Multi-Search Alias
-
Hello! I am extremely happy to have discovered Vivaldi. As you can imagine, I am an old Opera user with much optimism for this project. I am writing with one very specific feature (power user!) request - more of an extension of an existing feature: the option to create a "Multi-Search Alias". It works exactly as a search alias except, instead of opening one tab with one site's results, it opens multiple tabs (in a tab stack, naturally), each tab therein containing the results of that search on a different site. So, when I am looking for books about haskell, I will type, perhaps "b haskell" and then up pops a tab group showing me the results of that search in all of my favourite book shops. In Opera 12 I could do this via a script. My migration to later versions of Opera happened only when I found a Chrome add-on which did something similar (but not using an alias, and cumbersome to set up). The way I see it, all that is required is to create a method by which one alias forwards the request to multiple existing aliases or addresses. The only modification to the existing UI would be to add another box to the "Add as Search Engine..." feature which might be called "Group Keyword". Perhaps that could even be a drop-down of existing Group Keywords. Not only would this be very useful to me, but I think many more people would like the idea once they "got" it. After all, if I want to buy a book, I want to look in many book shops. You could even make one of those modern videos showing a badly drawn person walking along a shopping street saying "If you were on your high street and wanted a new pair of shoes, you wouldn't just go into one shop, would you?". Sorry, I'm waffling, but you get the point Good luck with this browser - you have my support!
-
I find it amazing how many features were built into Olde Opera that I'm still discovering through user posts like yours… useful things I've never even thought of using in the ways some users do, and I can readily see the workflow advantages of having them. Given the depth of the usage perspective and creativity that went into Olde Opera and the presence now of many of the same people and thinking at Vivaldi, I have truly great hopes we'll see the same kinds of things emerge with the Vivaldi browser. Whether they are able to be put in place the same way or, for various reasons, emerge with different characteristics, a really useful and adaptable browsing tool is being created before our very eyes. But it will take time... perhaps a few years even... before some of the little (but highly useful) niche features get put in place - so patience will be the order of the day.
-
I agree - learning about ways of working is very interesting, and often leads to increases in productivity where they were not expected.
By the way, I would not call my request a "feature" of the old Opera browser - I did need to write a script (with the help of others) and I could not get it working via aliases (I had to assign a keystroke), nor could I get the tabs opening in a stack (I used a new window). As far as I am aware, no-one has done this, although it has been a year since I scoured the Chrome and Firefox add-on libraries. Opera introduced the concept of the search alias and, although it has now been adopted by everyone, there it has rested! To me, this is the next obvious step.
-
… By the way, I would not call my request a "feature" of the old Opera browser - I did need to write a script (with the help of others) and I could not get it working via aliases (I had to assign a keystroke), nor could I get the tabs opening in a stack (I used a new window). ....
Perhaps true, but the capacity for flexible usage (such as user scripts) was well-integrated into the basic browser design, hence you were able to do as much as you were. The result of such flexibility, for those who cared to take the time and effort, was a browser that could be shaped as an extension of the users themselves… how they thought, reflecting their preferences, adaptable to their unique work needs, and customizable via user effort in all manner of ways not necessarily ever thought of by the developers. The abandonment of this flexibility is what had such catastrophic implications for such users with almost all of the browser brands' recent pursuit of "simplicity" and the mass-market.
My hope is that Vivaldi's developers keep that kind of flexibility foremost in mind as they move forward with the browser. Your experience is a good example of what a user can do if the browser is blessed with the inherent flexibility of design and the wise employment of feature "hooks" on which a user can hang many different kinds of usage adaptations.
-
… By the way, I would not call my request a "feature" ....
Perhaps true, but the capacity for flexible usage (such as user scripts) was well-integrated into the basic browser design, hence you were able to do as much as you were. … The abandonment of this flexibility is what had such catastrophic implications for such users with almost all of the browser brands' recent pursuit of "simplicity" and the mass-market.
My hope is that Vivaldi's developers keep that kind of flexibility foremost in mind as they move forward with the browser. Your experience is a good example of what a user can do if the browser is blessed with the inherent flexibility of design and the wise employment of feature "hooks" on which a user can hang many different kinds of usage adaptations.
Hear, hear!
-