Vivaldi 8.0
100 points
1 hour ago
| 16 comments
| vivaldi.com
| HN
adrian_b
52 minutes ago
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With Firefox, especially with Firefox on Linux, which always had and still has poor GPU support, I frequently encounter sites that do not work well or they do not work at all. So I must keep a backup browser, which is normally Vivaldi, because typically any site that works in Chrome also works in Vivaldi.

Moreover, Vivaldi has a great advantage over both Firefox and Chrome, in it the command to print a Web page usually works fine, while in both Firefox and Chrome it almost never works correctly.

Both Firefox and Chrome are almost never able to render correctly a "printed" page, even if they render the same page perfectly on screen. In the printed page, the graphic elements have almost always wrong sizes, which results in overlapped or invisible page elements. I suppose that this is caused by the fact that many Web pages stupidly use element sizes in pixels, instead of using length units, e.g. points or inches or mm, and both Firefox and Chrome might scale pixels wrongly when rendering for resolutions that differ from that of the screen, while Vivaldi scales them correctly.

Besides the "Print" command, the second feature that I like in Vivaldi better than in Firefox or Chrome is that it accepts mouse gestures for most commands, as alternatives to keyboard shortcuts, so you do not need to move the hand from the mouse while browsing.

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netsharc
30 minutes ago
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> mouse gestures

Vivaldi is born made by the same people who left Opera after it was bought by a Chinese company, and the mouse gestures are similar. Ny favorites: "Hold right mouse button, click left" is the browser back gesture, and "hold left, click right" is forward.

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tuoret
4 minutes ago
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I switched to Firefox when Opera ditched Presto and mouse gestures were the thing I missed the most (along with windowed tabs). Took me a long time to stop trying to use them, those commands were etched deep in my muscle memory. I remember trying a few extensions but they never managed to replicate how smoothly it worked in Opera.

You can tell the Vivaldi devs care about that kind of stuff. I don't want to use a chromium-based browser as my daily driver, but I like a lot of what they're doing.

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dmos62
29 minutes ago
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I ran into broken printing when I was trying to turn web pages into PDFs. Both Chrome and Firefox couldn't "print" without breaking layout.
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dijksterhuis
40 minutes ago
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> the second feature that I like in Vivaldi better than in Firefox or Chrome is that it accepts mouse gestures for most commands

vivaldi was doing something weird for me, can’t exactly remember what now. seemingly unprompted it would switch tabs or go back in history or something.

turns out i’d tried to be clever, set up a mouse gesture and forgotten about it. xD

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portmanteaufu
1 hour ago
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I'd like to try Vivaldi, but the combination of being (partially) closed-source [1] and free-as-in-beer makes me feel like I must be the product.

Do they do any sort of third-party auditing of the closed parts?

[1] https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/why-isnt-vivaldi-browser...

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dijksterhuis
52 minutes ago
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source code is apparently* available to audit: https://vivaldi.com/source

* on my phone, can’t inspect the tars

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brnt
39 minutes ago
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Tarballs every 2 months, and we know these don't give you the Vivaldi browser as they supply it.

I don't trust them one bit. There was that telemetry analysis that showed Vivaldi as a very noisy browser.

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dijksterhuis
38 minutes ago
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> we know these don't give you the Vivaldi browser as they supply it.

how so? how do you know this?

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ekianjo
9 minutes ago
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Probably because they update the browser way more often than that
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dgellow
1 hour ago
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Im not sure I understand their business model. I don’t see any paid offering on their website
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newscombinatorY
1 hour ago
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Took 2 seconds to startpage* this: https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/

*screw Google and their AI search

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dgellow
39 minutes ago
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Guess I’m blind, I somehow missed it… thanks!

So the answer seems to be:

- search partnerships

- direct match partnerships

- bookmarks partnerships

- donation

- cut when people sign up for advertised products (proton vpn, not sure if others)

Or at least that was the case in 2019

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zamadatix
1 hour ago
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Search engine deals are HUGE for browsers. They're e.g. what has funded Mozilla with many billions over the last 20 years. Mozilla has tried to diversify but everything else has pales in comparison (and the donations are basically a joke).

It scales up with usage as well. Not that Safari needed funding, but Google pays Apple upwards of $20,000,000,000 per year for the privilege of being the default for that user base.

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RockstarSprain
7 minutes ago
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Looks better than I was expecting. I just wish the address bar were expanding fully to the right when selected, with the "Show Full Address" setting on. Otherwise it seems a bit misleading.
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xerox13ster
51 minutes ago
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I have been using Vivaldi since it was an alpha build. It is the best browser hands down IMO. I have been here for the entire ride. I am so glad to see that there is not AI bundled in this release, which has been a major concern for me when anticipating future releases of this browser.

I hope they keep it up.

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aucisson_masque
1 hour ago
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Vivaldi is all about customization but then they categorically refuse to add extension support to their android browser.

Imo extension is the ultimate way to customize your browser experience.

It's not technical difficulties, there are open source projects that have such support.

I also don't believe it's against any TOS because some of these browser are available in the Google play store.

I just don't get why they refuse to do that.

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hvb2
1 hour ago
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Because of stuff like this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48207660

If you don't have the ability to police extensions you're basically putting your users up for sale?

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zerr
4 minutes ago
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They can add support for Chrome and Edge extensions marketplaces.
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joshuaissac
1 hour ago
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But they support extensions on desktop.

The problem you linked to also happened on desktop because there is no VSCode for phones.

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atraac
1 hour ago
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Your users don't have to use those extensions, so I don't understand how that's relevant? People who do, should be made aware of risks and that's it. This is not a good argument against taking away their option to have that customization.
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hvb2
26 minutes ago
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I'm having a hard time finding a thread where people don't complain about npm when the real issue is packages being compromised.

Swap packages for extensions in the above and let me know how that's different

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eviks
1 hour ago
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No, if that were true, there would be no extension support on non-mobile
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mrweasel
1 hour ago
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It's a lovely browser, and a lot of work has clearly been put into it. I should like it, because I used Opera for ages (in the Presto era), but it's just a little to busy for me.

There's way to much stuff, to many feature and when the rendering engine is just Blink, I don't really see much of a reason to use it over Firefox.

Nice work though and wonderful to see a 3rd party browser maker giving it a go.

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michelsedgh
17 minutes ago
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Wait so you make a big announcement talking about a full new redesign but dont actually show a demo? That should be illegal
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rs_rs_rs_rs_rs
13 minutes ago
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Not just that but the screenshots are terrible too...
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rjzzleep
50 minutes ago
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Every time I try use Vivaldi I encounter how incredibly slow the UI is. Are all Vivaldi users running it on specced out desktops? Or is it just ao lineux UI latency issue?
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zamadatix
6 minutes ago
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Same, even on the absolute highest end machines. It has been a few versions since I've given it a go and I otherwise like it but the perf decline over stock Chromium, sometimes randomly appearing, is what has always steered me away again in the past.
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zamadatix
43 minutes ago
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I always liked Vivaldi's simple+autohide layout. Unfortunately, the 3-4 times I tried to use it over the years I always ended up giving up due to random performance regressions over stock Chromium. It's been a few versions now though, maybe it's worth a go again.
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Barbing
1 hour ago
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Respect the tremendous amount of work that went into this!

I appreciate the intention to protect my privacy. How does that square with Manifest V2 deprecation as dictated by the adtech company (Google)?

Also, for years I’ve been uncomfortable using Chromium as I’m uncomfortable raising that statistic any more, since I don’t want the Internet to be designed for one particular engine. Maybe Vivaldi 9.0 will be the biggest design overhaul of all time and even refactor based on Gecko like Firefox :)

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ahofmann
1 hour ago
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Vivaldi is the browser, where I always wonder why it doesn't get mentioned in all the privacy enhanced browsers. It's the only browser for me, that reliably filters out all ads with ublock origin while working on all websites without any problems. Also the company behind Vivaldi is not in USA/China/Russia, which also helps from my point of view.
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turblety
1 hour ago
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Because it's a proprietary closed source fork of Google Chromium. There's nothing to trust. If it's free and closed source, you are the product.
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eviks
1 hour ago
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> If you have been using Vivaldi for years, you have your setup exactly as you want it and you would not trade it for anything.

You wouldn't be able to even if you wanted because there is no good way to export/import your changes for the trade to happen

Otherwise removing a few borders seems a bit underwhelming for a major version bump

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dragochat
30 minutes ago
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still as bloated as ever?

can't we just have tabs + tiling (either tiles in tabs, or tabs in tiles, both can work), and call it a day?

that's all I need from browsing today

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Mashimo
6 minutes ago
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> still as bloated as ever?

That's their thing. Though a lot can be disabled.

> can't we just have tabs + tiling

Maybe Min or Zen Browser is more your thing?

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Bingflatops
1 hour ago
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Looks way better and almost everything is quite cohesive but then they add the weird arrow with an uggly box around it in the top right.
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sagacity
39 minutes ago
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You can just right-click and hide it, though.
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self_awareness
32 minutes ago
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I was an Opera user for years. Now I'm a Vivaldi user also since a long time. Best browser, FF/Chrome doesn't come close.
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ktallett
55 minutes ago
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Two questions, how can you trust closed source? And how are they already on release 8.0; what are these significant improvement each time or is it like apple's yearly release?
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Mashimo
9 minutes ago
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> And how are they already on release 8.0;

First release was 11 years ago. Why not?

Also there is no standard for version releases. I mean there probably is, but none that you have to follow.

> how can you trust closed source?

Same as using Android or windows or iOS.

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sevg
51 minutes ago
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If version 8.0 makes you raise your eyebrows, just wait til you see what version Firefox and Chrome are on!
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ktallett
26 minutes ago
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Which is even more nuts, especially with the features removed from Firefox sometimes like the grouped tabs removal then regain.
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zamadatix
3 minutes ago
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Some want major version numbers to mean "giant changes" and others want version numbers to mean "not just a security patch". Others want something between.

None of these approaches is any more correct than the other and theres zero chance of getting everyone to agree only one should be used. You just have to understand which approach is being taken to consume it accordingly.

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