Vivaldi 1.8 released: find out what is new
Vivaldi Technologies released Vivaldi 1.8, the latest version of the company's desktop web browser a moment ago featuring a redesigned history feature, and more.
Vivaldi is one of the web browsers that I'm keeping a very close eye on: the browser has come a long way since first beta and stable releases, and grown considerable in the past twelve months.
Vivaldi 1.8 is the eights major release of the browser since the release of the stable version almost a year ago.
Each new version added something to the browser, often a unique feature that you could not find in this form or at all in other browsers.
Vivaldi 1.8 -- history reimagined
The main new feature of Vivaldi 1.8 is a reimagined history page. The browsing history has not changed all that much in the past decade or so in web browsers. It consists of a long chronological list of visited URLs for the most part, and looks nearly identical in all browsers. There is a search usually, and an option to filter the results.
Vivaldi 1.8 reinvents the history page, but it is designed in a way that users will feel at home right away.
This is achieved by keeping the chronological format of the history, but adding stuff to it. Even better, many of the things that are added to the page can be hidden, so that you don't have to use them if you don't want to.
Customization options are one of the strengths of the Vivaldi browser, and the redesigned history page highlights that again.
The screenshot at the top shows the history page in its glory. The calendar on the left is optional, and you can display or hide it with a click. It enables you to jump to a date quickly though.
The stats on the right are also optional. They highlight your browsing activity, the total of page views and visited pages, and the top domains that you visited.
The chronological listing is still there, but improved. The time of the visit is listed there, the page title, the address (including whether the page was secure or not), and the number of views.
You can run searches to filter the results, go back or forward in history, or switch from day view to list, week, or month view. This may lead to the following display of history information:
You can display all four information modules side by side: the calendar, the weekly/monthly view, the actual listing of sites, and the activity information.
Best of all, all the information is processed locally, and not transferred to the cloud.
History side panel
Another history related feature is the new ability to display the browsing history in the sidebar. Simply click on the new history icon there to display the browsing history of the day.
You can switch to another day or time period, or use the search to find history records quickly using it.
Drag and drop notes
Another new feature is the ability to drag and drop content on the notes menu of the sidebar to create a new note. This works not only from within Vivaldi, but apparently also from other applications.
Instead of using drag and drop, Vivaldi users may also highlight text on a website, right-click on the selection, and use the copy to note feature from the context menu for that.
If you prefer to use the keyboard for that, use Ctrl-Shift-N to copy the text and add it as a note in the browser.
New Tab Audio controls
Vivaldi has supported audio muting controls for a while. Simply right-click on a tab to mute tabs, or click on the play icon on the tab directly to toggle between mute and play.
Vivaldi Technologies improved the audio controls in Vivaldi 1.8. The new Tab Muting menu in the Tab Settings of the browser lets you limit audio playback to the active tab in the browser, or prioritize audio playback in the active tab.
The first option blocks any audio in inactive tabs, the second blocks audio in other tabs if audio plays in the active tab. If it does not, audio in background tabs may be played.
We reviewed the new audio management feature here previously. Check it out for detailed information.
Smaller changes worth mentioning
Things don't end there. Vivaldi 1.8 features a lot of smaller changes, that are nevertheless pretty cool:
- Option to turn off automatic updates. Go to vivaldi://settings/autoupdate/, and remove the checkmark of the "enable autoupdate" box. You may set the "notify about new updates when Vivaldi is not running" option instead to receive notifications when updates are made available.
- You may set about:home as the start page.
- Open links in the current tab from the right-click context menu.
- Change the style of hibernated tabs to grayscale.
- Address bar drop down menu highlights matching characters now.
- Right-click image search options.
- Translation improvements.
Closing Words
Installed copies of the Vivaldi web browser should pick up the new version automatically and install it on the system. You can download the latest version from the official website as well.
shame with tab muting didn’t offer a ‘mute all’
You have this option in the Keyboard Shortcuts settings and also by the mouse gesture!
thank you kind sir
missed that as i not use mouse gestures at all, and very few, if any, keyboard shortcuts.
now to set some up
still wish default option was mute all; nothing worse than a website shouting at you when you browse to it
Vivaldi is very good! My default browser! Each update brings more native features! Amazing! The staff really listens to the community! An excellent job! I use the beta because I like having the new functions before they reach the final version! In addition to helping to report bugs and also ask for new features! The browser with each update becomes better!
Everybody wants Phillips Hue support. ;)
I can type “vivaldi://history” in the address bar to get to the new history page, but how do I do that via the menu? All I see in the menu “View > History Panel”, which is not the same.
Found it. Tools > History
You can also press Ctrl+H
When Vivaldi reaches the 2.0 edition, I will try it again. I wasn’t very impressed by 1.7, and from reading this post, I don’t think that I will be any more impressed. Firefox suits my needs.
Firefox is “speed king”: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/desktop/fast/
Ignore the fact that the article is from 2013.
Ignore the fact that people at moz|//a don’t give a shit about Firefox, so much so that they cannot be bothered to update the Firefox homepage in 4 friggin’ years.
Go Firefox!
Sad truth about Firefox aside, what would it take for Vivaldi to impress you? Just curious what people expect from their browser.
Not really sure why you would want a browser that retains so much of your “history”. The way things are now, privacy is far more important.
I don’t think you understand the feature presented.
YOUR browser already stores this information. Vivaldi just allows you to visualize it in a different way.
I’ll switch to Vivaldi if they implement multi-row tab bar or tab trees. It looks like I just have to wait:
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/8563/feature-request-extend-tabs-bookmarks-bars-to-multiple-rows-a-la-op12
The new History feature really looks interesting and so is the Activity panel but I don’t like the fact that browser is able to recognize, sort and catalogue my browsing history by the way I was interacting with page and address. It leaves some “privacy violated” taste.
Vivaldi and it’s CEO clearly stated that the data is being processed locally and not uploaded anywhere. Martin wrote it as well.
@manicmac You wouldn’t be wrong to assume that any other browser does this too. Vivaldi just is, at least to my knowledge, the first browser to give you such detail about it.
Yes but despite of that, it still feels like one step too far and with all due respect to CEO statement, they always can change their mind because “muney”.
Dude, you don’t understand.
YOUR browser already has all this information. They don’t do anything new except giving you a useless pretty window to go through your own browsing history.
What privacy violation are you talking about? It’s YOUR browsing history in YOUR browser with a shiny interface instead of the dull list. Nothing more.
Chrome has all your browsing history.
IE has all your browsing history.
Firefox has all your browsing history.
A shiny new fancy GUI for THE SAME information scares you? HA!
Are you sure you know what “privacy” and “violated” mean? :))
At last, a browser trying to offer something new. However, I’d like them to focus a bit more on what’s useful, as opposed to what can be done and looks nice. I doubt many people need statistics and graphics about where they have been. Being able to retrieve quickly some specific information browsed in the past is what most users need to do.
Take this calendar page, which is pretty and innovative at first sight : how useful is it, for heavy Internet users, to know which have been their 4 more browsed sites on any given day ? People using the history function browse much more sites than that.
Dude, it’s a useless feature. Really it is, but they have to make news so people have something to talk about while the really big stuff is being worked on (sync, mail, version for Android, who-the-hell-knows-what-else).
They already put most of the basic useful stuff in and it would be a really long period without any new screenshots if they would not release anything until the next big stuff will be ready.
It’s just marketing, like the Philips Hue integration (well, that one could have some use, actually) to show what the development trend is for Vivaldi: features! features everywhere!.
Laggy scrolling just like Chrome and Opera, staying with Firefox.
Give unchecking smooth scrolling under vivaldi://settings/webpages/ a try.
chrome://flags or opera://flags – disable Smooth scrolling. Solved. ;-)
I’ve been trying out Vivaldi x64 for the past four months. I’ve only encountered two problems, both involving upgrading. The first problem has happened twice. During the upgrade process, my settings were completely erased including the custom theme I’d created. It’d be really nice for them to implement a customizable settings backup function. The other problem occurs every time Vivaldi upgrades. The installer leaves behind the prior installation in the install folder, but only a small part of it. (At least I’m assuming it’s a small part since they average about 150 MB and the new version is closer to 400 MB). I have to manually delete them, which doesn’t affect Vivaldi’s functionality at all.
The second problem you have isn’t the behavior for Chrome as well?
It is a very nice browser, but it blows my mind that a browser designed for power users still doesn’t allow dragging and dropping bookmarks from folders on the bookmarks bar. Even in other chromium browsers (like Chrome) you can do this. I just don’t get it.
I just tested this in Vivaldi 1.8.770.54 (Stable channel) (32-bit) and I could drag a bookmark from some random folder to the bookmarks bar.
Also, I think you are misunderstanding the bookmarks bar feature in Vivaldi.
The bookmarks bar is just a convenient way to access a specific bookmarks folder. It’s not a separate bookmarks location itself. It’s just a container to display a specific bookmarks folder that you already have so you can easily have access to it while browsing.
I hope my explanation helps.
Still starting very very slow with lots of tabs, Tab bar does not scroll properly, mouse gestures are too slow.
What do you mean mouse gestures are too slow?
Can browser history be completely disabled in Vivaldi?
What fingerprinting protections exist in Vivaldi?
In settings you can configure the browsing history to only be saved for the last day, but you cannot disable it completely for now, nor did I find any option to delete history on browser exit. You would have to use a private window.
But, there might be a way to launch a private window directly instead a regular window when launching Vivaldi. I would suggest you visit the Vivaldi forums and ask there if this is possible. Actually, do a search first. Maybe it’s already mentioned in the forums.
Vivaldi is a work in progress, not quite ready for prime time. Promising though.
…
“When Vivaldi reaches the 2.0 edition, I will try it again. I wasn’t very impressed by 1.7, and from reading this post, I don’t think that I will be any more impressed. Firefox suits my needs.”
…
I agree 100%…
have now discovered it broke esxi 6.0u3 web client – yay!
back to ff52.0.01 we go
Can the address bar be customized at all? I like to change the icons themes at least.
I’d really like to have the tab bar below the address bar too. Is this possible?