Opera Founder Opens Up About New Vivaldi Browser (networkworld.com) 73
alphadogg writes: Since the days of Mosaic in the early 1990s, Jon von Tetzchner has been working on web browsers. He is one of the creators of Opera, the alternative browser that's been a power-user favorite since 1995. His new project, Vivaldi, is heading for its first stable release. Network World sat down with von Tetzchner on Thursday to talk about Vivaldi and Opera at the Innovation House, a related venture of his.
Pavorotti Next? (Score:2)
I'm holding out for Quadraphenia
North Korea? (Score:2)
Isn't North Korea buying Opera?
Re:North Korea? (Score:5, Interesting)
A tech company from China.
Not like chrome. (Score:3)
Is it going to look like chrome or edge?
It really is ok if every browser doesn't look exactly like every other browser.
Re: (Score:2)
If I recall correctly, Opera was based on webkit. Webkit was originally a KDE project that got adopted into Safari and OSX (where it really took off). Then Chrome was built off webkit.
So if Vivaldi is built off chrome then it's still webkit derived like opera.
were down to edge, webkit variants, and firefox as actively developed engines.
Re: (Score:3)
Nope. Opera was its own thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Nope. Opera was its own thing.
You're right but he's right too. Opera used to have their own engine (Presto) but is was discontinued in favor of Blink (Google's Webkit derivative) and as far as I know never open sourced, Vivaldi also uses Blink so we're down to just Edge, Webkit-ish and Gecko. But with the dominating engine open source (Chromium = Chrome minus a few proprietary plug-ins) I'm not really all that concerned about that.
Re: (Score:2)
But with the dominating engine open source (Chromium = Chrome minus a few proprietary plug-ins) I'm not really all that concerned about that.
If we end up having only one or two...we risk the specs are going to cater to the architecture of those browsers... This is a very real risk.
Re: (Score:2)
We've already got the problem of all the -webkit extensions that Webkit created, and have become popular enough that the other browsers either have to implement these non-standard extensions, or risk being perceived as "broken" when they can't render webpages that Chrome/Opera/etc. can render.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
It would be nice if it were open sourced, I still prefer v12 and would donate my time and effort.
Re: (Score:2)
Opera created and used there own stuff {Presto} but then abandoned it for webkit about three years ago after version 12.17. I think the transition to webkit and some new direction for opera was what prompted them to leave and start vivaldi. I know I'm not a fan of the new opera.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Opera was bought at some time. The new boss wanted to modernize it and thought developers developing a render engine is a waste of time, if you can get a free one.
Then they just took a whole chromium and started modifying it and distributed it as "opera", which everybody hated. Now it grows more and more an own browser again, but with another focus than opera had.
Vivaldi is now the approach to recreate the old opera. Because a new company cannot develop a new engine and the rights to the old engine are owne
It's not a fucking disaster like FF and Chrome are (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been using Vivaldi for a while now. Its UI isn't as nice as Opera's (I mean the real Opera, not the shitty recent releases) was, but it's a lot more usable than Firefox's or Chrome's or Edge's or new Opera's UIs are.
There's a real status bar. You can put the tabs on any side. It can easily show the full URL. The preferences dialog is well organized and allows for a lot of customization. I haven't had problems using major Chrome extensions with it. It's reasonably fast.
Despite being so new, it kicks the living shit out of Firefox, as far as I'm concerned!
Vivaldi is a browser that empowers me, and lets me define the web experience that I want. It's not made by snotfaced hipster's pushing their "opinionated", and totally wrong, ideas on me without my consent. Firefox is a browser that shits in my mouth and makes me swallow, even when I've told them repeatedly I don't want to do that. I trust Vivaldi a lot more than I trust Chrome, too.
My only complaint about Vivaldi is that it isn't open source. But I can overlook that because it's so much better than Firefox, and it's better than Chrome and Edge, too.
Vivaldi is the first positive thing that has happened to the web in a very, very long time.
Re: (Score:3)
Seems like your Firefox has picked up some malware during your visits to the nether regions of the Internet. ;)
As for Vivaldi, I'm one who regularly tries it out (it's one of my secondary browsers). I wouldn't go as far as you about Vivaldi's quality, and I certainly don't believe it "shits" on Firefox (at least not to that extent), but I do think it's improved since every snapshot a
Re: (Score:2)
Funnily enough, I typed that reply with Pale Moon. I've been trying it out for the last two weeks and am fairly impressed with it. Still, I'll probably go back to using Firefox as my main browser, but Vivaldi and Pale Moon are there if I do choose to move away.
I'm finding the direction that Firefox is taking is trying my patience, and as a long time user of Firefox since its Phoenix days, there might come a day when I say bye. Vivaldi and Pale Moon might well make that bye easier.
I miss Omniweb (Score:2)
Every release of firefox, I hope again that they have fixed the memory leaks. They never have. I have to shut firefox down every day and run the OS X developer application "purge" to get my memory back so other programs don't stall like republicans in congress. FF is the only program that requires this. I've gone so far as to take a machine with a fresh OS install and then add FF... and it always acts the same - eats RAM like starving locusts at a newly discovered wheatfield. Lots of people have made sugges
Re: (Score:1)
Sounds like a mac problem, on Debian it works pretty nice, only sometimes it takes a while to reclaim all memory after a tab has been closed.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, it certainly could be OS X <--> FF interaction. I just wish they'd fix the thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, OS X 10.6.8.
I have the latest FF, and I update it whenever it says it's time to.
I almost always have a gmail tab open; a couple of slack tabs open; and it would be an unusual day if I didn't read at least one slashdot story. Aside from that, I browse Amazon, visit flickr, and google things. I'd say pretty much anything else I do would be exceptional, and so unlikely to be a specific culprit, assuming that there is one, other than FF itself or OS X. I rarely open large images in my browser.
I don't use F
Re: (Score:2)
I get it on CentOS, so it probably isn't.
Re: (Score:2)
You can try Firefox Developer (i.e. Aurora/Alpha) it runs a lot better, with e10s by default. You have to disable the ugly skin, then remove useless icons from the toolbar, then that's all.
Using the beta version now : no e10s, so I came across bad behavior but for now it is rather decent still.
Re: (Score:1)
Funnily enough, I typed that reply with Pale Moon. I've been trying it out for the last two weeks and am fairly impressed with it. Still, I'll probably go back to using Firefox as my main browser, but Vivaldi and Pale Moon are there if I do choose to move away.
I'm finding the direction that Firefox is taking is trying my patience, and as a long time user of Firefox since its Phoenix days, there might come a day when I say bye. Vivaldi and Pale Moon might well make that bye easier.
I've been using Pale Moon for a while now. I've used Firefox since the Firebird days but for me (and many others) Mozilla's decision to deprecate XUL-based extensions in favour of the WebExtensions API [mozilla.org] so that Firefox can be compatible with Chrome and Opera is the last straw. The WebExtensions API is much more restrictive and many popular extensions will be unworkable as a result.
There has been a a lot of negative reaction in the Mozilla forums; e.g "it's the extensions that make Firefox" and "If I wanted C
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
A browser impossible to check for backdoors? Sorry, no.
Re: (Score:2)
I originally went to opera because of tabbed browsing with more advanced features accessible but out of site on a simple interface and a built in pop-up blocker. Something none of the other browsers where doing at the time but do now.
Re: (Score:1)
Remember Opera's CSS support and "fit to width?"
Re: Not like chrome. (Score:1)
I use it on OS X. It's great except for its proxy support. It uses the OS X systemwide proxy settings. But I don't want to use my SOCKS5 ad filtering proxy for all apps, just Vivaldi. Firefox does this right because it has its own independent proxy config that doesn't mess up other apps. I wish Vivaldi had its own separate config, too.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a much more heavyweight, power user friendly browser when it comes to UI. Take a few minutes to learn the hotkeys and advanced features and it's a much more productive browser than Chrome.
Sometimes simplicity can (somewhat non-intuitively) impede productivity, and this idea is what Vivaldi is built around. I'm not saying it's clunky, it's very well designed, but it's also full of useful power user centric features that are easy to access and not hidden in layers of "advanced settings" menus.
Re: (Score:3)
A web BROWSER? One reason to put the word in all caps could be that it's likely to be the most complex piece of software many people use.
One example, I regularly ask myself, why is bookmark and history management so poor in Firefox and unchanged since version 1.0? (or even worsened a bit with Australis adding a "right side history panel" with no features, but the left side panel still available)
e.g. History doesn't seem made to sort through things with multiple criterions at the same time, nor to allow an e
Intuitive (Score:5, Funny)
It's not non-intuitive at all.
Simplicity is great for two classes of users: power users who don't want to be power users of that particular segment of tech, and the broad swath of droolers out there. That's by far the largest chunk of market. Their version of productivity is "do the average thing without being bothered by anything." So for them, simplicity is productive.
Unfortunately, that leaves power users who do want, or even might need, sophisticated features, without the tools they need to be specifically productive. And it leads to the kind of brain-dead thinking that gives us "features" like hiding the URL and just showing the domain, non-standard (and broken) buttons because "oh, pretty", UI elements that migrate like addled geese, not to mention just up and disappear...
Sigh.
Re: (Score:2)
The Vivaldi interface is very customizable, like Opera Presto. E.g., I have my tabs on the side -- ideal for a wide-screen resolution, IMHO.
Re: (Score:2)
Vivaldi can install extensions directly from the Chrome web store, just like Chrome does.
Missing feature (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ask them. They have a public bugreport form (though no public bts) and they read the comments on their blog (and in their forum).
Do thay finally have that bookmark menu? (Score:4, Informative)
I am still on Opera 12.x because the one glaring thing the beta Vivaldi is missing is bookmarks than can be accessed easily. Having to click open the bookmark-sidebar, selecting the link and then having to click the sidebar close again is just not acceptable. Other than that, Vivaldi was fine in beta and I will be moving to it as soon as the bookmarks work well.
Re: (Score:2)
there's a bookmarks "tab" on the new tab page, up at the top: Speed dial, +, Bookmarks, History. Clicking on those lets you view your history or bookmarks in that tab similar to the opera:history and opera:bookmarks pages used to
fyi
Re: (Score:2)
I don't have that. Must have been added later. Thanks, I will take a look.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, no. That does not cut it. Double-click to open a sub-folder? Not really. Since Opera has just released 12.18 as security update, I will stay with it a while longer.
And seriously, how can they mess up or not prioritize something as central as bookmarks in Vivaldi?
Old Opera (Score:3, Interesting)
Today, the only browser trying to be Opera is otter-browser.org
My browser of choice today (Score:1)