Opera Founder Is Back, WIth a Feature-Heavy, Chromium-Based Browser

New submitter cdysthe writes Almost two years ago, the Norwegian browser firm Opera ripped out the guts of its product and adopted the more standard WebKit and Chromium technologies, essentially making it more like rivals Chrome and Safari. But it wasn't just Opera's innards that changed; the browser also became more streamlined and perhaps less geeky. Many Opera fans were deeply displeased at the loss of what they saw as key differentiating functionality. So now Jon von Tetzchner, the man who founded Opera and who would probably never have allowed those drastic feature changes, is back to serve this hard core with a new browser called Vivaldi. The project's front page links to downloads of a technical preview, available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Firefox users who likewise prefer a browser with more rather than fewer features (but otherwise want to stick with Firefox) might also consider SeaMonkey, which bundles not just a browser but email, newsgroup client and feed reader, HTML editor, IRC chat and web development tools.

Comments

Really good news!

[megahurts.gr]

Yep, Opera used to be the best, until they destroyed it. When they did, I stopped using it. Now this is really good news!

Re:Really good news!

[samwichse]

Yep, stopped using it after 12.17 became too crufty with new sites... the new versions had no reason to compel you to use them over Chrome. I mean, you're Chrome-based, and adopt what is essentially the Chrome interface, why would I go out and download you over Chrome?

I hope it has mouse gestures by default and that lovely fit to window width feature of the old Opera.

Re:Really good news!

[pr0fessor]

It doesn't appear to have a popup blocker and it shares proxy settings with the system it appears they have gotten just the most basic stuff in it, but it does get a 511 on the html5test not sure why chrome only get 501 and other browsers are even lower.

 

Re:Really good news!

[samwichse]

Wow, it's nice.

It's still missing a lot of features, but unlike the "new Opera," they seem to have the intent to add them. Many of the nicer interface touches are there... the nice sidebar layout, the view panel, the ability to put tabs on the bottom, show/hide images (no cached only mode yet) and a nice view panel with zoom slider that zooms all the page content.

Shockingly stable for a tech preview release. I like :)

Re:"vivaldi"

[OzPeter]

c'mon guys...we *have* to start coming up with better names for products...

"Vivaldi"

Hey .. don't you know that this is actually the first of a suite of 4 programs .. they'll be one for each season.

I want to have to support another browser

[pooh666]

Webkit or not, about as much as I want TCP by pidgin.

Downloading

[jamstar7]

Interesting that the Ubuntu/Debian .deb file is ONLY for 64 bit systems. No 32 bits for us dinosaurs.

Re:"vivaldi"

[quax]

So let me get this straight, you seriously don't know who Vivaldi was, and you think everybody else is as proudly ignorant as you are.

Obviously the name works perfectly. This browser is not for you.

Re:Perfect Business

[unixisc]

Would people be willing to pay for such a browser? Either a one time purchase, or a subscription? Since any browser maker would have to fund their existence, unless the browser is just a side business of theirs. In which case, why would they bother spending quality time maintaining it?

Go ahead - give us the business case, if it ain't ads. And don't say donations - we all know that that's hardly enough to fund any software developer.

product name affects usage

[globaljustin]

the name actually matters

you base all kinds of choices based on product names...

the name is part of the design...when you don't have any other information, design choices can indicate quality

is Vivaldi intended for a small group of developers only? no? you want non-developers to use it?

the name is not some completely abstract factor

Re:product name affects usage

[amicusNYCL]

is Vivaldi intended for a small group of developers only? no? you want non-developers to use it?

I don't understand your gripe with that name in particular. It's not an obscure name, and it evokes some sense of classical grace (as well as being an extension of the Opera name in a sense). There are any number of other projects out there, both successful and otherwise, that have much more ridiculous names. Firefox is a great example. What does "Firefox" have to do with being a web browser? Or SeaMonkey, or Chrome for that matter? What about Twitter? Or Flickr? What about LibreOffice, which I have to actually spell for people who haven't heard of it? How about "The Gimp?" But you're choosing to go on a rant over the name of a classical composer, as if no one has heard of this person?

In the first place, people are obviously fine with using things with names that don't have an obvious connection to the product. In the second place, plenty of people have actually heard of Vivaldi (the man). It's not as obscure as you apparently think it is.

I'm using it now, quick review

[iplayfast]

It feels like a fast version of Chome. But I don't have all the cache filled in the same way so probably not a fair test. But so far not a problem with it. Have used it on facebook game that requires flash 15, (won't work with firefox) was flawless.

Not found a single gotcha so far

Already Better Than New Opera

[jazman_777]

The original dream we hardcore Opera users had was replacing the Presto engine with Blink, but wrapping it with the feature-full Opera interface experience. That was more a pipe dream. Vivaldi already has more of the old Opera features than the new one does. It's a technology preview, so it's got a lot of rough edges, but the spirit of the old Opera is there.

Re:Already Better Than New Opera

[CrashNBrn]

Opera 12, is a 12MB download...__12__

Once more, __12__. Nearly 1/5th the size of Mozilla's Firefox, about 1/3rd the size of Google's Chrome.
Unfortunately, the dev's completely hosed the JS engine in Opera 12 (compared to pretty much any prior Opera version). Opera 12 is also the least stable of any Opera release to date, including the clusterfuck of Opera 10.11 - 10.6 --- it wasn't until nearly the final release of Opera 10.64 that you could give up Opera 10.10 without suffering major regressions.

At the very least Opera could of switched the rendering engine/JS for __web-content__, and kept Presto-and-co to render/deal with Opera's GUI. Maybe that wasn't possible? Seems like they were a bunch of bright folks, they could of figured out a shim to get Karaken (JS) to "talk" to V8 as needed.

Christ it took the Opera Dev's 18+ months to get functional bookmarks (and its still crippled compared to Opera 12). I sure as hell don't have any faith in that AD-company (FYI that's what Opera ASA is). When they switched to Blink, they gutted their official company vision too. I forget the comments thread where the two Mission Statements were compared, but the new one is laughable at best.

Re:Yet another webkit-based browser

[Wootery]

I disagree, Presto is (still today) quite usable. Opera Mobile Classic, the current name of the Presto-powered browser for Android (which is available alongside the 'real' WebKit-based Opera), breathes new life into ancient Android phones. It doesn't cope with all sites, but it's a lot better than the old Android browser. (And Chrome doesn't run on Android 2.)

The column handling is awesome, which is a particular advantage on mobile devices.

For whatever reason, the 'real' Opera browser for Android, is absolutely awful. You can't even add your own search-engines beyond the ones it ships with. (Seriously.) It's nothing more than Chrome-but-terrible.

Re:"vivaldi"

[CannonballHead]

Man. I'm going to have to write out a Liszt so when I actually do go browser Chopin, I can remember all these.