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.

Comments

Not like chrome.

[sims 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.

Re:Not like chrome.

[XanC]

Nope. Opera was its own thing.

Re:Not like chrome.

[dejitaru]

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.

Re:Not like chrome.

[Blaskowicz]

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")

Re:North Korea?

[reanjr]

A tech company from China.

It's not a fucking disaster like FF and Chrome are

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:It's not a fucking disaster like FF and Chrome

[Gort65]

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.

Intuitive

[fyngyrz]

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.

Do thay finally have that bookmark menu?

[gweihir]

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.

Old Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

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