Vivaldi gives its browser a buffing, adds a dashboard

Vivaldi has updated its eponymous browser – it now has a refreshed user interface and a dashboard packed with widgets. While the browser engine remains based on Chromium (as are most desktop browsers), the customizable interface around it has long been a hallmark of Vivaldi, alongside the company's obsession with user privacy …

[Czrly]

We need a User Agent that isn't Googled.

If it is not truly Open Source, it can never be a proper "User Agent". Also, it's Chromium so its very existence exacerbates the monoculture problem, no matter how honest their claims of privacy – which, I guess, we just have to trust because it isn't Open Source. It exacerbates the problems with EME and other Google-mandated "standards", too.

We need a proper User Agent that isn't controlled by Google – directly, or indirectly via their advertising-company proxy: Mozilla. Vivaldi is not that.

That said, this news did impart one positive and novel idea: after reading their response, beginning "Our Dashboard is quite different…", I no longer doubt that LLMs *can* actually replace many humans in the workplace.

[Czrly]

Re: We need a User Agent that isn't Googled.

Pre-emptive response: "Source Available" does *not* cut it for a web browser, supposed to be a User Agent, with which human beings do things like Internet Banking, personal or intimate messaging and – on occasion – research which conflicts with the prevailing status-quo of the land in which they're living such as searching for certain bears that like honey or for clinics deplored by a certain political lobby for culture-war reasons.

You cannot fork a Source Available software if those who publish it change their behaviour in the future. Without the threat of being forked, the corporation behind the software faces no checks and balances from their user base and being morally upstanding holds no specific utility value. This means that morality necessarily ceases to be a dominant strategy as soon as the Dollar arrives at the door.

A Source Available software will have no long-term plans to maintain support for user-first standards like Manifest v2 because they know that user disagreement is impotent. Indeed: Vivaldi say they'll support v2 until some time next year – THAT'S NOT LONG-TERM and we can't just fork Vivaldi in 2025, either, should they neglect to extend that or even just forget that promise before June, 2025. (Vivaldi, to be fair, are in an unfortunate position because they surely don't want to maintain v2 in their own fork of Chromium. Again: the problem is in evidence.)

[Fogcat]

Re: We need a User Agent that isn't Googled.

There is a completely new engine, not Blink, not WebKit, not Gecko, in development

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladybird_(web_browser)

But don't expect to see anything until 2026!

From https://ladybird.org/ : "Ladybird is currently in heavy development. We are targeting a first Alpha release for early adopters in 2026."

[Craig 2]

Sigh

When will browsers stop trying to become operating systems...

[Guy de Loimbard]

Re: Sigh

Totally with you Craig 2.

I just want the browser to allow me to access the WWW stuff.

We seem to be spending more time preventing our browsers leaking information than we do trying to just get on and use the internet for something useful, like provide me with information that I want, without trying to be my OS, or give which ever data scraper is relevant, all my personal habitual information!

[Steve Graham]

Re: Sigh

As the article says: "those already there or who make the move". I'm already there, having used Vivaldi as my everyday browser for several years. And it looks as though I'll be "making the move" soon. To what, though?

[Lee D]

Sigh

Is there an option to go back to how it was?

The whole point of Vivaldi was to bring back how Opera used to be, and Opera was so configurable for stuff like this it was amazing.

If you're just going to enforce UI changes on me that I don't want (e.g. Speed Dial which I disabled on day one and have never used), then there's little point in using a different browser.

[Andy The Hat]

Re: Sigh

Opera V6 to V12 was peak time for browser innovation ... Then for some reason Opera decided to stop, even taking steps backwards from basic features that users liked, and alienated a lot of its userbase - I was one who was happy to *pay* (remember that concept?) for V6 but jumped ship after my nails broke holding on to V12 for far too long.

"The most visual change is around browser tab handling, with tabs now appearing as floating lozenges rather than squared-off elements of earlier versions. Vivaldi says, "Tabs now float, creating a clean, spacious look that feels intuitive and modern."

Great, but putting unnecessary coats of "Snowman's Bone", or whatever the currently fashionable paint colour is, on a perfectly functional door doesn't improve the door. In fact, when the door starts to stick in the frame the danger is that the first instinct is to blame the door, not the multiple layers of decoration ...

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

/edit: You can turn them off! Hooray! Changed icon from "flame" to "meh"

"Tabs now float, creating a clean, spacious look that feels intuitive and modern."

NOOOOOOO!

Floating tabs are an ugly, hideous abomination that should be nuked from space. Seriously, for me one of the big selling points was that they hadn't succumbed to this madness and were sticking with things that look like elements from a grown up UI not something designed by a four year old.

I really hope there's a way to turn that off.

[zimzam]

For anyone wondering: Go to settings -> Appearance -> set User Interface Density to Compact.

[Lee D]

Not the hero we deserve, but the hero we needed.

[Mr Flibble]

Well. 2-level tab stacking with compact display style is… broken, unless a non-stacked tab is selected.

And they moved the panel button from the status bar. Stupid. Anyway, I've moved it back.

[Mage]

Tabs now float, creating a clean, spacious look that feels intuitive and modern

Stupid.

Put tabs back under everything attached to document window with slight 3D. GUI designers have forgotten what a tab is and have obviously never used physical files or cards.

GUIs increasingly sacrificing function for an opinionated "pretty", which often isn't.

It looks a mess. Fiver year olds I know do better.

[mcswell]

Re: Tabs now float, creating a clean, spacious look that feels intuitive and modern

Indeed. The *first* thing I did after this new design landed was to try to change my tabs back. I *don't want* "spacious" or "clean", whatever that is supposed to mean.

After searching through all Vivaldi's settings for tabs and finding nothing, I went to the forum where someone else had asked the same question: how to revert the look. Turns out it's the setting for the "compact" view, as someone has already posted here.

[Mockup1974]

All I wanted was a continuation of Opera 12. But I think Floorp actually comes closer to that... configurable but not bloated.

[LenG]

Stop changing things

Every time some idiot makes significant changes to the interface of something useful I have to spend time relearning how it works. I'd be quite happy to never upgrade most of my software except when genuinely new functionality was added.

At 70 plus it becomes increasingly more difficult to adapt to the constant flow of changes into stuff which really doesn't need to change.

[usbac]

Re: Stop changing things

I wish I could give you 100 upvotes for this.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: Stop changing things

Allow me to assist with my own humble addition.

[Lee D]

Re: Stop changing things

And, honestly, you could send me back 40 years in terms of UI, to interfaces I haven't used in decades, and I'd be MORE PRODUCTIVE.

That's just insane, but it's true.

Imagine reinventing the way you have to pedal a bike every 5-10 years and then finding out that the original Victorian pedals actually are easier and faster.

Modern UI designers have literally broken the UI and still there is no intention to fix it and everyone is copying them.

[mcswell]

Re: Stop changing things

Yes, it wouldn't be so bad if one company did something stupid, but now everyone has to copy them. (I'm looking at the rounded corners in this text box.) The most flagrant example is when Microsoft introduced the Ribbon, with hieroglyphs in place of menus. Now nearly everyone seems to think that's a good idea. I had to mouse over six icons on some app today before I found the one that saved the PDF to my computer.

Can't anyone think for themselves?

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Re: Stop changing things

I'm not averse to change as much as I am averse to adding new "features" and stuffing them in my face while not fixing things which are currently broken.

I have Vivaldi configured to open to an empty page, having no particular need or want of such things as "speed dial" (which just seem to be "bookmarks" that take up a lot of screen space), widgets, or whatever¹, and it always pops up a dialog box that says

Open xdg-open? A website wants to open this application.

This is a known bug that, to my knowledge, has been extant for at least a couple of years with no resolution.

Here's a deal: fix the known bugs and I'll start looking at your new "features," okay?

________________

¹ If someone else likes `em, fine. None of my business.

[Lon24]

Re: Stop changing things

New features spawn new bugs. One of my RPi updated to 7 today. Rendered useless. Resizing the start page left the icons struggling to re-arrange themselves for 30 secs instead of less than 1 on 6.9 and ramming the cpu at 90+% leading to the inevitable freeze.

Reverted to 6.9 to be informed the updated database couldn't be accessed and I should update to 7. Doh!

I really don't need this drama to use the most basic and essential desktop function. This joins Nextcloud in their relentess monthly upgrades which re-introduce the same old bug in htaccess that has to be fixed every time. Bug fix releases are essential. That's where the priority should lie. Regression for little gain is not