Vivaldi Browser's new Dashboard feature reinvents the New Tab page
Vivaldi Technologies has just released a new stable desktop version of its Vivaldi Browser.
The details:
- A new Dashboard is introduced that users of the browser may customize to display nearly anything they want on the New Tab page of the browser.
- Tabs have a new floating design.
- The Feed Reader gets a much needed upgraded: folders.
How to get the new version: The new Vivaldi is already available for all supported desktop platforms. You can wait for the automatic update feature to install the update or select Vivaldi Menu > Help > Check for updates to download the update immediately.
New users may download the latest version from Vivaldi's official website.
Vivaldi: the new dashboard
Vivaldi has not removed the default New Tab page of the browser. Engineers have added the Dashboard to it instead.
You can switch between Speed Dial and Dashboard; the browser remembers your selection automatically.
Note: Users who do not need the Dashboard may turn it off in the Settings.
What is the Dashboard? The Dashboard is a customizable user space. It displays widgets, which can be internal functions provided by the browser or web services.
Here is a list of widgets that you may add, remove, or delete:
- Date and time.
- Sticky notes.
- Speed Dial.
- Calendar agenda.
- Latest emails.
- Bookmarks.
- Tasks.
- Tip of the day.
- Feeds.
- Top sites.
- Privacy statistics.
- Webpage.
Some of these have dependencies. You need to enable Mail in Vivaldi to use Feeds, Calendar or latest emails. While the Vivaldi-specific functions are fine, it is the webpage option that pushes the feature to the next level.
You can add any URL to the Dashboard of the browser. This means that you may add web services, like a translator, currency converter, YouTube, or whatever you like to the Dashboard area.
Not all sites display well there, as it depends on a responsive design or support for mobile versions.
One thing that you may notice is that you get limited control over the size of a widget. Vivaldi supports the sizes regular and tall only. Websites are displayed in tall mode automatically. There is no option to increase the width of a webpage or modify the appearance in any way.
This would be a welcome addition in future versions of the browser, as some sites may need more width or height to display their content. Scrollbars are displayed when the content does not fit the size of the widget.
With that caveat in mind, it is still opening up plenty of possibilities to display useful content on the New Tab page of the Vivaldi browser.
Other changes in Vivaldi Browser
The new release of the Vivaldi browser launches with additional improvements:
- User interface upgrade with "floating tabs" and new icons.
- Feed Reader supports folders to better manage RSS feeds.
- New "jump to last mail" option in Vivaldi Mail.
- Real-time syn of tabs, bookmarks, and settings.
Closing Words
Dashboard is the main feature of the new Vivaldi browser release. While the other changes are nice, Dashboard may alter how users of the browser interact with the New Tab page. From merely being a vessel to launch a new site quickly to something that users may spend time on.
It all depends on how individual users use the browser, on the other hand. Mail, calendar, and RSS feed users get features that they make like, but there is something for everyone.
Again, this is not for everyone, but if you like to create your own custom startpage on the Internet, this may very well be it.
Have you tried Vivaldi lately? What is your take on the browser, the new Dashboard, and its other features? Feel free to leave a comment down below.
Proprietary. No thanks.
Vivaldi is a must have browser, better than Brave in some ways.
Hello Everyone!
I REALLY wanted to Love Vivaldi (as I am currently trying out other Internet Browsers).
I really did!
I LOVE the way this particular Browser looks and operates:
It’s Customizes very well; It is F A S T!!!
I Also love that it provides a timestamp and date for sensitive documents when I need to Print these!
HOWEVER, I had to remove Vivaldi when my Firewall Denied Access to it about a couple of days after I installed it.
This action made me Suspicious as I need to Trust Vivaldi.
Gil-Star X
[United States of America]
This ridiculous round-cornered design is ruining yet another browser. Why must all browsers have this appearance? No one wants to be different anymore? The excessive padding is a waste of screen real estate and doesn’t look nice. Luckily Vivaldi is customizable and this ugly nonsense can be turned off.
As I concede this might be an issue in other browsers on vivaldi you can simply go to theme settings and change the “Corner rounding” value to whatever you want, even 0.
So can that bring back square tabs like Vivaldi had in v6x?
Since Vivaldi is a Chrome based browser it’s going to suffer from Google’s decision to prevent third party apps which block ads from being installed.
Maybe you can customize it as per the article, but be ready to be bombarded with ads.
1. Manifestv3 is not just about adblockers.
2. Manifevtv3 is not stopping adblockers from existing in the Chome Extensions Store, in fact, all mainstream adblockers are already Mv3, the only problem is uBlock decided not to replace Mv2 version with Mv3 like Adguard and ABP did, so you will get the extension removed/disabled and you will have to install uBlock Lite, Adguard or ABP yourself… This means, it is not Google’s fault but Gorhill’s fault for not doing the right thing.
Also, it is not Google’s fault uBlock Lite is basic, like, you can’t add your own filters, or scriptlets or anything, it’s a install and use extension, and enable few lists based on language. Look at ABP and Adguard, ABP matched most feature parity with MV2 long time ago, and Adguard is achiving the same…
Of course, I doubt you understand how adblockers work, so I doubt you and people complaining about adblockers and MV3 really even know what they are talking about.
Adblockers are nothing special, you could easily do the same job by using Devtools because what adblockers do is use the same features developers use to make websites, you inject CSS and JS, Chromium devtools have allowed to do network filtering for a very long time as well, and that is not going away either.
You can complain about the limits in network filters and how now filters are embedded with the extension so the size is bigger and the few features that you probably would never use that will not make it to Mv3, or the limits in regex and all that, but Adblockers still exist and Adguard and ABP are doing a better job than uBlock, simple as that and adblockers work fine for the most part.
Also, Vivaldi has an adblocker, so it is pretty dumb to say “BoMbArdEd With ADs” when the adblocker, while basic, it does the job for most websites, of course Adguard and ABP are more advanced, and uBlock Lite does a decent job even if custom rules are out of the table because of a Developer (Gorhill) decisoin, not because it can’t be done.
While Vivaldi made their native adblocker around WebRequestAPI, it still will not affect their adblocker too much, and the effect will truly be seen when Chromioum removes Mv2 completely in June 2025, but maybe Vivaldi’s adblocker will not need anything special to keep working decently like they do right now (it’s a decent but basic adblocker, and that’s Vivaldi’s team incompetence for not matching or seeking to match feature parity with 3rd party adblockers)
So next time, study the subject and learn, Adblockers can’t be removed unless Google removes them from the store, and if that was the case, Google has made many changes to Mv3 to accomodate adblockers, and why would they want to do that if they really wanted to get rid of adblockers?
Web technologies are very open, and if you inject CSS for cosmetics, or JS for procedurals, or JS scriptlets to modify pages and do amazing things like blocking Youtube and twitch ads, well, that means you can’t just block adblockers unless you change the way websites are made.
Adblockers pretty much just modifies what a developers does in a website, that’s all, open Devtools and you can do it as well, so… again, lean and then stop saying lies about Mv3 and adblockers.
In fact, Firefox supports Mv3 as well, and most developers will switch to Mv3 for their extensions for obvious reasons (marketshare if it is not clear for you) and move on to what most browsers use for the web engine (Blink/Chromium). So in the end Mv3 will overtake and someday even Gorhill will have to give up and move on and make uBlock Lite not Lite and match uBlock Mv2 features.
So, stop with the drama and obvious misinformation only because in so many years (since 2019) Mv3 ‘killing adblockers’ was debunked, and especially now, when you can install Adguard and ABP and uBlock Lite and understand that the adblockers work and the features that aren’t making it (yet) to Mv3, are feature you probably won’t even use because they would probably require custom adblock rules anyway and if you don’t understand adblockers that means, you don’t need such advanced features.
Anyway, Mv3 is not about just adblockers, even Tampermonkey had to move on and go Mv3 and now you need to enable developer mode to use your userscripts, that’s how it works and Tampermonkey developer (and other userscript extension developers probably) are working to match Mv2, but developers moved on to Mv3 and most are not happy but are okay with it knowing it it the future they have to adapt to.
It’s funny that you complain about misinformers.
@Anonymous
“it is not Google’s fault but Gorhill’s fault for not doing the right thing.”
Is it a fault to not adapt an extension to Manifest V3 when the very way the extension works is totaly incompatible with Manifest V3 ? It’s not a fault, it’s just impossible. There is indeed uBlock Lite, adapted for Manifest V3, but it’s so much conceptually difference from uBlock Origin that it appears as an extension of its own.
Implicitly defending Google is an arguable attitude. We may rather consider reversing the charges :
– Google’s Manifest V3 Still Hurts Privacy, Security, and Innovation
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/googles-manifest-v3-still-hurts-privacy-security-innovation
– Chrome’s Manifest V3, and its changes for ad blocking, are coming real soon
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/chromes-manifest-v3-and-its-changes-for-ad-blocking-are-coming-real-soon/
Already old article, yet quoting a paragraph : “But one of the biggest changes [Manifest V3 from V2] is in disallowing “remotely hosted code,” which includes the filtering lists that ad blockers keep regularly updated. Ad blockers that want to update their filtering lists, perhaps in response to pivots by platforms like Google’s YouTube and ad servers, will have to do so through the Chrome Web Store’s review process. Ad-blocking coders see it as an intentional gatekeeping and slowing.
– About Google Chrome’s “This extension may soon no longer be supported”
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/wiki/About-Google-Chrome's-%22This-extension-may-soon-no-longer-be-supported%22
Quoting, “(…) the focus on reliability and efficiency in a Manifest v3 environment meant having to sacrifice many features beyond those not possible within a Manifest v3 framework.”
IMO and in those of users who know what ads are and what blocking them is and means, it is quite obvious that Google’s argument to consider reliability and efficiency is genuine craps, as Google is, plain bla-bla as when they get caught on privacy issues and carry on with there eternal “we are committed to users’ privacy’ etc etc etc.
Avoid Google. You (still) have several other browsers, Chromium or not, that run Manifest V2 extensions, totally as Vivaldi, partially as Brave and of course Firefox in its very own category.
;;TLDR;;
I installed Vivaldi for the umpteenth time 4 months ago. All the previous times I uninstalled it because it did not really interest me. This time, however, version 6.9 blew my mind.
I love the browser, the customizability, and with Mail, Calendar and Feeds enabled, I could ditch Thunderbird and my RSS feeds extension Feedbro.
In addition, the forum community is really great, so unless I run into some serious trouble with the browser, I will keep it as my daily driver.