated to letting you know which of your add-ons is slowing you down." Does anyone know this feature of Firefox?
- discreditable 12y ago
  It's in Nightly. I've seen it a few times. It appears as a bar across the bottom of your screen telling you x addon may be causing this page to load slowly. From there you have the option to disable the addon, ignore the message, or ignore permanently. I saw it for uBlock, HTTPSEverywhere, and reddit enhancement suite, and amazonsmile redirect. In each scenario I felt it was well worth the tradeoff to run a little more slowly.
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    Worth noting that it's set to be hypersensitive right now for testing. Don't trust it for much of anything yet.
    - agumonkey 12y ago
      Good to know, I was starting to think either noscript/ublock were badly written, badly integrated or that Firefox had deep issues.
  - jray319 12y ago
    Thanks. I found it. http://www.ghacks.net/2015/02/18/firefox-38-notifies-you-about-add-ons-that-slow-down-the-browser/ http://www.ghacks.net/2015/02/18/firefox-38-notifies-you-abo...
- fabrice_d 12y ago
  It's in current nightly builds. You get a status bar telling you that such add-on is taking to long when you load a page.
lelf 12y ago
And just about the first thing you see when trying to install it… Vivaldi may collect visitor statistics. The visitor statistics may include information about the visitors IP-addresses, usage patterns, <…> I guess I don't want your shiny new browser.
- sanderjd 12y ago
  At least it's one of the first things you see!
  - themodelplumber 12y ago
    But for "advanced" users this is a turnoff. I wonder what they are getting paid per-user, and if that amount is greater than what they'd make if they just charged for the app.
- mrkurt 12y ago
  Every website collects that stuff.
  - skymt 12y ago
    Most websites don't collect that stuff across every other website.
    - jodrellblank 12y ago
      Most don't. A surprising amount do - any page that embeds a Facebook 'like' button loaded from Facebook servers with a referrer header ... or JQuery hosted by Google or a Doubleclick advert or a reTweet button, and on and on.
      - joshontheweb 12y ago
        This is why I stay logged out of facebook and don't allow third party cookies. Trying to move off of gmail also so I am not always logged in there either. Probably not perfect but hopefully it foils a lot of attempts at tracking.
Mithaldu 12y ago
As someone who tried using it: There's nothing about this for power users. Even with an absolutely minimal website, it consumes ~20mb per tab.
- emodendroket 12y ago
  I imagine "power users" probably have more than 2GB of RAM.
  - valvar 12y ago
    Not on my good old T60, I don't. That users have a lot of RAM is a terrible excuse for bad memory management, anyway.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    But also much more programs competing for it - I have 6GB on my work laptop, and I'm constantly at 95%+ (not counting cache!).
    - munchhausen 12y ago
      This needs to be said - upgrade your RAM. If your device doesn't support a memory upgrade, get one that does. Upgrading my laptop to 32GB RAM was one of those things where you wish you had done it a lot earlier. No more OOM-killers, no more things grinding to a halt because the box is swapping (in fact, I disabled swap altogether), no more checking memory utilisation before starting a beefy VM. Just smooth sailing all along.
      - TeMPOraL 12y ago
        Yeah, until the next release of Chrome and Firefox, where GMail and Facebook together will start to happily eat 16GB of your 32. The amount of memory browsers now eat up is insane.
ljoshua 12y ago
I loved and used Opera as my main browser back in the day, flicking back and forth between pages with right-mouse-button gestures and reading my email in-browser before Gmail. What a fantastic browser it was! I am excited to see the Vivaldi project mature and hope to be able to evaluate it once it is more complete.
ljoshua 12y ago
I loved and used Opera as my main browser back in the day, flicking back and forth between pages with right-mouse-button gestures and reading my email in-browser before Gmail. What a fantastic browser it was! I am excited to see the Vivaldi project mature and hope to be able to evaluate it once it is more complete.
a3_nm 12y ago
Where's the source? What's the license? I couldn't find this information, and downloads seem to be binary-only.
- bhassel 12y ago
  From some quick searching, apparently it's closed-source, but built on top of Chromium's rendering engine (Blink).
  - 0942v8653 12y ago
    Wow… why would anyone ever want to use this browser? Honestly. If it were open source, it would at least have a chance.
    - azakai 12y ago
      To be fair to Vivaldi, Chrome isn't open source either, and lots of people use it. Chrome is of course mostly open source, except for some proprietary bits. The same is basically true of Vivaldi (and Opera), they all add a relatively small amount of proprietary code on top of the massive open source Chromium codebase.
      - Nullabillity 12y ago
        AFAIK the only differences between Chromium and Chrome are: * Preinstalled proprietary plugins (Widevine, Flash) * More preinstalled codecs (woohoo, patents!) * Various user metrics reporting There is a pretty big difference between that and keeping all of your changes private.
        abrowne 12y ago
        And the updater (for Mac/Win).
        azakai 12y ago
        Well, for Vivaldi and Opera, "all of your changes" in this case amounts to just the UI. Neither has the capability nor motivation to modify Blink in any significant way. Also, Opera has been contributing to Blink, so they aren't keeping all their changes private. Vivaldi hasn't launched yet, but I would guess the same would be true of them - it just isn't rational to do otherwise (if Vivaldi fixes some small bug in Blink, why keep it as a patch they need to constantly reapply on top of Blink? Far easier to upstream it). So aside from the UI (which is tiny compared to the entire browser), Chrome, Blink and Vivaldi are about equal in terms of being open or closed.
austenallred 12y ago
What I want from a browser: 1. Speed 2. Privacy 3. Add-ons/features (and this is far below 1 and 2). This browser collects all sorts of information (seemingly more than chrome based on the message from instillation), and consumes an absurd amount of memory per tab, even on plain text webpages. There may be something promising there, but this isn't it.
- lqdc13 12y ago
  This browser consumes about same amount as chrome in my tests. Maybe 1/5 more. Firefox and Chrome also collect the same information, but it is an opt-in from what I remember. Edit: Chrome usage with 3 tabs: http://i.imgur.com/mGiX0So.png http://i.imgur.com/mGiX0So.png Vivaldi usage with the same tabs: http://i.imgur.com/ejnNzib.png http://i.imgur.com/ejnNzib.png
  - paulirish 12y ago
    Installed Chrome extensions are your remaining helpers in there.
  - DavideNL 12y ago
    > Firefox and Chrome also collect the same information Uhm, reference? I seriously doubt that...
    - lqdc13 12y ago
      Well, first from https://vivaldi.com/privacy/ https://vivaldi.com/privacy/ it's not clear to me whether the privacy thing applies to the browser or the vivaldi web site. Second, here's google chrome's privacy policy: https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/privacy/ https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/privacy/ You can see that they have all kinds of information being sent to google. At least as much as Vivaldi.
- emodendroket 12y ago
  Well, that probably makes you a minority even among "power users," however we might define that term.
Puts 12y ago
There are two things I really miss about Opera. Generic Content-blocking - that is not only blocking ads but any URL-pattern of interest. And also the per-site settings. For example a lot of sites use extensive javascript only for tracking, but not for functionality visible to the user, so blocking javascript on those sites truly improves loadtime on many sites. And also being able to fine tune cookie settings per site. It's such simple functionality, but really makes a huge difference both for performance and privacy and it saddens me that Opera never will be what it once was, and probably no other browser either. :-(
- Terr_ 12y ago
  Yeah, I want stuff like the F12 menu, and a good workflow for uses who whitelist sites for cookies, javascript, and flash. Now, Firefox might be able to fill the void, but I doubt Chrome ever can. Those kinds of features are an irritant to Google, because they want their pervasive analytics, ads, and various web-apps to work out of the box.
c3RlcGhlbnI_ 12y ago
Why did they keep the built in mail client of all things? Fighting opera to get it to use my mail and RSS clients was the worst part of my experience with the browser. If you want to make a customizable browser, give us the option to not install such unnecessary addons. The browser already seems to use as much memory as chrome, it does not need to waste any more.
- forthefuture 12y ago
  This is something I don't really understand about the idea of a "power" browser. The entire reason browsers cut back on features was bloat that 99% of users never use. I guess targeting that 1% makes the bloat more reasonable, but for anyone who wants one feature and not another, it's easier to start at 0 with Chrome or Firefox and add the one thing you want.
  - lmkg 12y ago
    On the other hand, the reason that Firefox got a reputation for being slow, bloated, and leaky was because 90% of the features were written by third-party developers with varying levels of competency, no quality controls, and little incentive to bring their stuff up to date. I used Opera pre-12, and the reason I did so was because all of the features that I wanted were baked-in to the browser, which meant that they went through the same quality controls and integration testing as the rest of the browser. There was no separate step of updating add-ons, or even worse having outdated add-ons with no compatible version. Everything Just Worked. Granted, some of the features were not as feature-complete as comparable Firefox add-ons. E.g., tab-stacking is strictly inferior to tree-style tabs because there is only one level of collapse. But everything I wanted was already included, at an acceptable-enough level that for me, it outweighed the cost of having to comparison-shop for mouse gestures or custom CSS solutions or whatever. FWIW, Opera never felt "bloated" to me. It had crop-tons of features, but for whatever reason that didn't translate to a feeling of bloat. The browser was fast and responsive, and the pile of features never really got in my way. Every once in a while, I would read about an interesting Firefox add-on, dig into the Options menu, and find out Opera had the feature all along, whereupon I would drag it onto the UI. Personally I like having the email built-in to the browser because it means I don't have to context-switch to see the status of my inbox. But that's a personal quirk.
Theodores 12y ago
I gave Vivaldi a go because I wanted to speed up the testing of a website 'logged in' (with Chrome) and 'not logged in' (with Vivaldi). Vivaldi was notionally perfect for that with the same F12 tools as Chrome. I could delete session cookies and do my testing with it, no learning required. So I would say I have given it a fair shot. But what browser am I using now? Chrome. Sometimes when you want to get something done you don't need to find that the maximise/minimise buttons are somewhere different, and with Ubuntu/Unity + Vivaldi they are - 90's style, in the top-right hand side. I was actually a late convert to Chrome, for a long time I 'needed' Firebug and found the Chrome F12 tools to be inferior, or with a learning hurdle. With Vivaldi there is no leap of re-learning required, but, it doesn't have anything extra that I need for the day job. A regular incognito window does all I need for testing, with the UX chrome in the expected places. Note I also have the indispensable 'Hover Zoom' and 'Vim bindings'.
- byte1918 12y ago
  I really, really, really want to like Firebug/Firefox but it's just impossible for me. I already tried to switch 2 times this year. Once with the FFDev and once with v36 (stable) - both times I was left just as disappointed. I open the developer tools and refresh a SharePoint page and the browser hangs for close to 1 minute - this is just unacceptable. Even IE doesn't have this hiccups. I know this isn't common and is only reproducible on v36 for me but it's a huge PIA. Other than this, I'm curious why do you say the chrome developer tools are inferior? I haven't used firebug in a while but AFAIK Chrome Dev Tools has most of it's features and since it's "native" it's smother and faster.
  - michaelbuddy 12y ago
    Try it while not logged into SharePoint. My experience when SharePoint is logged its not exactly lean.
- deaddodo 12y ago
  > I gave Vivaldi a go because I wanted to speed up the testing of a website 'logged in' (with Chrome) and 'not logged in' (with Vivaldi) Most people just use incognito mode for that.
Elepsis 12y ago
As a loyal user of Opera 5-12 (and a grudging user of the new Opera, which I find marginally faster/less full of surprises than Chrome), I love that the article reads like a list of old Opera 12 features that I miss. At the same time, I'm deeply worried that they believe they have to rebuild everything, including the mail client, to get to their first official release. Opera had a long pattern of rough but innovative releases that took a while to stabilize, and I can't help but believe that with them emphasizing feature completeness first, it's going to be rough for quite some time. Given the high bar set by modern browsers I'm not sure users--power users especially--will put up with the associated quirks long enough for Vivaldi to gain traction.
- yuhong 12y ago
  Still it proves that Opera 15 could have been done differently while still remaining Chromium-based.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> And since Chrome arrived in 2008, the Web hasn't seen another major browser launch—until now. Lots of new browsers have launched since 2008, and Vivaldi certainly isn't a major browser yet, if it ever will be.
- nekopa 12y ago
  I normally respect the things you say on here, but for once, I do have to cry "Citation". If you would be so kind, can you list some of the lots of new browsers that have been released?
  - Guvante 12y ago
    The original quote was > And since Chrome arrived in 2008, the Web hasn't seen another major browser launch—until now. The contested bit is "until now". Either you have to drop the major from the classification for until now to make sense, in which case there have been tons of minor browsers released since then, or you have to classify this new browser as major, which is a stretch.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    Not an unfair questions. Another post already listed some: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9159709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9159709 Sure, these aren't major browsers -- neither is Vivaldi, yet, and its purely speculation that it might be in the future.
    - azakai 12y ago
      Furthermore, there is little reason to suspect Vivaldi might become major. It brings nothing substantially new on the tech side - it's using Blink, like Chrome and Opera, and like Opera, it only differentiates itself from Chrome on the UI side. Many browsers have differentiated only on the UI side; none have really succeeded. As another example, Flock. The 4 actually major browsers have all brought major new innovations: Firefox was a different rendering engine than IE (and much better in pretty much every aspect, except legacy website support); Safari launched with WebKit (a new major fork of KHTML with many improvements); Chrome in turn launched using a major fork of WebKit (bringing process isolation and a completely new JS engine, v8). Vivaldi brings nothing like that to the table. It's interesting to see new UI ideas, of course. But for the article to call it "the first new major browser in many years" makes me immediately wonder if the author doesn't own Vivaldi stock (which of course is not the case; but the point is that it seems unjustifiably positive on the product).
shpx 12y ago
Let me know when Vivaldi implements vimperator style link selection and I'll try it. Otherwise if you have to click Firefox+vimperator or palemoon+pentadactyl will always be the true powerusers browser
- scuba7183 12y ago
  >Firefox+vimperator or palemoon+pentadactyl will always be the true powerusers browser Only if you are already a hardcore vim user and want that functionality in your browser, tons of people don't care
- sergiotapia 12y ago
  Vim users are a niche within a niche. Not all developers use Vim or care.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Because not all developers are power users - but this browser is supposedly aimed at those of us who are.
    - JadeNB 12y ago
      Even as a vim devotee, I think that the suggestion that "power user" implies "vim user" is incorrect at best, and offensive at worst.
      - TeMPOraL 12y ago
        Of course. It implies "vim or emacs users".
- akurilin 12y ago
  I was going to say exactly this. A fast browser with pentadactyl, but still the ability to use heavy SPAs like Asana without too much of a hassle.
mohakraaj 12y ago
I installed it, but crashes every time I try to open it.
dghf 12y ago
> even the ability to render a page with monospace fonts if you want. Is there any major browser that doesn't allow you to do this?
- detaro 12y ago
  In Opera you could quickly change these things for the current page in the menu. I don't think that is possible in Chrome or Firefox.
TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
Why can't they have stacked tabs and web page notes while using the Blink renderer? Saying that dropping Presto made those features go away doesn't make any sense to me. Its not like the Browser is built using its own renderer. The web renderer renders into the area of the tab ... the rest of the browser functionality exists outside that real-estate--and should be independent of the renderer.
m_mueller 12y ago
I was using Opera heavily until about 6-7 years ago when the compatibility just became too bad. The feature I miss most is the keyboard shortcuts (which this seems to have) and 'fast forward'. This was a neat feature for paged sites where the browser would try to parse the site for 'next page' links, preload it and when you hit the fast forward button it would show it immediately. Worked great in all kinds of user forums and photo albums back in the day - although granted, there's much less paged content nowadays. I used to put back, forward and fast forward on the 'z,', 'x' and 'c' keys, sort of similar to vim (although I was never a vim user). It really felt like being in total control of your browser and having the web at your fingertips.
getsat 12y ago
I got this prompt when I opened HN in Vivaldi: http://i.imgur.com/HKMLXQD.png http://i.imgur.com/HKMLXQD.png When I click the ?, nothing happens. Any idea what this is?
- r3bl 12y ago
  My guess is that they want to use your password manager for Chrome to allow you to login to HN.
andyidsinga 12y ago
"first there was ie and Firefox"... holy crap I am old ...cello anyone? :|
mrmondo 12y ago
I don't personally see whats so exciting about this, it really doesn't tick any of the boxes for anything I'd want in a browser (as a 'power user'), this just reminds me how much I dislike Javascript.
fapjacks 12y ago
It's not open source enough for me. No thanks.
hjst 12y ago
It's worth noting that there is already an open source browser project to recreate + extend the Opera 12 UI: Otter Browser http://otter-browser.org/ http://otter-browser.org/
dredmorbius 12y ago
Not really my style (I'm a vim guy), but for power-user browsers, there's conkeror. Webkit rendering, emacs commandline. http://conkeror.org/ http://conkeror.org/ (I mostly use it as a frequently-wiped-configs-and-cache bare rendering test.)

134 points by Heewg9 12y ago

toothbrush 12y ago

Their website needs Javascript to load. Ugh. I hope that's not an indicator for the rest of their philosophy.

pselbert 12y ago
The entire browser is built on JS/React. I'm pretty sure that is an indicator of the rest of their philosophy.
iLoch 12y ago
It's 2015 man, get off lynx..
- 0942v8653 12y ago
  I agree, w3m is much better. More modern. lynx sometimes has trouble making connections on my machine. Sent from my w3m
  - LukeShu 12y ago
    Have you compared w3m to "links" (links2 on Debian/Ubuntu)? links is my preferred TTY browser, but it seems to be neglected by most users.
    - demiol 12y ago
      I compared. w3m is better than links2, elinks better than w3m.
      - TeMPOraL 12y ago
        And what do you think about eww, the new browser embedded in Emacs 24? I personally like it.
emodendroket 12y ago
I don't understand why there are still people persisting in disabling JavaScript when the vast majority of Web sites today have significant functionality degradation or just plain won't work without it.
- valvar 12y ago
  If it needs JavaScript to display properly, then it's probably not worth my time. Anyone concerned with privacy and/or security should use noscript.
  - emodendroket 12y ago
    Nobody in their right mind is going to practically double the amount of work they do on a project to support people disabling JavaScript (a tiny minority who also knows how to undo this change if they are so inclined) unless they are absolutely huge. In any case, there are other ways to track you without the use of scripts.
- Amezarak 12y ago
  > I don't understand why there are still people persisting in disabling JavaScript when the vast majority of Web sites today have significant functionality degradation or just plain won't work without it. Install NoScript and browse for a couple days. Permanently whitelist what you have to on sites you frequent and trust. You'll find that pages load light-years faster, browser hangs/crashes are non-existent, annoying advertisements are a thing of the past, and actually, most web sites work fine without Javascript. Even though some of these websites have literally dozens (I suspect sometimes even hundreds: they sometimes chain each other and the full list takes up my entire screen and scrolls for a while) of scripts from different domains. And then you get used to this web, and all of a sudden there's you run across what should be just a plain-text article - not a web application - and you discover that you have to enable Javascript just to see any text and it feels a little absurd. This is definitely the exception, and not the rule. My whitelist, after years of browsing, is pretty small.
- marssaxman 12y ago
  The vast majority of web sites are crap. I'd really rather default disable javascript and opt-in if I decide I want to allow their code to run on my machine.

pbowyer 12y ago

This is the worst-written article I've read in a long time. It repeats itself (forgivable), contradicts itself (unforgivable) and I'm pretty sure is factually inaccurate in places (Doesn't Firefox already show the slowest addons?) In spite of that Vivaldi looks interesting, and as a long-time fan of Opera (the original company and the browser) I wish them well.

wlesieutre 12y ago
>Doesn't Firefox already show the slowest addons? I don't know about Firefox, but Internet Explorer definitely warns about addons that slow down launch times and opening new windows/tabs.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
icebraining 12y ago
The claims that there aren't new browsers is wrong as well - there's many of them, it's just that they don't have a marketing team behind them. Uzbl, luakit, surf, jumanji, midori, vimprobable, xombrero, etc.
- wanda 12y ago
  Well, none of those are new. Breach.cc is relatively new but even that goes back a year. But these highly extensible vim-like microbrowsers you list (excl. midori) have been around for years.
aroch 12y ago
FF38+ gives you a popup if it detects an addon is slowing page render: http://www.ghacks.net/2015/02/18/firefox-38-notifies-you-about-add-ons-that-slow-down-the-browser/ http://www.ghacks.net/2015/02/18/firefox-38-notifies-you-abo...
- ars 12y ago
  Note that the current stable is 36.

jray319 12y ago

"The problem is bad enough that a future version of Firefox will even have a feature dedicated to letting you know which of your add-ons is slowing you down." Does anyone know this feature of Firefox?

discreditable 12y ago
It's in Nightly. I've seen it a few times. It appears as a bar across the bottom of your screen telling you x addon may be causing this page to load slowly. From there you have the option to disable the addon, ignore the message, or ignore permanently. I saw it for uBlock, HTTPSEverywhere, and reddit enhancement suite, and amazonsmile redirect. In each scenario I felt it was well worth the tradeoff to run a little more slowly.
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  Worth noting that it's set to be hypersensitive right now for testing. Don't trust it for much of anything yet.
  - agumonkey 12y ago
    Good to know, I was starting to think either noscript/ublock were badly written, badly integrated or that Firefox had deep issues.
- jray319 12y ago
  Thanks. I found it. http://www.ghacks.net/2015/02/18/firefox-38-notifies-you-about-add-ons-that-slow-down-the-browser/ http://www.ghacks.net/2015/02/18/firefox-38-notifies-you-abo...
fabrice_d 12y ago
It's in current nightly builds. You get a status bar telling you that such add-on is taking to long when you load a page.

lelf 12y ago

And just about the first thing you see when trying to install it… Vivaldi may collect visitor statistics. The visitor statistics may include information about the visitors IP-addresses, usage patterns, <…> I guess I don't want your shiny new browser.

sanderjd 12y ago
At least it's one of the first things you see!
- themodelplumber 12y ago
  But for "advanced" users this is a turnoff. I wonder what they are getting paid per-user, and if that amount is greater than what they'd make if they just charged for the app.
mrkurt 12y ago
Every website collects that stuff.
- skymt 12y ago
  Most websites don't collect that stuff across every other website.
  - jodrellblank 12y ago
    Most don't. A surprising amount do - any page that embeds a Facebook 'like' button loaded from Facebook servers with a referrer header ... or JQuery hosted by Google or a Doubleclick advert or a reTweet button, and on and on.
    - joshontheweb 12y ago
      This is why I stay logged out of facebook and don't allow third party cookies. Trying to move off of gmail also so I am not always logged in there either. Probably not perfect but hopefully it foils a lot of attempts at tracking.

Mithaldu 12y ago

As someone who tried using it: There's nothing about this for power users. Even with an absolutely minimal website, it consumes ~20mb per tab.

emodendroket 12y ago
I imagine "power users" probably have more than 2GB of RAM.
- valvar 12y ago
  Not on my good old T60, I don't. That users have a lot of RAM is a terrible excuse for bad memory management, anyway.
- icebraining 12y ago
  But also much more programs competing for it - I have 6GB on my work laptop, and I'm constantly at 95%+ (not counting cache!).
  - munchhausen 12y ago
    This needs to be said - upgrade your RAM. If your device doesn't support a memory upgrade, get one that does. Upgrading my laptop to 32GB RAM was one of those things where you wish you had done it a lot earlier. No more OOM-killers, no more things grinding to a halt because the box is swapping (in fact, I disabled swap altogether), no more checking memory utilisation before starting a beefy VM. Just smooth sailing all along.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      Yeah, until the next release of Chrome and Firefox, where GMail and Facebook together will start to happily eat 16GB of your 32. The amount of memory browsers now eat up is insane.

ljoshua 12y ago

I loved and used Opera as my main browser back in the day, flicking back and forth between pages with right-mouse-button gestures and reading my email in-browser before Gmail. What a fantastic browser it was! I am excited to see the Vivaldi project mature and hope to be able to evaluate it once it is more complete.

ljoshua 12y ago

a3_nm 12y ago

Where's the source? What's the license? I couldn't find this information, and downloads seem to be binary-only.

bhassel 12y ago
From some quick searching, apparently it's closed-source, but built on top of Chromium's rendering engine (Blink).
- 0942v8653 12y ago
  Wow… why would anyone ever want to use this browser? Honestly. If it were open source, it would at least have a chance.
  - azakai 12y ago
    To be fair to Vivaldi, Chrome isn't open source either, and lots of people use it. Chrome is of course mostly open source, except for some proprietary bits. The same is basically true of Vivaldi (and Opera), they all add a relatively small amount of proprietary code on top of the massive open source Chromium codebase.
    - Nullabillity 12y ago
      AFAIK the only differences between Chromium and Chrome are: * Preinstalled proprietary plugins (Widevine, Flash) * More preinstalled codecs (woohoo, patents!) * Various user metrics reporting There is a pretty big difference between that and keeping all of your changes private.
      - abrowne 12y ago
        And the updater (for Mac/Win).
      - azakai 12y ago
        Well, for Vivaldi and Opera, "all of your changes" in this case amounts to just the UI. Neither has the capability nor motivation to modify Blink in any significant way. Also, Opera has been contributing to Blink, so they aren't keeping all their changes private. Vivaldi hasn't launched yet, but I would guess the same would be true of them - it just isn't rational to do otherwise (if Vivaldi fixes some small bug in Blink, why keep it as a patch they need to constantly reapply on top of Blink? Far easier to upstream it). So aside from the UI (which is tiny compared to the entire browser), Chrome, Blink and Vivaldi are about equal in terms of being open or closed.

austenallred 12y ago

What I want from a browser: 1. Speed 2. Privacy 3. Add-ons/features (and this is far below 1 and 2). This browser collects all sorts of information (seemingly more than chrome based on the message from instillation), and consumes an absurd amount of memory per tab, even on plain text webpages. There may be something promising there, but this isn't it.

lqdc13 12y ago
This browser consumes about same amount as chrome in my tests. Maybe 1/5 more. Firefox and Chrome also collect the same information, but it is an opt-in from what I remember. Edit: Chrome usage with 3 tabs: http://i.imgur.com/mGiX0So.png http://i.imgur.com/mGiX0So.png Vivaldi usage with the same tabs: http://i.imgur.com/ejnNzib.png http://i.imgur.com/ejnNzib.png
- paulirish 12y ago
  Installed Chrome extensions are your remaining helpers in there.
- DavideNL 12y ago
  > Firefox and Chrome also collect the same information Uhm, reference? I seriously doubt that...
  - lqdc13 12y ago
    Well, first from https://vivaldi.com/privacy/ https://vivaldi.com/privacy/ it's not clear to me whether the privacy thing applies to the browser or the vivaldi web site. Second, here's google chrome's privacy policy: https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/privacy/ https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/privacy/ You can see that they have all kinds of information being sent to google. At least as much as Vivaldi.
emodendroket 12y ago
Well, that probably makes you a minority even among "power users," however we might define that term.

Puts 12y ago

There are two things I really miss about Opera. Generic Content-blocking - that is not only blocking ads but any URL-pattern of interest. And also the per-site settings. For example a lot of sites use extensive javascript only for tracking, but not for functionality visible to the user, so blocking javascript on those sites truly improves loadtime on many sites. And also being able to fine tune cookie settings per site. It's such simple functionality, but really makes a huge difference both for performance and privacy and it saddens me that Opera never will be what it once was, and probably no other browser either. :-(

Terr_ 12y ago
Yeah, I want stuff like the F12 menu, and a good workflow for uses who whitelist sites for cookies, javascript, and flash. Now, Firefox might be able to fill the void, but I doubt Chrome ever can. Those kinds of features are an irritant to Google, because they want their pervasive analytics, ads, and various web-apps to work out of the box.

c3RlcGhlbnI_ 12y ago

Why did they keep the built in mail client of all things? Fighting opera to get it to use my mail and RSS clients was the worst part of my experience with the browser. If you want to make a customizable browser, give us the option to not install such unnecessary addons. The browser already seems to use as much memory as chrome, it does not need to waste any more.

forthefuture 12y ago
This is something I don't really understand about the idea of a "power" browser. The entire reason browsers cut back on features was bloat that 99% of users never use. I guess targeting that 1% makes the bloat more reasonable, but for anyone who wants one feature and not another, it's easier to start at 0 with Chrome or Firefox and add the one thing you want.
- lmkg 12y ago
  On the other hand, the reason that Firefox got a reputation for being slow, bloated, and leaky was because 90% of the features were written by third-party developers with varying levels of competency, no quality controls, and little incentive to bring their stuff up to date. I used Opera pre-12, and the reason I did so was because all of the features that I wanted were baked-in to the browser, which meant that they went through the same quality controls and integration testing as the rest of the browser. There was no separate step of updating add-ons, or even worse having outdated add-ons with no compatible version. Everything Just Worked. Granted, some of the features were not as feature-complete as comparable Firefox add-ons. E.g., tab-stacking is strictly inferior to tree-style tabs because there is only one level of collapse. But everything I wanted was already included, at an acceptable-enough level that for me, it outweighed the cost of having to comparison-shop for mouse gestures or custom CSS solutions or whatever. FWIW, Opera never felt "bloated" to me. It had crop-tons of features, but for whatever reason that didn't translate to a feeling of bloat. The browser was fast and responsive, and the pile of features never really got in my way. Every once in a while, I would read about an interesting Firefox add-on, dig into the Options menu, and find out Opera had the feature all along, whereupon I would drag it onto the UI. Personally I like having the email built-in to the browser because it means I don't have to context-switch to see the status of my inbox. But that's a personal quirk.

Theodores 12y ago

I gave Vivaldi a go because I wanted to speed up the testing of a website 'logged in' (with Chrome) and 'not logged in' (with Vivaldi). Vivaldi was notionally perfect for that with the same F12 tools as Chrome. I could delete session cookies and do my testing with it, no learning required. So I would say I have given it a fair shot. But what browser am I using now? Chrome. Sometimes when you want to get something done you don't need to find that the maximise/minimise buttons are somewhere different, and with Ubuntu/Unity + Vivaldi they are - 90's style, in the top-right hand side. I was actually a late convert to Chrome, for a long time I 'needed' Firebug and found the Chrome F12 tools to be inferior, or with a learning hurdle. With Vivaldi there is no leap of re-learning required, but, it doesn't have anything extra that I need for the day job. A regular incognito window does all I need for testing, with the UX chrome in the expected places. Note I also have the indispensable 'Hover Zoom' and 'Vim bindings'.

byte1918 12y ago
I really, really, really want to like Firebug/Firefox but it's just impossible for me. I already tried to switch 2 times this year. Once with the FFDev and once with v36 (stable) - both times I was left just as disappointed. I open the developer tools and refresh a SharePoint page and the browser hangs for close to 1 minute - this is just unacceptable. Even IE doesn't have this hiccups. I know this isn't common and is only reproducible on v36 for me but it's a huge PIA. Other than this, I'm curious why do you say the chrome developer tools are inferior? I haven't used firebug in a while but AFAIK Chrome Dev Tools has most of it's features and since it's "native" it's smother and faster.
- michaelbuddy 12y ago
  Try it while not logged into SharePoint. My experience when SharePoint is logged its not exactly lean.
deaddodo 12y ago
> I gave Vivaldi a go because I wanted to speed up the testing of a website 'logged in' (with Chrome) and 'not logged in' (with Vivaldi) Most people just use incognito mode for that.

Elepsis 12y ago

As a loyal user of Opera 5-12 (and a grudging user of the new Opera, which I find marginally faster/less full of surprises than Chrome), I love that the article reads like a list of old Opera 12 features that I miss. At the same time, I'm deeply worried that they believe they have to rebuild everything, including the mail client, to get to their first official release. Opera had a long pattern of rough but innovative releases that took a while to stabilize, and I can't help but believe that with them emphasizing feature completeness first, it's going to be rough for quite some time. Given the high bar set by modern browsers I'm not sure users--power users especially--will put up with the associated quirks long enough for Vivaldi to gain traction.

yuhong 12y ago
Still it proves that Opera 15 could have been done differently while still remaining Chromium-based.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> And since Chrome arrived in 2008, the Web hasn't seen another major browser launch—until now. Lots of new browsers have launched since 2008, and Vivaldi certainly isn't a major browser yet, if it ever will be.

nekopa 12y ago
I normally respect the things you say on here, but for once, I do have to cry "Citation". If you would be so kind, can you list some of the lots of new browsers that have been released?
- Guvante 12y ago
  The original quote was > And since Chrome arrived in 2008, the Web hasn't seen another major browser launch—until now. The contested bit is "until now". Either you have to drop the major from the classification for until now to make sense, in which case there have been tons of minor browsers released since then, or you have to classify this new browser as major, which is a stretch.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  Not an unfair questions. Another post already listed some: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9159709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9159709 Sure, these aren't major browsers -- neither is Vivaldi, yet, and its purely speculation that it might be in the future.
  - azakai 12y ago
    Furthermore, there is little reason to suspect Vivaldi might become major. It brings nothing substantially new on the tech side - it's using Blink, like Chrome and Opera, and like Opera, it only differentiates itself from Chrome on the UI side. Many browsers have differentiated only on the UI side; none have really succeeded. As another example, Flock. The 4 actually major browsers have all brought major new innovations: Firefox was a different rendering engine than IE (and much better in pretty much every aspect, except legacy website support); Safari launched with WebKit (a new major fork of KHTML with many improvements); Chrome in turn launched using a major fork of WebKit (bringing process isolation and a completely new JS engine, v8). Vivaldi brings nothing like that to the table. It's interesting to see new UI ideas, of course. But for the article to call it "the first new major browser in many years" makes me immediately wonder if the author doesn't own Vivaldi stock (which of course is not the case; but the point is that it seems unjustifiably positive on the product).

shpx 12y ago

Let me know when Vivaldi implements vimperator style link selection and I'll try it. Otherwise if you have to click Firefox+vimperator or palemoon+pentadactyl will always be the true powerusers browser

scuba7183 12y ago
>Firefox+vimperator or palemoon+pentadactyl will always be the true powerusers browser Only if you are already a hardcore vim user and want that functionality in your browser, tons of people don't care
sergiotapia 12y ago
Vim users are a niche within a niche. Not all developers use Vim or care.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Because not all developers are power users - but this browser is supposedly aimed at those of us who are.
  - JadeNB 12y ago
    Even as a vim devotee, I think that the suggestion that "power user" implies "vim user" is incorrect at best, and offensive at worst.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      Of course. It implies "vim or emacs users".
akurilin 12y ago
I was going to say exactly this. A fast browser with pentadactyl, but still the ability to use heavy SPAs like Asana without too much of a hassle.

mohakraaj 12y ago

I installed it, but crashes every time I try to open it.

dghf 12y ago

> even the ability to render a page with monospace fonts if you want. Is there any major browser that doesn't allow you to do this?

detaro 12y ago
In Opera you could quickly change these things for the current page in the menu. I don't think that is possible in Chrome or Firefox.

TheMagicHorsey 12y ago

Why can't they have stacked tabs and web page notes while using the Blink renderer? Saying that dropping Presto made those features go away doesn't make any sense to me. Its not like the Browser is built using its own renderer. The web renderer renders into the area of the tab ... the rest of the browser functionality exists outside that real-estate--and should be independent of the renderer.

m_mueller 12y ago

I was using Opera heavily until about 6-7 years ago when the compatibility just became too bad. The feature I miss most is the keyboard shortcuts (which this seems to have) and 'fast forward'. This was a neat feature for paged sites where the browser would try to parse the site for 'next page' links, preload it and when you hit the fast forward button it would show it immediately. Worked great in all kinds of user forums and photo albums back in the day - although granted, there's much less paged content nowadays. I used to put back, forward and fast forward on the 'z,', 'x' and 'c' keys, sort of similar to vim (although I was never a vim user). It really felt like being in total control of your browser and having the web at your fingertips.

getsat 12y ago

I got this prompt when I opened HN in Vivaldi: http://i.imgur.com/HKMLXQD.png http://i.imgur.com/HKMLXQD.png When I click the ?, nothing happens. Any idea what this is?

r3bl 12y ago
My guess is that they want to use your password manager for Chrome to allow you to login to HN.

andyidsinga 12y ago

"first there was ie and Firefox"... holy crap I am old ...cello anyone? :|

mrmondo 12y ago

I don't personally see whats so exciting about this, it really doesn't tick any of the boxes for anything I'd want in a browser (as a 'power user'), this just reminds me how much I dislike Javascript.

fapjacks 12y ago

It's not open source enough for me. No thanks.

hjst 12y ago

It's worth noting that there is already an open source browser project to recreate + extend the Opera 12 UI: Otter Browser http://otter-browser.org/ http://otter-browser.org/

dredmorbius 12y ago

Not really my style (I'm a vim guy), but for power-user browsers, there's conkeror. Webkit rendering, emacs commandline. http://conkeror.org/ http://conkeror.org/ (I mostly use it as a frequently-wiped-configs-and-cache bare rendering test.)