Search engine deals are HUGE for browsers. They're e.g. what has funded Mozilla with many billions over the last 20 years. Mozilla has tried to diversify but everything else has pales in comparison (and the donations are basically a joke).
It scales up with usage as well. Not that Safari needed funding, but Google pays Apple upwards of $20,000,000,000 per year for the privilege of being the default for that user base.
With Firefox, especially with Firefox on Linux, which always had and still has poor GPU support, I frequently encounter sites that do not work well or they do not work at all. So I must keep a backup browser, which is normally Vivaldi, because typically any site that works in Chrome also works in Vivaldi.
Moreover, Vivaldi has a great advantage over both Firefox and Chrome, in it the command to print a Web page usually works fine, while in both Firefox and Chrome it almost never works correctly.
Both Firefox and Chrome are almost never able to render correctly a "printed" page, even if they render the same page perfectly on screen. In the printed page, the graphic elements have almost always wrong sizes, which results in overlapped or invisible page elements. I suppose that this is caused by the fact that many Web pages stupidly use element sizes in pixels, instead of using length units, e.g. points or inches or mm, and both Firefox and Chrome might scale pixels wrongly when rendering for resolutions that differ from that of the screen, while Vivaldi scales them correctly.
Besides the "Print" command, the second feature that I like in Vivaldi better than in Firefox or Chrome is that it accepts mouse gestures for most commands, as alternatives to keyboard shortcuts, so you do not need to move the hand from the mouse while browsing.
I have been using Vivaldi since it was an alpha build. It is the best browser hands down IMO. I have been here for the entire ride. I am so glad to see that there is not AI bundled in this release, which has been a major concern for me when anticipating future releases of this browser.
I always liked Vivaldi's simple+autohide layout. Unfortunately, the 3-4 times I tried to use it over the years I always ended up giving up due to random performance regressions over stock Chromium. It's been a few versions now though, maybe it's worth a go again.
It's a lovely browser, and a lot of work has clearly been put into it. I should like it, because I used Opera for ages (in the Presto era), but it's just a little to busy for me.
There's way to much stuff, to many feature and when the rendering engine is just Blink, I don't really see much of a reason to use it over Firefox.
Nice work though and wonderful to see a 3rd party browser maker giving it a go.
Your users don't have to use those extensions, so I don't understand how that's relevant? People who do, should be made aware of risks and that's it. This is not a good argument against taking away their option to have that customization.
Every time I try use Vivaldi I encounter how incredibly slow the UI is. Are all Vivaldi users running it on specced out desktops? Or is it just ao lineux UI latency issue?
Respect the tremendous amount of work that went into this!
I appreciate the intention to protect my privacy. How does that square with Manifest V2 deprecation as dictated by the adtech company (Google)?
Also, for years I’ve been uncomfortable using Chromium as I’m uncomfortable raising that statistic any more, since I don’t want the Internet to be designed for one particular engine. Maybe Vivaldi 9.0 will be the biggest design overhaul of all time and even refactor based on Gecko like Firefox :)
Vivaldi is the browser, where I always wonder why it doesn't get mentioned in all the privacy enhanced browsers. It's the only browser for me, that reliably filters out all ads with ublock origin while working on all websites without any problems. Also the company behind Vivaldi is not in USA/China/Russia, which also helps from my point of view.
Two questions, how can you trust closed source? And how are they already on release 8.0; what are these significant improvement each time or is it like apple's yearly release?
Do they do any sort of third-party auditing of the closed parts?
[1] https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/why-isnt-vivaldi-browser...
* on my phone, can’t inspect the tars
I don't trust them one bit. There was that telemetry analysis that showed Vivaldi as a very noisy browser.
*screw Google and their AI search
So the answer seems to be:
- search partnerships
- direct match partnerships
- bookmarks partnerships
- donation
- cut when people sign up for advertised products (proton vpn, not sure if others)
Or at least that was the case in 2019
It scales up with usage as well. Not that Safari needed funding, but Google pays Apple upwards of $20,000,000,000 per year for the privilege of being the default for that user base.
Moreover, Vivaldi has a great advantage over both Firefox and Chrome, in it the command to print a Web page usually works fine, while in both Firefox and Chrome it almost never works correctly.
Both Firefox and Chrome are almost never able to render correctly a "printed" page, even if they render the same page perfectly on screen. In the printed page, the graphic elements have almost always wrong sizes, which results in overlapped or invisible page elements. I suppose that this is caused by the fact that many Web pages stupidly use element sizes in pixels, instead of using length units, e.g. points or inches or mm, and both Firefox and Chrome might scale pixels wrongly when rendering for resolutions that differ from that of the screen, while Vivaldi scales them correctly.
Besides the "Print" command, the second feature that I like in Vivaldi better than in Firefox or Chrome is that it accepts mouse gestures for most commands, as alternatives to keyboard shortcuts, so you do not need to move the hand from the mouse while browsing.
I hope they keep it up.
There's way to much stuff, to many feature and when the rendering engine is just Blink, I don't really see much of a reason to use it over Firefox.
Nice work though and wonderful to see a 3rd party browser maker giving it a go.
Imo extension is the ultimate way to customize your browser experience.
It's not technical difficulties, there are open source projects that have such support.
I also don't believe it's against any TOS because some of these browser are available in the Google play store.
I just don't get why they refuse to do that.
If you don't have the ability to police extensions you're basically putting your users up for sale?
The problem you linked to also happened on desktop because there is no VSCode for phones.
I appreciate the intention to protect my privacy. How does that square with Manifest V2 deprecation as dictated by the adtech company (Google)?
Also, for years I’ve been uncomfortable using Chromium as I’m uncomfortable raising that statistic any more, since I don’t want the Internet to be designed for one particular engine. Maybe Vivaldi 9.0 will be the biggest design overhaul of all time and even refactor based on Gecko like Firefox :)
You wouldn't be able to even if you wanted because there is no good way to export/import your changes for the trade to happen
Otherwise removing a few borders seems a bit underwhelming for a major version bump