Vivaldi 2.2 released: navigation and customization improvements
Vivaldi Technologies released Vivaldi 2.2 to the Stable channel on December 13, 2018. The new version of the web browser improves navigation, improves customization options further, and includes other new or improved features.
Existing Vivaldi installations are upgraded to the new version automatically by default; administrators who don't want to wait can run a check for updates to install the new version of Vivaldi early.
Just select Vivaldi Menu > Help > Check for Updates to run a manual check for updates. Vivaldi should pick up the new version automatically at this point.
Tip: Check out our full review of Vivaldi here.
Vivaldi 2.2 Release information
Vivaldi 2.2 features a number of navigation and tab management improvements that extend the already large number of options and tweaks of the web browser.
Tabs can be selected with CTRL or Shift, and when you right-click the selection, you may save the selection as a session. Sessions can be reopened at a later point in time with a click on Vivaldi > File > Open Saved Session.
The new feature offers another option to save open sites in Vivaldi; another option saves sites to the bookmarks, and session restore itself is supported as well.
Vivaldi developers added a new tab switching option for the first nine tabs to the browser. You may know that you may access the first eight tabs with the shortcut Ctrl-1 to Ctrl-8, and the last tab with the shortcut Ctrl-9.
Vivaldi users may use Alt-W and then a number between 1-9 to jump to that tab directly next to that.
Display a site's custom shortcuts
Vivaldi's Quick Commands tool, press F2 to launch it, may be used to display custom shortcuts that a site supports in Vivaldi 2.2.
Just press F2 to launch Quick Commands, type "Show" and select "Show Webpage Access Key Shortcuts" to display shortcuts that are available.
Users may invoke those shortcuts using Alt-Shift as the modifier. Wikipedia supports a number, e.g. Alt-Shift-Z to visit the main page.
Another new quick command, Show Closed Tabs, displays all closed tabs in the browser for easy selection and reopening. Just use F2 to display Quick Commands, type "Show Closed Tabs", and select the option.
Vivaldi 2.2 features a couple of additional enhancements. Long-click on the back or forward button to display the tab's history, and middle-click on any entry to launch it in a new ab in the browser.
The developers added a search box to the new Tab Page. Users of the browser can hide it in the Settings under Search > Show Search Field on Speed Dial.
Multimedia improvements
Vivaldi 2.2 features a number of multimedia improvements. A right-click on a HTML5 video displays a new option to play it in picture-in-picture mode in the browser similarly to how that is done in other browsers.
Sites that use custom context menus, e.g. YouTube, require a double-click instead to launch the video stream in its own window.
Vivaldi supported options to mute media playing in the web browser. Up until now, support for muting all other tabs was restricted to using keyboard shortcuts or quick commands.
The new version of Vivaldi adds context menu support as an alternative option. Just right-click the tab that plays the audio and select the "Mute Other Tabs" option to mute audio in all but the active tab. The option is displayed only if audio is playing in another tab.
Support for video streaming sites that require Encrypted Media Extensions support has been added in Vivaldi 2.2 as well on Linux. The Linux version of Vivaldi will fetch the Widevine EME plugin automatically when it is required for playback.
Other changes and improvements
Vivaldi 2.2 comes with a new privacy setting to block the browser from using Google's DNS service as a backup when site's throw navigational errors.
Visit Settings > Privacy and remove the checkmark from Use a Google DNS Service to Help Resolve Navigation Errors.
Vivaldi users who don't use some of the toolbar icons can remove these now in the new version. Just right-click on any icon and select Customize > Remove from Toolbar to hide it.
You find a reset option under Settings > Appearance to bring back removed icons, and one in the right-click menu.
Now You: What is your take on Vivaldi 2.2?
I bet it still has that 12+ month old bug where it launches as a non-maximized window stretched to the free space of the screen.
The one I reported numerous times and filled out bug reports… for over 12 months.
That was a windows bug and it was fixed some time ago.
Funny how I still have it. Guess it’s not fixed.
interface is probably still sluggish as always. and yeah still with the padding bug and inability to middle click a new tab which even firefox is able to
I miss opera 12 :/
@Anonymous: I miss opera 12 :/
Ditto that. I keep an installer for v.12 in case Opera ‘accidentally’ upgrades itself. It’s happened before so I simply uninstall the current, reinstall v.12, and I’m happy.
I much prefer v.12 even though the masses are rushing to current version Chromium clones.
Can Opera 12 even still render pages properly? I know there is some project called Otter Browser that tries to recreate Opera 12…
Yikes, two years ago, when I left O12 behind, it was close to a full-time job coming up with hacks and workarounds to keep it going on any number of sites that I visited regularly. It was one thing after another. I can’t actually tell if you mean that O12 is still your regular browser, but if it is, wow. “Open with” must be getting a workout.
Rick, Opera 12 is not my primary browser, I just keep it active because I like it. Sure, it has its detractors, but I prefer it to what Opera has become.
And oddly (as compared to you) it works just fine. I’m running Win-10×64 Pro-1803. No problems.
I prefer Firefox and Vivaldi, but I still use Opera from time to time without any issues. But I keep a clean system so very seldom do I have problems with programs not working as they should.
Vivaldi really needs to improve their bookmark manager. Their quick bookmark still takes 2 clicks while every other browser is only 1.
At last, a browser whose developers actually add useful — nay, obvious features. Save those tabs as a session : here is an absolutely basic feature that many users need, and which can’t be left to the whim of an extension developer.
Still, Vivaldi is slow, and I’m having problems right now with some links not working at all, or some sites just refusing to load. But you get the feeling there’s a team at work which understands what you’re doing with your computer, and what might be missing from their program.
“Vivaldi 2.2 comes with a new privacy setting to block the browser from using Google’s DNS service as a backup when sites throw navigational errors.”
Navigational errors? Meaning when you can’t reach a site, Chromium/Vivaldi would try to use 8.8.8.8 to resolve it, and unchecking this means that it won’t? I don’t think I’ve heard of that before. I have heard of ISPs stepping in and doing it (e.g. when you mistype a domain name), however, though perhaps we’re talking about different things.
Just curious, I’m getting the comments and responses via email, but they don’t appear at the bottom of the post anymore. Did something happen?
Declan
It can be a caching issue that articles don’t appear immediately on the site.
“I miss opera 12 :/”
I don’t. I still use it every day as my email client ;-) (and I mean the browser, not the separate mail app).
Regarding Vivaldi, I don’t know why, but I can’t feel at ease with it as I felt with Opera 12. After much trying and testing, I kept Pale Moon (with a bunch of addons). It’s not perfect (scrolling started to misbehave in YT site and the like since version 28) but despite that annoyance, I get along with it quite well.
Me too. With Scriptweeder and NoAdsAdvanced i block 99% of the crap that “modern web sites” serve and 99% of the sites works and loads super fast. Not to mention that it starts in seconds with more than 400,000 mails 1000-2000 RSS messages. But hey, its capitalism. I doesn’t mater what we need but watt makes more money. I mis communism when we had little but everything worked and was intended for the people not money :-)
So from what I see in screenshots, still no bookmark button.
I’d like to use Vivaldi more, but it has several issues.
It takes 50 seconds to open on my PC, with only 3 tabs. Pale Moon with about 400 tabs opens in half the time.
Videos on youtube and elsewhere are choppy, even at 480p. Doesn’t happen on any of my other browsers.
There’s no bookmarks button on the toolbar and the one in the sidebar has to be manually closed again after opening a bookmark. This can be fixed with a mod, but that brings up another complaint that all mods are lost if you upgrade the browser. There’s a 3rd party tool to backup and restore the mods, but it requires .NET 4.5, which I’m not installing.
Other things I can’t think of right now.