
Vivaldi – A new browser for our friends - vetler
https://vivaldi.com
======
shadowmint
Its not a new javascript engine.

Its not a new rendering engine.

So basically its just a different UI skin on chrome. That's cute, but its not
a new browser.

It's the same browser with a slightly new UI.

Count me as skeptical and unexcited.

I am similarly unexcited by the 'it's browser' webkits views in android and
ios, for exactly the same reason; they're dime a dozen, and lack any
compelling reason to switch or use.

(Servo, by comparison, _is_ a new rendering engine, with new features that
make it extremely interesting)

~~~
lmkg
I'll voice a dissenting opinion.

Doing HTML and JavaScript are commodities. Given the existence of standards,
there's not a lot of room for innovative behavior. Any developments (faster,
new HTML standards, etc) won't impact the market unless they're in one of the
major browsers. Competition is good, but there's only room in the market for a
handful of rendering engines. Maybe 3-5, tops.

Conversely, UI and human interaction with the browser is a place where there's
room for an unbounded number of players. This is where the competition can
actually be happening. And it's where I think the competition _should_ be
happening.

The idea of a browser as something that just renders HTML and executes
JavaScript is kinda lame. I use Opera because I think it's also the browser's
responsibility to include tab organization and search functionality and mouse
gestures and flipping CSS in and out and synchronization. (And I like my mail
integrated, but that's a personal thing.) And I want it to Just Work, instead
of having to manage a half-dozen extensions.

I am guardedly optimistic about Vivaldi, because it's what I actually out of a
browser. (Specifically, an updated version of Opera 12, which Opera 15+ is
not.)

~~~
kibwen

      > Given the existence of standards, there's not a lot of 
      > room for innovative behavior.
    

This is incorrect. Servo, with its goal of being fanatically concurrent, is
forging new ground in discovering exactly where the HTML specs both admit
concurrency and where they unintentionally demand serial behavior. Browsers of
its ilk, regardless of adoption, will be instrumental in informing future
standards such that they are not accidentally hostile to concurrency and
parallelism, thereby clearing the way for widely-adopted engines to implement
such optimizations at their leisure.

~~~
ewzimm
> unless they're in one of the major browsers

Servo is a research project for a future version of Firefox. That's the
definition of a major browser. No web developers want a new browser with
incompatible features to test or build against, but Mozilla/Google/Microsoft
experimenting for future versions is expected.

The original point is that independent browsers using established libraries
and adding new UI concepts is great for users and doesn't make extra work for
web developers. I'm looking forward to what they make of it!

------
rplnt
MRU Tab Switching out of the box. Didn't expect that now that some shitty
browsers (Chrome) can't even have it via extensions. I will never understand
why someone intentionally removed ctrl+tab functionality from their browser
(it's completely useless feature as "select tab to the right").

So I'll keep an eye on this for sure. Even though there are lots of missing
features and couple of bugs that I noticed right out of the box. I hope
they'll get to the point where they can maintain their own version of Blink,
to get rid of some stupid choices they made (text selection for example).

Relevant (open-source) project: [http://otter-browser.org/](http://otter-
browser.org/)

~~~
tombh
+1 for MRU

Who even finds "select tab to the right" useful??

~~~
CyberShadow
I couldn't get used to MRU because then I can't get to the tab I want without
looking away / breaking my train of thought. Once you know the tab you want is
three tabs to the right, you can get to it by muscle memory. You can't build a
mental index with MRU because the items keep moving around (but maybe tracking
MRU lists is an acquired mental skill).

By default, many browsers also arrange tabs in an order I find not entirely
optimal. Tree Style Tabs / Tab Mix Plus help here.

~~~
rplnt
In old Opera you were shown an ordered list of tabs when using ctrl+tab (as
you have in window managers). Not exactly what you were talking about, but it
was not just random guessing as for which tab will pop up next. You saw how
many you had to go, or you could use a mouse. You have other shortcuts for go
left/right when those make sense.

Also, my biggest issue is with the inability to change this behavior. So I
don't think there is one right way to do things (as there obviously isn't). I
think such option should be included in settings, or at least let it be
possible via extension (as is in FF). By the way, request for this option is
one of the top voted issues in chromium (like in top 10 of all time I think),
yet it was closed as WONTFIX without any comment from developers.

~~~
CyberShadow
Yes, I used Opera for many years until I reluctantly switched to Firefox. The
MRU popup still adds a mental load because you have to visually scan the tab
list and know at which tab to stop at. Alt+Tab suffers from the same problem.

> or you could use a mouse

I try to not use the mouse, even while browsing the web. One of the reasons I
liked Opera was the excellent spatial navigation feature, which sadly has no
good equivalent in other browsers currently. Vivaldi claims to reimplement it,
so that's interesting, but at this point I'm not going to risk more lock-in by
switching from an open-source browser to a closed-source one.

------
albertzeyer
I would like some more information. Like what engine is this based on? What JS
engine? And I guess the source will not be open? (Why?)

Edit: Some more info here: [http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/01/27/meet-
vivaldi-new-brows...](http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/01/27/meet-vivaldi-new-
browser-former-ceo-opera/)

Seems as if it uses the Chrome engine. I wonder about the differences to Opera
then.

Edit: Found also this on the homepage (somewhat hidden under the "Web
technology" tab):

We use JavaScript and React to create the user interface — with the help of
Node.js, Browserify and a long list of NPM modules. Vivaldi is the web built
with the web.

So it's like [http://breach.cc/](http://breach.cc/)
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8952152](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8952152))
then?

~~~
gorm
Most of the UI is based on React. But we use _a lot_ of open source projects.
If you run it you should visit vivaldi://credits

~~~
mjg59
It's cool that you use a lot of open source projects. But some of them are
under licenses that require the user to be able to download their source code,
and it's not obvious right now where (for instance) your Webkit code is. You
should probably fix that.

~~~
mjg59
And as an aside - if you're linking LGPLed material into a static binary (as
you appear to be doing with Webkit), you need to follow the provisions of
section 6(a) of LGPL 2.1 and provide object files that allow the recipient to
re-link the binary with a modified copy of the LGPLed work.

------
eva1984
Why there aren't any screenshots?

One suggestion: 'A new browser for our friends' is nowhere a good
introduction. It simply fails to explain to me the reason why I should care
this in the first place.

------
sonnyp
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML,
like Gecko) Chrome/40.0.2214.89 Vivaldi/1.0.83.38 Safari/537.36

I think it's the first useragent string to contain 7 different browser/engine
names.

~~~
paulojreis
It's roughly the same as Chrome, plus the reference to Vivaldi.

It's ugly, as any user-agent string is. The uglier beast, to my knowledge, is
this one:

Mozilla/5.0 (Mobile; Windows Phone 8.1; Android 4.0; ARM; Trident/7.0; Touch;
rv:11.0; IEMobile/11.0; NOKIA; Lumia 520) like iPhone OS 7_0_3 Mac OS X
AppleWebKit/537 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile Safari/537

Windows Phone 8.1 Internet Explorer.

~~~
mynameisvlad
That one makes a little more sense. Some user agent detectors will look for
Trident and assume it's an old version of IE and therefore not compatible.

The more things you put in your UA string, the harder it'll be to fall into
the "this is IE" bucket.

~~~
paulojreis
It serves a purpose, but (IMHO) makes no sense.

Microsoft is trying to avoid UA-based blocking (e.g. Google once used this do
block the Google Maps web app in Windows Phones) and styling (some sites only
send the mobile version to webkit mobile browsers). Microsoft effectively
masks its browser by changing the UA string to something which is detected as
mobile Webkit, and this is (IMHO) wrong. Even if the site is "functional", a
site owner should be able to opt to not support Windows Phones.

Suppose you are responsible for a site which carries a heavy and valuable
brand. Suppose you don't have/don't want to allocate the resources needed to
correctly develop and test your site in Windows Phone. You don't know how the
site will run: you won't know about bugs, you can't guarantee a solid user
experience and you can't guarantee performance. Ergo, you might affect the
brand you carry. Although not ideal, I think it is valid for someone to say "I
want to block my site in some device/OS, because I can't guarantee the quality
and it might be bad for my brand".

I concede (and believe) that the end user should be able to circumvent these
mechanisms by, e.g., changing the UA string. However, I don't agree with
Microsoft approach of masquerading, by default, as Android and/or iOS
browsers. Pardon my rant, but it's just Microsoft being Microsoft: bending
standards at will and playing desperate when not it control of a given market.

------
fapjacks
Uninstalled.

"Title: Vivaldi End User License Agreement

7\. Without limiting the foregoing, you are neither allowed to (a) adapt,
alter, translate, embed into any other product or otherwise create derivative
works of, or otherwise modify the Software ; (b) separate the component
programs of the Software for use on different computers; (c) reverse engineer,
decompile, disassemble or otherwise attempt to derive the source code for the
Software, except as permitted by applicable law;"

~~~
anonbanker
Contacting the FSF as this is using GPL'ed code under a restrictive license.

~~~
yareally
What library contained in it falls under GPL?

------
edwinjm
Hmm, so it's not Open Source? So it's not a community effort? So the
developers are paid? Then how are these expenses earned back?

~~~
vetler
My guess is that it's funded by Opera Software co-founder and former Jon von
Tetzchner for now, he should have some money left in the bank after leaving
Opera.

------
jarcane
Color me interested. I'm currently fed up with more or less the entire current
crop of browsers, so it would be nice to see a new serious player with some
experience enter the field. Old Opera was a fantastic suite in its day, but
new Opera is little more than a buggy hack of Chrome.

~~~
foooh
The new Opera is far more than a buggy hack of Chrome. It has a new user
interface which isn't actually buggy.

~~~
jarcane
A new interface which offers less functionality than either Chrome or Opera 12
(it can't even export your bloody bookmarks FFS), constantly locks up and
becomes unresponsive for half-minutes or more at a time after simple actions,
and largely wastes its breath on visual features like the new bookmarks
manager which manage to be deliberately less functional than almost any other
possible interface.

It's not as bad as Firefox though.

------
hultner
Tried it out, there are some problems with handling local hostnames. Tried
visiting my localhost webserver but have to specify [http://](http://) every
time, even if I'm already on the site and just append something to the url
it'll redirect me to google unless I first prepend [http://](http://). It's
rather annoying considering I only edited the already loaded URL. It's easily
a deal breaker from a developer stance point.

~~~
xrstf
Similar things happen in Chrome. This is why I jumped the shark and simply use
fake domains with actual TLDs for local development stuff, e.g.
"myproject.ninja" or "something.gg". With the advent of all those new TLDs,
there should be one for you as well to designate as "this points to
localhost". ;-)

~~~
Already__Taken
The only trick I've had to do with chrome is use an ending slash `/` like
`devserver/` and it tries that hostname and doesn't search for it.

------
jleight
The very first thing I noticed as soon as I opened the browser is that the
tabs don't touch the top of the screen when the browser is maximized [1]. This
makes closing tabs much more difficult since you can't just move your mouse
all the way to the top of the screen and middle click--you have to consciously
stop moving the mouse before it leaves the tab.

I can understand why they don't touch the top of the screen: the tab stacking
shows up above the tab. My suggestion would be to expand the tab to the top of
the window, and then just make the tab stacking show up inside at the top of
the tab. If not that, at least make the tab's bounding box touch the edge of
the screen and leave the tab stacking on top of it.

I found a few more issues while typing this up: 1\. The browser seemed to
think my CTRL key was stuck or something. Typing in my password on imgur made
it switch tabs and zoom out multiple times when I went to type some of the
numbers in my password. 2\. Copying the image URL from the address bar after I
uploaded it didn't copy the protocol. The protocol was hidden since it's http,
but that adds an extra step of typing "[http://"](http://") when I wanted to
paste it here.

The browser looks like it has promise. I like the look-and-feel. I like that
the address bar is the progress bar when the page is loading. Being able to
add notes and screenshots also seems like it would be incredibly useful.

Overall, I'd give the browser another shot once you've made some more
progress.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/xMOacR5.png](http://i.imgur.com/xMOacR5.png)

~~~
mdpm
While Fitts' law is useful, that behaviour actually drives me mad as someone
who is used to the three mouse buttons having discrete behaviours on the
actual caption bar. Suddenly 'tab' is above 'window' in the hierarchy for
control.

~~~
jleight
I can understand that. For me, though, I use middle click to close tabs
significantly more often than I move the browser window to another monitor. So
I'd rather live with having to click an empty space farther to the right of
the tabs when I actually do move the window.

I could learn to use CTRL+F4 to close tabs, but I find that slower than just
middle clicking the tabs.

------
arcatek
It is much slower than Chrome - check
[http://www.leboncoin.fr](http://www.leboncoin.fr) and try to move the mouse
above the map. The lag is very noticeable.

~~~
mazesc
What about "tech preview" and "not optimized" did you not understand?

~~~
xutopia
Can you say the same without it coming off as mean-spirited? One example:
"They did mention it was a 'tech preview' and that it was 'not optimized'."

~~~
mazesc
You're right I should have expressed myself differently.

------
ponyous
It's funny because its Mozart's birthday not Vivaldi's.

------
owaislone
Interesting but no HiDPI support (linux) so won't be able to use as daily
driver and help test it.

~~~
Kiro
How does HiDPI work on Linux? Is everything scaled to twice the size like with
retina?

~~~
hpaavola
Ubuntu has a slider that lets you to adjust the multiplier, see
[http://www.phoronix.net/image.php?id=0x2014&image=unity_hidp...](http://www.phoronix.net/image.php?id=0x2014&image=unity_hidpi_1_show&w=1920)
Not sure about other distros.

------
waxjar
> Built on Web Technology

I wish this trend would end. The few applications I tried out that advertised
being built on web technologies were not very well integrated with the OS (UX
wise), huge in binary size, very memory hungry and noticeably slower than
native alternatives. It's not a selling point, imo.

Especially not when you consider how _big_ a dependency webkit/gecko is and
how much bugs and attack surface you're bringing in and are responsible for
patching in your end product.

~~~
WorldWideWayne
I'm so glad that I'm not the only one asking for this.

I don't understand what the use-case is. Why expend all that energy to make a
custom native UI platform when all you end up doing is breaking the standards
for my native OS? On Windows, Internet Explorer is the only browser that just
gives a simple native window. Chrome and Firefox both cause issues because of
their custom drawn windows. I don't see any reason to use Vivaldi if they're
going to follow the same path.

------
renke1
All I want is Spatial Navigation like in the old Opera. It was such a
intuitive way to operate your browser solely with your keyboard. I really miss
the old Opera...

~~~
t0mislav
Same here. Old Opera is now only a nice memory. :/

------
Touche
I really like it! One thing that I'd like is for Bookmarks to be synced with
Pinboard. Local browser bookmarks are no use for me (and I would presume a lot
of people) because I use too many devices and too many browsers. I don't mind
going to pinboard.in to view my bookmarks but it's nice to be able to quickly
bookmark something using the native browser UI (rather than an extension).

------
raquo
I hope they make it, sure looks interesting. I kinda miss old-Opera, it was
great for its time.

I wonder what their business model is. How does one earn money off a browser
nowadays? They seem to focus on being a complete browser suite, old-Opera
style. Do they plan to sell it as an app? Sell web services (mail etc)?
Convert all encountered amazon links into affiliate links? (har har)

~~~
Gustomaximus
At a guess, no.1 objective would be to get eyeballs. The money would likely
come from the search box/URLs default once they have some scale.

------
Aoyagi
My gods, it looks more like Opera12 than the latest Chropera. I'm so very
tempted to start using this as a daily driver right away!

And I got an error when trying to register on their forums (edit: solved
through IRC), oh well. I wonder if they even considered doing something
similar to now-defunct Opera Unite. That thing rocked.

------
JoelSutherland
If you were looking for screenshots (since this is a wrapper around blink)
they are buried here under the Press Resources link:

[https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ljm9h48qn2x3v33/AAAmdrTw2ISsKKQNR...](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ljm9h48qn2x3v33/AAAmdrTw2ISsKKQNRNHk-73ka/Screenshots?dl=0)

------
pikzen
Hey cool, a new bowser which seems function-

oh for fucks sake it's goddamn node.js again. Stop this shit. I don't need a
node runtime taking up 400MB on top of an already memory hungry browser. I
don't need a browser using and abusing fucking javascript to run.

Looks good though, and features seem interesting.

~~~
rtpg
You do realise that node.js is basically just V8 right? You kind of need a
Javascript runtime for your browser anyways.

Chrome and FF had a decent amount of memory leaks "despite" being written in
C++

~~~
pikzen
>You do realise that node.js is basically just V8 right?

Aside from the fact that _I don 't need a goddamn 400MB runtime running_ all
the time, the major problem is that node.js (and javascript, by extension) are
awful tools for anything desktop related. (Server related too, but that's more
a personal opinion that node.js is cancer (hi ted)).

Performance has never been up to par with C/C++ (no, testing a 100 line script
is not a valid bench. No, comparing it against awful code is not a valid bench
either. Which kinda invalidates 90% of node benchmarks.). But sure, let's
trade a bit of performance for ease of use, I'm all for it. Except when that
tradeoff implies using javascript, whose warts are known by anyone sensible.
Having a single threaded architecture for a browser, which should basically be
running one process/thread per tab is an error we shouldn't be doing anymore
in 2015. I sure love one tab crashing my entire browser(hi firefox). Which I
managed to do quickly with Vivaldi, but I can understand that it's still a
beta.

Also, let's ignore the OS's native UI libraries because atom-shell/whatever-
desktop-lib-they-use chose to render the entire thing as a DOM because
reasons.

>Chrome and FF had a decent amount of memory leaks "despite" being written in
C++

Nowhere did I hold Chrome and Firefox in high regards when it comes to memory
usage. Chrome seems to think that allocating 4GB of memory for 20ish tabs is a
good idea. Firefox is a bit better but has this slight tendency to leak memory
like crazy.

tl;dr: browsers suck but that's not a reason to write one in fucking
javascript

awaiting the nodejs defense force

------
chj
Visit HN on this browser, you will see chrome UI adjusts its color theme
automatically. Very impressive.

------
thomasfoster96
I'm downloading Vivaldi now. Chrome's safe-download mechanism doesn't like it.

As much as I like the idea of writing a browser using web technologies, most
attempts so far have been pretty lacklustre. I'll wait until it's finished to
pass final judgement on Vivaldi, but I don't really want the old Opera UI and
features on top of the browser engine that the current Opera uses.

Also, I'm waiting for someone to just make a nice plain web browser. I don't
want a mail client built in, I already have one of those. I don't want panels
everywhere that I can't hide, nor do I really want a note taker. All I want in
a browser is the minimal amount of UI around a fast browser engine that has
lots of green boxes on caniuse.com.

~~~
woah
Chrome?

~~~
thomasfoster96
What about it?

~~~
ivanbozic
"All I want in a browser is the minimal amount of UI around a fast browser
engine that has lots of green boxes on caniuse.com." Chrome.

~~~
thomasfoster96
Chrome's good (I do use it) but it seems to me that Google is turning it into
a platform. It has lots of green boxes, but non-standards track features are
creeping in.

------
Polarity
\- design layout looks cluttered. coloring of the ui to match the website is
not a good idea. you cant really distinguish between browser and website,
gives me a cluttered feeling. \- ui feels slow and flickering after some
clicks \- double click on yosemite doesnt maximize instead it mimizes the
window \- dont know why a modern browser needs todos, mail, notes and
contacts. we have apps/webapps for that already. \- dont fetch stuff from
google servers on startup \- tab grouping is useless for me, split screen etc.
would be more useful imo \- integrate a service for bookmarks or deliver an
api. local bookmarks are so 1995. \- rename it, vivaldi sounds very oldish and
boring.

------
tuananh
I wonder how browsers in the past used to work? A single tab takes over 200MB
these days.

~~~
findjashua
the most common source of js memory leaks in my experience is devs forgetting
to clean up event listeners.

------
Piko
511 points on HTML5Test [0] on Linux with Vivaldi. That's more than I get with
Chromium (481) or Firefox (449). Vivaldi feels already quite nice but not
finished (e.g. flickering of the preview images in vertical tabs when
switching the tabs) and generally a tiny bit slower when changing tabs in
comparison to chrome/chromium, my default browser at the moment.

Definitely keep it installed for now, probably won't use it daily.

[0] [https://html5test.com/index.html](https://html5test.com/index.html)

------
ludwigvan
So good to see the single character keyboard shortcuts from the old Opera,
although some functionality is working differently, need to press 1 and 2
twice to switch back and forth? It used to be that 1 and 2 would go to next
and prev tab, but now 3 and 4 seem to have been assigned for those.

1 (cycles bt. tabs?), 2, 3 (next tab), 4 (prev tab), z (back), x (forward)

------
scriptdevil
I have been using this browser for the last 4-5 hours. It is fairly good.
However, some pages like Dr. Dobbs and Vivaldi's own forum makes all shortcuts
fail. The only solution seems to be to alt-tab to some other window and then
use the shortcut. That said, the browser is really neat to use.

------
Cowicide
I really like the way they've implemented tab previews. I can hover at over
the tab and it'll show its thumbnail or I can drag the menubar down under the
tab bar and all the tab thumbnails show at once. It makes more sense to me
than the way Apple implements it in Safari.

------
chaotic-good
It is possible to search using address bar and separate search bar, why not to
join them?

~~~
nirvdrum
In most (all?) browsers with a unified search bar, your search query may be
confused with a URL and breaks your search. There's usually some syntax you
can throw at the front to disambiguate, but I'd rather not have to think about
whether my query is going to work or not -- especially with new TLDs rolling
out all the time. I much appreciate the separate search bar as a result.

~~~
ponyous
In classic Opera browser if you prefixed your search query with a letter it
always searched with engine associated with the letter. For example:

`g thisissearch.com` would be interpreted as Google search query, not url. I
think this is good behaviour.

~~~
nieve
There are two different ways to do this in Firefox with no addons or weird
configs:

Open Preferences->Search->One-click Search Engines, make sure google is
checked, double-click "google" in the keyword column, change it to just "g".

If you want to keep the old "google" term or outright disable Google as a
built-in search engine you can still add "g" as a keyword search. Go to
Google, right click the search box, select "Add a Keyword for this Search..."
and select "g" as your keyword. This works for search forms on most sites that
aren't doing insane stuff with javascript or mandating a security token and it
generally remembers other form settings as well.

~~~
ponyous
Yes, I have seen this. I couldn't play with it when I was at work. I
definitely love this functionality.

------
jblok
"A new browser for our friends", as in the developer community? That seems
like a lot of effort to build a browser for a very small group of users.

The sad truth of browsers is that most people use whatever comes on their
machine. A lot of times that would be IE - lots of people I know/companies in
the UK still use IE out of a lack of knowing any better. Some more savvy users
will use Chrome/FF but that's because they realise it has a lot of benefits
over IE or are shamed into not using IE.

This doesn't really offer any 'wow' features that entice me as a web developer
to try it, so your average user is even less likely to try it. And really,
when making a browser, your target _needs_ to be the masses because otherwise
no web dev is going to support your browser if it requires even the tiniest of
special treatment in their code.

~~~
jarcane
_" A new browser for our friends", as in the developer community?_

The "Opera community" is, or was, a thing. Opera spent years cultivating an
actual community around their users, with forums and chat and social
networking features galore. Then they shut it down last year.

The Vivaldi folks have also started Vivaldi.net, which appears to be an
attempt to keep that community going elsewhere now that Opera has essentially
axed everything that made people love them in favor of being an also-ran
Chromium fork.

~~~
foooh
The Opera forums weren't shut down. They were moved to a new location. The
chat still exists as well.

The My Opera site was what made people love Opera? Uh... No. Opera 12 had tens
of millions of users, and hardly a fraction of those visited that site.

~~~
jarcane
Well, I was also referring to the browser itself, which is now a useless
shadow of its former self.

------
danboarder
Looks good, not sure about the nav changing color to match website styles but
that is an interesting approach.

Having mail built in is not useful for me, but I wonder if it will support
other email providers eventually (gmail etc)?

~~~
wanda
I don't like it either. I mean it wouldn't bother me that much, it's not a
dealbreaker, but it's the kind of minor thing that would prevent me from
switching to this browser unless it offers something genuinely advantageous
over the existing solutions.

But, just fyi, you can switch off the color changing. At least in this preview
release.

------
unfamiliar
Looks good! I think the first thing you could do with is a public bug
tracker/feature request system. I think the forum format is particularly badly
suited to managing feature requests and tracking bugs.

------
t0mislav
UI should be minimal. I dont't understand why all this buttons, dashboard
should be visible by default. It looks like kids picture book, distractions
everywhere.

~~~
k_
Well, there's a whole lot of no-UI browsers out there for you. Hell, almost
all available browsers fit in this category.

But some of us actually miss those UI, so this is good news. Although I'm
still disappointed by Vivaldi atm.. not the Opera 9-like I was hoping for =/

------
n8m
My first thought was: "Crap another browser. Fun times." \- but I guess it
will be alright since everything seems to run on bootstrap & co anyways ...

------
gear54rus
Tab stacks, cloned UI, tab previews, integrated mail.

Someone is targeting Opera-like experience and damn, I like it.

I am not sure about liking it being another incarnation of Chrome inside
though.

~~~
matmann2001
I think the people behind it are past Opera employees.

~~~
palmer_eldritch
In fact, Vivaldi's founder is Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, one of Opera's
founders and ex-CEO of Opera.

So I guess one could say there's a link between Opera and Vivaldi (no pun
intended).

------
talles
I love the Tab Stacks idea.

IE tried to do that years ago by coloring tabs, but then you ended with a
rainbow in your face instead of really (abstracted away from you) grouping.

------
chaotic-good
UI looks really cool though a little bit alien on ubuntu.

~~~
pmontra
It looks definitely out of place on Ubuntu (a Gnome fallback desktop here.) It
looks like something ported from a Windows 8 desktop and it ignores the system
setting for the color of the title bar.

I also wonder why they are implementing an integrated mail client. It seems a
waste of developer time which could be spent on something more important.

That said, the browser is pretty fast. Chances that I'll use it: maybe, but
not as primary browser. I'm using FF with some vital addons as my primary
browser (Firebug, NoScript, AdBlock, SelfDestructingCookies) and Opera/Blink
as wordprocessor and spreadsheet on Google Drive, to separate concerns
(customer mandated docs). I can't see me leaving FF for this (I didn't for
Chrome) but it could end up replacing Opera if they keep it minimal.

------
monk_e_boy
Nooooo! Forward/back and home buttons are all in different places to Firefox,
IE and Chrome... gah! I wish they'd all use the same layout!

------
benbristow
I like how there's already Linux versions out as early as this. Unusual.

Seems like a cross between Opera and Chrome. Will have to keep an eye out for
this.

------
V-2
Still that tiny gap between the tab bar and the edge of the screen :) Years
pass, but Opera (and now its offspring) can't get it right.

~~~
waxjar
If i remember correctly, that's so you drag & drop a full window rather than a
single tab.

~~~
lsaferite
I'm looking at chrome with a title bar full of tabs. If I want to move the
whole browser I have several places to grab the title bar. Additionally, from
a sample size of one I find that selecting tabs happens with a far greater
frequency than moving the window. Generally the widow is maximized on one
display and I simply Alt-Tab to other windows.

~~~
V-2
Yeah, exactly. There's normally a bit of free space to the right of tabs. User
can grab the title bar there. I'm switching between tabs like 1000 times more
often than dragging the entire window anywhere. Perhaps I'm not a typical web
browser user, but...

------
zvrba
Can somebody explain to me a viable business case for building yet another
browser today? How do they expect to make money on it?

~~~
blister
If they're able to attract market share at all, there's a lot of money to be
made in the default search engine arena. The Mozilla Foundation gets quite a
bit of money from Yahoo to have Yahoo be the default.

------
rokhayakebe
Are they caching websites? I have HN open in both Chrome and Vivaldi and the
comments count are different.

------
anoother
Tab stacks!

Is this finally a replacement for Opera?

~~~
mahouse
Yes, the UI is a clone. Memories :_)

------
findjashua
the #1 thing I want from my browser is tree-style tabs
([https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-
ta...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/))

------
baby
They had one thing to do right for a modern browser: tabs on the side...

~~~
danbee
Check the preferences :)

~~~
ponyous
Is it there? I'm on phone now. I have been waiting for this desperately! :DD

~~~
tosh
Yes, it supports vertical tabs (tabs on the side) :)

------
jkcl
Screenshots, screenshots, screenshots! A picture paints a thousand...

------
binoyxj
You all remember RockMelt browser? This = That in the making!

------
sehr
Opera creators using NPM & React to create a web browser.

I love the future

------
harel
I downloaded it without any expectations, and I must say I'm impressed. It
even runs our Chrome only single page app very well and fast. I'm looking
forward to seeing where this one goes.

------
tosh
Finally a browser that supports vertical tabs.

------
davidfregoli
no ctrl+shift+t?? [http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PIMx8pYvMEw/Uek_GUQ-
OCI/AAAAAAAAA_...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PIMx8pYvMEw/Uek_GUQ-
OCI/AAAAAAAAA_0/9xOrP9jGlBU/s1600/fthisshit.jpg)

------
gprasanth
I wonder if everyone in the "team" contributed code.

------
p0nce
Please disable Javascript by default when browsing. It will be very fast.

------
nkuttler
Well, I know I'm not your average user, but a website that only displays a
spinner to noscript users doesn't exactly make me very confident that this
browser will help to make a better www.

~~~
phpnode
You have chosen to break your own web experience, I'm not sure why you're
complaining.

~~~
nkuttler
When I started to use the web there were campaigns like best viewed in any
browser, and the browser wars were just starting. I didn't realize that
sharing my sentiment would be perceived as complaining. I know how to disable
noscript.

~~~
drdaeman
The times had changed. Semantic Web is dead. Nobody anymore gives a damn about
that, everyone's drunk the kool-aid of webapps.

Everyone used to hate Flash, but it's perceived as normal when the pages are
bundled a good chunk of rendering/layout engine to run inside your browser
engine. Can't track you and serve you advertisements with plain hypertext
documents, duh.

