[HN Gopher] Vivaldi Browser 5.0
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Vivaldi Browser 5.0
        
       Author : philonoist
       Score  : 137 points
       Date   : 2021-12-02 15:22 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (vivaldi.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (vivaldi.com)
        
       | kkjjkgjjgg wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | Nux wrote:
       | 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=...
        
         | webmobdev wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
           | 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 wrote:
           | 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.
        
         | Oxodao wrote:
         | Pretty sure that's no longer the case or used to not be the
         | case as I have a Microsoft account I use on Skype among other
         | MS services that is firstname@lastname.fr
        
         | mattl wrote:
         | They also won't take hey.com
        
         | luke2m wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | Nux wrote:
           | IMHO it's a dumb policy and against competition. This is
           | discriminatory and abusive.
           | 
           | Pretty sure there are thousands or tens of thousands of email
           | domains out there that are personal. Nobody can track them
           | all. How many of you guys don't have your own personal
           | domains?
        
         | roody15 wrote:
         | That is complete garbage. Lame Microsoft
        
         | zamadatix wrote:
         | I wouldn't be surprised if that because Vivaldi had/has a
         | corporate MS service using the domain in some way. E.g. if I
         | test with one of my personal domains with MX records/email
         | configured it continues just fine, if I test with one of my
         | personal domains without email configure it continues just
         | fine, if I try to create a personal account using my work's
         | domain (tied to O365) it blocks it.
         | 
         | So it's not that you can only register gmail/yahoo/etc it seems
         | that the domain can't already be registered for non personal
         | use at MS. Maybe there are other criteria as well (perhaps a
         | way to explicitly exclude your domain if you don't want people
         | registering it for example) but it's a lot more open than "only
         | these services allowed".
        
           | Nux wrote:
           | Ok, good.. Then vivaldi.net is specifically blacklisted then.
           | 
           | I checked and vivaldi.net is their community, everyone can
           | sign up for email, whereas vivaldi.com is their "commercial"
           | email domain.
           | 
           | Both hosted in Iceland with valid MX that has got nothing to
           | do with o365...
        
             | zamadatix wrote:
             | Doesn't necessarily have to be that the domain is tied to
             | specifically O365 like my work just that it is registered
             | for non-personal use with Microsoft's cloud e.g. Azure AD.
             | Or possibly still other factors unknown but yeah the main
             | thing is it's blocked for a reason not because it was
             | missing from a whitelist.
        
       | drcongo wrote:
       | 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...
        
         | y-c-o-m-b wrote:
         | I've been using Vivaldi for at least a couple of years now -
         | strictly for banking - and I fully agree on the slowness of the
         | application. It's awful.
         | 
         | I came from the original Opera (before it transferred
         | ownership) and I loved the UI/UX and performance of it. I was
         | hoping Vivaldi would replicate that, but it's been an enormous
         | pain in the ass lately with websites either not loading (they
         | work fine in Firefox and Chrome), tabs crashing spontaneously,
         | the app crashing spontaneously, and the horrid performance.
         | These issues seem to occur across my different other laptops
         | also.
         | 
         | I use it exclusively for banking as I said, so it's only used
         | once or twice a month but I would never use Vivaldi on a
         | regular basis with the way it currently works.
         | 
         | I will say though, I really like their mobile app so far. There
         | was a weird tab duplication bug on it earlier in the year and
         | they fixed it really quick, but outside of that it's been
         | pretty great.
        
         | LinAGKar wrote:
         | That's the sort of attitude that's ruining Firefox. They're
         | removing everything that makes it useful in a appempt to turn
         | it into a Chrome clone. Vivaldi is the only remotely viable
         | alternative to Firefox.
        
         | qwerty456127 wrote:
         | > I want a rendering engine and some tabs
         | 
         | Even tabs don't have to be a thing for an app (e.g. a web
         | browser) to manage. A good window manager could tabify
         | anything. This would require a standardized API for windows to
         | expose the opened view URIs to be really good in replacing app-
         | level tabs though.
        
         | bogwog wrote:
         | Vivaldi is clearly for power users, but you're definitely
         | exaggerating. It's not that complicated, and performance is
         | fine.
         | 
         | Being based on Chromium is the only thing that keeps me from
         | using it as my main browser.
        
         | Tomis02 wrote:
         | > making the entire application 1000 times slower than it could
         | have been.
         | 
         | Everything you think you gain in speed in Chrome/Firefox, you
         | instantly lose when having to deal with their oversimplified
         | UX. Vivaldi's focus on features means that I can easily manage
         | and switch between tens of tabs - having an equivalent
         | functionality on other browsers via extensions is both very
         | slow and clunky, and the simple act of switching between two
         | tabs is annoyingly unergonomic. By using Vivaldi I must've
         | gained so far entire days of life that would've been otherwise
         | lost by blindly ctrl-tabbing my way to the desired tab.
        
         | RussianCow wrote:
         | > 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 wrote:
           | Yeah, sorry, wasn't meaning to hate on Vivaldi. I'm sure it's
           | great for those who want those features.
        
             | Tempest1981 wrote:
             | Usually folks on HN are mad when they cater to the masses
             | and ignore the 0.1% power-users. Can't win.
        
         | ochronus wrote:
         | +1 - I _really_ wanted to like Vivaldi, but... no.
        
         | brnt wrote:
         | On top of that, their open core model makes it hard to say how
         | secure all that UI is and how pro-user they actually are. In
         | that phone-home test they had some of the worst score n that
         | regard, together with Edge.
        
         | chimen wrote:
         | Switch browsers then, you have alternatives. Nothing wrong with
         | what they do, this is not the way to appreciate free stuff.
         | We're not in 2003 when IE was your only tool.
         | 
         | Are we offended by too many options now? I want a rendering
         | engine with adblocker and a mail client blended in. Most of my
         | time is spent in a browser when I'm online so, for me, it makes
         | sense for my browser to be as capable as it can.
        
         | kunagi7 wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | drcongo wrote:
           | I use Safari for actual browsing because it's really
           | unbeatable at it - very fast rendering, has tabs. I'd argue
           | Chromium doesn't quite live up to that promise thanks to the
           | horrible UI rendering and spectacular battery drain that it
           | inherits from Chrome. Firefox I think does a nice compromise
           | between being a good browser and having all that
           | customisation stuff that the kids seem to like, but it does
           | have a tiny hit on performance there too, ie: when opening a
           | new tab the UI lag is as bad as Chrome. Vivaldi takes it to
           | an extreme, and obviously gets the extreme UI lag that goes
           | with that.
           | 
           | I'm probably in a minority, but for me anything that gets in
           | the way of me opening a new tab and loading a webpage in it
           | is just harm.
        
             | the_other wrote:
             | Safari user here too. It's great. Admittedly, I'm fairly
             | invested in the Apple ecosystem and enjoy my laptop and
             | phone operating as two views on the same computing state,
             | so I'm biased... but Safari renders very nicely, has
             | minimal UI, runs fast and I like it a lot.
             | 
             | I'm not looking forward to the Monterey tab design tho'
             | when I eventually have to upgrade to a "current"-ish
             | version.
        
               | Tsiklon wrote:
               | The new tab design is entirely optional on Monterey, the
               | reception to it was that bad. I personally don't use the
               | new tab design on the desktop. But I do use the new tab
               | design on iOS (which conveniently moves the address bar
               | to the bottom of the screen)
        
               | drcongo wrote:
               | I'm on the Monterey tab design, and it's hit and miss.
               | First time using it I was wondering what the fuss was
               | about wrt knowing which was the active tab, it seemed
               | fairly clear to me. However, I've since seen states where
               | the active tab is lighter than the others (it is right
               | now) and other times where the active tab is darker than
               | the others (definitely happens in a private window) - the
               | lack of consistency is the biggest problem with it. Also,
               | it's _really_ hard to tell if you're in a private window
               | on the latest Safari.
        
               | Tempest1981 wrote:
               | Does it help to do this:
               | 
               | Preferences -> Tabs -> Uncheck "Show color in tab bar"
        
               | handrous wrote:
               | The chrome color-changing is obnoxious and plainly harms
               | UX, and the design is weirdly wasteful of pixels for
               | something that looks like it was intended to save space.
               | It also continues the flattifying trend of making it
               | impossible to distinguish individual interactive elements
               | unless you're looking directly at them--gimme buttons,
               | depth, and contrast, damnit.
               | 
               | And that's _after_ switching it to the more-classic-like
               | version that keeps the URL bar separate.
               | 
               | The tab groups are sort of cool, but they're bugged for
               | me (opening a link in a new tab results in a blank tab,
               | after briefly displaying the intended content after I
               | switch to it, but _only_ in named groups, not in the
               | default unnamed tab group) and their relationship or lack
               | of relationship with windows keeps throwing me off.
               | Overall this feels like something the window manager
               | should handle, in some fashion, though I admit existing
               | features aren 't _quite_ enough to cover what it does. It
               | also seems like the whole concept needs to be integrated
               | with bookmarks. All in all, good direction, but something
               | 's still missing.
               | 
               | Oh, and I also forget to switch to them, so haven't used
               | them at all since about the first week after initially
               | setting a few useful ones up. I need a way to at least
               | tell Safari to open tabs for certain sites in certain tab
               | groups, regardless of where I start to load them.
               | Otherwise I end up with the same 100+ tabs in the unnamed
               | tab group as I always have.
        
             | jayp1418 wrote:
             | Gnome Web is also good
        
             | ochronus wrote:
             | I love Safari, too - my issue is that I use different OS's
             | in parallel and not having bookmarks/settings sync is a big
             | usability issue :/ so I'm stuck with Ungoogled Chromium,
             | where I can at least solve for the bookmarks sync.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | Tempest1981 wrote:
               | I like having separate sync for work vs home. So I use
               | different browsers for each. Any other suggestions for
               | keeping things separate?
        
             | kunagi7 wrote:
             | As an iPad owner, Safari is great, it does the job for
             | occasional browsing, displaying things to someone (small
             | gatherings, meetings, family, etc).
             | 
             | As a Linux Desktop user however, I don't care about UI
             | speed since my browser usage is mostly static, a few
             | documentation pages, a lot of heavy tabs at work (JIRA,
             | Gmail, Chat, Teams, web related projects, etc). Maybe I
             | have a powerful desktop bias since my Ryzen doesn't seem to
             | have any visible performance hit, either Chromium, Brave,
             | Firefox, Vivaldi open tabs in a flash. On my laptop (also
             | Linux) every browser feels a bit sluggish though with
             | Chromium being the fastest. Macs (specially the new M1s)
             | are a different beast and feels like Safari is specially
             | optimized for them.
        
         | tomrod wrote:
         | Its mobile browser is fantastic. Much better than Firefox,
         | Opera, or Chrome, IMHO.
        
         | throw10920 wrote:
         | > a ton of unnecessary cognitive load
         | 
         | I'm curious - what features does Vivaldi have that add
         | cognitive load to users not using them?
        
         | WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote:
         | It is odd. Also harder to trust a small org.
         | 
         | Maybe an angle to getting a size-able slice of the browser
         | market for a start up at this point would be just being super
         | simple, very private-first, and than have a better development
         | experience + inspector than Chrome's. Then let all the "tech"
         | people push it out. No easy task.
        
       | amyjess wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
           | There's always sideloading at least.
        
       | quaffapint wrote:
       | I've read their 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 wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
           | 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 wrote:
         | 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.
        
       | jernejzen wrote:
       | So guess that if you want extensions you need to go through
       | Google machinery.. and your back to their telemetry empire?
        
         | jadbox wrote:
         | I don't follow- Doesn't Vivaldi support any chrome extension?
        
           | mthoms wrote:
           | Yes, but you have to get them through the Chrome Web Store.
           | It's the same with Brave.
        
             | sva_ wrote:
             | You can also just add the extensions by temporarily turning
             | the "Developer mode" switch on and dragging the archive
             | into the extensions pane.
        
       | pndy wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | pseudalopex wrote:
       | 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-
       | translat...
        
         | zamadatix wrote:
         | "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.
        
           | cturtle wrote:
           | 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_t...
        
             | Isthatablackgsd wrote:
             | That explains why I get beach ball of death in my macOS.
             | Sometime it just hang indefinitely and I was wondering why
             | this behavior exist in Vivaldi. I thought it was a bad
             | memory leak.
        
           | jadbox wrote:
           | Is this still true of v5?
        
             | zamadatix wrote:
             | 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 wrote:
               | 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.
        
       | Chevalier wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | kangaroozach wrote:
       | Is it built on chromium?
        
         | pseudalopex wrote:
         | Yes.
        
           | TheDesolate0 wrote:
           | No, they are not.
           | 
           | They use open source code, but are not open source.
        
         | sandreas wrote:
         | https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-open-source/
        
       | cute_boi wrote:
       | 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 :(
        
       | SwiftyBug wrote:
       | I don't understand that obsession browser developers have with
       | themes. To the point it's a highlight in a major version.
        
         | KarlKemp wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
           | Yes, the last thing I want are things competing with the page
           | I'm reading.
        
           | riidom wrote:
           | 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!).
        
         | handrous wrote:
         | As far as just colors and font size and such, that used to be
         | an OS feature that every (native) application got for free.
         | 
         | FF had it years and years ago, too. I tried it a bit back then
         | and then stopped, because almost all the themes just made it
         | harder to use. Not sure what's up with their making such a big
         | deal out of adding a weaker and less-customizable version of it
         | recently with their color themes. "We redid an old feature, but
         | worse".
        
         | wussboy wrote:
         | Agree. I've never used one for longer than it took to briefly
         | click to it to see what it looked like.
        
         | webmobdev wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | mixmastamyk wrote:
           | Music software skinz can add some value, because they do not
           | not directly compete with the content. Browsers not so much.
        
         | zamadatix wrote:
         | There is a bigger group of users that care about how
         | cute/fun/whatever their browser looks than the group of users
         | that care about engine improvements and new technology support.
        
           | Tempest1981 wrote:
           | As someone who has installed in dozens of custom fonts and
           | themes for my IDE, there's a definite appeal!
        
         | smoldesu wrote:
         | I think Chrome handles themes best, at least on Linux. It
         | automatically grabs your GTK stylesheet's color palette and
         | recolors the window accordingly. Combined with proper window
         | decorations, it's a surprisingly "native" feel out of the box.
        
         | skinkestek wrote:
         | User configurable themes is fantastic!
         | 
         | Look at Firefox now for an example of what happens when
         | developers can introduce their "I know best" themes:
         | 
         | I constantly get confused and think the active tab is next to
         | the actually active tab.
         | 
         | Irony is the idea behind removing actual themability seems to
         | be to prevent people from seeing badly styled browsers, and yet
         | this is the second most annoying one I am aware of. (Chrome
         | annoys me more, not because it is bad but because I don't like
         | Chrome ;-)
        
           | pvinis wrote:
           | color.firefox.com is great for that!
        
             | crispyalmond wrote:
             | Are the colors sticking around? Last time I checked they
             | were "limited time". (Unless you already applied one of
             | their colors)
        
               | noahtallen wrote:
               | Firefox color is different from the new built-in color
               | thing. It's an official extension that has been around
               | for a while which lets you customize a lot of the colors
               | used in different parts of Firefox.
        
         | riidom wrote:
         | I wondered about that too. It seems like a bit of "filler
         | content" to be honest. There are not many new features at all,
         | the new thing here is the theme management in first place. The
         | release notes in general are pretty weak compared to pervious
         | releases of Vivaldi.
         | 
         | I mean I don't care there is always a bit of a hanger now and
         | then, I still love Vivaldi. Just saying I can relate to these
         | observation.
        
         | hulitu wrote:
         | Because chrome and firefox literarly thrashed the browser
         | experience. Not everybody loves gray or black and 1 font size
         | does not fit all people.
        
       | pixelgeek wrote:
       | 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?
        
         | Isthatablackgsd wrote:
         | > "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.
        
           | fpoling wrote:
           | A Vivaldi developer here. In which OS and on which pages do
           | you experience this effect? Also, what is DPI of the screen?
        
         | tssva wrote:
         | Taking a screenshot on Windows is easy. PrtScn key will copy a
         | screenshot of the current screen to the clipboard, Alt+PrtScn
         | will copy the current window to the clipboard, Windows+PrtScn
         | will save a screenshot of the current screen to the Screenshot
         | folder of the Pictures folder. Additionally, Windows ships with
         | the Snip & Sketch tool which is activated with Windows+Shift+S.
         | It allows you to capture a whole screen, a window, a rectangle
         | or a free form area of a screen. It also has tools for
         | annotating the screenshot.
        
         | wejick wrote:
         | I personally can't live without Firefox capture functionality.
         | Control + shift + S. Very convenient.
         | 
         | It may be similar situation for vivaldi user.
        
           | rpdillon wrote:
           | 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 wrote:
         | 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.
        
       | csomar wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | Rather than tab stacks, try Firefox Containers +
         | 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-disc...
         | with the option turned on to discard tabs as soon as they're
         | hidden.
        
       | st3fan wrote:
       | "Can't use $ in password" - i'm curious what the story is
        
       | freediver wrote:
       | 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...
        
         | drewcoo wrote:
         | Low performance seems strange, given the perf culture at Opera.
         | I assume they still beat a potato, though.
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaT7thTxyq8
        
         | therealmarv wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
           | I'm using Brave on my iPhone right now.
        
             | speedgoose wrote:
             | It's safari with a skin and some cryptoscams.
        
               | RankingMember wrote:
               | I really wish the crypto garbage would be dropped from
               | Brave. Makes it feel jumbled and spammy after a fresh
               | install.
        
             | PixyMisa wrote:
             | Well, yes, except no. Brave on iOS is Webkit with a fancy
             | wrapper.
        
               | KarlKemp wrote:
               | A shitty wrapper. The answer to the question "why isn't
               | there another middleman between content and readers,
               | scamming both?"
        
               | ajhurliman wrote:
               | TIL!
        
           | freediver wrote:
           | To be more accurate there are no Blink or Gecko based
           | browsers on iOS. Both Firefox and Chrome (and many other
           | Chromium browsers) exist on iOS, using WebKit rendering
           | engine.
        
             | skrowl wrote:
             | Technically correct, but the Firefox and Chrome listed in
             | the iOS lockdown store are basically just skins on top of
             | WebKit, not actually different web browsers (like they are
             | on Android and other modern operating systems).
             | 
             | It sounds like the EU and others may be fixing this soon by
             | forcing Apple to allow other app stores on their devices if
             | they want to continue selling devices in their regions.
             | 
             | Presumably Amazon store / Epic store / etc on iOS will
             | carry real Firefox / Chrome.
        
               | freediver wrote:
               | What do you mean by skin on top of WebKit? WebKit itself
               | just renders the web page. The browser manufacturer has
               | to build an entire browser and decide how to treat user
               | privacy for example, does it have telemetry and what
               | kind, whether to use native controls or not, what browser
               | features to implement like reader mode, how to handle
               | multiple tabs, gestures etc.. Calling that a skin is same
               | as calling Vivaldi a skin of Chromium disregarding the
               | effort made to make it different.
        
         | shortformblog wrote:
         | Author of that piece--was great chatting with Jon von
         | Tetzchner. FWIW, I daily drive it on an M1 MacBook Air now that
         | there's a native Apple Silicon version and I don't really see
         | the slowdown issues.
         | 
         | Also, his recommendation in the piece of creating a minimal
         | profile is one that I think a lot of people might find valuable
         | when using Vivaldi.
        
         | rjzzleep wrote:
         | Is the UI still as horribly laggy? I try vivaldi every other
         | year because people say it's faster, but it's almost as if
         | those people only run that beast on a desktop or fully specced
         | 15" laptops
        
           | vadfa wrote:
           | Exactly what I was going to ask. They wrote the UI in
           | javascript with obvious consequences. The day they rewrite it
           | in a normal language they will see me again.
        
           | Tomis02 wrote:
           | Runs fine on my nothing special 6-7 year old computer. I also
           | disable tab rendering and use the tab side panel instead, I'm
           | not sure if that makes a difference.
        
             | nsonha wrote:
             | it's not that it's slow or resource hogs, it's janky which
             | gives the same impression as being laggy
        
           | Chevalier wrote:
           | If anything, Vivaldi seems faster for me than Chrome was. I
           | haven't seen any of the performance slowdowns that other
           | people on this thread have mentioned. Possibly because I
           | haven't enabled the Mail/Calendar/Feeds full-fat option?
        
           | jjordan wrote:
           | I'm in the same boat. I've _wanted_ to switch to them for
           | years, but once I get it loaded with my requisite plugins and
           | start using it for a while, the UI inevitably begins to
           | experience random lags and moments of unresponsiveness.
        
       | zaiste wrote:
       | 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-
       | containe...
        
       | throwaway123x2 wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | I switched from firefox to vivaldi about a year ago. So far
         | it's been an improvement, tab stacks especially in my opinion.
        
         | malermeister wrote:
         | What's your problem with FF specifically? I keep hearing people
         | complain, but it seems like the same ol browser to me?
        
         | Scarbutt wrote:
         | Mozilla should switch to chromium.
        
           | laumars wrote:
           | No. Competition is healthy and that includes browser
           | rendering engines too.
        
         | patall wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | bogwog wrote:
           | Agreed, it has been my daily driver for years and I have
           | never had any problems with it. I think the guy your replied
           | to is just riding on the Mozilla hate train.
           | 
           | To be fair, Mozilla does deserve 99.999% of the hate it gets,
           | but that doesn't justify making dishonest claims about
           | Firefox just to stick it to Mozilla.
        
           | Eelongate wrote:
           | With Firefox 93, I was restarting the browser 3 or 4 times a
           | day because it kept crashing while playing videos. It would
           | start with videos loading but not playing, and then moments
           | later the whole browser would lock up and leave no choice but
           | to kill it and restart. So far Firefox 94 seems to have that
           | issue resolved, but that experience with 93 was very nearly
           | enough to make me quit.
           | 
           | (I should probably mention, another long-running complaint I
           | have with Firefox is the community's habit of gaslighting
           | anybody who talks about Firefox's problems with the usual _"
           | I never experience that so your experiences are invalid"_ So
           | please spare me this time.)
        
             | patall wrote:
             | Yeah, I totally understand what you are saying. One should
             | point out however that my parent comment is pretty much the
             | same, i.e implying that 'it's become unstable and slow for
             | everyone'. Not that I want to blame them, we all have a
             | limited point of view and comments on the internet often
             | sound harsh simply by negligence and not intentionally.
        
             | GNOMES wrote:
             | I had this issue in my Firefox Nightly for about a day.
             | Next update or so resolved the issue for me. Obviously
             | unstable bleeding edge isn't for everyone, but I does have
             | it's benefits at times.
        
           | y-c-o-m-b wrote:
           | I'm also curious about this. I finally upgraded from a 4GB
           | RAM system to something modern, but FireFox was my primary on
           | that machine for _years_ with no issues. Firefox mobile has
           | atrocious performance for me, but their desktop app is solid
           | and it 's what I'm viewing HN on right now. I especially love
           | the silent updates.
           | 
           | EDIT: by "modern" I mean I'm on an I5 with 8GB RAM lol. I do
           | have a Lenovo Legion 7 with a 3080 but use it only for
           | gaming. This I5/8GB combo is my daily driver and works great
           | with Firefox, loads instantly and I can have a dozen or more
           | tabs open no problem.
        
         | ibdf wrote:
         | 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.
        
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       (page generated 2021-12-02 23:02 UTC)