
Vivaldi Browser 1.0 - sverrejoh
https://vivaldi.net/en-US/teamblog/102-vivaldi-finale-1-0
======
onion2k
_One of the things that makes Vivaldi unique is that it is built on modern web
technologies. We use JavaScript and React to create the user interface with
the help of Node.js and a long list of NPM modules. Vivaldi is the web built
with the web._

By the looks of things Vivaldi is Chromium with a skin written using React,
but there's no links to a repo or any API documentation as far as I can tell.
The extensions page in the browser suggests it uses Chromium's extensions API
which rather defeats the "Customize Everything" tag line that's all over the
website. Is it possible to load in my own React components to add to the
browser chrome some how?

~~~
Aoyagi
FWIW there are bits of the code here, but I don't know what is the extent of
it

[https://vivaldi.com/source/](https://vivaldi.com/source/)

~~~
Etheryte
The browser is proprietary, but includes open source components, without
checking, what you've linked to above is probably just the open source bits.

~~~
hobarrera
I'm honestly curious as to who'd move to a proprietary browser in 2016 given
all the history of the last couple of decades!

~~~
chias
Google, for one. Chromium is an open-source project, but Chrome is and has
always been proprietary.

------
tmikaeld
What about security?

Adding node.js and react on the user interface may open up security issues

If it's not running in a sandbox, I'm worried about issues like these:
[http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/04/noscript-and-
other-p...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/04/noscript-and-other-
popular-firefox-add-ons-open-millions-to-new-attack/)

Plus it's not open source so we can't check for vulnerabilities.

------
Etheryte
I'm yet to understand the hype. Perhaps there are users out there to whom it
is appealing, but personally I don't see the need for the features they bring
out like notes in the browser or stacking tabs next to one another. These are
things I can already do using standalone applications or a window manager. I
would rather a browser be simple and most importantly stable and fast.

~~~
dvdgsng
There is no need to "understand the hype", as a) there is none and b) it
mostly comes down to personal preferences. When you're happy with your current
workflow using other tools - that's totally fine, good for you. But, you know,
there are people out there who are really looking forward to an alternative
Browser-UI that 1) is very fast, 2) has a lot of configuration/features the
others lack and 3) does not require you to install buggy/slow/tracking
extensions for each and every single thing you want to change.

e.g. having a vertical tab list out of the box is great, even when it still
lacks some nice features from Tree Style Tabs.

~~~
V-2
> 2) has a lot of configuration/features the others lack

Such as? I find it less customizable than Firefox or Chrome

~~~
mateuszf
Vertical tabs - lot of users want it, but chrome devs close the feature
requests.

~~~
V-2
Ah, ok. They are however available in Firefox as an extension, aren't they? Or
at least that used to be the case

~~~
arupauqa
I tried the Vivaldi version of this a few months ago and it unfortunately does
not meet the feature set of Tree Style Tabs. It isn't a worthwhile
alternative, for me.

------
rplnt
I'm glad there's something. Chrome simply sucks[1]. Firefox is complicated[1],
and even if you invest time, there are too many things wrong[1]. There's not
much else (as in different).

I tried Vivaldi many times over the last year, and my conclusion is that I
find it unusably slow. They take direction I like, but they chose technology
that is bad (but cheap). Maybe it will get better, I surely hope so. Another
nitpick of mine is that it uses WebKit (or whatever it's called now) and I
hate using that.. but I do... because browser market (and perhaps web itself
as a result) is in a really bad state.

What makes it different (and better in my eyes)? It's a browser usable out of
the box, without any extensions. Not to say there shouldn't be any extensions,
just that the basic functionality and configuration should be there.

1\. For me obviously, personal preference and all.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
Also try Otter Browser ( [http://www.otter-browser.org/](http://www.otter-
browser.org/) ). It aims to replicate the feature set of old Opera, with the
same idea of being usable out of the box, and it doesn't use as slow a
technology as Vivaldi. It still is lacking some important stuff (such as
passwords manager) but it's actually progressing at a very good pace
considering it's practically a single-person FOSS project.

On the other hand it's also Webkit-based at the moment, because everything
seems to be... the architecture is multi-engine though.

~~~
rplnt
I follow them as well (mostly by idling on irc and posting major releases to
reddit; I don't contribute). It's a nice project. Though I don't particularly
agree with their priorities (i.e. recreating complete Opera 12.x).

For me Opera wasn't great because it had bundled irc/torrent/mail clients. I
couldn't care less about those. It was great because it was stable, fast,
small, memory efficient. No other browser was even close at that time (2012
they neded iirc?). Had all the things you want - content blocker, ui/input
customization, great tab/window management, "inspector",.. and I don't even
know what else anymore :)

I don't think Otter will be able to achieve many of those. Partially because
it uses webkit and is in no place to maintain its own fork.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
Well, I didn't care much for torrent and email in Opera 12, but they didn't
bother me either, as they didn't seem to spend any resources when they were
not used. Even with torrent, email and IRC, Opera was still the fastest and
most lightweight browser around by a mile.

The thing with Opera features is that each user had their own pet features. In
fact, when Opera released the new Chrome-based versions, removing lots of
features, they claimed that those features were not used by the vast majority
of users (an example was bookmarks which they claimed was unused by more than
90% according from their survey data). And it may very well be true, but the
problem is that each particular feature was used by a different minority, so
they upset a lot of users even if for different reasons for each user (in my
case, menu bar, MDI and "click tab to minimize" were some of the biggest ones,
other people don't care about these but loved tab stacking which I always
turned off, etc.)

In view of this, even if I didn't use all Opera's features, I think trying to
implement the full feature set is a sensible goal.

For the record I think the bundled clients, at least IRC and torrent, are
quite low priority in Otter anyway.

~~~
V-2
> Well, I didn't care much for torrent and email in Opera 12, but they didn't
> bother me either, as they didn't seem to spend any resources when they were
> not used.

That's true, but they surely spent their resources on developing these
extensions. In hindsight, this wasn't such a good bet. Case in point: noone
else did that, and this approach is rather outdated now.

~~~
rplnt
Not entirely true with the email as it was also (or only I guess) used as RSS
reader by many people.

~~~
V-2
So-called "superusers" are probably overrepresented in your circles (as in
mine), and thus your point of view is kind of skewed ;) Ask your family
members or people on the street, an overwhelming majority of regular internet
users won't have a slightest clue what an RSS reader even is

------
V-2
Its main selling point is supposed to be customizability, but I can't even
customize predefined mouse gestures :) And there are no mouse gestures
allowing to navigate between tabs (only back and forth in history, which is
kind of pointless to me as that's already covered by mouse buttons). I also
can't disable that annoying gap between the tab bar and the top edge of the
screen...

------
ponyous
I really like it for a few reasons:

    
    
      - On OSX all browsers except Safari consume battery like crazy - In Vivaldi you can use "hibernate background tabs" and it will take a lot less resources 
      - Vertical tabs - I tend to have a lot of tabs open (Hibernate feature is even more handy in this case)
      - Tab group tiling - I can have 2 websites open side by side in 1 browser Window

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
> Tab group tiling - I can have 2 websites open side by side in 1 browser
> Window

I feel like window-management is pretty much broken at this point. I can now
have multiple windows, containing multiple tabs, containing multiple ... what
would you call those things? Mini-windows? Pages? Panes? Anyway, we also have
tiling window managers, OSX's very limited equivalent, full-screen modes that
are very slightly different from maximised windows, Chrome doing its own weird
UI for ripping a tab out of its window and merging it back again, Firefox's
tab groups, one ordering for app-cycling, another order for window-cycling,
one-or-the-other order for tab-cycling... It's all getting a bit too much.

~~~
ponyous
This is why you pick and use one browser. I like the difference and choice to
pick whichever functionality (browser) I want.

> I feel like window-management is pretty much broken at this point. I can now
> have multiple windows, containing multiple tabs, containing multiple ...
> what would you call those things?

Are you saying that we should do all "window" management on OS level? I want
to maximise screen estate, having 2 windows side by side with vertical tabs
will just take way too much space on a laptop screen.

Compare the following and tell me which one do you prefer:

[http://imgur.com/4rxsF3G](http://imgur.com/4rxsF3G)
[http://imgur.com/X4FsuAB](http://imgur.com/X4FsuAB)

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
I totally take your point (yes, the 2nd image is 'better' for the most part),
and it's one I considered when I wrote my comment. I think it's interesting to
compare it with OSX and its global menubar.

I'd like to see a windowing system that totally revamps how we think about
screens, apps, windows, tabs; menus, toolbars, etc. When should a menu be
linked to an app and when should it be linked to a tab? How can we
meaningfully manage all these things together? Do we really need a 5th level
in this hierarchy? Is it really a hierarchy, or should an 'app' be able to
overlap more than one screen? Does it ever make sense for a tab (image a
'naked' pane displaying an image) to be available to more than one app? etc.

I feel like, yes, we need to solve these issues at a higher-than-app level,
because every app doing its own thing will just be incredibly confusing.

~~~
ponyous
Is there any incentive you know that tries to standardise how desktop apps
should behave?

Just my observations & opinions: I don't think we will reach a point anytime
soon where desktop apps have standardised UIs much more than now. The most
effort in this space is done on iOS. Apple pushed UX Guidelines quite hard,
most of the apps are mainstream consumer oriented and are not even that
complex so Tab bar on the bottom + screens above works well. Desktop apps are
generally much more complex and therefore harder to standardise I guess.

------
staticelf
I like the idea of a new browser, but I won't switch from my beloved Firefox
that has all the addons and stability I need.

Is it using webkit or something else?

~~~
warpech
It is using Blink (the same engine that powers Chrome), which started as a
fork of Webkit. Blink is also used by Opera since 2013.

------
nice_byte
Its UI is made with Javascript. As if I don't already have a bad enough time
dealing with sloth websites, they have to pile it on. Not even worth a try.

~~~
foota
Javascript is plenty fast, I don't see why you shouldn't use it to power a
browser.

~~~
nice_byte
It's not just about the speed of executing Javascript code. The UI is rendered
with the browser's rendering engine. I've used Atom and it was a disaster, so
I no longer trust any desktop applications written using that technology.

I think that if you're going to write a desktop application, you should either
use your native platform's APIs or pick a GUI toolkit that can give you a
native look and feel. It'll give you a fast UI that looks and behaves
consistently with the rest of the user's environment.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Please don't write off an entire technology because of one slow early release
of an example of it. There should be better ways of utilising native UIs, I'll
give you that.

------
FX61
Why should i use Vivaldi when i also can use Firefox and Classic Theme
restorer?

Let's see... Vivaldi is Open Source Chromium with a bundled closed source app
(Want to see that is true? Open Vivaldi task manager, kill the webview Vivaldi
process, and UI disappears, but browser keeps running) to create the UI which
is thanks to how it is created highly exploitable.

No thanks, go away!

------
orkoden
I loved Opera back in the 3.x to 7.x days. Vivaldi's UI and features reminds
me of it.

After using it for an hour for my regular browsing, I noticed it uses a lot of
CPU for some websites. I saw over 100% for pages where Safari chugs along with
25%. That's enough to get the fans spinning.

------
wanderer2323
How does it enable the user to block adds? Built-in? Addon?

~~~
dkns
It's using chrome addons so you can install uBlock as normal.

------
piyush_soni
I'd definitely want a new browser, but one which promises it won't slow down
like hell after a few days of use until I open a 100 tabs. The stackable tabs
features is nice, but I'd prefer someone creates a Firefox extension to do the
same.

~~~
piyush_soni
Just installed Vivaldi to try anyway. Slow out of the box - plain window
interaction feels delayed and it's a fresh install! Will try after a few
releases.

------
mhd
Now all we need is a more browser-centric variant of Electron, and we'll get
all kinds of these Chrome "distributions". Here's one in Ember, here's one in
Angular, here's one with vertical tabs...

------
dang
Related article at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11437095](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11437095).

------
pingec
A month ago when I tried Vivaldi, it seemed quite slow to load websites. But
it could also be the blinking progress bar that tricks me to have that
impression. Anyone else?

Also, waiting to see the promised mailer app. I still use Opera Mail for my
mail but now that it is in the Chinese hands, I do not feel comfortable
updating it.

------
konart
To those who a curious about "why?" = this is from some of the guys who worked
making Opera and for those (but not only for) who liked it more than other
browsers.

Not only opera had a very nice engine of its own (not anymore in Vivaldi,
though), but also great functionality and ways for customization

------
hobarrera

        Vivaldi 1.0 32bit DEB
        Vivaldi 1.0 64bit DEB
        Vivaldi 1.0 32bit RPM
        Vivaldi 1.0 64bit RPM
    

Where's the good old .tar.gz for all those NOT using deb/rpm-based systems?

------
farresito
Unfortunate that I can't run it on Arch Linux: segmentation fault. Failed to
initialize database.

I don't have plans to move away from Firefox, but it's always nice to see
people attempt new things.

------
shimon_e
I use to use vivaldi on my old computer due to performance issues with chrome.
The killer feature I remember was stackable tabs. Going to reinstall it again
to see what is new.

------
SirNoobsAlot
I'd be curious to see a comparison of this with the "big 3" (Chrome, Firefox,
IE). And playing devil's advocate, why bother to make yet another browser?

~~~
nperez
I don't really have fragmentation concerns because it's basically Chrome with
an Opera-like front end. I did a benchmark comparison and they were roughly
equal, with Vivaldi winning some and Chrome winning some.

I'm liking it so far. If you aren't crazy about Chrome's UI, it's worth a
shot. Hope to see more privacy features, but right now the settings are the
same as in Chrome.

~~~
V-2
Only unlike Chrome, Opera or Firefox, it doesn't support tearing tabs off the
window (to spawn a new window)

------
wangii
I hate it alway trying to use my "confidential information stored in Chrome
Safe Storage" in my keychain.

------
tilfin
Spring has come! Thing it is good that there is such a different choice.

------
xjpis250
what is the relation between Vivaldi, Opera, and Qihoo?

------
geniium
No incognito mode? Bye!

~~~
Aoyagi
There seems to be a "Private Window" feature. Not sure whether it's theirs or
the engine's.

------
rayascott
If you want to help me use the web, don't just build a browser. Build a web
user's toolkit that helps me customise my workflow and experience with the
various sites and their services. It's an integrated web, but where are the
"browsers" that acknowledge this reality and orchestrate instead of simply
providing a read-only experience. Sure, Safari has made a start on iOS with
plugins, but it should go much further.

