Finally: Vivaldi Beta is now available
Vivaldi unveiled the official beta version of the company's web browser a couple of minutes ago marking the next step in the company's plan to win over disgruntled Opera users and Internet users who want control over how their browser looks and behaves.
It feels like Vivaldi has been around for a long time when in fact it has been less than a year. First unveiled in January 2015, it is been pushed out in the open with weekly snapshot releases that, for the most part, worked fine and without larger issues.
Based on Chromium/Blink, it is one of the few browsers based on the Google browser that does not just make marginal interface changes to the browser and keeps everything else as is.
In fact, one of the main goals of the project is to implement popular features that classic Opera supported but modern Opera does not.
If you like to customize your browser, then you don't have much choice in today's browser world. There is Firefox which is still the uncrowned king when it comes to that, and there is Vivaldi now. All other browsers limit what you can do in terms of interface customizations.
Want tabs at the bottom of the screen? Good luck with that while using Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge.
One of Vivaldi's strengths is the customization options it makes available. Place tabs on the side or bottom, show or hide the status bar, or show the address bar or bookmark bar at the bottom instead of the top.
There is a light and dark theme available already, lots of options to modify the start page of the browser, and if you want, you can make the UI adapt the color of the pages you are visiting.
There is more to Vivaldi than that though. If you have used classic Opera you will recognize long lost features like tab stacking or the side panel that are already available in Vivaldi.
Once you have started stacking tabs, you may display them all in a single tab side by side using the browser's tiling functionality.
Vivaldi supports keyboard shortcuts, and gives you options to remap these shortcuts right in its interface. The only other browser that lets you do that is Firefox but you need add-ons for that in the browser (Update: modern Opera provides those options as well).
Quick Commands is another interesting feature. Tap on F2 to display a command prompt to launch commands quickly. Type what you want to do, e.g. "private" and select the "new private window" option using the keyboard.
The beta ships with improved support for Google Chrome extensions. According to Vivaldi, you should be able to install and use most Chrome extensions in the browser now.
Benchmark Comparison
| Browser / Benchmark | HTML5Test | Kraken | Octane |
| Google Chrome 46 | 521 | 1677.4 | 19514 |
| Microsoft Edge | 397 | 1849.5 | 21547 |
| Mozilla Firefox 42 | 466 | 1715.7 | 17682 |
| Opera 34 Dev | 520 | 1824.6 | 19001 |
| Vivaldi Beta | 521 | 1777.9 | 18892 |
Check out the official blog post on the Vivaldi website for a detailed look as to what the browser is offering right now. Downloads are provided on the page, but if you are running Vivaldi already you may also update it from within the browser itself.
Tip: If you are interested in how it all started, check out this podcast with Jon Von Tetzchner, Vivaldi CEO and Opera Software co-founder.
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.