
Vivaldi 2.0 – includes sync, resizable tab tiling, floating web panels and more - jonmccull
https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-2-0-your-browser-matters/
======
toyg
I’ve used Vivaldi for a bit, and it’s a nice browser. Coming from Chrome,
there is a pretty painless transition since most extensions will work fine.

However, Vivaldi does nothing to improve the state of the web. It’s just
another webkit, fostering the monoculture; and their business model and
practices are basically the same as Google’s, just on a smaller scale.

~~~
sosborn
> It’s just another webkit, fostering the monoculture;

Ignoring that Blink and Webkit are feature identical, what negative effects
are there with an open source rendering engine monoculture?

~~~
stonogo
It ossifies every layer of the stack below it. Once you have a practical
monoculture, user demand effectively cements the entire underlying operating
system design to cater to the browser implementation. Fine if you're selling
Chromebooks, but fatal for innovation.

Once the operating system is encased in amber, only a massive budget can break
new ground -- this is why things like Plan 9 from Bell Labs will never take
off. It's why Haiku is importing more and more BSD code instead of pursuing
their own paradigms. It's why the only realistic chance for anything new is
Google's Fuchsia; they're one of a very few organizations who can afford to
innovate in this environment.

~~~
waddlesplash
> It's why Haiku is importing more and more BSD code instead of pursuing their
> own paradigms.

We are? Uhh ... not really?

We use FreeBSD's WiFi stack and drivers (same as the other BSDs), and have
plans to import some of FreeBSD's work to get linuxdrm/gallium for hardware
acceleration. That's it.

------
krn
Sadly, Vivaldi is not an open-source web browser[1].

[1] [https://help.vivaldi.com/article/is-vivaldi-open-
source/](https://help.vivaldi.com/article/is-vivaldi-open-source/)

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Until the headline reads "Vivaldi source code released", the browser is
irrelevant. They really need to get their act together on this point, there's
no excuse for a closed source web browser in 2018.

~~~
ethelward
> there's no excuse for a closed source web browser in 2018.

Unless it is Chrome, or Safari, or Edge, ...

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Edge and Safari are barely relevant and my argument applies equally to them.
Chrome is just a few patches on top of Chromium, but again my argument aplies
- no one should be using given that Chromium is basically the same.

------
throwaway255
He gave an interview to Slashdot, where he [talked about tactics employed by
Google and Microsoft to push their browsers, memory-hog in browsers, and other
things]([https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/09/26/0713254/vivaldi-20-...](https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/09/26/0713254/vivaldi-20-desktop-
browser-featuring-expanded-customization-sync-across-devices-and-privacy-
tools-released-qa-with-founder)).

------
_trampeltier
I love Vivaldi. Really a great browser. Special the you can see more than one
tab at once, that's a really nice feature on todays large 32" and 43" screens.
I wonder why nobody else does it. Vivaldi has it since beginning.

~~~
jonmccull
Yes, this. The ability to drag and resize them now is just brilliant. I pretty
much only use it to view two pages side-by-side, but when you try it with 4 or
5 tabs the resizing is a dream.

~~~
Aardwolf
I do that with other browsers with multiple windows. Meta+left and meta+right
(in cinnamon and many other desktop UIs) automatically place the window in the
left and right half of the monitor.

------
ubertaco
Sync is good, but if they want to sway me away from either Firefox or Chrome,
that sync needs to include syncing with a mobile browser. Otherwise it
satisfies a 20% case for sync while missing the 80% case.

------
DarkWiiPlayer
Finally! I've been waiting for this for days now :)

Most exciting feature for me are the auto-hiding and floating panels. Auto-
hiding as in they disappear if you click anywhere outside them and floating as
in they don't resize the actual browser window but instead cover it, so they
don't cause pages to reflow their content, which can be annoying at times.

------
_Codemonkeyism
(25 years FF user)

Trying out Vivaldi 2.0, tab management is much better than Firefox, e.g.
Vertical Tab View shows closed tabs, I can drag & drop closed tabs into a
window to just reopen them.

~~~
knfzn
Firefox has been out for 25 years? Or are you referring to Mozilla also?

~~~
_Codemonkeyism
Mosaic on an SGI or VAX/Tektronix not sure which one arrived first, we had
both in our Unix pool at university.

~~~
djsumdog
NSCA Mosaic also made its way into IE. It's gone now, but as late as IE6, it
was still referenced in the About dialogue.

------
anon92612
Does anyone know if Vivaldi (and Brave), render HTML/CSS/JS just like Chrome
does?

I know they are both based on Chromium, but just wondering if Google adds some
"Googliness" to Chrome?

As a web developer, if I just test my sites against Vivaldi, Brave, or other
Chromium based browsers, can I guaranteed the rendering will be identical to
Chrome? Or is it safer to also test in Chrome?

Also, do all Chrome extensions work on Chromium based browsers?

~~~
bla2
[https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/docs/c...](https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/docs/chromium_browser_vs_google_chrome.md)
suggests that rendering in Chrome and Chromium is identical, so as long as
Vivaldi and Brave keep their Chromium updated it should render the same as
Chrome.

------
drake_112
In the light of all the negative attention Chrome 69 has been getting around
these parts I've found Vivaldi to be a very pleasant, more privacy-focused
alternative.

------
swrobel
...and yet still no way to customize the toolbar. Am I seriously the only one
out there who can't stand having a pointless Home Button taking up space?

~~~
drcongo
No, you're not. And it's an ugly button at that.

------
steinso
My biggest gripe with Vivaldi is that the first option when right clicking a
link is to open in new tab and focus it. This seems like a small issue, but
this is different to all major browsers which has open in new _background_ tab
as the default option. There is 10 years of muscle memory for me to overcome
to switch and I just can't do it.

~~~
aquadrop
It's new tab in the first option for me.

~~~
steinso
Just checked, you are right! The issue was actually that it focuses the tab
when you open it, it does not open it in the background. I have clarified the
comment, thanks!

~~~
def_true_false
Middle click should do the trick, though sometimes it's broken (usually when
people fail to imitate a link with JS).

------
nerdponx
What is Vivaldi's business model?

~~~
sulami
I've been wondering about this for a while. Especially now that they're
actively supplying servers to support sync (which also at least at the time of
writing doesn't seem to allow running your own server).

~~~
whoknowsnobody
The same as Mozilla, default bookmarks and search engines. The founder, Jon,
said that in every interview they ask him, shouldn't be too hard to find.

~~~
sulami
That makes sense. I wonder how viable this is financially, given that it's a
very niche browser, at least right now.

~~~
whoknowsnobody
I think Jon said somewhere that to start being profitable they needed
something about 3 million users, and Vivaldi already has more than 800 000
according to their page and I heard some other sites saying it's already at
over 1 million.

~~~
nerdponx
That's surprisingly economical, much more than I expected. I suppose "no
tracking" search engines like DDG have a similar approach.

~~~
whoknowsnobody
Actually I don't thinks it's so surprising, the 90s did not have tracking and
companies have survived and grown.

But tracking is probably +5x more profitable minimum, while Vivaldi or Mozilla
might get some $1/user Google probably makes $5-$15/user. And the reason of
all the tracking and why companies fight so hard against legislation that try
to cut their cash cow.

~~~
nerdponx
Are there any "open" ad-targeting platforms, where you get to see where and
how your data is used?

------
navinsylvester
I use firefox as my primary browser but used chrome as secondary for misc. Did
away with chrome recently and am trying vivaldi.

So far i observed that session restart is not reliable. Tab open by default
takes you to the page and there is an option to open tab in background but its
quite annoying that its not the default. Calling a norm as being out of place
is quite a stand. Developers who normally have the tendency to open multiple
pages at once from search results will find this feature bothersome when
trying it out.

I don't think its a game changer but can be a worthy contender for a secondary
browser option.

------
timothevs
Is it possible to load two instances - with different profiles? For instance
Opera/Opera Beta can be run simultaneously with different profiles.

~~~
batat

        vivaldi --user-data-dir=...

------
O_H_E
I love the users first approach they have been taking. They are constantly
listening to feature requests and implementing the most common ones.

------
NO_CHANGE
I love it. It feels like I'm using Opera 12 again. 72 open tabs in my current
window with 24 closed tabs.

What's even nicer is having tabs grouped by topics I've been looking at where
I collapse most of them to save visual space in the tab tree.

Bookmark sync was the last thing I needed to switch away from Opera. It helps
to have shared bookmarks when I run separate profiles for work and hobbies.

------
ColanR
I looked at vivaldi about a year ago, and the only thing I missed was bookmark
synchronization. Looking forward to trying it again.

------
rayascott
Can any browser out there, Vivaldi or otherwise, take the tabs of a window and
save the corresponding list of URLs so I can reopen that window of tabs at a
later date?

That’s one essential feature I want from a browser, I’ve grown to desire more
over the years, but for some strange reason, no browser I’ve seen out there
allows you to treat sets of URLs as such.

~~~
pennaMan
There are extensions for Chrome and Firefox that do exactly that.

[https://www.one-tab.com/](https://www.one-tab.com/)

~~~
rayascott
Thanks for the extensions but my idea is more around browsers treating our
activity more as multiple projects that we’re working on. Like associated
files, they’re associated URLs. Extensions are fool, but you’d think the
browser wars would spur greater innovation in this area.

~~~
yoz-y
I feel that browser wars have finished and the winners are Chrome and mobile
Safari. Other browsers now fight for numbers so advanced features are not
really a priority.

------
skshetry
I tried Vivaldi a year ago. It was nice to have greater amount of
customizations and I liked it very much. But, I couldn't use it for longer as
it had memory leaks, so, if you opened and closed lot of tabs, you had to
restart the Vivaldi from time to time.

But, this might have been fixed and i should recheck.

------
ayoisaiah
Last time I tried Vivaldi (over a year ago), the browser shortcuts were taking
precedence over website shortcuts. I noticed this in Google Sheets and others.
I hope that's fixed now

Firefox is likely to remain my default browser, but there's a lot to like
about Vivaldi.

~~~
shady-lady
> Last time I tried Vivaldi (over a year ago), the browser shortcuts were
> taking precedence over website shortcuts. I noticed this in Google Sheets
> and others. I hope that's fixed now

I feel that's how it should be.

OS > Browser > Browser Extension > Website

Using some sites(JIRA in particular) in Firefox is painful as they just
capture every keypress/combo regardless of whether they need it or not. Yes,
it's lazy on the website devs part but that is why I think they should be last
in line.

~~~
ayoisaiah
You're not wrong, but what I meant is that they were conflicts, and the
browser's shortcuts took precedence. Like Ctrl+b to bold text and others. Many
threads were open on this problem on the Vivaldi forum. I was not used to this
with Chrome and Firefox, so it surprised me.

~~~
whoknowsnobody
It's fixed now, Vivaldi behaves like the others with keyboard shortcuts.

------
dishanr
I want to give this a try but I'm relying heavily on Firefox Containers now to
separate different login sessions. I wonder if there's something similar on
Vivaldi(Chrome)

------
kleff
I was really hoping 2.0 would include the integrated e-mail client they teased
a looong time ago. By now I think that is the only feature I still miss from
the Opera 12 days.

~~~
NO_CHANGE
The email client was also really handy for reading rss feeds. It made the
notes tool more useful for grabbing web content and then composing an email
with it.

------
hadrien01
Why not integrate an open-source system like Firefox Sync?

~~~
drdaeman
Because it's a total mess. I've worked on a protocol re-implementation for
personal use, and I assure you it's quite ugly. And it's a moving target that
changes once in a while, so supporting that is essentially being at Mozilla's
mercy.

Mozilla's Kinto could do the trick, though. I haven't dug inside but protocol-
wise it looks quite good to my personal tastes. I believe this is what
actually Mozilla wants to eventually switch Sync to.

And if sync can be done with dumb backend storing encrypted blobs, then WebDAV
is the most ubiquitous and simple option. Although it lacks realtime
notifications which are quite important for sync.

~~~
PurpleRamen
Realtime-notification could be implementad as an optional service running
besides the dumb storage, triggered by whatever.

It's not that bookmark-sync is so important for most people that they cannot
wait some minutes till a periodical checker fetches the updates.

~~~
drdaeman
Sync is not just about bookmarks, but also about open tabs and passwords.

I'd say it's quite desirable for one's phone to immediately catch up with
their desktop. Open the same site using the tab list, have the password ready,
etc.

------
surfcao
If you have vim fingers like me, vivaldi + surfingkeys is probably the closest
to replace vimperator+ firefox.

~~~
scns
Using Saka Key atm, should be available on chrome too.

------
ModernMech
Any word if the browser supports pinch to zoom yet? That's been holding me
back from using it.

~~~
clessg
Works for me on an rMBP.

------
chrisper
Is the address bar still kind of slow when typing?

~~~
duiker101
for the last few months I had that the browser was painfully slow for me,
especially when opening new tabs, on a 2014 Macbook Pro so I had to stop using
it while on the road. I recently installed v2.x(Snapshot) and it's back to
being very performant. I don't know if what you experienced has been fixed but
I think it's worth a shot seeing that it's a major release and a lot of things
have changed.

I am so happy to be using my favorite browser again!

------
yAnonymous
Seems pretty great so far.

Is there a way to get the Firefox autoscrolling behavior, i.e. middle mouse
click to toggle auto scroll mode?

~~~
benbristow
There's a Chrome extension (aka Vivaldi Extension) you can use for it.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autoscroll/occjjkg...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autoscroll/occjjkgifpmdgodlplnacmkejpdionan)

------
yAnonymous
For the love of god, please save the window position of the developer tools
when they're in a separate window. Firefox also fails at this.

------
shady-lady
Shocking the extent to which Vivaldi is innovating at the chrome level
compared to Firefox(revenue 2016 > $500 million).

~~~
_Codemonkeyism
Firefox is spending millions on political goals, failed OS' etc. Only a small
portion is put into the progress of FF - speeding up rendering a notable
exception.

~~~
porker
While I appreciate the political work, I would like to see better leadership
at Firefox, and less spent on side and failed projects.

~~~
ColanR
Too bad the founder was kicked out for political reasons. It would have been
nice if FF could have focused on technology, while being agnostic to the
politics.

~~~
Frondo
He wasn't kicked out -- he resigned.

And it was for political reasons that stood to directly affect an unknown
number of his employees, the people whose lives would be directly affected by
his donation to the anti-gay marriage thing; if those people raise a stink
because he's trying to use government to interfere in their lives, I can't
fault them.

"I'm going to use my wealth and power to negatively impact your life -- but
don't talk about it, that's _political_." Nope.

~~~
nil_pointer
That's not entirely accurate, he was forced out

~~~
CorpusCalcium
No, he wasn't. He wasn't accepted as CEO by enough employees, but he could
have stepped down and retained another position in the company, like CTO. Even
he recognizes that Mozilla leadership wanted him to stay on board, but he
chose to quit and pursue his own project. Which is fine. It just doesn't mean
he was "forced" out any more than the people who quit because they couldn't
stand him being CEO were "forced" out.

~~~
BrendanEich
Why are you asserting false claims without being able to support them?

As CEO I had already reorged Mozilla, and CTO was lined up for someone else
(Andreas Gal). I was not offered any particular C level position by anyone
with authority over such things.

I did not leave because of any of my employees objecting to me. If you are
thinking of the handful of Mozilla Foundation employees who tweeted on March
27th against me ([https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/03/mozil...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/03/mozilla-employees-to-brendan-eich-step-down/)), none of
them worked for me. The Mozilla Foundation is arms-length from the Mozilla
Corporation.

I also did not quit to pursue my own project; Brave was not founded until May
2015. I resigned to avoid Mozilla taking any more damage from mob action
kicked off by someone who demanded that I be "completely removed from any day
to day activities at Mozilla"
([http://web.archive.org/web/20180621041436/http://www.teamrar...](http://web.archive.org/web/20180621041436/http://www.teamrarebit.com/blog/2014/03/24/goodbye_firefox_marketplace/)
\-- the blog seems broken but the Web archive has snapshots).

It's clear you just asserted falsehoods that make you comfortable. But you not
only did not know what you were asserting to be true, you could not possibly
know whether it was true. That's wishful thinking at best, and tantamount to
lying at worst.

~~~
_Codemonkeyism
Only on HN one could write about a tech "celebrity" (not meant as an insult)
and the person shows up and corrects you.

------
ComputerGuru
Vivaldi has severe touchpad scroll lag under Windows, making it neigh unusable
(with and without smooth scrolling enabled). How do developers manage to
consistently break functionality that is natively implemented correctly in the
OS?

