Vivaldi's tweaky grinders fire out another release: Add themes, security

The Vivaldi browser continues its rapid progress its third release in four months. The new binary largely contains bug fixes, with theme support the biggest new feature. In addition to the eight default themes you can add your own. Version 1.3 adds more mouse gestures – there are now more than 90 browser actions available …

[Lee D]

Subheading:

Still no fecking email client

Honestly, "themes"? So you pulled the colour variables out of the hard coding and read them from an XML instead.

New gestures? So you added some to the existing list of dozens of gestures.

Linux catch-up? Well, I should think so too.

"the emphasis is on neglected power users"

No it's not. It's a Chrome clone like all the others with a handful of obvious configuration options and nowhere near approaching the flexibility, or features, of Opera 12 released MANY YEARS AGO.

Hell, I still can't get bookmarks to drag into a bookmark folder on the bookmark bar first time. There is literally about 10 pixels of tolerance between "throw it on the bar NEXT to the folder" or "Throw it in the folder" and the folders don't expand so you can't put it where you need to in a sub-sub-sub folder without moving it four times.

This is the sort of stuff that Opera actually FIXED. This is the kind of thing that Opera did by default for everything they do (put any bar, menu, button or object anywhere you like). The actual Opera power-user features just aren't present AT ALL (email client, integrated search, even integrated Bittorrent downloads (years ahead of its time).

I still can't get Vivaldi to actually give me a blank page for a new tab. I really don't want ANY of that junk on there and the barest I can get it down to is two huge +'s, Bookmarks and History. Opera 12? Guess what? New blank tab = a damn blank tab.

But email is the one thing really driving me mad. Opera 12 is now causing me hassle on Facebook and other sites and if I move from it, I won't maintain it as a separate email client. If I'm moving it'll be to something else entirely, most likely Chrome (heck, Vivaldi IS Chrome, so why not just use Chrome proper) and some kind of more modern email client. If Vivaldi don't pull their finger out with even just an alpha "this will eat your email" preview, I can't see me bothering to use it ever again.

And, yes, in work Vivaldi is my default browser. At home, Opera 12 is my default browser and email client, with Chrome for the things that moan or if I want to ChromeCast. So I am testing it extensively - as I have since the first beta release - but there's just nothing compelling to actually make me go "Oooh..." as Opera did and made me pay for it back in the day.

[frank ly]

The last time (only time) I tried Vivaldi, I couldn't get it to import my bookmarks.html file. I've installed, setup, configured and used many applications over the years but Vivaldi had me baffled. Is it now possible to easily import an external bookmarks .html file, like you can in Chromium, Firefox and Palemoon? Is it worth bothering?

[JSR453]

Vivaldi Bookmarks Import

Press F2, scroll down to the import bookmarks and settings entry.

Bobs your fathers brother.

[Joe Drunk]

I still can't get Vivaldi to actually give me a blank page for a new tab. I really don't want ANY of that junk on there and the barest I can get it down to is two huge +'s, Bookmarks and History. Opera 12? Guess what? New blank tab = a damn blank tab.

This is probably one of the biggest annoyances for me for Vivaldi among all the others you listed.

I've settled on Slimjet for most of my browsing. It is a Chrome clone without the Google bloat and tracking. I get a blank page for a new tab! Best part is it works with all essential add-ons for Chrome (Ublock, Ghostery, Noscript, Tampermonkey). There's even a Linux port I intend to try soon.

If you're Windows they have a standard and portable version.

I still use Firefox but mostly SJ. I do miss Opera 12...

[Rimpel]

You can disable the speed dial tiles so you just get the one plus, bookmarks and history. Go to settings/start page and uncheck speed dial layout/show add button. I find that unobtrusive enough personally.

I much prefer vivaldi to chrome and they are the only 2 options I have here at work. sllimjet is blocked so that's a non starter.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Still no fecking email client"

What on earth do you want an email client _in a web browser_ for??

[ChubbyBehemoth]

Where's the email client... Oh well,.. stick to Opera 12 then.

[Innes]

Ive been using it my work browser for a while and haven't really had any problems with it. Ublock, Privacy Badger and the Signal messenger attached without any problems.

The biggest winge that I have with it is that I cant open pdfs In Acrobat Reader rather than itself (nececery for annotations) directly from the download bar, I have to 'open containing folder'.

[Innes]

Been using Vivaldi as a work browser for a while now, i've found it to be quite good. Ublock, Privacy Badger and the Signal messenger client all plugged in without any problems.

Only nagging issue that I have is that I cant load PDFs in Acrobat Reader directly from the download bar, it loads them itself meaning annotations don't show up. I have right click to show its containing folder and load it that way.

[I_am_Chris]

Love it's speed

I was a hardened Firefox user (almost non-stop since Phoenix days), in the last six months its performance had tanked.

Viv is a breath of fresh air. Lightweight, fast and clean. It's been my primary browser at work on Mac and at home on linux for about two months.

As others have said better control of pdf handling would be good.

[Mr Dogshit]

Poor Opera 12

I'm going to have to ditch it soon. I feel as if I'm about to take a faithful old pet on a one way trip to the vet.

I'll give this Slimjet thing a whirl. Not at all happy about the fact it's based on Google code though.

How hard can it be to write a damn browser?

[John 110]

Re: Poor Opera 12

Try Pale Moon, it's forked from Firefox, leaving out the dubious decisions Mozilla have made of late. With a little effort, it can give you a close-to-Opera 12 experience in a modern browser.

http://www.palemoon.org/

[AnnT]

Re: Poor Opera 12

Vivaldi IMHO is superior to Pale Moon. With the newest version of Pale Moon, websites ddin't render properly for me at all. Removed Pale Moon from my computer and installed Vivaldi as my main browser.

[cd]

Seamonkey works for me. Been better for me than Firefox for a long time. Built-in email client, Calendar add-on, uBlock, Disconnect, and Noscript just work, and there's a Firefox addon converter here... http://addonconverter.fotokraina.com/compatibility/

Still having trouble trusting anything remotely associated with Google.

[MollyHolzschlag]

Vivaldi: Why Email, History Features and Thank You

Thanks for all the feedback! I am here to take notes. And thanks to the Register, for making us laugh in spite of ourselves.

So I'm Molly, Developer Relations at Vivaldi, and I just wanted to pipe up and thank you for the feedback. Many of us at Vivaldi worked at Opera, I'm one of those people and I can honestly say the work they've done is incredible. So folks' loyalty makes complete sense to me both as a power user (there are many breeds of that IMO) and a person that has spent her life focused on standards as they are applied to browsers.

My hope is that you will have patience with us. There's a lot that's happened in recent years (an understatement!) and the changing face of the browser industry is, to me, endlessly fascinating. We have big goals and we're doing it with an approach that's not been done to this extent with a browser interface built on Open Web standards.

I can tell you with confidence that email is a top-priority for Vivaldi. We all want it, and no one wants it more than our CEO, pictured in this article, Jon. He himself is driving the effort so I can tell you with confidence this is not a far-off feature. We have a dedicated team working on it daily. When will it be available? Unknown. Will it meet all "power" needs at first rollout? C'mon, this is software. And, we are on task.

Our history feature (and related bugs) is another priority, and likely we will start seeing rapid improvements in our history management with upcoming snapshot releases.

Some people are questioning why an email client at all? This has to do with a core ideology at Vivaldi to focus on in-browser apps and features as opposed to third party extensions and plugins. You can already see this with our extended panel customization, extensive tab features and my new favorite - tab sessions. We support extensions and plugins because not doing so would limit users, and we want you to have choice. And, building a software product this extensive with Web technologies is pretty new territory. We use HTML, CSS, LESS Framework JS, ReactJS Framework - Open Web technologies all. We are constantly balancing performance and design, core and UI, in-browser apps such as email with plugin or extension methodologies.

Quality takes time. In the increasing demand for speed, performance, immediacy there must in my opinion be periods of stabilization, fixing things in the now rather in a promised future that we all know never comes and thinking carefully about our responsibility to ourselves and everyone to build a browser that ultimately meets its goal. I've been called "The Fairy Godmother" of the Web, but sadly, I don't have a magic sparkly wand to make the process go faster, and even if I did, I personally do not see any advantage of rushing the process. Getting it done and done well, hell yeah!

Thank you all so much for the feedback. Please feel free to come on over any time to our Vivaldi Forums, Twitter and Facebook pages for direct feature requests, where and how to report bugs and general discussion as it pertains to the Web and Vivaldi.

Yours from Arizona, USA - Yeeeee-HA!

Molly

[KarateMonkey]

Re: Vivaldi: Why Email, History Features and Thank You

"I can tell you with confidence that email is a top-priority for Vivaldi. We all want it!"

No, no we don't. While clearly from other comments here, _some_ people want email in their web browser but I most definitely don't.

I already have a perfectly good dedicated email client, which does all things email. Why then should I have duplicate functionality bloating my web browser?

Very dissapointing - I am currently trialling Vivaldi. If this get added, and if you move to Chrome's 'apps' model(*), I'm ditching Vivaldi as a failed experiment I'm afraid.

(* Which I don't like, and which broke some critical plugin functionality I use frequently when Chrome switched suddenly to the apps model)

And by the way, I can't see anything you publish on the private internet that is Facebook.

[LordLestat]

Vivaldi's features are great.

But Chromium is garbage. Especially now where Chromium devs have killed GDI rendering which creates blurry fonts. This screws up also rendering on low end graphics chips which results in heavy scrolling glitches if you have your bars in a different location than standard.

Really can not understand the Vivaldi developers that they have not chosen Mozilla's Gecko engine as source base, not that complex to understand like Chromium and even if Mozilla are morons, they are not complete morons like the Chromium developers.

Vivaldi's feature set is really refreshing and a blessing for powe users or advanced users. But as long as they use a crappy source base, Vivaldi is utter crap too.