I'm sure everyone here knows, but just posting to make sure no one misses out.
Please don't use Vivaldi. It is a closed source browser [1], and as such we have no way of validating they have not put backdoors, spyware, telemetrics to send private details such as your bank details, website logins, Google account, etc.
Stick with open source browsers, who's code is verifiable, especially for something as important as a web browser.
Remember that Chrome is also closed-source. You can't build Chrome from source, and you can't check whether Google hasn't added anything nefarious on top of Chromium (and they do, at very least the DRM).
I don't use Vivaldi, and have no interest in the Mastodon for now, but they were smart enough to change their use agent in order to have further compatibility, that actually triggered a market share loss on paper.
I do not understand why no other browser has the ability to keep a predefined list of pages always open to the side, especially for real-time communication.
A lot of features Vivaldi has are definitely "nice-to-have" level, especially stuff they seemingly put in for fun like Philips Hue integration.
But there are some very functional settings I use that I just miss in every other browser. Most notable for me are:
- extremely (at least relative to Chrome or Firefox) configurable keyboard shortcuts
- easily editable search engines (you have to enable this with an about:config parameter that isn't default -- not that it's turned off by default, but that it's a parameter you have to know about beforehand and add yourself to the list)
And it's Chromium, so you get Chromium extensions such as uBlock Origin, which is why I stuck with it over qutebrowser (which also has configurable keyboard shortcuts) even though it's closed source.
I loved Vivaldi. It has the spirit of Opera, where it's all about giving power users options instead of streamlining them away for UX (which is still an option you can have with Vivaldi!). I use Firefox now -- Manifest v3 was the last straw -- but I lament the loss of configurability in some areas.
If you pin tabs, they'll be loaded on start and stay until you close them. Always in sight even if you have a lot of tabs. At least on Firefox.
It seems like this would almost perfectly act as a "predefined list of pages always open to the side, especially for real-time communication" or did I miss something? It won't be next to the page, but always visible at the top-left and kept between restarts.
I know pinned tabs, I pin the music tab, it plays in the background, I never have to look at it, cool.
The point of having slack/mattermost/discord/whatever always on the side is that one does not have to switch away from the main tab just to see what's going on.
I use Vivaldi as my secondary browser and I like it. I use it because my workplace mandates Google Workspaces. I use it solely for work purposes for 2 main reasons:
1. It has tree tabs and I can't find any other Chrome based browser with Tree tabs
2. Google Meet is 2nd class citizen on Firefox and lacks many features.
What do you find to be missing for Google Meet? Firefox is also my daily driver, and my workplace is heavily into the whole Google ecosystem. Meet seems to be fine enough, but maybe I'm not looking for things that aren't shown to me.
Google meet on FF doesn’t support the video effects like screen blur or advanced filters. At least that was the message I got the last time I tried it.
Opera (the European one) was a decent company, and much, much more ethical than Google or Apple (in not using weasel words, and false assurance to data mine your personal data). The founder sold Opera (a really big mistake in my opinion) and started Vivaldi browser with a Chromium base. I'd still trust Vivaldi over Google and Apple anytime. That said, it is disappointing that their browser always phones home (and to Google too, last I remember) and they do not give you an option to disable that (unless you use some powerful application firewall), and so I avoid it. And Vivaldi still has miles to go before it can even barely touch the innovations that happened at Opera.
A nit-pick, but not entirely true. The set of events was: founder stepped aside from the board due to disagreements on direction, eventually resigned from the company, then (a good while later) the board opted to sell the company.
Perhaps the big mistake was the founder not taking as much of a bdfl approach to management as many do. Maybe. Who's to say.
> I avoid it. And Vivaldi still has miles to go before it can even barely touch the innovations that happened at Opera.
It's a long way off, and I swore I'd never trust closed-source again after the Presto project was lost. But given the current landscape (& growing misgivings[0] with Firefox management), Vivaldi is looking more and more tempting by the day.
If I recall right, the founder was involved in the fiasco to abandon Presto in favour of Blink. I remember one of the reason he cited in defence for this is that Presto couldn't keep up with the increasing number of popular, broken websites they needed to support in "quirks" mode / compatibility mode (or something like that) and working with Google on Blink would really help with that. So I don't think he is entirely blameless. (But there's also the fact that all businessmen, especially new one, also make honest mistakes).
It's a pity that Vivaldi doesn't see the business potential in building another new browser engine. With Mozilla making Firefox an adware crap, I think Vivaldi may even be able to get half a million dollar in online funding for the promise of another open source browser engine. Projects like Netsurf and SerenityOS browser already have done half the work and just need an experienced and talented leadership to give them momentum and Vivaldi can certainly provide that ... Even Webkit is quite decent and just needs a multi-platform push.
Not sure how long it was brewing internally, but the decision to move from Presto to Webkit was publicly announced in 2013; von Tetzchner stepped down in 2010 & resigned in 2011.
> the fact that all businessmen, especially new one, also make honest mistakes
But yes, absolutely this. The repeated decision to forgo open-sourcing is (imo) a fatal mistake - it's the number 1 cited reason for people not switching to Vivaldi & also the real tragedy of Presto's shutdown: no possibility of a community fork - for what was an engine that always outperformed all competitors efficiency-wise (Webkit was faster when coupled with new hw & a brick tonne of RAM, but still knocks out even the fanciest setups today when you open more than a tab or three).
Most of the world is closed source and if the only reason to not use Vivaldi is because it is not open source well that isn't a very compelling reason at all. Most of the planet is using some form of closed source web browser the top 3 being Chrome, Safari, or Edge.
Well, no, it can be a compelling reason and the world can still mostly run closed source browsers. Those ideas are not in conflict.
Twenty years ago if you said "don't run closed source operating systems" people would've popped out of the woodwork and said the same thing. Twenty years later, a huge chunk of the world runs on an open source OS.
I suppose a lot depends on how we define 'world' and 'open source'. Still, there is an argument to be had ( and what FSF advocates ) about benefits of open software. "Closed source" is absolutely a compelling reason and, from where I sit, companies and organizations across the globe have shown time and again that they simply cannot be trusted and will engage in 'goodwill withdrawal' when convenient.
<< Most of the planet is using some form of closed source web browser the top 3 being Chrome, Safari, or Edge.
Sadly, I personally believe popularity is a bad reason to advocate for technology. I kinda buy your argument that 'closed source' is not inherently bad ( edit: but it does require trust hence my first paragraph ).
I use a closed source browser but I don't use Vivaldi because it's slow, drains the battery on my laptop at an incredible rate and I find the UI to be less than enjoyable.
I use Vivaldi because it simply has more the features in a better package than these open source browsers. Maybe some day Firefox stops fucking around with and just starts stealing UX features from Edge and Vivaldi so I come back, but for now I can't start using it.
It's a shame it's proprietary, because it's the most configurable and feature rich browser I know of, and the only one that could possibly replace Firefox. As it is, I have it around for the rare things that don't work in Firefox, such as Teams meetings.
Chromium browsers lack side tabs and horizontal tabs make zero sense. I believe that Firefox (and its derivatives) is the only option which is open source.
(yes there are a few vertical tab extensions for Chrome, but they are all incredibly lame as they do it by injecting an iframe into each webpage (!!))
I actually like Vivaldi's "tab grouping" feature better than tree side vertical tabs. I use Firefox tho, because I don't want to give chrom* based browsers any more market share
It's sort of funny how we've come full circle. First there was RSS. People didn't like having an RSS program, so a reader was bundled with the browser. Then social media took over from personal blogs & feeds. With declining use, browsers removed RSS readers. Then federated social media grew. Now browsers are re-bundling clients in the browser.
RSS is still around! Most news & blog sites support it, though sometimes you have to go digging in the HTML to find the feed URL. On the client side, I find Feedly to be satisfactory on both desktop & mobile, and they actually have a business model so hopefully they'll stick around. There are of course many other clients, but that's the one that stuck for me.
Setting up an RSS reader was the best thing that happened to my browsing habits in years. Can't recommend it enough.
Constant refreshing of half a dozen sites was replaced by occassionally looking into one program. Literally all the sites I read had an RSS feed, even if they didn't advertise it (maybe they don't even realise it). And a while ago I added an RSS feed for replies to my comments here[1], which I thought I might implement myself, but of course somebody already did (thanks!).
In addition, it helps keeping up with blogs I do read, but I don't read immediately, e.g. ACOUP.
It also solved the problem of Firefox Android's atrocious tab handling ([2], basically because I took Firefox out of the equation).
Frankly this just seems like Vivaldi hopping on a not so compelling trend.
I don’t even think your list of events is a successive, connected one. Browsers once had RSS readers so now it’s full circle that Vivaldi adds to its kitchen sink for a social network barely anybody uses?
Cool. Was never a user of Vivaldi or any chrome derivative but adoption of mastodon a la activity pub /fediverse is a good development. Better than crypto/nft nonsense at least IMO
I use Vivaldi day to day, mostly because of tab stacks, but it crashes fairly often and loses my tabs in the process (I can always restore them from its trash though). I just got the new release, and discovered another bug: If you're on tab A and right-click on a tab stack B, and click "pin tab stack", it pins your current tab, rather than the stack you clicked on.
I want to like Vivaldi, but how do these things pass QA?
They should rather fix useless built-in Mail client. Wanted to switch from Outlook over recent design changes, but that Mail built-in Vivaldi is even more unusable requiring you to use some left panel, which will cover the list of messages, you just can't have simple Mail client in one tab without some annoying panels.
Please don't use Vivaldi. It is a closed source browser [1], and as such we have no way of validating they have not put backdoors, spyware, telemetrics to send private details such as your bank details, website logins, Google account, etc.
Stick with open source browsers, who's code is verifiable, especially for something as important as a web browser.
[1] https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/why-isnt-vivaldi-browser...