Vivaldi 4.0 introduces translate feature and Mail, Calendar and Feed Reader functionality
Vivaldi Technologies released Vivaldi 4.0, a new version of the company's web browser today. The new browser version introduces Vivaldi Translate, a privacy preserving translate feature, and beta versions of the long-awaited Vivaldi Mail client, Calendar and Feed Reader.
The new version is available already and most devices will be upgraded automatically to the new version. Vivaldi users who want to speed up the process may select Menu > Help > Check for Updates to run a manual check for updates. If a new version is found, Vivaldi will prompt to install it on the device.
A new welcome screen displays three use scenarios to users that offer different levels of access to features. All features are always available, but the initial selection, between essential, classic and fully, determines the initial loadout of the browser.
Vivaldi Translate
Vivaldi Translate is a major addition to the web browser. It is a translation feature that is built-in and thus comfortable to use. The technology is powered by Lingvanex and Vivaldi Technologies hosts the required servers in Iceland. Vivaldi's solution does not involve third-parties, which would be the case if Google Translate, Microsoft Translate or similar translation services would be used.
The feature is available in all desktop and mobile versions of the Vivaldi browser. Vivaldi displays a translate icon in the interface or a prompt, depending on the preferences. A click on the icon opens the prompt if it is not displayed automatically. It includes options to translate the page to another language, with Vivaldi's system language being offered as the default. If you run an English copy of Vivaldi, English is suggested by the browser.
You can change the language to any other that is supported and configure rules to handle specific tasks automatically. Rules include the automatic translation of certain languages or to block translations on the active site or for the language to block future prompts on that site or for that language.
The list of supported languages is not as long as that of Google Translate or Microsoft Translate, but it covers many widely spoken languages such as English, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese.
Desktop users may enable or disable the automatic translation popup under settings > General.
Android users who use Vivaldi on the device may translate webpages by selecting Menu > Translate. Translation settings are found under Menu > Settings > General > Language settings.
Vivaldi Mail, Calendar and RSS Feed Reader
The second big feature of Vivaldi 4.0 is the introduction of the long-awaited mail client. It has been available in snapshot releases for some time, but Vivaldi 4.0 is the first stable version of the browser with the feature.
When Vivaldi launched back in 2016, one of the promises was that a mail client similar to the one built-into the classic Opera web browser, would be introduced. The release makes Vivaldi one of the few browsers and the only major browser that comes with built-in mail functionality.
Select the Mail option from the sidebar or Menu > Tools > Mail to get started. Vivaldi Mail supports IMAP and POP3, and you can add multiple email accounts to the application. The mail client supports automatic and manual setups of accounts.
The default layout displays the interface in three columns, but you may change that and many other settings to customize the experience. The screenshot above shows a different layout with the sidebar listing of folders and mail accounts, and a split column listing messages and the selected message.
One of the interesting features of Vivaldi Mail is its automatic detection and categorization of mailing lists, newsletters and mail threads. A click on mailing lists, for instance, displays all categorized messages making them easier to find in the application.
Read and unread messages are displayed neatly in the sidebar listing. The mail client comes with a built-in search, filters, flags, labels and more. Searches can be saved for quick access and labels can be synced. The compose window opens in a new tab in the browser.
The feed reader is available in the mail client. The Feeds category in the mail client's sidebar lists all subscribed feeds. The reader works as expected: select a feed or all feeds, browse the available articles, and select one to read it right in the interface.
Feed subscriptions and settings are managed in Settings > Feeds. There you may add new feeds to Vivaldi, delete feeds, and configure some options, e.g. the automatic detection of feeds in web pages.
Vivaldi displays a feed icon on webpages with feeds in the address bar. Select it to add one of the feeds to Vivaldi; this works for YouTube channels as well to subscribe to channels in the feed reader. Vivaldi's feed reader supports podcast feeds as well. Both YouTube videos as well as podcasts can be played in the feed reader.
An option to import an OMPL feed is not available in the interface, but you can import feeds.xml files (rename the common opml file extension to xml) by loading the file in Vivaldi.
Vivaldi Calendar Beta introduces calendar functionality in the Vivaldi Browser. Data is kept on the local system by default but users may integrate events from online calendars into the Vivaldi calendar. The feature supports CalDAV calendars and online calendars from providers such as iCloud, Fastmail or Zimbra.
The calendar supports three different layouts: minimal, which only shows the event title, full, which shows all event data, and compact, which combines both modes but caps event text. Inline editing is supported by the calendar to quickly change event titles and start/end times.
Vivaldi Calendar Beta supports search and filter functionality, which acts similar to the functionality of the mail client. These can be saved for quick access.
Closing Words
Vivaldi 4.0 is a major release. It introduces the long awaited mail client, feed reader and calendar, and the translation feature.
Now You: have you tried Vivaldi 4.0? What is your impression thus far?
They are adding features and the browser version number goes up by each release, but the user base count are not moving much, if at all. Something I noted in a comment over at restoreprivacy some time ago:
https://restoreprivacy.com/browser/secure/comment-page-5/#comment-173882
“In Feb 2021 Brave reached the 25 million mark. And not long ago they reached the 30 million mark. Vivaldi on the other hand are not that vocal and open about how quick/slow they are attracting new users. Afaik they seem to still be hoovering around the 2+ million mark, and it is not moving much, neither up or down.
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/55342/number-of-active-users
https://vivaldi.com/company/ (scroll down for data)
A member on reddit, 6 months ago, also wondered on Vivaldis own reddit-section about why Vivaldi are not growing at a quicker pace, and as usual all sorts of explainations popped up.
https://www.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/jmwy9m/a_gain_of_87_million_new_users_in_12_months/
And now it seems Vivaldi are a bit annoyed for not growing much. So the other day, Vivaldi even launched a special “contribute” page with tips and tricks in hope that the growth will take off and even added an option where users can donate money directly to Vivaldi:
“Help us grow
Vivaldi is a small company owned by the employees. We have no external investors and we are keeping it that way to ensure that Vivaldi stay on the straight and narrow.
We need your help to grow.”
https://vivaldi.com/contribute/
On April 15, 2016. Vivaldi CEO Jon said in an interview with Reuters that: “We only need five million monthly users to make money and I’m confident that we will get there.”
The introduction of Vivaldi version 1.0 follows a 15-month development that cost veteran software maker Jon von Tetzchner around 50 million crowns ($6.07 million) of his own money.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-internet-vivaldi-idUSKCN0XC1J6 “.
——
I hope they can attract new users quicker soon as competition between browser makers, including the small ones, are good. But if one of the big promises from 2016, the e-mail client, took 5 years to be fully implemented, you kind of start to wonder what time frame the CEO had set up to reach their 5 million active users goal, as they are far from reaching it. Since he included the word “only” when he commented to the media about the 5 million mark, it seems like he thought it would be an easy target to make.
https://twitter.com/brave/status/1400232231080132608
@Karl,
> “In Feb 2021 Brave reached the 25 million mark. And not long ago they reached the 30 million mark. Vivaldi on the other hand are not that vocal and open about how quick/slow they are attracting new users. Afaik they seem to still be hoovering around the 2+ million mark, and it is not moving much, neither up or down.
I see it differently.
Vivaldi’s user base is growing. However, it is declining at the same rate. So it seems to me that it just doesn’t seem to be expanding or shrinking.
I have been a user of Vivaldi since it was first released, but I discontinued using it last May. Most of my friends and acquaintances who used to use Vivaldi have now stopped using it.
The users who have stopped say in unison that “Vivaldi is too focused on niche features, has too many unnecessary features, and performs poorly”, “the UI is cluttered with buttons and panels, and is not easy to use” because there is no way to organize them. This style has been consistent since the beginning of development (the development concept professed by von Tetzchner) and is not expected to be reconsidered.
To the beginner class, the niche features and rich options seem like fun, but for us, we were disgusted by the “browser full of unnecessary features”.
My friends and I have “lost all interest in Vivaldi” and will never try it again.
The user base will probably never reach its goal of 5 million users.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-internet-vivaldi-idUSKCN0XC1J6
2?200?000+ Active Users (and counting)
https://vivaldi.com/company/
Vivaldi is expanding its new hiring of full-time employees, and if they don’t get the revenue to match, a turnaround similar to Opera’s (a stock sale) will be in sight.
2?200?000+ Active Users (and counting)
https://vivaldi.com/company/
2200000+ Active Users (and counting)
https://vivaldi.com/company/
> An option to import an OMPL feed is not available in the interface, but you can import feeds.xml files (rename the common opml file extension to xml) by loading the file in Vivaldi.
Martin, how does one “load” a file in Vivaldi?
You need to make sure that the filename is feeds.xml. Select Menu > File > Open to load it. You should see an option at the top of the page to import some or all feeds in Vivaldi.
@Martin: nope, I do not get that option. At the top of the page it says:
“This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.”
Perhaps because I am on MacOS?
P.S.
https://help.vivaldi.com/mail/mail-feeds/import-feeds-from-other-feed-readers/
@Lemegeton: thanks for the link. In the last step of the procedure on that page, the xml code is displayed in a new tab, as it is supposed to, and with “with all the feed messages from that group will be displayed” I assume they mean the xml code.
But I don’t see how to “Select all the feeds you want to have in Vivaldi and you’re done.”
In Vivaldi’s menu: File – Open File
:)
@Lemegeton: that shows the xml code, but how do you turn that into your RSS feeds?
Vivaldi’s servers are based in Iceland, that is something, Vivaldi details to privacy are effective, Vivaldi dev are cool, Vivaldi UI is somewhat slow (especially the extension bar part), Vivaldi performance affected a lot based on Chromium version and Vivaldi dev surely kept it well updated, Vivaldi is purely a web browser.
I agree about the Vivaldi devs – they’re really engaged with the users, it’s like the old days…
im not a Big fan of there Email, but yes i still find the browser Laggy, i just think its got to much bloatware.
Cool features, but long as there’s no way to turn off DirectWrite crap rendering, I won’t use it.
The Feed/RSS functionality is clearly not ready for release. I add a couple of feeds, new messages are detected (mail counter increases), but no way to read them. Apparently you must first setup the mail client, (ie add a VALID mail account) because the feed reader only works inside the email client. Fail#1. I don’t need a new mail client, I only wanted to test the Feed reader. OK, then let’s add a dummy mail account, with a fake pop3 server.. Fail#2 : can not add a new mail account, without a succesful connection to the server. Yes, you can create a new acount for free at vivaldi.net. Well, I do NOT WANT that.
The newsfeed (RSS/Atom) really still needs a lot of improvement, but you were wrong from the start – you don’t need an email account to use the newsfeed functionality, and you can work with feeds from outside the email – you can add a separate Feed button in the sidebar of the main window. The interface, however, the news feeds are the same as the mail.
+1
Exactly my thoughts.
I think you’d be better served if you also submit bug reports via the Vivaldi website: https://vivaldi.com/bugreport/
Considering Vivaldi was created by some of the original crew from Opera I am glad to see they finally are close to what the original Opera was as last. It is good to have the option for Mail, Calendar and News but you can disable that if you want. Overall it is a decent browser that deserves consideration but as always it may not be for everyone.
When will these hipsters at last offer a way to alter these ugly muddy dirty color pattern?
On the other hand I like and use this browser a lot. But these not new features are usually futile. As well as there is no real privacy as deleting browsing data is a nuisance and not working. Why not the option to disable data collection completely?
A customer is complaining without actually checking things out.
Themes, Ctrl&Shift&Delete (it DOES delete the data).
Add ” –disk-cache-dir=nul” to the shortcut so you don’t use the disk at all for cache ;) Make sure you have enough RAM.
And read https://vivaldi.com/privacy/browser/ Good luck getting worked up about that. Although you probably will.
have u try theme in setting? u can do custom theme directly in there…
1) Can anyone suggest a way to make a feed of a user’s Youtube ‘subscriptions’ page, which shows whenever a new video has been uploaded by a channel that is followed by the user?
2) Is there a way to make feeds of pages that don’t seem to have them available? Like ergo-log.com for example.
Thank you guys for your help as always.
Jim, go to the channel’s page and copy the channel_id hash
example:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Jvz7FpBsY73_wEjFV67wQ
the hash is UC3Jvz7FpBsY73_wEjFV67wQ
Then you just use https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC3Jvz7FpBsY73_wEjFV67wQ for the feed.
If the channel does not display the hash, but the username instead, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/c/BraxMe
then view the page source and search for “channel_id”, the first occurrence will be your own and the second will be the channel you’re viewing.
However with Vivaldi this is much easier, as Vivaldi offers you the RSS feed in a button on the right side of the URL bar.
> 1) Can anyone suggest a way to make a feed of a user’s Youtube ‘subscriptions’ page, which shows whenever a new video has been uploaded by a channel that is followed by the user?
It depends on whether youtube provides a RSS/Atom feed of this (I doubt it, since this information is contained “inside” the account). But you can check it yourself: open the desired page in Vivaldi and if the page provides a newsfeed, there will be a corresponding icon in the address bar.
But the easiest way to solve this problem is another way: you can subscribe to the RSS feeds of the corresponding channels in Vivaldi itself directly.
> 2) Is there a way to make feeds of pages that don’t seem to have them available? Like ergo-log.com for example.
If the site does not provide a news feed, you can’t subscribe to it, of course.
However, there are third-party services that solve this problem (monitor supported sites and give the result in the form of a newsfeed).
There’s an article at 12bytes.org for the purpose you mentioned. I suggest you check that out as its well detailed.
https://12bytes.org/articles/tech/how-to-access-rss-feeds/ That’s the link, find if it can help you.
It would appear the 32bit linux version is being dropped because all downloads on their site point to v3.7..I have asked continuously on the forum and get no credible responses,so i am assuming the 32bit linux version is being dropped altogether.
I am going to stick with firefox which has no such issues.
Just curious: why do you need 32bit?
Maybe he has an old PC with a 32-bit CPU.
Maybe updating will work – install Vivaldi 3.7 and try to update it.
@Dumbledalf
32-bit general-purpose processors for home computers have not been produced for 13 years. For portable devices (netbooks, tablets) – about 11 years.
Zed’s dead, baby. Zed’s dead.
Why are Vivaldi putting unnecessary features in their browser? A browser is meant to be lean, fast, and secure, just like Chrome. Vivaldi should thank Google for making Chromium open source.
Vivaldi has always been superfast for me on desktop, Linux and Android.
New features have never slowed it down.
This trolling is getting boring. This joke was funny the first two times.
So, let’s pretend they did what you said and cleaned it up. Which browser would you choose then: Vivaldi or Chrome?
Trolling? hahaha.
Why would I use a ripoff Chrome, when I can use the real thing. If anything I would use Firefox, than Vivaldi.
@ChromeFan
Yes, boring trolling.
> Why would I use a ripoff Chrome, when I can use the real thing.
That’s why they build features into their browser – for those who need this features or may need it, and do not listen to clowns who say that all this should be removed. After all, the clowns wouldn’t use Vivaldi anyway, even if Vivaldi team did everything the clowns demanded.
Because that’s literally their USP?
And yet another release that doesn’t include the long-awaited feature that will allow users to clear all browsing data on exit, a feature that has been available in browsers such as Brave and Firefox, and probably more for quite some time.
Quite disappointing, given they introduced the feature in the mobile version of the browser, and yet continue to ignore users’ requests here: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/26811/option-to-clear-everything-on-exit
I switched to Vivaldi full-time several months ago (whilst retaining FF as a secondary option). I’m still not keen on the slightly laggy interface – even though they’ve been improving that – but overall it’s a great browser which is becoming significantly better with each new version.
would you mind if i ask, can you go to vivaldi:gpu see what u r using?opengl/skia/vulkan?
would you mind testing each one?(vivaldi:flags, search those name to try)
im on low spec lappy so im stuck with skia aka full software render, opengl spike ram too much for me when loading website & vulkan isnt available on my lappy.
i just wanna know if there any difference in performance between those or if it still slightly laggy. btw the default should be opengl i guess?
not trying to demand anything from u here but perhaps those could be the one that affect ui lagginess?
Speed is fine on my PC. Resizing is subsecond.
The only thing which bothers me with Vivaldi, is that for some downloads (but not all), the whole browser locks until the file is finished. I suspect this is a Chromium issue, since I remember having that problem with Chrome as well.
@Ivan
I have not experienced such a problem where a download would cause Vivaldi to freeze, that’s an issue just you have, maybe post about it on the forums, maybe other people will report the same.
@Ivan:
Sounds like an antivirus issue to me, to be honest. Have you tried disabling it and check whether it makes a difference to Vivaldi?
On my laptop all three options are available. From initial testing:
1. Skia and OpenGL: seem to be using the same amount of RAM, more or less. CPU kind of spikes with both, so no obvious difference.
2. Vulkan: seems to be quicker with UI drawing and generally less laggy than the other two, but there are some serious artefacts and flickering on Vivaldi-specific pages (e.g. the Speed Dial). No artefacts on websites though. CPU usage definitely lower than the other two.
I’m not the guy you responded too but I downloaded Vivaldi because I was curious and if it really makes a difference.
The default is OpenGL as you said and I tried Skia and Vulkan and both have the same performance with no difference.
compared to Firefox Vivaldi was noticeably laggyer, simplest test was resizing the screen from full screen to put the window to the left side, Vivaldi took 2-4 seconds to render the page again, while firefox took less than second.
I have GTX 1650 and i5 8400 and this is what it says:
Canvas: Hardware accelerated
Compositing: Hardware accelerated
Multiple Raster Threads: Enabled
Out-of-process Rasterization: Hardware accelerated
OpenGL: Enabled
Rasterization: Hardware accelerated
Skia Renderer: Enabled
Video Decode: Hardware accelerated
Vulkan: Disabled
WebGL: Hardware accelerated
WebGL2: Hardware accelerated
I have noticed a bit of delay with Vivaldi compared to other browsers, but I remember that since 2015 and back then I had an older PC. I think it’s something with their UI that they simply can’t fix, but either the more I use it, the less I notice it or with newer versions they have significantly decreased it.
hmmm…thanks for testing though.
That’s nice, but I worry that it makes the browser slower. I hope it stays optional in that case.