Vivaldi Browser 5.0 • Hacker News Board

Re: Vivaldi Browser 5.0

#81

Post by pixelgeek » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

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?

Re: Vivaldi Browser 5.0

#82

Post by drcongo » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

the_other wrote: post #78

drcongo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

Re: Vivaldi Browser 5.0

#83

Post by Isthatablackgsd » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:20 PM UTC

cturtle wrote: post #54

zamadatix wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 s…

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...

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.

Re: Vivaldi Browser 5.0

#84

Post by ochronus » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:21 PM UTC

drcongo wrote: post #61

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…

+1 - I _really_ wanted to like Vivaldi, but... no.

Re: Vivaldi Browser 5.0

#85

Post by ochronus » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

drcongo wrote: post #69

kunagi7 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cus…

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…

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.

Re: Vivaldi Browser 5.0

#86

Post by kunagi7 » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

drcongo wrote: post #69

kunagi7 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cus…

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…

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.

Re: Vivaldi Browser 5.0

#87

Post by crispyalmond » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

pvinis wrote: post #63

skinkestek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

color.firefox.com is great for that!

Are the colors sticking around? Last time I checked they were "limited time". (Unless you already applied one of their colors)

Re: Vivaldi Browser 5.0

#88

Post by wejick » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:30 PM UTC

pixelgeek wrote: post #81

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…

I personally can't live without Firefox capture functionality. Control + shift + S. Very convenient.

It may be similar situation for vivaldi user.

Re: Vivaldi Browser 5.0

#89

Post by stetrain » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:30 PM UTC

pixelgeek wrote: post #81

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…

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.

Re: Vivaldi Browser 5.0

#90

Post by chimen » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:39 PM UTC

drcongo wrote: post #61

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…

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.