The Vivaldi Browser is released. Its from Opera founder von Tetzchner, the guy who did Opera Presto.

Its just a preview. It needs a lot of work.

https://vivaldi.com

Great (old) news: last month, Vivaldi became usable by scaling to DPI.[1] Something that doesn't yet apply to the Linux version of Maxthon. This means Vivaldi joins the ranks of e.g. Otter, Netsurf, Firefox, and Opera/Blink as an actually usable program.

[1] I didn't bother to check if that particular snapshot picked it up automatically like the latest snapshot, but without UI-scaling that's a moot question.

Vivaldi implemented something that's been missing from Opera since forever ago: tab selection for tiling. Of course it was available in an easy manner through the window panel, which was preferable over the tab bar for that and many other reasons.

https://vivaldi.net/en-US/blogs/teamblog/item/49-snapshot-1-0-258-3-a-quick-fix-for-languages-and-improved-tab-selection-for-easier-tiling

Vivaldi implemented something that's been missing from Opera since forever ago: tab selection for tiling. Of course it was available in an easy manner through the window panel, which was preferable over the tab bar for that and many other reasons.

https://vivaldi.net/en-US/blogs/teamblog/item/49-snapshot-1-0-258-3-a-quick-fix-for-languages-and-improved-tab-selection-for-easier-tiling

I never missed this feature. Here's how to select tabs for tiling:

- Open up two browser windows
- Send the tabs that you don't want tiled into the other window
- Tile

- Open up two browser windows
- Send the tabs that you don't want tiled into the other window
- Tile

And just how do you select the pages you want to put into another window, or that you want to bookmark in a folder, or close all at once,* or...? Selection with Control and Shift is paramount unless you like RSI. But of course, none of that stuff works in Vivaldi (yet ?), and the tab bar is an inherently inferior specimen regardless.

* When I'm done with something I often want to close something like 20 tabs all at once. In Opera this takes something like 1-2 seconds. In any other browser I'm clicking 20 times, hoping I don't misclick in the meantime.

- Open up two browser windows
- Send the tabs that you don't want tiled into the other window
- Tile

And just how do you select the pages you want to put into another window, or that you want to bookmark in a folder, or close all at once,* or...? Selection with Control and Shift is paramount unless you like RSI.

What is RSI?

The way I used to do it with Opera was to create a new window, open the Windows panel and drag&drop there until set, and then tile. I have the New window button in Windows panel, plus buttons and menus for tab management and tiling - all there in Windows panel.

Ctrl+Click in Opera's Windows panel in fact allows multiple selection. Hopefully Otter gains the same functionality rather sooner than later. I miss tab management like this a lot.

* When I'm done with something I often want to close something like 20 tabs all at once. In Opera this takes something like 1-2 seconds. In any other browser I'm clicking 20 times, hoping I don't misclick in the meantime.

If you have arranged the tabs in multiple windows, you can close the "done" window. If you have one set of tabs pinned and the "done" set unpinned, you can close all - the pinned ones will remain open.

Ctrl+Click in Opera's Windows panel in fact allows multiple selection.

As does selection with Shift and arrow keys.

If you have arranged the tabs in multiple windows, you can close the "done" window. If you have one set of tabs pinned and the "done" set unpinned, you can close all - the pinned ones will remain open.

That still doesn't work in any way other than through Opera's window panel if you start on something and you notice it's really starting to become its own independent thing. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about separating 20 tabs, bookmarking them or closing them. The only workable solution I'm aware of exists in Opera/Presto.

Vivaldi came out with a "beta candidate".

This snapshot is a "candidate" for a beta release. This means it should contain enough fixes to be labelled beta quality. We are not calling it beta yet, in case one of the recent fixes is incomplete or we missed something very important. If all goes to plan we will reissue it as a beta (a final change that allows us to update technical preview users). If not, we will put out further candidates with just a few more critical fixes.

Now for the other news from Iceland: Vivaldi is now officially 1.0 greek-letter-free

Vivaldi has launched a new web browser that is different enough to have a chance of success. Rather than targeting the mass market with a simplified browser, Vivaldi is trying to deliver more power to the people who live and work on the web, whether they use Windows, Mac OS X or Linux.

These people, the developers believe, are those who want to take notes and screen grabs while browsing, or view three or four different web pages in the same tab. People who want to be able to save and reload all their favourite sites as sessions. People who want to do everything via configurable keyboard commands, or use mouse-gestures instead.

I like their download screen (for future reference, screenshot here). There are some minor annoyances like having to click on the menu button, Windows style, instead of being able to hold down on it and I think the fonts seem to look a bit fuzzier than elsewhere on my system, suggesting it applies some extra or different anti-aliasing of its own volition.

Besides that -- well, bookmarks are obviously better than Opera/Blink's (nicknames!). The download panel is significantly more usable than the annoying @#$% they utilize in Opera/Blink and Firefox. Opening the mail panel does nothing for me and the windows panel is sorely lacking. On Firefox I've got a pretty decent alternative in Tab Tree, although it doesn't currently support selection of multiple windows by holding Ctrl or Shift. But Otter doesn't currently have a windows panel either, so I can't complain I suppose.

It doesn't have a Ctrl+Tab list like Opera/Blink does, and Ctrl + scroll zooms the surrounding GUI instead of the page. Which might be a pretty cool feature if it happened while your mouse was resting on the GUI, but it's pretty annoying when you're fully over the page.

In short, for me it hasn't really improved since the beta a few months ago but as a tertiary browser it's neck and neck with Opera/Blink. I think I actually prefer Opera/Blink because of the tab list (although that might be an opera:flags feature) given that I don't care about its lack of bookmarks. On the flipside, Vivaldi feels like it could be an actual competitor for being my default browser, which Opera/Blink clearly has no aspirations to, and that's something indeed.

Here is a guide to some presumably common questions about Vivaldi: http://www.webupd8.org/2016/04/how-to-get-flash-and-h264-to-work-in.html

Here's an interview with Ruari: https://opensource.com/life/16/4/young-vivaldi-browser-taking-its-cues-community

I'm interested in the fact that they have plans to go mobile:

When can we expect Vivaldi for mobile?

It's hard to give a timescale on that. We fully intend to produce a mobile version, but we really need to focus on getting out a final of our desktop version first. I will say that we will be looking at Android first, since iOS only lets you use their rendering engine, which severely limits what we can do.

I guess there technically should be a new thread, now that there is a release version and the browser is no longer TR. I am too lazy to make one though, and it probably doesn't matter.

I think I saw something about a 1.1 RC in my newsfeeds.

Is this also where news about the Vivaldi community goes? They've switched to NodeBB for their forum: https://vivaldi.net/teamblog/170-a-fresh-makeover-vivaldi-forum-gets-a-new-look

The improvement is palpable. Whereas previously it was rather slow for me to say the least, now it's as fast as DnD.

But Vivaldi totally sucks as a blogging platform ever since they started pre-screening posts. It takes days to publish a blog post there. Same goes for each edit. Pointless.

They do? I admit I don't keep the closest eye on their blog posts (mostly headlines) but that sounds awfully labor intensive.

Vivaldi says they now do high-contrast mode: https://vivaldi.net/teamblog/174-designing-the-developer-story-at-vivaldi-web-browser

I pointed out (to Opera) that Opera/Blink did not a few years back, but I wouldn't know how it's looking today.

https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-makes-history/

Vivaldi came out with an interesting new history feature.

I wonder when email is going to arrive in Vivaldi. I may have to give it serious consideration at that point, as my current email program (Poco Mail) is starting to have issues. 

Me too.
I wonder when they are going to support FreeBSD.
Opera M2 is still my primary e-mail software.

Mail is the main feature I have bee waiting for Vivaldi to release.   I moved my mail from Opera M2 to SeaMonkey just because... I think, they are the only browser with integrate mail by now.

What? Even Vivaldi hasn't implemented the mailer yet? This means it's either very hard to do or it's perceived as a superfluous nuisance in the industry in general. Likely there won't be anybody to do it. So the loss of Opera M2 is truly tragic, irreparable. (I still use it, by the way, though not exclusively.)

An interview with Jon von Tetzchner in an Estonian tech magazine/webmag https://am.ee/Jon-von-Tetzchner-Latitude59-intervjuu

Vivaldi joins the campaign for net neutrality https://vivaldi.com/blog/dont-let-monopolists-call-the-shots-save-the-internet/

#NetNeutrality allowed me to invent the web without having to ask for permission. Let's keep the internet open! http://battleforthenet.com

Testing browsers here again, since long time.

Looks like Vivaldi doesn't switch tabs with right-click+scroll like old Opera. Otter does. And Vivaldi doesn't have the secondary address bar.

And paste-and-go by keybind does not work when the address bar is switched off. Am I the only using browsers this way?