How can Vivaldi staff says V is about flexibility & customization? (Or why V should consider independence from Chromium)
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I have loved Opera for more many years. Back before there was Chrome. While there was still Netscape. When I heard that Opera's co-creator created Vivaldi, I was so excited.
Jon McCullough, Vivaldi's Growth Marketing Manager, wrote a nice article on Quora about Vivaldi. https://www.quora.com/How-did-Vivaldi-become-famous/answer/Jon-McCullough-1
One thing he said was that
Vivaldi embraces flexibility, customisation
I really wish it were true. But it seems to me (and correct me if I’m wrong) that Vivaldi is not as customizable as Firefox. For instance, I use the Tab Tree add-on on Firefox. By doing so, the tabs on the top are no longer there. But the best a Chromium-dependent browser (i.e. Vivaldi) can do is to install an extension near the URL bar. Sadly, Vivaldi’s customizability doesn’t go as far as completely removing the row of tabs.
Do you have plans on becoming independent from Chromium/Blink_engine code? Because it seems the only way to really attain flexibility is to be free of the Chromium/Blink restrictions.
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@nopera said in How can Vivaldi staff says V is about flexibility & customization? (Or why V should consider independence from Chromium):
For instance, I use the Tab Tree addon (Tab Tree (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/tab-tree/)) on Firefox. By doing so, the tabs on the top are no longer there. But the best a Chromium-dependent browser (i.e. Vivaldi) can do is to install an extension near the URL bar. Sadly, Vivaldi’s customizability doesn’t go as far as completely removing the row of tabs.
I don't know that extension but you don't need an extension to move tabs to (either) side, see Tools/Settings/Tabs.
If you want more "tree" features there is https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/15332/tree-tabs
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@nopera How do you propose Vivaldi become "independent" of Chromium?
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@nopera You can hide the tab bar. Settings, Tabs.
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@Ayespy I'm not a coder, but isn't the answer to basically start from scratch? I really don't know. All I know is that Vivaldi's freedom to customize is limited by Chromium. Maybe starting from scratch is unnecessary.
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@nopera said in How can Vivaldi staff says V is about flexibility & customization? (Or why V should consider independence from Chromium):
One thing I've noticed immediately is that the tabs are mini-snapshots of the page.
That sounds like you have activated "Tab Thumbnails". If you decide you don't like them you can disable them (lower down on same settings page as TAB position).
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@TbGbe Thanks for letting me know. Seeing just text (i.e. disabling tab snapshots) may come in handy there are many tabs open.
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One specific limitation of the Chromium/Blink engine, noted by the developer of the Tab-Tree that @TbGbe linked to, is this (https://forum.vivaldi.net/post/152139).
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Like anything else in the real world, a particular browser's choice of a specific rendering engine involves a tradeoff... in fact, a lot of tradeoffs. A primary issue is whether to develop one's own rendering engine or adopt some existing engine already "out there", and that issue involves considering the significant costs of designing one's own engine, getting it widely adopted by websites that narrowly sniff for such things, and keeping the engine compatible with the myriad of sites that refuse to code for anything other than the 'big name' rendering engines. Olde Opera fought this battle for years with Presto, all too often unsuccessfully. In the old Opera forums, one of the biggest recurring problems was users experiencing sites that refused to load on their Opera browser without use of a custom user agent or other kinds of subterfuge, and even then, some sites simply were coded in ways that causes the engine problems - so the browser designers were always playing catch-up with work-around patches.
When a browser employs an existing rendering engine (like chromium), it also acquires many of the limitations of that engine's architecture and internal design choices. Some of those limitations can be overcome in the browser code applied over the engine, whereas others are more foundational and thus harder to overcome without extreme design efforts. Consequently, choices have to made where to employ one's finite browser design resources and when. Given enough time and effort, remarkable progress can be made in some areas to overcome apparent engine limitations; in other areas, not so much so.
This is why Vivaldi is a work in progress. However, most of that progress is cumulative, and with time, more and more limitations will be overcome, unique features added, and customization improved. Even with Olde Opera's use of its own rendering engine, it took years to achieve what many users fondly look back to at the version 10-12 era. I believe many great things are yet to come with Vivaldi, largely because similar creativity and talent that was poured into Olde Opera now largely exists at Vivaldi.