Search suggestions: a privacy-driven feature in Vivaldi
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No other browser gives you as much fine-grained control over your searches as Vivaldi. Have you ever wondered why there are so many options when it comes to search suggestions?
Click here to see the full blog post
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@ruario Nice article.
I would love to be able to use the dedicated Search field, but i can't with the current UI design. I do not routinely use V in full-screen mode [& do not want to have to], but instead i use it taking full screen height & ~50% screen width. Because i cannot configure V to show the Extensions "field" / row separate to the Address / Search row, nor can i have the Search field separate to the Address bar [eg, ideally in the Status Bar, which i permanently show], any time i show the Search field it eats up most of the Extensions row space... which is unacceptable given i want my specific Extension icons permanently visible.
This UI limitation is a pity, coz it forces me to have to sacrifice something, which unfortunately is always the Search field. The article reminds me of benefits arising from using the dedicated Search field, hence i am reminded of my undesirable compromise.
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@ruario I've tried out POST method with ddg, but I still get history entries for the search terms on latest snapshot. Maybe I understood this part of the article wrong though. I entered search terms from both the search and the address field to test.
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@steffie All of your issues can be solved with a custom modification to the browser – similar modifications have been done before and the code is available. Just depends if you are willing to implement.
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@luetage said in Search suggestions: a privacy-driven feature in Vivaldi:
Just depends if you are willing to implement
Thank you. I suspected that might be the case, but i am ignorant in these matters; furthermore the prospect of losing the mod & needing to repeat it each update is unappealing to me.
If my naive assumptions above are wrong, & in fact there's a nice way i could make the mod once rather than repeatedly, then the pain of trying to learn /understand how to do it would be worthwhile.
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@steffie Since the whole application is replaced on update, the mods must disappear too. But there are scripts for all operating systems to automate the process of patching the mods in again. Whenever an update comes around it just takes me one command in terminal to get up and running again. I'd say 10 seconds at most since it closes and restarts Vivaldi. But yeah, you will have to invest time to set this up.
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The search suggestions are in fact so safe, that I can't get them working, even when I checked to allow them. When I really need a suggestion, I have to go directly to google.com. It's one of the few things that really bother me, about this browser.
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@luetage said in Search suggestions: a privacy-driven feature in Vivaldi:
you will have to invest time to set this up
Time i have, but coding nous i severely lack. I know we have a dedicated forum topic [maybe several, by now] on modding V, but i gave up trying to follow it a very long time ago... too far above my head, & nowadays too hard to efficiently search for some procedure specific to my installation, & my desired UI layout.
I imagine that eventually such UI optimisations will become available in Settings.
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EDIT: I found this https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/21417/linux-bash-script-adding-the-modding-patch-to-vivaldi-installations ... which looks invaluable, but also this https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/10549/modding-vivaldi?page=1Before you read on, be aware that you need knowledge of CSS and/or JavaScript, depending on what you intend to do. If you have no experience whatsoever, this is not for you.
...which sums up my dilemma.
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@dogbehu @dogbehu: Do you have a suggestion url set in settings?
If not, use this URL: https://www.google.com/complete/search?client=chrome&q=%s
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I wish vivaldi would support OpenSearch when including a new custom search. This could automatically add search suggestion if available.
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@luetage: I tried it myself now. In DDG, the URL saved in history is clean but I see that DDG is updating the page title with the search terms and this gets stored in history. However if you try the same thing with startpage the history entry is clean.
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@dogbehu: We do not have the search suggestion information prefilled for Google, only for other search engines. You can enter it yourself if you want search suggestions with Google
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Useful Tip: You can give any URL you want as the suggestion url.
Example: I can set duckduckgo as the suggestion provider in a custom search engine for the vivaldi forums.
This could be useful if:
- The engine you want to use doesn't offer suggestions
- You want to search with a particular service, but don't want to send them everything you type for suggestions
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@ruario: Moral of the story. Always test and double check statements, so good on you luetage!
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@lonm: Indeed, this is a very interesting tip. Thanks for sharing!
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Some search engines allow users to use the POST method for search (e.g. the privacy focussed, Startpage).
The correct spelling is focused and the comma should be removed for grammatical reasons.
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@luisanton True, but adding a POST method isn't always working; see
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/27384/unable-to-create-search-on-urban-dictionary -
This is an excellent, well-thought-out feature set. Thank you.
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18th
Good to know what POST is for -
@ruario: Of course. Why make it simple, that would be boring
@LonM: Thanks, that got it working.