I had a front-end development job a while back with a colleague who used Vivaldi, and it taught me to really hate that browser. Every few weeks, he'd file a new bug ticket with a vague description...
I had a front-end development job a while back with a colleague who used Vivaldi, and it taught me to really hate that browser.
Every few weeks, he'd file a new bug ticket with a vague description of the problem, and occasionally a half-relevant screenshot. I'd spend a while trying to figure out what he meant, and eventually I'd usually find out the problem was "I'm using Vivaldi, and it does something different to other browsers here". I don't really understand how Vivaldi could have so many weird edge cases given it's just a Chromium wrapper, but apparently it does. I don't remember all the problems I ran into, but it was things like the file picker doing strange things if you clicked "cancel", and the screen size not being reported correctly at certain points in the page's lifecycle.
The worst part, though, was that I'd try and come up with some sort of fix on our side, and then, like the responsible developer I am, I'd spend some time creating a minimal reproducible example and submitting it to Vivaldi. Unfortunately, the only bug tracker I ever found was a "found a bug?" form that as far as I could tell, just sent everything straight into the ether. I never got any response from Vivaldi at all (not even a "we've got your report and will look at it" confirmation), and IIRC their internal bug tracker was locked down so you couldn't see how they were handing these things anyway.
I realise this is quite a privileged complaint compared to the IE wilderness years, but I have absolutely no desire to return there. I deeply dislike Vivaldi, and I hope I never have to support it again.
I had the same experience with Vivaldi a few years ago, since then it has become much more robust. Oddly enough I did have good luck filing bug reports back then. Recently I did found a bug and...
I had the same experience with Vivaldi a few years ago, since then it has become much more robust. Oddly enough I did have good luck filing bug reports back then. Recently I did found a bug and have not heard back from them. Which, given their popularity, I figured is because they get a lot of them.
Anyway, I can't remember the last time I ran into something like the issues you mentioned in daily browsing.
It's one of the reasons why I am a happy Vivaldi user. Most of their features, more often than not, offer clear value and are generally things not easily implemented as extensions either. I think...
It's one of the reasons why I am a happy Vivaldi user. Most of their features, more often than not, offer clear value and are generally things not easily implemented as extensions either.
I think LLMs can be useful tools, I use them on a regular basis. But, there is no reason to integrate them into a browser natively.
Certainly not when all browsers come with a nifty framework that allows you to leave the choice to the user: extensions. This is even more the case when the functionality that is built directly into the browser directly doesn't do anything that extensions can also do. Firefox in general is guilty of features like that. In one of their latest updates they introduced an experimental AI chatbot feature. This feature doesn't offer anything that existing extensions can't already do.
So to me, as a user, it really feels like some PM/PO over at Mozilla figured that it would look good if they can claim Firefox has "AI features". Considering there are already extensions out there that do the same (and better) and that it now is part of the browser code base (making it more complex) it seems such a waste of resources and future tech debt.
If it looks like I am picking on Firefox specifically, that isn't the case, it just the most recent example that comes to mind. I haven't used Chrome for quite some time now, but I expect there to be some AI shenanigans going on there. They lost me as a user a few years ago when they started rolling out some anti user features (forgot which ones).
The last time I checked, Microsoft even calls Edge an "AI Browser" (at least in the Android Play Store listing) (micro edit, this is actually in the article) and Edge has been riddled by "could easily have been an extension" features for years now.
Brave, always has been shady and not really about considering people or even privacy other than for marketing.
Opera is the true king of integrating shit that doesn't need to be integrated, taking it a step further and pretending that pre-installed PWAs are the best thing since sliced bread.
I left Opera after the 2012(?) chromium switch and came back to Vivaldi a few years ago. Super happy with it. If for no other reason that all of the 'extra' features they have are optional. Their...
I left Opera after the 2012(?) chromium switch and came back to Vivaldi a few years ago. Super happy with it. If for no other reason that all of the 'extra' features they have are optional. Their mouse gestures feel and operate better than any Chrome/Firefox extension I've tried, but if you don't like/want them, turn them off. Also appreciate their commitment to keep ad-blocking viable.
I like that they've continued the Opera tradition of actually experimenting and rolling out new features that other browsers eventually implement.
Oh man, Opera mouse gestures got me so hooked I couldn't really switch to any other browser until a decent alternative extension was available. I've since switched to Firefox with Gesturefy. Good...
Oh man, Opera mouse gestures got me so hooked I couldn't really switch to any other browser until a decent alternative extension was available. I've since switched to Firefox with Gesturefy. Good enough to not make me have to use a chromium browser at least.
It's so ingrained in my browsing that I continuously try gesturing in browsers or computers that do not have that functionality.
+1 for Vivaldi, switched last year and haven't looked back for the most part. I will occasionally use Chrome/Brave for sites that act weird on Vivaldi mobile, and use FF nightly for Tildes since...
+1 for Vivaldi, switched last year and haven't looked back for the most part. I will occasionally use Chrome/Brave for sites that act weird on Vivaldi mobile, and use FF nightly for Tildes since there are some good user scripts.
The Vivaldi customization and workspaces are so linux. I use the workspaces daily and they help so much with organizing my browsing experience.
Userscripts also work with Vivaldi? Violentmonkey is a good open source extension for them. Though with manifest V3 on the horizon I am not sure what the future is for userscripts on Chromium...
use FF nightly for Tildes since there are some good user scripts.
Can I trouble you to expand on this? I use Brave because I am lazy and it just works, but would prefer to use a browser with less shitty people involved. What is Vivaldi doing that makes them...
Also appreciate their commitment to keep ad-blocking viable.
Can I trouble you to expand on this? I use Brave because I am lazy and it just works, but would prefer to use a browser with less shitty people involved. What is Vivaldi doing that makes them better for ad blocking then Chrome or Firefox?
When Google announced it's big ManifestV3 changes designed to cripple adblocker extensions/addons Vivaldi built one into the browser. I still have Ublock Origin installed, mostly out of habit, but...
When Google announced it's big ManifestV3 changes designed to cripple adblocker extensions/addons Vivaldi built one into the browser. I still have Ublock Origin installed, mostly out of habit, but their built-in one is pretty good on it's own.
I clicked around a bit, but couldn't find any info on their website, but how does Vivaldi make money? I'm extremely hesitant to use a product if I don't understand its business model, just because...
I clicked around a bit, but couldn't find any info on their website, but how does Vivaldi make money? I'm extremely hesitant to use a product if I don't understand its business model, just because that often leads to unpleasant surprises down the road.
They made a blog post about this a while ago, this is still valid: https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/ They are also a relatively small company with 54 people working for it in 2021...
They are also a relatively small company with 54 people working for it in 2021 according to Wikipedia. Which doesn't necessarily indicate much. But is a factor in keeping costs down.
Also, relevant is the privacy policy which they clearly split out across various things like the browser itself, community, syncing, etc: https://vivaldi.com/privacy/
I had a front-end development job a while back with a colleague who used Vivaldi, and it taught me to really hate that browser.
Every few weeks, he'd file a new bug ticket with a vague description of the problem, and occasionally a half-relevant screenshot. I'd spend a while trying to figure out what he meant, and eventually I'd usually find out the problem was "I'm using Vivaldi, and it does something different to other browsers here". I don't really understand how Vivaldi could have so many weird edge cases given it's just a Chromium wrapper, but apparently it does. I don't remember all the problems I ran into, but it was things like the file picker doing strange things if you clicked "cancel", and the screen size not being reported correctly at certain points in the page's lifecycle.
The worst part, though, was that I'd try and come up with some sort of fix on our side, and then, like the responsible developer I am, I'd spend some time creating a minimal reproducible example and submitting it to Vivaldi. Unfortunately, the only bug tracker I ever found was a "found a bug?" form that as far as I could tell, just sent everything straight into the ether. I never got any response from Vivaldi at all (not even a "we've got your report and will look at it" confirmation), and IIRC their internal bug tracker was locked down so you couldn't see how they were handing these things anyway.
I realise this is quite a privileged complaint compared to the IE wilderness years, but I have absolutely no desire to return there. I deeply dislike Vivaldi, and I hope I never have to support it again.
I had the same experience with Vivaldi a few years ago, since then it has become much more robust. Oddly enough I did have good luck filing bug reports back then. Recently I did found a bug and have not heard back from them. Which, given their popularity, I figured is because they get a lot of them.
Anyway, I can't remember the last time I ran into something like the issues you mentioned in daily browsing.
It's one of the reasons why I am a happy Vivaldi user. Most of their features, more often than not, offer clear value and are generally things not easily implemented as extensions either.
I think LLMs can be useful tools, I use them on a regular basis. But, there is no reason to integrate them into a browser natively.
Certainly not when all browsers come with a nifty framework that allows you to leave the choice to the user: extensions. This is even more the case when the functionality that is built directly into the browser directly doesn't do anything that extensions can also do. Firefox in general is guilty of features like that. In one of their latest updates they introduced an experimental AI chatbot feature. This feature doesn't offer anything that existing extensions can't already do.
So to me, as a user, it really feels like some PM/PO over at Mozilla figured that it would look good if they can claim Firefox has "AI features". Considering there are already extensions out there that do the same (and better) and that it now is part of the browser code base (making it more complex) it seems such a waste of resources and future tech debt.
If it looks like I am picking on Firefox specifically, that isn't the case, it just the most recent example that comes to mind. I haven't used Chrome for quite some time now, but I expect there to be some AI shenanigans going on there. They lost me as a user a few years ago when they started rolling out some anti user features (forgot which ones).
The last time I checked, Microsoft even calls Edge an "AI Browser" (at least in the Android Play Store listing) (micro edit, this is actually in the article) and Edge has been riddled by "could easily have been an extension" features for years now.
Brave, always has been shady and not really about considering people or even privacy other than for marketing.
Opera is the true king of integrating shit that doesn't need to be integrated, taking it a step further and pretending that pre-installed PWAs are the best thing since sliced bread.
I left Opera after the 2012(?) chromium switch and came back to Vivaldi a few years ago. Super happy with it. If for no other reason that all of the 'extra' features they have are optional. Their mouse gestures feel and operate better than any Chrome/Firefox extension I've tried, but if you don't like/want them, turn them off. Also appreciate their commitment to keep ad-blocking viable.
I like that they've continued the Opera tradition of actually experimenting and rolling out new features that other browsers eventually implement.
Oh man, Opera mouse gestures got me so hooked I couldn't really switch to any other browser until a decent alternative extension was available. I've since switched to Firefox with Gesturefy. Good enough to not make me have to use a chromium browser at least.
It's so ingrained in my browsing that I continuously try gesturing in browsers or computers that do not have that functionality.
+1 for Vivaldi, switched last year and haven't looked back for the most part. I will occasionally use Chrome/Brave for sites that act weird on Vivaldi mobile, and use FF nightly for Tildes since there are some good user scripts.
The Vivaldi customization and workspaces are so linux. I use the workspaces daily and they help so much with organizing my browsing experience.
Userscripts also work with Vivaldi? Violentmonkey is a good open source extension for them. Though with manifest V3 on the horizon I am not sure what the future is for userscripts on Chromium based browsers.
I meant on mobile, unless they've added it to Vivaldi mobile?
Oh, my bad. Completely missed you said mobile.
No worries.
Can I trouble you to expand on this? I use Brave because I am lazy and it just works, but would prefer to use a browser with less shitty people involved. What is Vivaldi doing that makes them better for ad blocking then Chrome or Firefox?
When Google announced it's big ManifestV3 changes designed to cripple adblocker extensions/addons Vivaldi built one into the browser. I still have Ublock Origin installed, mostly out of habit, but their built-in one is pretty good on it's own.
Ah, I had no idea they made their own. Thank you! Going to have to give the browser a try finally.
I clicked around a bit, but couldn't find any info on their website, but how does Vivaldi make money? I'm extremely hesitant to use a product if I don't understand its business model, just because that often leads to unpleasant surprises down the road.
They made a blog post about this a while ago, this is still valid: https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/
They are also a relatively small company with 54 people working for it in 2021 according to Wikipedia. Which doesn't necessarily indicate much. But is a factor in keeping costs down.
Also, relevant is the privacy policy which they clearly split out across various things like the browser itself, community, syncing, etc: https://vivaldi.com/privacy/
Thanks for that! I do wish there was more software that could just be paid for with money, but this seems pretty reasonable.