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.