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Opera's Ex-CEO Launches Vivaldi 1.0 For Power Users

Opera co-founder and former CEO Jon von Tetzchner on Wednesday launched the v1.0 of Vivaldi browser. Vivaldi v1.0, which is aimed at "power users", is available to download from the company's website for Windows, OS X, and Linux platforms. The Norway, Oslo company has been working on it since 2013. Vivaldi offers a range of features such as support for Chrome extension, Tab Stacks, Rewind and Fast Forward, and built-in support for custom keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures. There are plenty of other handy tools including the ability to check how much data a Web page has consumed in real time.

135 comments

  1. adblock option? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    last time I checked, they still hadn't implemented the content blocking that Opera 12 had, did they enable that yet? i'm not using adblock, i'm manually blocking every single annoying ad... most website don't display ads anymore in my browser...

    1. Re:adblock option? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As far as I know, you can only install Chrome extensions in Vivaldi by typing in the internal extensions page address, enabling developer mode and then manually downloading and adding each extension.

      The last time I tried Vivaldi, it was a crashy and buggy mess. Parts of the UI didn't render at all and were invisible and the rest did not conform to my UI theme, nor to any of the standard Windows themes. It was a big mess of white, red and invisible. This is certainly not the Opera replacement anyone wanted and in fact the new version of Opera is much better than Vivaldi.

    2. Re:adblock option? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      As far as I know, you can only install Chrome extensions in Vivaldi by typing in the internal extensions page address, enabling developer mode and then manually downloading and adding each extension.

      You sure don't know much, then. Vivaldi has an Extensions page (Tools -> Extensions or Ctrl-Shift-E) which has a "Get more extensions" link to the Chrome Store. You install extensions the same way as in Chrome--browse or search the store and click on the "Add to Chrome" button for an extension you want to install. There is no going into developer mode, no manually downloading or installing anything.

      The last time I tried Vivaldi, it was a crashy and buggy mess.

      Cool story. Given this is the very first 1.0 release, whatever you used was Beta quality at best, as in a not-finished product. How about taking the three minutes it would take to install Vivaldi v1.0 and educate yourself? Or are you the same pathetic troll that keeps saying "Oh yes, I have recently installed [alpha quality] Servo browser and it is crap! utterly crap! and will never amount to anything!"? Vivaldi is a very usable and fast browser. It's also very flat and closed-source. But it's worth checking out if you're not completely satisfied with your current browser.

    3. Re:adblock option? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You sure don't know much, then. Vivaldi has an Extensions page (Tools -> Extensions or Ctrl-Shift-E) which has a "Get more extensions" link to the Chrome Store. You install extensions the same way as in Chrome--browse or search the store and click on the "Add to Chrome" button for an extension you want to install. There is no going into developer mode, no manually downloading or installing anything.

      Then it was a very recent change.

      Cool story. Given this is the very first 1.0 release, whatever you used was Beta quality at best, as in a not-finished product. How about taking the three minutes it would take to install Vivaldi v1.0 and educate yourself? Or are you the same pathetic troll that keeps saying "Oh yes, I have recently installed [alpha quality] Servo browser and it is crap! utterly crap! and will never amount to anything!"? Vivaldi is a very usable and fast browser. It's also very flat and closed-source. But it's worth checking out if you're not completely satisfied with your current browser.

      Vivaldi offers nothing over Chrome or Opera and it blatantly disregards UI theme. That's a fail and you're just a shill.

    4. Re:adblock option? by Lakitu · · Score: 1

      As far as I know, you can only install Chrome extensions in Vivaldi by typing in the internal extensions page address, enabling developer mode and then manually downloading and adding each extension.

      Then it was a very recent change.

      This is not a recent change. The Chrome Store is just a webpage which you can visit, and which treats Vivaldi as if it were Chrome for everything I've tried. You go to it, click on an extension, and it shows the overview for it, including an "Add to Chrome" button. It's been this way since at least November, 5 months ago.

    5. Re:adblock option? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, but the internal extensions page was previously not reachable in Vivaldi without manually typing in the address and extensions could not be installed unless developer mode was first enabled there.

  2. First by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But is it fast enough to get first posts?

    1. Re:First by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can it run Crysis?

    2. Re:First by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      imagine a beowulf cluster of these! With grits

  3. Fastest Slashdot news post ever. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wasn't the meme that the news will first happen on reddit, then forbes, then finally on slashdot?

    1. Re:Fastest Slashdot news post ever. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It should be legal to euthanize redditors.

  4. Vivalid kicks the shit out of Firefox. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've been using Vivaldi for some time now and I have to say, it kicks the living shit out of Firefox. Over the same period of time I've seen Vivaldi get better and better with each release, while Firefox has somehow managed to get worse and worse! Vivaldi is fast, its UI is really usable, and it just works. Firefox, on the other hand, I still find to be slow, it includes all kinds of bundled shit I don't want (Hello and Pocket), and the UI has become impractical. Instead of focusing on fixing these problems with Firefox, we've seen Mozilla dick around with total failures like Firefox OS, Rust, and Servo.

    There are only 2 things I dislike about Vivaldi:

    1) It isn't fully open source, to the best of my knowledge.

    2) It uses the system proxy settings, instead of allowing them to be set for the browser only. I only want my web browsers to go through my ad/malware-filtering SOCKS5 proxy, but Vivaldi makes this difficult.

    1. Re:Vivalid kicks the shit out of Firefox. by Shortguy881 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That first one is a huge issue for me. I'd be all for jumping on the Vivaldi bandwagon, but I cannot put software with no security/privacy review on my work machine, and I will not put it on my personal machine. They either need some security audits or to open source it.

      --
      Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
    2. Re:Vivalid kicks the shit out of Firefox. by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      1) makes it a non-starter: you NEED to be using an Open Source browser at this point. So forget Vivaldi.

    3. Re:Vivalid kicks the shit out of Firefox. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Wanna really get concerned about it? Open Vivaldi and do a search. It's redirecting all searches through www.vivaldi.rocks.

      Open Fiddler up and you'll see all the connections and such. I just sat there with Fiddler scrolling through all the calls Vivaldi was making - it was nuts.

      I used it a little in Beta, but I immediately uninstalled it.

    4. Re:Vivalid kicks the shit out of Firefox. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It also needs better cookie settings. It only allows you to either accept all cookies or block all. There is no way to whitelist some sites but block by default.

    5. Re:Vivalid kicks the shit out of Firefox. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Cannot reproduce.

      Perhaps that was only during beta.

    6. Re:Vivalid kicks the shit out of Firefox. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'll say what needs to be said: You're a stupid asshole.

    7. Re:Vivalid kicks the shit out of Firefox. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      You feel you need to be using an open source browser. I don't. Many people don't. So, you can forget whatever you want and fuck off. The rest of us will use what we want.

    8. Re:Vivalid kicks the shit out of Firefox. by almitydave · · Score: 1

      It also needs better cookie settings. It only allows you to either accept all cookies or block all. There is no way to whitelist some sites but block by default.

      Huh, my version (1.0.403.24 (Beta 3)) has the same options as Chrome, namely a global setting to allow all, block all, or clear on exit; with a hostname-pattern-matching exceptions list. So it can do exactly what you say it needs.

      --
      my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
      I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
    9. Re:Vivalid kicks the shit out of Firefox. by by+(1706743) · · Score: 1

      I've been using it for awhile now, switching over from Chrome. One of the major annoyances I have is its inability to properly move tabs to new windows -- instead, it seems to reload the entire page. This is problematic for some pages, e.g., opening a GMail email in a new window.

      Not enough to stop me from using it, but pretty annoying.

    10. Re:Vivalid kicks the shit out of Firefox. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You feel you need to be using an open source browser. I don't. Many people don't. So, you can forget whatever you want and fuck off. The rest of us will use what we want.

      The sheep says "bahhhhh"

    11. Re:Vivalid kicks the shit out of Firefox. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's there in 1.0, in the Bing search, which is the default.

    12. Re:Vivalid kicks the shit out of Firefox. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Being better than Firefox isn't saying much. Vivaldi is just another ugly "me too" Chromium clone.

    13. Re:Vivalid kicks the shit out of Firefox. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unlike the clueless little twerps like you who just blindly accept everything, right?

  5. Why the email client overhead in a browser? by QuietLagoon · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I see that Vivaldi will get an embedded email client. Why bloat a browser with an email client? The Opera email client never really fit my needs, it was too weird how it handled emails.

    .
    Since the early days of Netscape, I never saw the logic behind bundling email clients with browsers.

    1. Re:Why the email client overhead in a browser? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Opera's mail client was the best RSS tool ever.

    2. Re:Why the email client overhead in a browser? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because Vivaldi is a spiritual successor to Opera 12.

    3. Re:Why the email client overhead in a browser? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It doesn't have to be overhead, if coded well. The old Opera had built-in email, torrent, and rss clients but still managed to perform better on low-end hardware than Firefox, Chrome, and IE.

    4. Re:Why the email client overhead in a browser? by KGIII · · Score: 1

      I already had the repository in my list so I just used apt (I have snapshot installed) and the thing's already expanded to over 140 MB.

      *sighs*

      I was cock or the walk when I had not one, but two, 40 MB drives.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    5. Re:Why the email client overhead in a browser? by Hentes · · Score: 1

      I guess they saw an opportunity with Thunderbird's future being as unsure as it is.

    6. Re:Why the email client overhead in a browser? by certsoft · · Score: 1

      I still use Opera 12.16 as my main browser just because it is the last version that had integrated email. Maybe someday Vivaldi will live up to their long running promise of having integrated email.

    7. Re:Why the email client overhead in a browser? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I still use Opera 12.17 because of RSS/Atom feeds. And I'm just too used to it in general: mouse gestures, search keywords...

    8. Re:Why the email client overhead in a browser? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The lack of email is the only thing stopping me from switching from Opera 12, which I still use every day as my main browser. Vivaldi is my secondary one for when things don't work in Opera.

      I just hope it will read in my mailbox from Opera 12.

  6. Not for me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "An error occurred.
      Try watching this video on www.youtube.com, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser"

    is about the first thing I see on this page. That's why I know this isn't a browser for me. Mr. von Tetzchner, you can keep this one to yourself.

    1. Re:Not for me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I suppose you'd also refuse to buy a car at a dealership because you cut the brake lines on your own car and wrecked on the way there.

  7. Law of Nature by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1
  8. Tired it a few weeks ago by future+assassin · · Score: 2

    the Linux version and can't get pas the flat fugly GUI.

    --
    by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
    1. Re:Tired it a few weeks ago by Billly+Gates · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Whether we like it or not Flat and minimalism is in as gradients and skuemorphism where objects and icons look like objects are very outdated to the millennials today and the art professors who teach this stuff to students.

      Vivaldi didn't have much of a choice as this crowd would shun anything with gradients, 3d icons, and colors.

    2. Re:Tired it a few weeks ago by fnj · · Score: 1

      Whether we like it or not Flat and minimalism is in as gradients and skuemorphism where objects and icons look like objects are very outdated to the millennials today and the art professors who teach this stuff to students.

      Oh, sorry then, Professor Knuckle Under. I forgot we were supposed to gobble up every stupid fad that gets pushed on us. Please slap me twice in the face, and I will try to be a good sheep from now on.

    3. Re:Tired it a few weeks ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Go with the standard:
      http://www.file-extensions.org...
      http://xwinman.org/screenshots...
      http://xwinman.org/screenshots...
      http://xwinman.org/screenshots...

      And of course, you have used the most absurd examples that you think are possible.

      "Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler" - Albert Einstein

      You unwittingly used examples of engineering stations and scientific applications used to process very complex data. Look at the quote above. The only thing understood today is "simple" to the exclusion of all else.

      I went through this with some SAP idiots who while dealing with very complex data insisted on putting everything behind tiny little icons. It ended up being a complete mess of an app with "information behind a thousand doors." It was jarringly disconnected fram any real workflow and was roundly rejected by the people who were forced to use it.

      And the only reason it was used at all was it turns out SAP was bribing certain "decision makers" to use it. Yep.

      If you make software for idiots, guess who are the only people who want to use it? Yep again.

    4. Re:Tired it a few weeks ago by theArtificial · · Score: 4, Informative

      Julie Larsen-Green is totally a millennial. She's responsible for Metro and is in her 50s. When you start misattributing things to the youth you sound old and misinformed.

      --
      Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
    5. Re:Tired it a few weeks ago by aliquis · · Score: 2

      Absurd?
      No. The ones I know which worked just fine.

      I used MUI + MagicWB because it's an improvement over AmigaOS Workbench but still about the same. Afterstep because Next, NextStep, Steve Jobs and that it was a decent UI. I guess BeOS and OS/2 could had been thrown in too:
      http://lowendmac.com/wp-conten...
      http://ps-2.kev009.com/michaln...
      CDE because it's the standard(?) or was on Solaris machines(?), I don't know what it replaced if anything.
      FVWM is very configurable so I don't know if any of the looks are standard but it's old, known and look typical enough.

      All those in total are six different examples of user-interfaces I think look pretty decent. They are all "complete different" which was kinda a joke with saying "the standard" but on the other hand looking at them like this they kinda all is very similar with highlightened and shaded buttons to give them a 3D feel / separate them, and lines and grey. Maybe it's not the best user-interface but it's very clear were everything is.

      Like now I use Chrome but if I minimize this window then Steam sit behinds with it's completely own user-interface with much smaller buttons so I can't simply press on the same spot multiple times to minimize all my windows because they don't line up. How much of a crappy design isn't that?

      Also the damn close button which sit in the corner of the window where if the window for whatever reason isn't fully maximized you may accidentally close some other window behind it or whatever it is which may happen. Also in Windows the close button sit together with the rest and even up until this day not all programs KNOW TO ASK WHATEVER ONE REALLY WANT TO CLOSE THEM DOWN!! Something like Chrome will just close the window / shut down and that's it. No "Do you really want to close this window with 35 tabs?" - no such thing, just close it all down!! No worries!

      One the one hand I've kinda liked custom user interfaces when they are done right - like with Adobe Lightroom maybe I can accept it - I guess the difference is within whatever they live on a separate full screen themselves and have their own work-space or whatever they are windowed applications sharing the environment and space with other programs.
      I guess in general I'm against non-standard user-interfaces AS LONG AS THE STANDARD IS A GOOD ONE.
      Take KDE for instance - tool-bars, large tabs, vertical text written in rotated mode! Tree structures for selections here and there. I hate it. I'm ok with KDE as such but the user-interface is shit. I like that it's one environment but the user-interface used for it all isn't the best it could be IMHO.
      In Windows I hate that I can't pull a drawer from explorer into a file selector dialog to enter that directory (or a file either I guess), I have to navigate through their explorer within the file selector dialog.

      I don't really know how this is on topic on the user-interfaces above let alone the /. post whatever the topic was for that one - oh, Vivaldi 1.0, got it.

      Oh well, back to topic then I guess:
      I liked the old Opera - I like clever features and Opera was the inventor of many of them. The new Opera (and Edge) lost capabilities and I hate that. However Opera doesn't follow the native user-interface and I don't like that. I dislike tabs which somehow holds close gadgets within them which will be really cramped and when you want to switch tab you may eventually close one instead because supposedly it also held a close gadget.
      So much poor design in user-interfaces. But I like the FEATURES of the good old Opera and Vivaldi.

    6. Re:Tired it a few weeks ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All those in total are six different examples of user-interfaces I think look pretty decent.

      My apologies. I misunderstood your intent. I guess I have a reflexive bias when it comes to current UX / UI / GUI work.

      And I agree about the GUI's. We present(ed) what needs to be shown, and I use(d) color as a means of differentiation, not just to look pretty. Sorry for the misunderstanding. :-)

    7. Re:Tired it a few weeks ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whether we like it or not Flat and minimalism is in as gradients and skuemorphism where objects and icons look like objects are very outdated to the millennials today

      Wait wait wait. The /. crowd of a few years ago threw a hissy fit that Windows Vista/7 had such fancy unnecessary 3d effects, gradients, glass effect, etc. "All it does is waste my processor cycles", they said "they should stop doing this stuff! Windows XP is minimalistic and it works fine.".

      Microsoft and Apple listened. They made everything flat and turned off effects, as was asked. And now, it's a problem?

    8. Re:Tired it a few weeks ago by KGIII · · Score: 1

      That's funny. I've been wondering what people mean when they say "flat" in reference to things like that. Now I know. I don't mind it but I do have one pet peeve with Vivaldi... Put the damned disable hardware acceleration button back!

      It was never there - but it was in the code they got and forked. It's IN Chromium and Opera. I know, 'cause I have to tick the damned thing on two separate boxes with nVidia cards and using the free drivers. I have to! Or the MENU is BLACK and I can't see it. As is the address bar, as is the tab bar, as is random splotches around the screen.

      They took out the button. It was there. It's in the same damned spot on all the other browsers based on the same code. They didn't take it out. Nope. But Vivaldi? They're like, "That might be handy, tear it out of there. That'll irk that KGIII for sure!" (Well, something like that.)

      Fortunately, I'm kind of used to it. I just start it with vivildi --disable-gpu-compositing or vivaldi-snapshot --disable-gpu-blah-blah-blah... I know - 'cause that's how to get the other browsers started so that I can go in and change the menu option. I can't see it without that switch. But no... Vivaldi tore that button right out of there.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    9. Re:Tired it a few weeks ago by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Slashdotters called Windows XP Fisher-Price and they ran in the far opposite direction. You just can't be pleased.

      Fits right in on Windows 10, anyway. Like it or not, at least it fits in. Just need a native UI for each OS.

    10. Re:Tired it a few weeks ago by slapout · · Score: 1

      That's the same thing I said about Windows 10...

      --
      Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
    11. Re:Tired it a few weeks ago by erapert · · Score: 1

      I literally chuckled aloud when I saw those screenshots. Then I shook my head when I realized that you seem to be serious.
      That's the most hideous and dated GUI I've ever seen except, possibly, for Windows XP or Apple OS9.

    12. Re:Tired it a few weeks ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I particularly liked the white terminal output on a snowy background

    13. Re:Tired it a few weeks ago by toddestan · · Score: 1

      It's a problem because what we have now doesn't resemble what we had 15-20 years ago at all. When they removed all the glitzy effects, they also removed all the other cues that existed previously which helped you navigate around. So while we don't need transparency or flashy animations, we do need to know what's a button that can be clicked on, and what isn't. That's the big difference between something like Windows 10 and Windows 2000.

  9. As an ex-Opera fan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm very glad Vivaldi exists. After Opera 12, they stripped all the features that made opera useful and even experimental. What made Opera special for me is, for me, it got 9 / 10 features correct without needing plugins. Just download and go. After Opera 12, Opera basically became Chrome. I don't know why the world needs Opera to be a 2nd versions of Chrome, but that is the direction Opera took. To be fair, Vivaldi also uses Chrome as the back end, but it provides so much more than Chrome. So thanks Jon von Tetzchner for rebuilding a feature-full browser without the mess of having a dozen plugins you have to maintain! - Written in Vivaldi

  10. Opera? For power users? by jandersen · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wouldn't it have been more appropriate to call it 'Wagner', then? Vivaldi is fairly light-footed and pleasant, whereas Wagner tends to sound like it was written for - and performed by - The Hulk on bad day.

    1. Re:Opera? For power users? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yeah, but if you called it Wagner, after a while of using it you'd get the urge to invade Poland.

    2. Re:Opera? For power users? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      “ - and performed by - The Hulk on a bad hair day.”

      There, FTFY.

      Yes, the area I live in has been taken over by NAWBO.

  11. Re:Bernie Sanders by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't fall for LUDDITE propaganda. App Appers is the ONLY candidate who can defeat APPS in the GENERAL ELECTION.

    If APPS is the LUDDITE candidate, App Appers will win the GENERAL ELECTION.

    You have been APPED.

    (captcha: apps)

  12. Fugly UI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If this is where user interfaces are going we could have stopped at the Athena Widgets in 1990 and saved ourselves a lot of trouble. If they really wanted something retro they could have used that. I concur with your observation.

    1. Re:Fugly UI by JustBoo · · Score: 2

      If this is where user interfaces are going we could have stopped at the Athena Widgets in 1990 and saved ourselves a lot of trouble. If they really wanted something retro they could have used that. I concur with your observation.

      +1 ( I wish I had points. )

      I get the whole minimalist thing, but as usual, it's been taken the the point of absurdity. I predict the next step will be a single white word on a white background with a barely visible graphic of a puff of smoke. That's it. And that will be after a year of "work" by a team of UX "geniuses." I happen to know most of that year is spent playing Clash of Clams and telling each other how smart they are to not actually provide any evidence of any actual effort and still get paid.

    2. Re:Fugly UI by PurplePhase · · Score: 1

      > I happen to know most of that year is spent playing Clash of Clams

      Smash Puss!!

      - sorry, I had to!

    3. Re:Fugly UI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I predict the next step will be a single white word on a white background with a barely visible graphic of a puff of smoke. That's it.

      Sounds like Google back in 1998.

    4. Re:Fugly UI by future+assassin · · Score: 1

      This browsers GUI is like the sun in your eye when you're driving and its leaks pas the sun visor. It distracts me from the main object which is the main browser window.

      --
      by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
    5. Re:Fugly UI by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      The leather in the address book is pretty ugly and so is the book stand in pre IOS 6 for news. It can go both ways.

      What looked cool in 1990 was out of this world to show off graphics. That's great we are used to pretty now and of course people like our Mom's who didn't know how to use a computer would see a newstand and a leather for an address book to figure out what these things are for.

      This is 2016 and now it is just about information coming back with little distractions to get in the way.

      I do not like the flat but it is growing on me. I am from a different generation who thinks it's odd not to show off what the hardware can do. What I do want more of IS COLOR. Thankfully office 2016 will no longer make you blind with the white of 2013 so someone is getting the message.

      FYI that desktop you grin over from 1990 from someone born on 1990 looks about as primptive as a teletype or greenscreen CRT to us :-) Flat hamburger menu makes it look slick and modern like a cell phone. A cell phone to them is what is cutting edge that is showy for some odd reason and responsive with less odd stuff for old people etc

    6. Re:Fugly UI by omnichad · · Score: 1

      I installed it. There's several options and one of the default choices is fairly sane. Mostly grey, but out of the way.

  13. A new browser possible? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

    Browsers are extremely complex application launchers and ecosystems thanks to HTML 5, apis, and CSS 3. Even the webcam API is a whole skype like api with compression, algorithms, and other things that are difficult to implement.

    Worse, you need a large security team around the clock to fix bugs.

    Chrome is here to stay. Of course 15 years ago I said the same with IE 6. IE 6 only mattered as it will always have 90% marketshare so IE 6 CSS and quirks will be with us always ... etc. :-) ... take it back we have 2 IE 6 apps at work still so yes I guess part of my prediction came true. Thankfully we have Citrix and no longer host it on the desktop like we did until the last minute during XP EOL 2 years ago.

    1. Re:A new browser possible? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Vivaldi is built around Chromium, just like newer Opera versions are. So it's a new browser, using an existing engine.

    2. Re:A new browser possible? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Servo is coming along nicely. Though I'll completely understand if no one around here knows, since apparently it's the Devil incarnate or something around here.

  14. When will Mozilla wake up?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The real question should be, When the hell will Mozilla wake up to the reality they're facing?!

    The browser stats from March 2016 are now available, and they show that Firefox has only about 7% of the browser market. That's across all desktop and mobile platforms that they support, too.

    To put that into perspective, it's about half of each of the most recent versions of desktop Chrome. It's about half of Chrome for Android. It's close to individual versions of other browsers, including IE 11, iOS Safari 9.2. It's likely below UC Browser for Android. Even Opera Mini, with about 5% of the market, isn't far behind Firefox.

    Firefox is clearly facing strong competition from numerous other browsers. Now it will be facing even more competition from Vivaldi, which is a very appealing and useful browser for power users.

    Yet despite this ever-increasing competition, and the ever-dwindling number of Firefox users, we don't see Mozilla making the drastic changes they should be making. We continue to see Firefox's support for multiple processes sputter. We continue to see unwanted UI changes. We don't see any significant performance improvements. We now hear that Mozilla will be switching to a Chrome-like extension model, which could very well cause severe breakage of existing extensions, and a really horrible experience for the few remaining Firefox users.

    Don't waste your time telling me about Servo. I've tried it recently, and the experience was abysmal. It's nowhere near ready for testing, never mind actual usage of any sort. Try it yourself if you don't believe me. It's decades behind even Firefox, which is well behind Chrome and other browsers.

    And we can't go blaming Firefox's declining market share on "mobile". As the stats show, desktop browsers are still the dominant ones. Even then, it's Mozilla's fault that they can't get Firefox for Android above 0.05% of the market.

    Doesn't anyone at Mozilla see the problem with their current situation? Doesn't anyone there have the guts to stand up and say, "Something is seriously wrong here!"? Doesn't Mozilla as an organization realize that Firefox is pretty much the only product of theirs that some people still sometimes use? Doesn't Mozilla realize that once Firefox has lost its few remaining users, which based on the current trends will happen eventually, that it, as an organization, won't have any influence of the future and the direction of the web?

    Why aren't we seeing more panic from Mozilla? Why do we just see more of the same old, which clearly hasn't been working, as it has been driving away their existing users without attracting any new users? Why aren't we seeing more concern from Mozilla about the future?

    1. Re: When will Mozilla wake up?! by jemmyw · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And yet despite its problems it runs smoother for me than chrome. With the devtools open Firefox is significantly faster. I was really surprised and only found this out when having a look at the Developer Edition of Firefox, but it is now my default browser.

    2. Re: When will Mozilla wake up?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Firefox does not run smoother than Pale Moon, who by the way has forked Gecko as well as Firefox.

    3. Re:When will Mozilla wake up?! by malditaenvidia · · Score: 2

      Yet despite this ever-increasing competition, and the ever-dwindling number of Firefox users, we don't see Mozilla making the drastic changes they should be making.

      Which are these changes, by the way? Is it adjusting their interface and functionality to act and feel like chrome? Because that certainly already happened and only served to alienate their loyal userbase further. Mozilla is a non-profit organization which doesn't have Google's marketing behemoth on their side, they rely entirely on word of mouth. Google is the most visited website in the world and can afford to offer a "faster, safer browser!" to everyone visiting their page, even if we know it's complete bullshit, grandma might have no idea that chrome is a spying tool. She might not be aware of the services it runs on startup to make it seem like it's opening her facebook faster, when it's actually just always running.

      So I am completely at a loss as to what Firefox and Mozilla should be doing, besides improving their browser. Maybe they should pull a netscape and sue google for monopolistic practices and whine hard enough so courts prevent google from promoting their product on their webpage.
      Mozila has been comfortably stagnant for the last 10 years and just now are starting to rethink their engine and their practices. If they are to be gone then so be it, plenty of other devs will take their place as it always happens. Perhaps this will allow other free browsers to get some much needed attention.

    4. Re:When will Mozilla wake up?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I use firefox and don't recall ever seeing an ad for chrome. And even if I or other people did, 99.9% are going to ignore it (already running, not running it and clueless (my mom) or not running it and don't care (my fiancee) ).

    5. Re: When will Mozilla wake up?! by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      And yet despite its problems [Firefox] runs smoother for me than chrome.

      Your experience and mine are very different. The JS engine and a lot of the rendering for graphical elements are horribly slow in Firefox compared to any other major desktop browser today. Even IE11 is much faster at some things. I've spent much of the past few months with actual profiling data trying to find out why, and there's no single big issue. Firefox simply has awful performance for some functionality that comes up a lot when you're doing web apps.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    6. Re: When will Mozilla wake up?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you talking about Firefox Developer Edition, though? It is drastically different from the main release. It's two versions ahead (currently 47) and has electrolysis fully enabled. My experiences mirror jemmyw's in that earlier this year I tried out the developer edition and was quite surprised how quick and smooth it was. Since then I've used the developer edition as my main browser.

      I do agree the main release of Firefox is and has been lackluster (slow, jerky/jittery). The developer edition may still be slower than other browsers (I haven't profiled them to get numbers) but it is a significant and noticeable improvement over the main release (currently version 45). So whenever electrolysis (and whatever else is in 47 but not 45, maybe JS/JIT engine improvements?) gets into the main release, Firefox users should see a much-needed improvement in speed and usability.

    7. Re:When will Mozilla wake up?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Which are these changes, by the way? Is it adjusting their interface and functionality to act and feel like chrome?

      Obviously not. Reverting the recent changes that make Firefox more like Chrome are among the "drastic changes" that are needed. Throwing out a few years of awful UI work would be a pretty significant reversal, but it's exactly what Firefox needs.

      And it's pathetic to blame Firefox's failing on Google advertising. Come on! Ads alone won't cause somebody to install Chrome. Ads alone won't cause that person to then continue using Chrome. Even though Chrome's UI is shitty, too, at least Chrome is otherwise a fast browser. It doesn't feel slow like Firefox does.

      So I am completely at a loss as to what Firefox and Mozilla should be doing, besides improving their browser.

      It's pretty obvious what they should be doing: returning to the practices that made Firefox successful in the first place.

      They need to:

      1. Ditch the UI designers. They clearly haven't helped improve Firefox. It's better to have programmers creating UIs than designers.
      2. Start listening to Firefox users. When the users say they don't want a proposed change, don't fucking implement it!
      3. Terminate the Rust and Servo projects. They aren't going anywhere.
      4. Refocus the resources being wasted on Rust and Servo to converting Gecko to C++14, and C++17 where appropriate. Use modern C++ techniques, which render Rust irrelevant.
      5. Get rid of the embedded ads, Pocket, and Hello.
      6. Get rid of Australis, and revert to a UI like Firefox 3.6's.
      7. Actually finish the goddamn multi-process work. It has been going on for years now.
      8. Ditch the participants who are more concerned with "social justice" and promoting leftism than they are with producing the best web browser.

      The path they need to take is clear. They just need to get around to following it before it's too late for them and they've become totally irrelevant!

    8. Re:When will Mozilla wake up?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What a load of self-entitled horseshit. "Do what *I* want! Anything less is a pathetic excuse!"

      The anti-Mozilla "power user" movement has truly reached the apex of its stupidity. Just use Vivaldi and be happy that someone still caters to your tiny niche of complainers who want it your way without having to install the addons, but rather just shipping the browser with them.

    9. Re:When will Mozilla wake up?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your comment is a perfect example of the awful attitude issues that far too many Mozilla contributors and supporters suffer from.

      First you deny the existence of the very real problems that Firefox's users experience.

      Then you ridicule anyone who dares to point out those problems.

      And finally you make the boneheaded claim that it's "wrong" for these users to make constructive suggestions for solving these problems.

      Eventually these users get fed up with being treated like shit, and they move away from Firefox to some other competing browser.

      Since this is happening day after day, month after month, and year after year, we've seen Firefox's market share drop significantly, while the market share of Firefox's competitors has increased.

      Mozilla and Firefox are nothing without their users.

      The few remaining Firefox users are the only thing keeping Mozilla even barely relevant!

      Yet it's like those who support Mozilla and Firefox are doing everything in their power to eliminate these few remaining users.

      It's all a very absurd, self-destructive act.

    10. Re: When will Mozilla wake up?! by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      Electrolysis is mostly about solving a different problem, I think, though perhaps it will have some consequential benefits for general performance as well.

      What I really want is a Firefox that can manage to do a smooth CSS animation without a jump on the final frame, and render SVGs with more than a few elements at useful speeds, and manipulate video elements without triggering weird buffering and skipping effects, and so on. It's basically impossible to design a smooth, professional-looking UI that runs well in Firefox today without severely limiting how complex the presentation gets. You can do basic table- and form-based stuff fine, but start trying to do anything interesting like having interactive visuals, or co-ordinated multimedia elements, or more than very simple animations, and too many things just don't work or don't work fast enough to be acceptable in production.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    11. Re: When will Mozilla wake up?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It sounds to me like you need a browser with a real rendering engine. Have you tried Chrome?

    12. Re: When will Mozilla wake up?! by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      I'm a professional web developer, among other hats I wear, so I use all of the major browsers regularly. Unfortunately, the users of the web sites and apps I write can choose whatever browser they want in most cases, so I'm often limited to the least common denominator in terms of functionality or performance requirements. And that least common denominator is Firefox an awful lot of the time these days.

      In case you're interested, Chrome really is much better on performance with a lot of these newer features, and its usually adds new features more rapidly than anyone else. However, its quality of implementation is often terrible when new features are introduced, and sometimes for several months or even years afterwards, and on balance we also find Chrome is by far the least reliable major desktop browser when it comes to updates breaking functionality that used to work.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    13. Re:When will Mozilla wake up?! by TangoMargarine · · Score: 1

      Ads alone won't cause somebody to install Chrome. Ads alone won't cause that person to then continue using Chrome

      You're overestimating the average computer user. If they get tricked into installing Chrome somehow (bundled installers, etc., really not hard), and Chrome sets itself as the default browser, I'm sure there is a not insignificant number of people who don't notice the change, or can't figure out how to get back to what they were using before, and continue on.

      This is Slashdot. We tend to know our shit around here, but we're a small minority of the population.

      --
      Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
    14. Re:When will Mozilla wake up?! by TangoMargarine · · Score: 1

      When it seems like virtually all the major browsers are busy becoming Chrome, it's not unreasonable to say that one of them should start making what *I* want--i.e. not-Chrome.

      --
      Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
    15. Re:When will Mozilla wake up?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You make it sound like the number of users is the most important thing about a piece of software. It's not that important. As long as Mozilla isn't scratching for resources it's not even relevant. I care the browser remains usable, not how many people make the same choices that I do.

    16. Re:When will Mozilla wake up?! by perryizgr8 · · Score: 1

      1. Ditch the UI designers. They clearly haven't helped improve Firefox. It's better to have programmers creating UIs than designers.

      I don't even give a shit about the UI if it runs bad. Once everything is perfect, they can change the UI all they want, without affecting performance and functionality.

      Use modern C++ techniques, which render Rust irrelevant.

      I'm glad someone said it. If you follow C++14 standards, there is no reason for Rust to exist anymore.

      7. Actually finish the goddamn multi-process work. It has been going on for years now.

      Multi-process is being treated like an optional "maybe we'll include this at some point if it is perfect" feature. Instead they should release a beta with multi-process (main Firefox beta, not electrolysis). People will use it and file bugs and then those bugs can be squashed. Within 6 months Firefox will be a nice multi-process browser.

      8. Ditch the participants who are more concerned with "social justice" and promoting leftism than they are with producing the best web browser.

      Those who do not follow meritocracy deserve to watch their browser die a slow death.

      --
      Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
    17. Re:When will Mozilla wake up?! by Sam36 · · Score: 1

      You've got bad data. From my own website data I see Chrome is at 36%, FF is 28%, IE is 20%, Opera is 0.4%.....

  15. Only 2? by CrashNBrn · · Score: 2

    There's almost nothing that Vivaldi does, that Opera doesn't, except for Tab Stacks.
    Unfortunately, Tab Stacks is one of the worst Tab implementations I've seen in 16 years. Opera 6 or 7 had a better Tab implementation as you could manage Windows\Tabs from the Panel. Now unless Vivaldi has pulled a rabbit out of their ass, their Panel implementation isn't anywhere near as functional as Opera 7 (from 2003).
    They've also been claiming that Vivaldi was going to get an email client for about 3 years now. Hopefully no one was holding their breath.

    1. Re:Only 2? by almitydave · · Score: 1

      There's almost nothing that Vivaldi does, that Opera doesn't, except for Tab Stacks.

      I was an Opera 12 aficionado, and resisted Opera Chromium as a long as possible. I tried it but gave up when they made the decision that certain MIME types (such as PDF) would be download-only, removing the ability to open in browser, or even using an external program, and refused to change despite many user complaints.

      --
      my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
      I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
    2. Re:Only 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know what you're talking about. I use current Opera and when I click on a PDF, it opens right in the browser. If I want to save it, I have to right click and download.

  16. Vivaldi... What for a waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why should i use Vivaldi when i also can use Firefox and Classic Theme restorer?

    Vivaldi is Open Source Chromium with a bundled closed source app (Want to see that is true? Open Vivaldi task manager, kill the webview Vivaldi process, and UI disappears, but browser keeps running) to create the UI which is thanks to how it is created highly exploitable.

    No thanks, go away!

    1. Re:Vivaldi... What for a waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, *you* go away (from Vivaldi) and leave it to those who want it. It's quite a bunch of us - mostly those that had been using the (real) Opera.
      If you had used it, you had no real replacement in the last years. Now we have, thanks to Jon.

    2. Re:Vivaldi... What for a waste of time! by LordLestat · · Score: 1

      While i too do not like the solution much that the Vivaldi UI is created by a bundled app, Vivaldi guys are hopeful that they can keep it alive no matter what Google team throws against them. As long as Vivaldi works, i will use it. There is much worse software existing actually.

    3. Re:Vivaldi... What for a waste of time! by KGIII · · Score: 1

      I've been using Opera since the 1990s. We had to pay for it then. I've used it since, with some exceptions... From version 15 to 23, Opera sucked. At 24 they were usable again. At 28 - 29, they were good again. They're quite nice now. I keep all three versions installed (beta, dev, stable) and use them for various tasks with separated tabs that open by default, shared settings (some), and folders that are saved on the Speed Dial.

      Then again...

      I've got a half dozen text browsers, Firefox (a couple of versions), all the Opera, Midori, Vivaldi (three versions), Pale Moon, Dillo, and probably a few that I've forgotten. I know I've got a couple downloaded that aren't installed yet. I'm pretty browser agnostic but I always return to Opera. I keep the others and use them for varied tasks or to test things.

      I'm kind of hell bent on keeping Opera, however. That's the big thing for me. I just return to it, always. The current incarnations are very good. If you're not enjoying the current versions that is because you choose not to. They work. They work fine. They're light and responsive (for a 2016 browser). They render well. You can set it up to use any Chromium/Chrome extension, and all that sort of stuff.

      It's not that I care what browser you use but if you'd actively disliking Opera that's just silly. It does its job just fine. They kind of all do, these days. Well, except for the myriad text browsers I've installed but even those serve a purpose for me. Yes, yes I do go browse the 'net with elinks or lynx. Not often - but I do. Speaking of which, I've gotta recompile Dillo so that I have https support.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    4. Re:Vivaldi... What for a waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Opera... The one who betrayed power users and removed all UI customization? How can you take that simplicity loving Google wh*res as good? That is stupid.

  17. One unresolved issue by JigJag · · Score: 1

    I've been using Vivaldi for about 6 months now. This post is made via Vivaldi. One issue I've had and could not find a solution is that of unlocking my saved passwords. In Firefox, you can press a button to see your saved password, and the browser kindly asks "are you sure?". In Vivaldi you don't even have that option. I had to use the built-in inspector to alert() me my password at form submission time since it was remembered and prefilled by the browser.

    Other than that, I enjoy it. It's slightly nimbler than Firefox and not as intrusive as Chrome.

    --
    "The hallmark of humanity is the ability to move beyond sensory inputs" - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
    1. Re:One unresolved issue by KGIII · · Score: 2

      Go here:
      chrome://settings/search#pass

      Manage passwords. It's at the bottom. Click that link. Tada!

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    2. Re:One unresolved issue by Daniel+Klugh · · Score: 1

      Huh? Why is there a double slash? "settings" isn't a hostname!

      --
      Daniel Klugh
    3. Re:One unresolved issue by KGIII · · Score: 1

      You will have to ask them. If you put just one slash in, it adds the second one.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    4. Re:One unresolved issue by JigJag · · Score: 1

      Thanks for your reply, it's good to know.

      That said, I'd like to know how you found that out? Even after searching on the KB, I never saw that option. If I go to Settings and type "pass" in the search box, I do NOT get what you get when going to chrome://settings/search#pass

      --
      "The hallmark of humanity is the ability to move beyond sensory inputs" - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
  18. Re: Bernie Sanders by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >the greatest president that ever presidented
    This needs to make the voyage to the footer quote of the day somehow.

  19. Opera 4 years later (2012-2016) by CrashNBrn · · Score: 2

    Then again, Opera has done little beyond bug fixing for the last year (or more). I think they got around to adding Bookmarks ~2 years ago.
    Within the last year or so Opera got rid of their Browser Developers from Norway and outsourced to Devs from the Czech Republic. At that point a number of ex-Opera devs went over to Vivaldi. Since then Opera Developer has slowed to a crawl.
    I stopped giving a rats ass after Opera sold itself to China.

    1. Re:Opera 4 years later (2012-2016) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Within the last year or so Opera got rid of their Browser Developers from Norway and outsourced to Devs from the Czech Republic.

      Good. There are some fantastic developers in the Czech Republic.

    2. Re:Opera 4 years later (2012-2016) by CrashNBrn · · Score: 1

      To Note: I wasn't deriding the Czech Developers. More the fact that Opera basically said FU to their Norway ones. And an observation that was made by a number of people that religiously follow the Opera releases on the Opera Blogs: "That the Opera Developer edition seemed to turn into a minor-bug-fix-polishing-edition with no real movement forward on long-overdue features. At this point there's almost no point to the Opera Developer release, it is not even a week or two ahead of Opera Beta.

    3. Re:Opera 4 years later (2012-2016) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm perfectly fine with that. I'd rather have bug fixes than a constant stream of unneeded additions and bloat that cause things to break even more.

      It's about time one of the browser makers started focusing on optimisation instead of the shiny of the week.

    4. Re:Opera 4 years later (2012-2016) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Within the last year or so Opera got rid of their Browser Developers from Norway and outsourced to Devs from the Czech Republic.

      Good. There are some fantastic developers in the Czech Republic.

      Then you hire them as well as keeping your existing developers. Normally natural turnover of developers is already a bad enough problem and is only possible to alleviate because you can get the new developers help from the developers who are leaving but still have a good relation with you. If you actually fire developers on a product you are trying to develop you are almost always going to end up losing.

  20. Re: Bernie Sanders by Barsteward · · Score: 1

    you mean America is not great now?

    --
    "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
  21. How have you reviewed your current browser? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Let's be real here, have you done a complete security audit of whatever browser you're using now? Have you, or even somebody else that you fully trust, checked every single line of code of the browser, plus any third-party libraries it uses? Have you built it yourself from this audited source code, to ensure that the binary you're using actually corresponds to the publicly-available source code? Have you also audited the compiler you're using, to ensure it isn't injecting code into the compiled binaries (like Thompson demonstrated is possible)?

    My suspicion is that you're holding Vivaldi to a much, much higher standard than you are with Chrome, Firefox, or whatever other browser you're currently using.

    1. Re:How have you reviewed your current browser? by TangoMargarine · · Score: 1

      Just because you haven't doesn't mean you wouldn't like the ability to at some point in the future.

      Oh, and Firefox is open source. So no, not holding Vivaldi to a higher standard.

      Oh wait, and Chromium is open source, too. Oops.

      --
      Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
    2. Re:How have you reviewed your current browser? by Shortguy881 · · Score: 1

      Not really. I stopped using chrome because of the always running bit. I'd stop using Firefox but then I wouldn't have a browser.

      --
      Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
  22. What. by thevirtualcat · · Score: 1

    "One of the things that makes Vivaldi unique is that it is built on modern web technologies. We use JavaScript and React to create the user interface..."

    Uhh.

    So basically they're writing Firefox on top of Blink instead of Gecko?

  23. tree tabs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No tab trees. Guess I'm sticking with Firefox.

    1. Re:tree tabs by Bathroom+Humor · · Score: 1

      They DO have tab stacking along with their verticle tabs feature, which I tolerate... but it's truly no replacement for the unstacking method used by Tree Style Tabs in Firefox. I would rather them fold downward than pop up as big thumbnails all over the screen. They could greatly improve this feature by allowing users to turn off thumbnails in the tab stack and just having a column of plaintext showing tab names.

  24. Typical new software release comments by Coisiche · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    The comments for this type of articles always seem to follow the same pattern.

    1. There will be more critical than supportive comments. Although for Windows that's understandable.

    2. Approximately 200 ACs could have done it better although they never seem to announce when their product will be ready.

    Disclaimer: actually posted using Vivaldi but I'm not really a fanatic user of any browser, having 4 installed on the machine I'm currently using.

    1. Re:Typical new software release comments by pr0fessor · · Score: 1

      I have actually been playing with developing a webkit based browser for about 4 years now. No it will never be released, probably never finished, it's far from a feature rich browser, but has the basic plug-ins, scripting, and cookies controls and is about as usable as IE neither of which I would use regularly. A couple of the libraries I designed for it are in other things and I've used it to test ideas for other projects.

      I wouldn't be surprised if the 200 AC you're talking about have a couple projects just like it.

  25. SLASHDOT APPLYING CENSORSHIP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This has been the front page story, until lately:

    https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/04/06/1529210/nest-reminds-customers-that-ownership-isnt-what-it-used-to-be

    Is slashdot applying censorship? Who are really the new overlords? Has Alphabet paid SlashdotMedia to silence its criticism?

    The article's text:

    Alphabet-owned Nest recently announced that it will be turning off Revolv Hub next month. An anonymous reader shares an article on EFF, a privacy rights group:
    Nest Labs, a home automation company acquired by Google in 2014, will disable some of its customers' home automation control devices in May. This move is causing quite a stir among people who purchased the $300 Revolv Hub devices -- customers who reasonably expected that the promised "lifetime" of updates would enable the hardware they paid for to actually work, only to discover the manufacturer can turn their device into a useless brick when it so chooses. This is far from the first time that customers' software and electronics have been downgraded by manufacturers. Updates can disable features the customer paid for that have fallen out of favor with the vendor, as when Google disabled privacy settings on Android or Sony took away the ability to run GNU/Linux on a Playstation 3. Manufacturers can even render a device unusable until the customer "agrees" to new terms of use, as Nintendo did with the Wii U. Other software and devices, including some video games, are designed so they simply stop working when they can no longer dial home to a server run by the vendor.

    TFA: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/nest-reminds-customers-ownership-isnt-what-it-used-be

    1. Re:SLASHDOT APPLYING CENSORSHIP by Coisiche · · Score: 1

      It is still there and it had 7 comments when I looked.

      To be vaguely on-topic in this thread: are you sure that you are using your browser correctly?

    2. Re:SLASHDOT APPLYING CENSORSHIP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Off-topic, but I'll respond anyway. The story is still there. If enough people vote it down in Firehose, I wouldn't be surprised to see it disappear.

      In this instance, however, I'd recommend hitting 'refresh' in your web browser (or upgrade from the original Vivaldi release ;-))

    3. Re:SLASHDOT APPLYING CENSORSHIP by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Why are you still worried about not being able to see a dupe from yesterday?

    4. Re:SLASHDOT APPLYING CENSORSHIP by omnichad · · Score: 1

      They're posting this same pointless comment on every story. I don't know why they picked this article to complain about. It's a dupe from yesterday.

  26. All Slashdot wants by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is a browser that that the geeks can have to themselves. A minimalist ui, tabbed browsing, ad filtering, script blocking and no bloatware like pocket. The makers of a Slashdot friendly browser would be given lots of bitcoin. And no Pale Moon or Uzbul aren't it.

    1. Re:All Slashdot wants by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Geeks only wanted it until flat and minimalist was "in". I guess it's time to bring back the Fisher-Price UIs?

  27. no noscript.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    so no thank you. firefox wins, hands down. adblock+noscript

    1. Re:no noscript.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Vivaldi has uMatrix, which doesn't have all the features of NoScript but definitely blocks scripts and allows more granular control of allowing (or restricting) content. uBlock Origin from the same author is also a great adblocking extension.

  28. Avant by darkain · · Score: 1

    This reminds me of the Avant browser of some 10-15 years ago. That was basically an embedded IE frame with a super clunky custom UI around it. Sure, it enabled tabbed browsing and some other nifty things to IE at the time, but the overall user experience was clunky as fuck.

    The same is true of Vivaldi. It is just another Webkit based browser (think Chrome, Opera, and Safari), but with yet another clunky UI surrounding it. The browser may support some cool new experimental features, but the rendering pipeline is extremely slow. To get an idea of this, try resizing the window and watch it flicker in and out of place. Whereas Chrome has very nice per-OS rendering optimizations, Vivaldi seems to be fighting with OS UI API rendering calls constantly, slowing it down considerably. This may not be an issue for higher end systems that can spare the CPU/GPU cycles, but on leaner machines for casual browsing, it is a major pain.

    1. Re:Avant by almitydave · · Score: 1

      The UI is actually built on HTML, Javascript, and CSS: the browser itself is actually a webpage (that you can edit), so graphics behavior when doing things like resizing won't be as snappy as native controls. The actual web page rendering is based on Blink and V8 (same as Chrome), which are very fast.

      Many (most?) of the "cool new experimental" features are actually old ones that had appeared in the Presto-based Opera browser before it became another Chrome flavor. Tastes vary, and browsers are close to text editors in inspiring devotion and animosity, but IMHO it's the best of both worlds - the features of Opera with the speed and compatibility of Chrome. Ironically, one of the things that bugs me about Chrome is that they don't use native controls, but keep messing with their homegrown interface (often making it worse).

      --
      my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
      I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
  29. Nope, it failed. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It STILL cannot open more than 20 bookmarks at the same time. This has been an ongoing issue for a long time now in the beta and still is in the final 1.0 release.

  30. Norway, Oslo by omnichad · · Score: 1

    Is Norway, Oslo the non-US format for city and state, like DD/MM/YY?

  31. Missing the point by Hentes · · Score: 1

    The reason I liked Opera was because it allowed a rich browsing experience with great degree of costumisability and control natively, without needing to install 20 shitty javascript extensions that make a browser slow and unstable. A browser written entirely in shitty js is not a replacement for Opera.

  32. no replacement for Opera 12 by jjohn_h · · Score: 1

    How do you toggle javascript on/off? How do you toggle style sheets on/off? How do you disable positioning?

    Fuck you, Vivaldi.

  33. I was going to try it, but not now... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    See subject: You think like I do, & know how great Opera 12.x & below truly was... massively flexible + powerful. I don't want or need ANYTHING less, & if this is the case with this new browser (the guy coding it's really good imo, no questions asked, but he's probably forced by ''market pressure" or sponsorship to NOT disallow the bringer of all evil, or one of them like JAVA + FLASH too, in javascript - minus scripting, which brings more bs infestation than ANYTHING else (which you THINK they would've learned from MS in Word/Excel/Access Macros beforehand that once you script a document? The trash WILL eventually come blowing in... I was a much bigger fan of server-side CGI/WinCGI because of it, less danger that way)).

    * Besides - I still use Opera 12.18 (newest release & pretty recent patch too if you didn't know that) - it works even to this day, excellently, on all levels noted above. Boggles my MIND that he 'abandoned' it. It still is, the best, hands-down.

    APK

    P.S.=> Thanks for the "heads up", assuming you're correct & I am guessing you are being honest about your findings - I'll pass for now because of your statements (unless someone corrects you or has already while I wrote this etc.)... apk

  34. Way to misinterpret stats... by Leslie43 · · Score: 1

    Granted, that chart you linked was garbage since it explained little, but had you gone through and clicked on who they got their stats from you will find what you quoted to be very off the mark.
    Site: http://gs.statcounter.com/

    Firefox has been dropping, but very slowly and it's still pretty consistent at around 15% or so of the market, Most of Chrome's growth has been at the hands of other browsers, I.E. in particular. The odds of Vivaldi making a significant dent in Firefox is small, it's more likely to cannibalize Chrome and everyone else.

    And Mozilla is concerned, and they should be. Personally, I think they should have fired several developers YEARS ago. The growing number of forks, 64bit and UI, should have been good indications they were doing something wrong. Which leads back to Chrome as well, yes, Chrome is growing, however, some of that could also be forks, since there is enough of them, but why are there so many? I have yet to see a Chrome fork that actually makes things any better.

  35. Real boolean searches? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If it doesn't support them, it has nothing to do with "power users" IMHO.

  36. Too much integrated crap by knorthern+knight · · Score: 1

    Not only email, but the linux version *DEMANDS* "cups", i.e printer support. My current Gentoo setup already has Pale Moon and Opera 12.16 installed, and any dependancies they require. Installing Vivaldi would download 83,318 KiB of files, of which 43,955 KiB is actually Vivaldi. The rest would be...

    net-dns/libidn-1.30
    sys-libs/libcap-2.24-r2
    dev-libs/dbus-glib-0.102
    app-text/qpdf-5.1.1
    dev-libs/libtasn1-4.5
    dev-libs/nettle-3.2
    dev-scheme/guile-1.8.8-r1
    sys-devel/autogen-5.18.4
    net-libs/gnutls-3.3.17.1
    app-text/poppler-0.32.0
    gnome-base/gconf-3.2.6-r4
    net-print/cups-2.0.3
    net-print/cups-filters-1.5.0

    qpdf and poppler seem to be for in-browser pdf-rendering. Other browsers allow me to pass pdf files to "helper applications", like mupdf. Screw this noise.

    --

    I'm not repeating myself
    I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
  37. Firefox must go by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    After ousting Brendan Eich they should have made a rainbow theme and target LGBT - the usage numbers would have soared. Honestly, an organization that did not unite behind and support their CEO in such circumstances deserves all it gets.