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Opera Founder Opens Up About New Vivaldi Browser (networkworld.com)

alphadogg writes: Since the days of Mosaic in the early 1990s, Jon von Tetzchner has been working on web browsers. He is one of the creators of Opera, the alternative browser that's been a power-user favorite since 1995. His new project, Vivaldi, is heading for its first stable release. Network World sat down with von Tetzchner on Thursday to talk about Vivaldi and Opera at the Innovation House, a related venture of his.

41 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Pavorotti Next? by goombah99 · · Score: 1

    I'm holding out for Quadraphenia

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
  2. North Korea? by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 1

    Isn't North Korea buying Opera?

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    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    1. Re:North Korea? by reanjr · · Score: 4, Interesting

      A tech company from China.

  3. Not like chrome. by sims+2 · · Score: 2

    Is it going to look like chrome or edge?

    It really is ok if every browser doesn't look exactly like every other browser.

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    Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
    1. Re:Not like chrome. by goombah99 · · Score: 1

      If I recall correctly, Opera was based on webkit. Webkit was originally a KDE project that got adopted into Safari and OSX (where it really took off). Then Chrome was built off webkit.

      So if Vivaldi is built off chrome then it's still webkit derived like opera.

      were down to edge, webkit variants, and firefox as actively developed engines.

      --
      Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    2. Re:Not like chrome. by XanC · · Score: 2

      Nope. Opera was its own thing.

    3. Re:Not like chrome. by pr0fessor · · Score: 1

      I originally went to opera because of tabbed browsing with more advanced features accessible but out of site on a simple interface and a built in pop-up blocker. Something none of the other browsers where doing at the time but do now.

    4. Re:Not like chrome. by dejitaru · · Score: 3, Informative

      Opera originally had it's own web engine "Presto", but that changed after version 12. They migrated to Chromium which had webkit, and now blink. Kind of a shame too because Presto was a good engine for most sites, and one of the best (if not the best) in regards to web standards at the time.

    5. Re: Not like chrome. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I use it on OS X. It's great except for its proxy support. It uses the OS X systemwide proxy settings. But I don't want to use my SOCKS5 ad filtering proxy for all apps, just Vivaldi. Firefox does this right because it has its own independent proxy config that doesn't mess up other apps. I wish Vivaldi had its own separate config, too.

    6. Re:Not like chrome. by mechtech256 · · Score: 1

      It's a much more heavyweight, power user friendly browser when it comes to UI. Take a few minutes to learn the hotkeys and advanced features and it's a much more productive browser than Chrome.

      Sometimes simplicity can (somewhat non-intuitively) impede productivity, and this idea is what Vivaldi is built around. I'm not saying it's clunky, it's very well designed, but it's also full of useful power user centric features that are easy to access and not hidden in layers of "advanced settings" menus.

    7. Re:Not like chrome. by pr0fessor · · Score: 1

      Opera created and used there own stuff {Presto} but then abandoned it for webkit about three years ago after version 12.17. I think the transition to webkit and some new direction for opera was what prompted them to leave and start vivaldi. I know I'm not a fan of the new opera.

    8. Re:Not like chrome. by malditaenvidia · · Score: 1

      Wrong, Opera used its own Presto engine. They struggled maintaining compatibility and one day decided to fire all their engineers and develop a skin for chrome instead.

    9. Re:Not like chrome. by pr0fessor · · Score: 1

      It would be nice if it were open sourced, I still prefer v12 and would donate my time and effort.

    10. Re:Not like chrome. by Blaskowicz · · Score: 2

      A web BROWSER? One reason to put the word in all caps could be that it's likely to be the most complex piece of software many people use.
      One example, I regularly ask myself, why is bookmark and history management so poor in Firefox and unchanged since version 1.0? (or even worsened a bit with Australis adding a "right side history panel" with no features, but the left side panel still available)

      e.g. History doesn't seem made to sort through things with multiple criterions at the same time, nor to allow an explicit date range.
      Bookmarks are dumped in a few folders and to manage the mess it feels like the Windows 95/98 start menu, only less convenient. Where's the database with multiple categories, sort by site and by date etc.? Exporting? (including txt, html) Saving a local copy? Be able to back up all bookmarks related to a topic in a certain date range, with or without local copy.
      Other the years I collected some articles (in the form of bookmark references) and ended up with quite some data loss when losing a hard drive (and no I shouldn't need a "Sync")

    11. Re:Not like chrome. by Kjella · · Score: 1

      Nope. Opera was its own thing.

      You're right but he's right too. Opera used to have their own engine (Presto) but is was discontinued in favor of Blink (Google's Webkit derivative) and as far as I know never open sourced, Vivaldi also uses Blink so we're down to just Edge, Webkit-ish and Gecko. But with the dominating engine open source (Chromium = Chrome minus a few proprietary plug-ins) I'm not really all that concerned about that.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    12. Re:Not like chrome. by x_t0ken_407 · · Score: 1

      The Vivaldi interface is very customizable, like Opera Presto. E.g., I have my tabs on the side -- ideal for a wide-screen resolution, IMHO.

    13. Re:Not like chrome. by jopsen · · Score: 1

      But with the dominating engine open source (Chromium = Chrome minus a few proprietary plug-ins) I'm not really all that concerned about that.

      If we end up having only one or two...we risk the specs are going to cater to the architecture of those browsers... This is a very real risk.

    14. Re:Not like chrome. by Lakitu · · Score: 1

      Vivaldi can install extensions directly from the Chrome web store, just like Chrome does.

    15. Re:Not like chrome. by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Remember Opera's CSS support and "fit to width?"

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    16. Re:Not like chrome. by toddestan · · Score: 1

      We've already got the problem of all the -webkit extensions that Webkit created, and have become popular enough that the other browsers either have to implement these non-standard extensions, or risk being perceived as "broken" when they can't render webpages that Chrome/Opera/etc. can render.

    17. Re:Not like chrome. by allo · · Score: 1

      Opera was bought at some time. The new boss wanted to modernize it and thought developers developing a render engine is a waste of time, if you can get a free one.
      Then they just took a whole chromium and started modifying it and distributed it as "opera", which everybody hated. Now it grows more and more an own browser again, but with another focus than opera had.
      Vivaldi is now the approach to recreate the old opera. Because a new company cannot develop a new engine and the rights to the old engine are owned by opera, they took chromium as base as well. But from day one on it did not look like chromium. It's just the render engine and the widget-system, which is used but the typical opera features get implemented on top of that.

  4. It's not a fucking disaster like FF and Chrome are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've been using Vivaldi for a while now. Its UI isn't as nice as Opera's (I mean the real Opera, not the shitty recent releases) was, but it's a lot more usable than Firefox's or Chrome's or Edge's or new Opera's UIs are.

    There's a real status bar. You can put the tabs on any side. It can easily show the full URL. The preferences dialog is well organized and allows for a lot of customization. I haven't had problems using major Chrome extensions with it. It's reasonably fast.

    Despite being so new, it kicks the living shit out of Firefox, as far as I'm concerned!

    Vivaldi is a browser that empowers me, and lets me define the web experience that I want. It's not made by snotfaced hipster's pushing their "opinionated", and totally wrong, ideas on me without my consent. Firefox is a browser that shits in my mouth and makes me swallow, even when I've told them repeatedly I don't want to do that. I trust Vivaldi a lot more than I trust Chrome, too.

    My only complaint about Vivaldi is that it isn't open source. But I can overlook that because it's so much better than Firefox, and it's better than Chrome and Edge, too.

    Vivaldi is the first positive thing that has happened to the web in a very, very long time.

  5. Re:It's not a fucking disaster like FF and Chrome by Gort65 · · Score: 2

    Firefox is a browser that shits in my mouth and makes me swallow, even when I've told them repeatedly I don't want to do that.

    Seems like your Firefox has picked up some malware during your visits to the nether regions of the Internet. ;)

    As for Vivaldi, I'm one who regularly tries it out (it's one of my secondary browsers). I wouldn't go as far as you about Vivaldi's quality, and I certainly don't believe it "shits" on Firefox (at least not to that extent), but I do think it's improved since every snapshot and is on the verge of being a serious contender. I like it and hope it offers a choice away from browsers that are aimed away from the power user.

  6. Re:It's not a fucking disaster like FF and Chrome by Gort65 · · Score: 1

    Funnily enough, I typed that reply with Pale Moon. I've been trying it out for the last two weeks and am fairly impressed with it. Still, I'll probably go back to using Firefox as my main browser, but Vivaldi and Pale Moon are there if I do choose to move away.

    I'm finding the direction that Firefox is taking is trying my patience, and as a long time user of Firefox since its Phoenix days, there might come a day when I say bye. Vivaldi and Pale Moon might well make that bye easier.

  7. Missing feature by malditaenvidia · · Score: 1

    One of the most missed features from oldpera is the links page. So, you'd find a page with a bunch of links to files you want, you'd press ctrl+shift+l, filter by file extension and it would let you download them at once. It was like the downthemall! extension for Firefox, but much more powerful. I wonder if they even remember they had that feature.

    1. Re:Missing feature by allo · · Score: 1

      Ask them. They have a public bugreport form (though no public bts) and they read the comments on their blog (and in their forum).

  8. I miss Omniweb by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

    Every release of firefox, I hope again that they have fixed the memory leaks. They never have. I have to shut firefox down every day and run the OS X developer application "purge" to get my memory back so other programs don't stall like republicans in congress. FF is the only program that requires this. I've gone so far as to take a machine with a fresh OS install and then add FF... and it always acts the same - eats RAM like starving locusts at a newly discovered wheatfield. Lots of people have made suggestions, including one wag-er who told me "8 GB isn't enough"(! ... I typically run with about 4 GB free if FF isn't chewing on my bits.)

    When I run purge, I can see memory consumption drop by 4 gigs (!) that FF has chewed to shreds; I end up with my other apps still using what they usually use, I can start FF again, and by about 8 hours later... time to kill it and purge again.

    I have over-ridden cache management and set it to 10 MB; but it seems nothing helps except killing FF.

    On top of that, tabs hang and consume 100% CPU, scrolling is jerky and unreliable, and when I open new tabs, the others freeze and unfreeze several times. On 3 GHz, 8-core, 8 GB machines. Which is absurd.

    The bad news is that Safari has even worse problems.

    Everyone wants to rush into the future. Microsoft, Apple, the FF people... pretty much everybody. I wish they'd stop trying to add features and just FIX WHAT THEY ALREADY HAVE.

    Best browser I ever used? Omniweb. By miles and miles.

    Unfortunately, Omniweb's developers succumbed to Apple's "New! Shiny! Incompatible!" mantra and hooked into OS X features that are only in late versions of the OS, so it's unusable under the more functional versions of OS X (no busted "appNap", no "sandboxing", comprehensive PPC support, etc.). I sure do miss using that browser.

    Vivaldi? Sure, I'll try it. I'll try anything. I'm desperate now. I would give a lot for a browser that actually worked smoothly. I've not seen one in years, though.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    1. Re:I miss Omniweb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Sounds like a mac problem, on Debian it works pretty nice, only sometimes it takes a while to reclaim all memory after a tab has been closed.

    2. Re:I miss Omniweb by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

      Yeah, it certainly could be OS X <--> FF interaction. I just wish they'd fix the thing.

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    3. Re:I miss Omniweb by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      You can try Firefox Developer (i.e. Aurora/Alpha) it runs a lot better, with e10s by default. You have to disable the ugly skin, then remove useless icons from the toolbar, then that's all.
      Using the beta version now : no e10s, so I came across bad behavior but for now it is rather decent still.

    4. Re:I miss Omniweb by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      I get it on CentOS, so it probably isn't.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    5. Re:I miss Omniweb by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

      Yes, OS X 10.6.8.

      I have the latest FF, and I update it whenever it says it's time to.

      I almost always have a gmail tab open; a couple of slack tabs open; and it would be an unusual day if I didn't read at least one slashdot story. Aside from that, I browse Amazon, visit flickr, and google things. I'd say pretty much anything else I do would be exceptional, and so unlikely to be a specific culprit, assuming that there is one, other than FF itself or OS X. I rarely open large images in my browser.

      I don't use FF plug-ins.

      I don't think I have any really unusual FF prefs settings; I've looked at them many times, and other than setting the cache to 10 mb, they all seem pretty vanilla.

      Thanks for the interest. Appreciate any insight.

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  9. Intuitive by fyngyrz · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sometimes simplicity can (somewhat non-intuitively) impede productivity

    It's not non-intuitive at all.

    Simplicity is great for two classes of users: power users who don't want to be power users of that particular segment of tech, and the broad swath of droolers out there. That's by far the largest chunk of market. Their version of productivity is "do the average thing without being bothered by anything." So for them, simplicity is productive.

    Unfortunately, that leaves power users who do want, or even might need, sophisticated features, without the tools they need to be specifically productive. And it leads to the kind of brain-dead thinking that gives us "features" like hiding the URL and just showing the domain, non-standard (and broken) buttons because "oh, pretty", UI elements that migrate like addled geese, not to mention just up and disappear...

    Sigh.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  10. Do thay finally have that bookmark menu? by gweihir · · Score: 3, Informative

    I am still on Opera 12.x because the one glaring thing the beta Vivaldi is missing is bookmarks than can be accessed easily. Having to click open the bookmark-sidebar, selecting the link and then having to click the sidebar close again is just not acceptable. Other than that, Vivaldi was fine in beta and I will be moving to it as soon as the bookmarks work well.

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    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    1. Re:Do thay finally have that bookmark menu? by Lakitu · · Score: 1

      there's a bookmarks "tab" on the new tab page, up at the top: Speed dial, +, Bookmarks, History. Clicking on those lets you view your history or bookmarks in that tab similar to the opera:history and opera:bookmarks pages used to

      fyi

    2. Re:Do thay finally have that bookmark menu? by gweihir · · Score: 1

      I don't have that. Must have been added later. Thanks, I will take a look.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    3. Re:Do thay finally have that bookmark menu? by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Ah, no. That does not cut it. Double-click to open a sub-folder? Not really. Since Opera has just released 12.18 as security update, I will stay with it a while longer.

      And seriously, how can they mess up or not prioritize something as central as bookmarks in Vivaldi?

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  11. Old Opera by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Today, the only browser trying to be Opera is otter-browser.org

  12. Re: It's not a fucking disaster like FF and Chrome by unixisc · · Score: 1

    And I'm missing it on PC-BSD

  13. Re:It's not a fucking disaster like FF and Chrome by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 1

    My only complaint about Vivaldi is that it isn't open source.

    A browser impossible to check for backdoors? Sorry, no.

    --
    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
    You cannot wash away blood with blood
  14. My browser of choice today by LordLestat · · Score: 1

    Thanks to Mozilla trying so hard to make something not Chrome like into a Chrome copy i have now moved to a browser which, while fully Chromium tries hard to be different than Chromium. Quite ironic :D