If You Liked Opera, now is the time for Vivaldi!
With all the people looking to sell “as a service” web-based products, it often feels like the browser is being dumbed down.
Jon Von Tetzchner -- the former Telenor Co-Founder / CEO of Opera and now CEO of Vivaldi -- pointed out to me in a call ahead of today’s release that many of the existing browsers are moving away from client side tools and reducing their feature set. You can tell there was frustration when he left Opera in 2013 and started looking at how to deliver on the vision.
“Vivaldi 1.0 is both a throwback and a look ahead. It’s a ‘Modern Classic’ designed to help our users get the most out of all the time they spend with their browser.” Von Tetzchner continued: “Millions of people have already agreed that they want a better browser, one that puts them in control. Everything we build is in service of the user. We have no investors and their agendas to dictate our progress. There’s no exit strategy and we’re here to stay. All we want to do is give people a browser they’re proud to use and that we’re proud to call Vivaldi.”
Among these features are:
Personalized: Vivaldi adapts to you, not the other way around. We made Vivaldi the most customizable browser, all based on feedback from millions of users. In fact, there are more than one million different ways to make Vivaldi your perfect browser.
Web Panels: View websites in your Vivaldi sidebar. The perfect way to browse tweets, Facebook posts, or chat alongside your primary browsing window. We like to say it’s the next best thing to a “Boss button” for the web.
Tab Stacks: Feel like you have too many tabs open? Vivaldi solves that with tab stacks. Drop tabs on top of each other to create a stack. It’s the fastest way to reduce clutter and keep organized. And when you’re ready to switch between tabs, Vivaldi has a number of customizations for that, too. With Tab Stack Tiling: Have a big screen? Tile that tab stack and see multiple pages at the same time! With multiple tab stacks, it is like having multiple desktops!
Sessions: Take browser management to the next level. Save your favorite set of tabs as a session for later retrieval.
Notes: The perfect tool for researchers. Mark that quote and save it as a note. Vivaldi can remember which site you were browsing at the time, and allow you to take screenshots as well.
Mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts: If you really want to operate the browser at lightning speed. Mouse gestures turn a flick of the wrist into almost any action in the browser. Keyboard shortcuts do the same with simple key combinations. Quick commands: Access open tabs, bookmarks, history, settings and more through a command interface.
Better bookmarks: Access your bookmarks from the bookmarks panel, bookmarks manager, bookmark bar and of course Speed Dial: Your favorite sites and bookmarks are easily accessible from any blank tab. Include Groups and Folders for even more Speed Dials!
Vivaldi is built on Chromium so it supports Chrome add-ons. Vivaldi is a web browser built for – and with – the web. The UI uses React and JavaScript, as well as Node.js.
For Jon and his core team of developers in Iceland, the goal is to return to building a feature-rich set and “make Vivaldi the ultimate web power tool for those who need it most.”
I have been working in Vivaldi now for a few hours. It feels a lot like when I first touched Opera and saw a vision for self-management that Opera provided. Like Opera it supports a webmail and blog that enables better integration to your web and client-side activity. At this point I can say it shows promise and for those of us who like to document what we are doing on the web for future use, it has a lot of value.
Jon has been invited to keynote at DevCon5 August 2nd and is looking to join us as we discuss how the essential power of the web is being delivered to our applications today.
Finally here are the links for browser in the various operating systems:
Windows: https://vivaldi.com/press/v847328fvds7843u8hifhdsa34gr/Vivaldi.1.0.435.26.exe
[13] 32-bit
Mac: https://vivaldi.com/press/v847328fvds7843u8hifhdsa34gr/Vivaldi.1.0.435.26.dmg
[14] 10.7+
Linux DEB: https://vivaldi.com/press/v847328fvds7843u8hifhdsa34gr/vivaldi-1.0.435.26-1_amd64.deb
[15] 64-bit
https://vivaldi.com/press/v847328fvds7843u8hifhdsa34gr/vivaldi-1.0.435.26-1_i386.deb
[16] 32-bit
Linux RPM: https://vivaldi.com/press/v847328fvds7843u8hifhdsa34gr/vivaldi-1.0.435.26-1.x86_64.rpm
[17] 64-bit
https://vivaldi.com/press/v847328fvds7843u8hifhdsa34gr/vivaldi-1.0.435.26-1.i386.rpm
[18] 32-bit
Edited by
Rory J. Thompson
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