Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vivaldi – A Browser for Our Friends

vivaldi.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 193 posts

Re: Vivaldi – A Browser for Our Friends

#121

Post by Tomis02 »

terrestrial wrote: post #75
Jonsvt wrote: post #32

Glad you like our browser. We are working hard to continue to add really useful features, cool stuff and more flexibility. Our philosophy is that we all deserve a browser that works in the way we want it to. This means we listen to input and gradually add the features and options you want. Cheers, Jon of Vivaldi

Hi Jon! I know you are a stand-up guy [0]. Have you considered working with the free software community to create a truly free and modern browser? No-one trusts Chromium since it's filled with Google-specific bits and tweaks, even analytics. Assuming you've trimmed all of that away, releasing your add-ons as free software (e.g. GPL or BSD) would create some real traction around Vivaldi as a browser alternative. This…

I knew which picture it was before i even opened it :) the Opera community used to be so amazing.

Re: Vivaldi – A Browser for Our Friends

#122

Post by StavrosK »

Fnoord wrote: post #96
suprfnk wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Vivaldi guys insist on pouring resources into an integrated desktop email client instead, because that was a signature feature of Opera back in the day. Really? That's dumb. Why would I want my browser to check my email? That should be another program, or just a webpage. The browser browses the internet. Perhaps I'm not the audience, as I've always liked the Unix "do one thing and do it well" approach.

> The browser browses the internet. You mean 'the World Wide Web' [1] since 'the Internet' includes other protocols than HTTP(S) such as SMTP, POP3, and IMAP. Nowadays, Node is everywhere. Slack, using JavaScript, is replacing IRC. One of the best e-mail clients is Nylas N1 which uses JavaScript under the hood. Hyper is a terminal using JavaScript. Discord is becoming the defacto standard for VoIP gaming, and uses Ja…

> The UIs work very well.

Maybe on your top-of-the-line computer. On my two-year-old Macbook Air, browsing the web is pure frustration, because everything is slow. Don't even get me started on how inferior Slack is compared to a local IRC client.

Re: Vivaldi – A Browser for Our Friends

#123

Post by silliaris »

I really like Vivaldi, but I cannot use it as my main browser because I really miss browser synchronization. With Chrome, I have everything synchronized, so setting up my browser environment I'm used to on new computer takes just few clicks. I hope Vivaldi will have this too soon.

Re: Vivaldi – A Browser for Our Friends

#124

Post by StavrosK »

nhumrich wrote: post #45
matthberg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was blown away by the customizability, I used Firefox with a split tab extension, yet this has native support.

Unfortunately you can't resize the split. I almost never want an exact 50-50 split. One webpage always scales better then the other in split mode.

You guys need to rotate your screen 90 degrees.

Re: Vivaldi – A Browser for Our Friends

#125

Post by StavrosK »

Jonsvt wrote: post #43
thecrumb wrote: post #40

Would switch to this immediately but it still doesn't support any sort of sync. People use browsers on multiple devices these days. Not sure why this isn't a priority for the Vivaldi team?

This is a priority for sure. We are getting there.

Can I point out that we want to have our cake and eat it too? I really really want password sync, but I also really don't want you to know any of my passwords. This is going to be hard for you to pull off successfully. How are you planning to achieve it?

Re: Vivaldi – A Browser for Our Friends

#127

Post by webmaven »

tornadoboy55 wrote: post #54
gkya wrote: post #13

I could've given it a try if it was opensource. But because it's closed I immediately classify it as vaporware, and as the browser is one of the two centers of my daily computing (the other being emacs), I won't invest in vaporware. I believe that opensourcing is the best choice of the company behind this.

> Closed source = vaporware Then why has Firefox been the 'shit' browser for the better part of a decade now? Best battery life (usually by a 2-4h difference!) -> use Edge/Safari Best stability -> use Chrome Best performance -> use Blink-based browser Most extensions -> use Firefox (Chrome has 90% of the FF extensions available though) Hell, Firefox still doesn't have e10s fully working, so one tab takes down the ent…

Given your interest in rendering engines, you may be interested in the work being done by Mozilla folks on Servo: https://servo.org/

Re: Vivaldi – A Browser for Our Friends

#128

Post by StevePerkins »

Aoyagi wrote: post #104
StevePerkins wrote: post #46

I check in on Vivaldi every few months to see how it's coming along, and there are some things that I like. However, I think they're a bit TOO fixated on Opera as it was 15 years ago. I keep waiting for bookmark sync, which today is a fundamental browser feature rather than a nice-to-have. But the Vivaldi guys insist on pouring resources into an integrated desktop email client instead, because that was a signature fe…

>I just don't WANT a re-implementation of Opera from 15 years ago. I'm sorry, but desktop email is dead for most of us. Well, those "most of you" clearly are not the target audience. And you're not the majority either, I should add. Sounds like you just want Chrome, to be frank.

Nope. Like I said, I use Opera:

* It still has a more impressive array of power user features than Chrome or Firefoxv

* It's sync service is more reliable than the other two.

* It works with Chrome extensions, and has no compatibility issues with websites (unless a site is stupid enough to check with User-Agent headers, and those can be spoofed with an extension in the worst-case).

* Last but not least, Opera has the best mobile browser on the planet (something that isn't even on Vivaldi's radar yet), supporting sync between your desktop and mobile instances.

Basically, it's the perfect blend of power and acknowledgment of contemporary reality today.

Now don't get me wrong... I'm nervous about Opera's recent sale to China, and I certainly could be swayed toward something else. But Vivaldi feels like little more than a "protest" of Opera changes since ver. 12, and I believe that the protesters are in the minority of what is already a small community to begin with.

I wish them well, but would love to see them be something truly different. Go truly open source, instead of making your code publicly visible yet still proprietary. Give more customization options, so users can choose between old-Opera or modern-browser behaviors. No one seriously expects you to "take over the world", but don't just be Opera 12.1 forever out of spite.

Re: Vivaldi – A Browser for Our Friends

#129

Post by StevePerkins »

Tomis02 wrote: post #119
StevePerkins wrote: post #46

I check in on Vivaldi every few months to see how it's coming along, and there are some things that I like. However, I think they're a bit TOO fixated on Opera as it was 15 years ago. I keep waiting for bookmark sync, which today is a fundamental browser feature rather than a nice-to-have. But the Vivaldi guys insist on pouring resources into an integrated desktop email client instead, because that was a signature fe…

Man, I really miss the skins in Opera 12, there were some gorgeous ones. I agree that the email client is not necessarily a priority, however > Every other major browser opens the link in a background tab, keeping the focus in the tab you're currently on. Oh wow, that's pretty bad for every other major browser. We have two use cases: 1) I want to open the link in a new tab and switch focus (presumably to read right n…

Indeed, you CAN get to the common behavior by clicking an item further down on the context menu... or by pressing some unholy keyboard combination.

But to be frank, it's clunky and I'm simply not going to bother so long as Opera is being actively developed. If Opera did stop, or turned into Chinese malware or something, then I would probably just jump over to Firefox and use plugins for the most Opera-like experience possible. Because sync is a must-have (including desktop and mobile)... and we'll just have disagree on whether 99.8% of the browser market has made "incorrect" UX choices on how to open a link.

This reaction IS what I was talking about, and does seem at odds with Vivaldi's branding and marketing. The website slogans include, "It's your web. Surf it the way you want!", " A million ways to customize everything!", etc. But suggest letting users customize Vivaldi so that common new tab behavior is the default, and ancient Opera behavior is the one requiring extra clicks... and suddenly customization is bad, and the way people want to surf the web is objectively wrong.

Come ON. Figure out what the purpose of Vivaldi is, and proceed accordingly. If the purpose is to re-implement Opera 12 out of spite toward a former employer, then that's fine... but don't have the marketing revolve around customization. If the purpose really IS customization, then don't be so hostile or dismissive when users request customization options that depart from Opera 12.

Post reply on HN