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InfoQ Homepage News Vivaldi: A New Browser Created by Former Opera Developers

Vivaldi: A New Browser Created by Former Opera Developers

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A team of former Opera developers along with their ex-CEO Jon von Tetzchner have created a new browser called Vivaldi.

A preview but stable version of the Vivaldi browser has been announced today by Vivaldi Technologies, a company founded by “key personnel” from Opera Software, including the former CEO, Tetzchner. We asked Tatsuki Tomita, COO and co-founder of the company, why another browser, and he offered us four reasons:

Because we feel that there is a need for more powerful browser for people who want more from their browser.

We think that most browsers in the market today are offering similar, non differentiated, relatively simple browser. 

There are extensions to add more capabilities but we think that’s not what everyone want.

There is a need for browser with pre integrated rich feature set and offer highly customizable fast experience.

Tomita added that there are “many millions of users still using old versions of Opera [and] asking for powerful features they once had. That was clearly one of the strong motivations for us to develop Vivaldi.”

Vivaldi starts with a number of notable features:

  • Quick Commands – accessing browser features by typing commands
  • Speed Dial – links to favorite websites available when creating a new tab
  • Notes – the ability to take notes and screenshots while browsing
  • Bookmarks – shown in a tree structure along with snapshots

According to Tomita, Vivaldi is not built on Opera, but it is using Blink for rendering and V8 for JavaScript. A beta version will be available in the “next few months”, and may include some of the features the team is working on: mail client, synchronization of bookmarks/history/notes/etc. between devices, navigating the web with the keyboard, extensions and improved performance.

Vivaldi is available on Windows, Linux and Mac OS.

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Community comments

  • Browser for enemies

    by Mental Lurg,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    They named it "browser for our friends". Look at the license. They may change the terms at any time "without notice and your continued use of the Software or Services will be deemed as acceptance of such changes. You should check the terms of use regularly!" Basically this means that you agree with whatever they put to the license in the future. It is like to sign a blank sheet of paper that will be filled by Vivaldi later on.

    What means "regularly" to you? Suppose they changed the EULA and charge now $1,000,000 for each day you use the browser. If "regularly" means to you "monthly", then you will be glad to know next time you check the license that as a friend of Vivaldi you are due to pay them $30,000,000. Really, this browser is not for everyone. For real friends only. If you can afford expensive lawyers, go use this browser.

    It is hard to believe that these are the people who worked on Opera. The Opera license was really friendly, fair, without any traps. After you accepted it, it would be unchangeable, "will continue in perpetuity". Whereas the Vivaldi license is a time bomb.

    If you have some enemies, just advise them to install Vivaldi. One day the will get into huge troubles because of Vivaldi license.


    To the functionality.
    - Optical impression is good. If you liked the UI of Opera, you will like UI in Vivaldi.
    - Flash doesn't work on some pages that work in FF in Chrome.
    - Poor support of short cuts. Common shortcuts supported in Opera, FireFox, IE, Chrome are missing in vivaldi. No way to reopen the closed tab (Shift+Ctrl+T) or activate menu with Alt.
    - To my surprise it supports some gestures out of the box. I automatically drawed gestures to close tabs, to navigate forward and backward, like I do that in FF and Chrome, and it worked in vivaldi. Without installing any extensions, which can be tiresome, especially in Chrome. This is the only positive feature I see in Vivaldi.

  • Re: Browser for enemies

    by Mental Lurg,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    Well, the gestures are supported out of the box also in the recent versions of Opera. Vivaldi just reproduces those. As well as Vivaldi reproduces some other Opera features, like Speed Dial and Speed Dial Folders.

  • Re: Browser for enemies

    by Thai Dang Vu,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    Thank you for pointing out those deceptive sentences in the license. That reminds me of a story a friend of mine told on facebook: he stopped at somebody on the pavement who sold coconuts, pointed to a coconut and asked the price. The sale-woman said $5. He said it was too expensive and offered $1. The sale-woman agreed. He picked 2, drank them there and paid $2. The woman then asked for $6. She said with a big knife (usually used to chop the coconuts) in her hand that my friend only bargained for the 1st coconut but not the 2nd one.

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