Priorities?
-
I like Vivaldi a lot and it's my primary browser. But I'm starting to lose patience with the revision priorities, which seem to be on features that might be valued by a few people, with little attention to some basics. Dockable dev tools? Seriously? There have been repeated requests over at least two years for bookmarks to be available off the menu bar, sorted alphabetically, with the option to have folders at the top (as found on most other browsers). There's a kludgy workaround by creating a folder on the Bookmarks bar, but since neither of the sorting extensions for Chrome work (Sprucemarks and Supersorter), it's becoming less and less useful. Please pay attention to basics!
-
@Kerampf said in Priorities?:
Please pay attention to basics!
Please cultivate an awareness of reality -- "basics" means different things to different people. Who died & left you in charge as Arbiter in Chief?
-
@Kerampf said in Priorities?:
Dockable dev tools? Seriously?
I have seen at least as many posts about dockable developer tools as I have about a bookmarks menu. Whatever, the fact is there is a viable workaround for a Bookmarks menu while I am not so sure about a decent workaround for the former.
Personally, I need neither of these features. That's the point — every man and his dog has a different idea about what the priorities should be. To get a rough idea of user's priorities, sort the Feature Requests threads by the number of upvotes.
Then consider that the priorities for the developers may be influenced by other factors:
- Is there a workaround?
- How long would it take to implement?
- Does it fit with other plans in the pipeline?
Mail and sync are currently top priorities for the devs. Sync could well be a solution to the top feature request — export and backup settings — or easily implemented when that is finished.
@zouyang said in Vivaldi powers up the Start Page and adds docked Dev Tools:
Docked dev tools, finally it comes. It is indispensable for developers. Great for this news.
-
For some reason I wasn't getting notification of replies to my post. Have there been as many posts about dockable developer tools and about the bookmark menu? I have no idea, I don't spend time on the Vivaldi forum. But clearly, dockable developer tools are not basic. They're an advanced feature for developers, clearly a smaller group than general users. One of a browser's most fundamental tasks is getting to a website. Some major browsers have a bookmark menu already, or in Chrome's case, one can at least get an extension that does the job of alphabetizing and placing folders at the top. I have hundreds of bookmarks, and even with a good set of folders, some categories are large and finding where a bookmark more or less randomly landed slows down the act of merely going to a website. Creating subfolders can even aggravate the problem.
The bookmarks sidebar actually does alphabetize and allows you to set folders to the top. But the need to click each folder in order to open it actually makes that option worse. What I and others have been asking for is a flyout menu similar to the existing menus. Not being a programmer I don't know how hard it would be to convert the bookmarks sidebar into a menu, but clearly the underlying system is already there. Or, since Vivaldi is able to use most Chrome extensions, I'd like the team to make the existing Chrome extensions function in Vivaldi. @Pesala : yes, I've voted for the feature request, probably three times now: as I said, the request has been made repeatedly, and since 2+ years of requests haven't moved the needle, I decided to write a noisy post.
I'll mention that I don't use Microsoft's Edge browser at all, because it uses that system too and there's not even a workaround. MS claims Edge is the fastest browser, but it doesn't matter if it takes half the time for it to process a page if it takes five times as long to get to the bookmark!
@Steffie : Snide remarks are not helpful. You have your own reality awareness to cultivate, and I'm not claiming to be Arbiter in Chief, I'm a frustrated common user who, as I said, otherwise likes Vivaldi enough to make it my primary browser. I'll put my subject heading of "Priorities?" in a different manner: is the Vivaldi team primarily interested in developing a browser to meet the sophisticated needs of specialists and thus fill a niche, or is it interested in attracting general users as well? While there is I'm sure a need for a niche browser, the way Vivaldi advertises itself suggests the opposite: "A Browser for Our Friends," "It's your web. Surf it the way you want." But perhaps "our friends" and "you" means "specialists." If Vivaldi is meant to be a niche browser, eventually I'll find it as unusable as Edge. In that case, just say so.
-
@Kerampf The general idea is for Vivaldi to eventually be everything to everyone, pretty much. They've a small team, preoccupied with a couple of pretty major projects right now, and there's no telling when bookmarks handing - which is known to need work - will rise to the top of the priority pile again.
-
The top priority is clearly to cultivate patience, but a sense of reality would certainly be helpful towards that end.
Since the bookmarks panel has a search field, there is seldom any need to expand bookmark folders and subfolders. The Bookmarks panel is way easier to use than the Bookmarks Bar to quickly locate a long-lost bookmark.
- Very frequently used bookmarks are on my speed dial
- Frequently used bookmarks have nick names
- Occasionally used bookmarks are on my Bookmarks Bar
- Rarely used, bookmarks are only in the Bookmarks Panel.
-
I certainly appreciate the fact that a small team can easily have its hands full, particularly if they have ideas for great new features. However, the fact that bookmark handing has been known to need work for years (a moderator or team member said it was a known issue a couple years ago) lends support to my frustration about what's getting prioritized, and helps explain my impatience.
I happen not to use speed dial because I prefer having a home page (Gmail), placing important bookmarks on the bookmarks bar, but that was easy to set up and it's merely a matter of taste. I didn't know about nicknames, I'll look into how well that works for me. One drawback to the bookmarks panel is that it leaves one the choice between losing screen space or clicking (or pressing F6) every time one needs to get at something; and then one has to close open folders so there's less to scroll through. In any case, I have to adapt to how Vivaldi handles bookmarks, without the option to use the method most other browsers have taken since, I think, Netscape (yeah I'm that old).
Okay, that's enough out of me. I think my concern has been heard, and thanks for the reasonable responses.
-
@Ayespy That's your personal feeling, I don't think Vivaldi wants to be everything to everyone, because this is illusionary. And the team hopefully knows that.
As user you have to know what you need. If your top priority is e.g. a bookmarks menu out of the box and working sync, but you don't need any of Vivaldi's unique features, this browser is simply a bad choice right now. Go for chrome or opera instead.
Vivaldi has many advantages, one of them being custom modifications. The user is able to change style and functionality of the browser. For example you can have your beloved bookmarks menu right now if you want to, because someone went out of their way and made it for you (vivaldihooks). But you have to be willing to try to improve your experience, and Vivaldi enables you to do so. That's what makes Vivaldi special imo.