When did you start using Vivaldi and what’s your favourite feature?

xyzzy

Like @Ayespy , I've also been using Vivaldi since the first public Technical Preview.

Back in 2015, it was a dark time in the world of web browsers. Opera had completely changed direction, Firefox was in decline (and I detested the Australis UI), Google Chrome was eating up market share, and desktop web browsers were seeking feature parity with stripped-down mobile browsers. There were no longer any good cross-platform web browsers out there that catered to advanced desktop users.

Then came Vivaldi. It was different. It was built differently. It was designed with a completely different philosophy that put its users and usability first. Right from the start, it strived to set itself apart from the rest of the pack. In the beginning, Vivaldi was very rough (who builds a browser without a Bookmarks menu?!?) but it clearly had a lot of promise. It respected platform conventions; it was the only alternative browser on macOS that put the "close button" on the left side of the tab. Most importantly, @jon and the core development team were innovators; they invented many (most?) of the modern features (that other browsers copied) that we take for granted today, and they continue their legacy of innovation to this day... all while respecting their users and putting privacy above all else.

It's hard to pick a specific favourite feature. The Vivaldi browser is simply a delight to use. It has the power of Chromium but was built with privacy in mind. It comes bundled with features that work well together without the need for extensions... but can be further enhanced by installing extensions if required. It's easy to customize and configure to accommodate my needs and preferences. I can browse with it using only a mouse, and I can also browse with it without taking my hands off the keyboard. I love how easy it is to customize the Theme to my liking, and I also constantly use features like Tab Stacks and Tab Tiling. There's no other web browser like it.

NoMoreMozilla

I have been using Vivaldi for four days. I have used Firefox ever since it came out in the 90s. I am moving away from Mozilla and Firefox because of their "Internet Trust Initiative" which, as far as I'm concerned, is censorship. I want a free, open, uncensored web.

So far, I am most enjoying the start page, with its nested folders and the ability to use custom images for the web sites.

I thought the stacked tabs would be great, until I found that they are not persistent. Next, I'm going to investigate the web panels; they might give me what I was looking for from stacked tabs.

My biggest problem, so far, is that bold text on some web pages is indistinguishable from normal text. I have asked about this in the community forum, but I haven't found a solution yet.

Happy surfing, everyone!

Ornorm

@nomoremozilla Welcome into the Vivaldi family
Thanks for sharing about Mozilla's Information Trust Initiative. I wasn't aware of it... scary.
About the tabs stack, what do you mean by "not persistent"?

NoMoreMozilla

@ornorm said in When did you start using Vivaldi and what’s your favourite feature?:

About the tabs stack, what do you mean by "not persistent"?

I was hoping I could create a tab stack of related pages, then close everything, open Vivaldi later, then re-open the tab stack, I suppose by some kind of naming mechanism.

I know I can leave the tab stack open, close Vivaldi, and reopen Vivaldi with the tab stack still open, but I'm not the type who wants many tabs open all the time.

Pesala

@nomoremozilla Right-click on a tab-stack to bookmark it. You can also save sessions from the File menu.

Ayespy

@nomoremozilla Pretty sure if you save a stack of tabs as a session, then when you open the session they will still be stacked.

NoMoreMozilla

@pesala said in When did you start using Vivaldi and what’s your favourite feature?:

@nomoremozilla Right-click on a tab-stack to bookmark it. You can also save sessions from the File menu.

Thank you. I'll try it.

Stardust

When did you start using Vivaldi?
Using Vivaldi since very early version
But it is still my 2nd browser because Firefox just has more privacy-related settings and I prefer gecko engine with smooth scrolling and superior zoom.

What’s your favourite feature?
I love that Vivaldi is power-user oriented. I don't want a browser without bookmarks I don't want a browser when a core features are being replaced by addons.

favorite features:

square tabs
UI customization. You can change user interface zoom and use Vivaldi on the big TV
many other "small features", e.g. option to disable close tab button.

NoMoreMozilla

@ayespy said in When did you start using Vivaldi and what’s your favourite feature?:

@nomoremozilla Pretty sure if you save a stack of tabs as a session, then when you open the session they will still be stacked.

Thanks! I'll check it out.

Para-Noid

@nomoremozilla Have you tried tab tiling?
Tab tiling is one reason I use Vivaldi as my default browser.

OlgaA

Thanks everyone for your insightful posts!

We've decided to create more than one story based on your feedback, and in fact, the first one is already published on the blog. Take a look here: https://vivaldi.com/blog/10-tab-management-tricks/

More to come!

GeneAum

Recently retired after 35yrs IT. Been using FF since forever (Netscape, etc.). Never thought another browser would pull me away from FF - and have installed/tried many. But Vivaldi did just that.
Been using V for a couple months, and find the feature set robust, and have absolutely no problems on the computers which it's installed.
I'm suggesting friends/family/etc. to try it as well.

Not sure I can come up with a fav feature. The whole browser is a fav feature :*) But,,,,quick access to adjustments; the bar on the left for more quick access, and very important: the SPEED (of the browsing). Also, the conservation of space.
Just an all-round robust/well-constructed-UI feature set.

Thanks for all your effort!

Steffie

This thread was created 4 months ago, apparently, yet it only came to my notice today, when i saw it in "Unread" [which i peruse multiple times a day, every day]. Odd.

Anyway, i found this old note i wrote myself [per Notes Panel, natch] & thought it apropos here.

Vivaldi -- the new old Opera!!!

7/2/15 00:26: Cool - keep watching for V development... this might become the new old Opera!!!

22/2/15: I have now made Vivaldi my default browser. Even though it remains buggy, crashy, & still lacks much key functionality, it already has enough Pros compared to Chromium & Opera Dev that it is worthwhile taking this step.

31/3/15: Weekly updates have continued & it's just getting better & better. Stability hassles are substantially reduced, & it's just more & more a delight to use.

Like many other "older" Vivaldiers, i came to V from O12 via the crushing disappointment of O-Dev [which itself caused me some months of forlorn testing of a multitude of potential alternative browsers, all of which i found wanting]. Thank you to that long-forgotten O-Dev Forum poster who, amongst all our plaintive complaints about the humongous list of beloved O12 features & functions excluded from O-Dev, mentioned this interesting new browser they'd discovered, V. Curious, i followed the link, & was almost instantly reduced to a giggling mass of delighted disbelief that someone was building a browser just for me! party

My chief favourite is Tab-stacks...Tab-stacks and Mouse-gestures...Mouse-gestures and Tab-stacks.... my two favourites are Mouse-gestures and Tab-stacks...and Web Panels.... My three favourites are Mouse-gestures, Tab-stacks, and Web Panels...and Tab Panes.... My four...no... amongst my favourite.... amongst my favouritery...are such elements as Mouse-gestures, Tab-stacks.... I'll come in again.

I didn't expect a kind of Vivaldi Inquisition.

Nobody expects the Vivaldi Inquisition! Amongst my favouritery are such diverse elements as Mouse-gestures, Tab-stacks, Web Panels, and Tab Panes, and the Customisable UI - oh damn!

Para-Noid

@Steffie Now do you see the problems Vivaldi has created?
V offers the user so many features that sometimes it boggles the imagination.
A user can keep it really simple or they can go whole hog. I use only a few features but they are all I need.
Then there are those use a ton of features. What it all comes down to is how the user wants it. Each and every
one of us have our very own "personal" Vivaldi.

Vivaldi...just about the most perfect browser there is.

Priest72

Been using vivaldi for a couple of months or so now,My favourite feature is the ability to use a window background in the GUI and then i customise the tab colour to match and gives a nice effect..Wood effect being my favourite.

purgat0ri

I have been using Vivaldi since the first technical preview. I was a big fan of Opera before that (having bought my own copy back when you still could!) so I was intrigued by the arrival of a browser that seemed to be attempting to reclaim some/all of Opera's vaunted customisability. I was put off by the fact that it ran on Chromium, but promises of keyboard-driven browsing, tab stacks, and an impending mail client.

In 2020, I'm still waiting on that mail client ;), but features that ensure Vivaldi remains my default browser include:

Web panels: Having Notion live here, and be accessible with a few key strokes is amazing, and something I can't replicate with any other browser (except maybe Fluid, to some extent).
UI hiding: I mostly use the keyboard when browsing, so being able to hide unneeded GUI elements to free up more screen real estate for web content is incredibly valuable for me. It's also handy when I'm working with my therapy clients (most often kids) over Zoom and want to limit their ability to click on tabs and other GUI elements that could serve to distract them from the task at hand.
Quick commands: Greatly decreases reliance on the rodent.
Tab tiling: This is another one that has come into its own with teletherapy over Zoom for me. With tab tiling, I can split the browser between a browser or text on the one hand, and a worksheet/some other task I want my patient to complete.

I use very many more of Vivaldi's features on top of the ones just listed, but these are the ones that are probably my 'killer apps' within the app. They are the features for which I have persisted with Vivaldi despite how un-fun it was to run it on old, slow hardware, or the fact that it doesn't support some of the nice media-decoding or native-performance boons of Safari.

BoneTone

I've been using Vivaldi since V1.x - I don't recall exactly, but it instantly became my primary browser, filling a hole that had been dug years prior. I'm not sure when it occurred, right then or later on, but it feels more like home than Presto did -- Presto had too many sites that wouldn't work. Every browser has sites that don't work in it; Vivaldi has very few in my experience, even less that matter.

My favorite feature is the customizablility -- the "browser that adapts to you." Functionality that I use is highly configurable, functionality I don't want can be disabled or hidden. This is root of Vivaldi's superiority,

I make extensive use of:

panels - being able to create your own panels is clutch, having them behave just like the native panels as if they were part of the browser to begin with. The panel is pretty much always open in my browser, and it's easy to use with just the mouse or just the keyboard, and obviously both combined. My custom panels run the full height of my fullscreen display, and include websites, mods, internal pages and extensions. It is one of the most useful pieces of functionality Vivaldi offers, creating highly productive workflows that just aren't possible elsewhere.
bookmark management - having the ability to see two distinct views of my bookmarks simultaneously in a tab and in the panel makes bookmark management much more powerful than other browsers. There is room for improvement here, if there weren't we're simply not thinking enough; but anything that hasn't already been submitted as a feature request already, I'll submit when I have time or think of a new feature.
tabs & tab stacks - I put the tab bar on the left and the panel on the right; on wide displays this helps to center the content on the screen. The window panel makes large numbers of tabs manageable, and Vivaldi is more than capable of handling hundreds, even thousands of tabs. Renaming a tab group before saving it so they get saved into a bookmark folder of the same name is great. As is moving a group to a new window before saving that window as a session. All these little things add up to supreme tab management.
keyboard shortcuts - Vivaldi exposes way more actions than other browsers for assigning custom & multiple keyboard shortcuts. This enables very productive workflows either with the keyboard only, or when combined with the mouse. Vivaldi should always be thinking about what other actions to expose, especially when introducing new features.
mouse gestures - again Vivaldi exposes a ton of actions. Just like with keyboard shortcuts, coming up with a semantic scheme where parts of a gesture (or shortcut) have meaning makes it easy to utilize the large number of actions avaliable for customization without the need for constantly referencing a cheat sheet (though a cheat sheet helps the first few weeks after you customize everything). Configuring a lot of actions enables highly productive workflows either with the mouse only, or in combination with the keyboard. Again, Vivaldi should always be thinking of new actions to expose, especially when introducing a new feature.
sync - now that the Android version is available, Vivaldi is my primary on my phone as well. Being able to create bookmarks that sync to the desktop, share tabs directly to other instances of Vivaldi, or share tab groups indirectly, Vivaldi has dramatically increased my productivity on my phone. There is of course much room for growth, the Android version being so new, with extension support being by far the number 1 thing I desire; but it's already impressively mature.
speed dials - I typically have about a half dozen speed dials at any given time; it varies depending on my work, with a few permanent speed dials along with a few dedicated to current projects. Being able to toggle any bookmark folder as a speed dial was a brilliant design choice.
mods - modifications are a specific type of customizablility, and a very powerful one at that -- a power not shared by most browsers.
extensions - without support for extensions Vivaldi would have a lot more work on its hands. Though I understand the move to build a native blocker for ads & trackers, I don't expect it to ever reach parity with the tools I use (a complete replacement for uBlock Origin, uMatrix, uBO Extra, NanoBlocker, Decentraleyes). Stylus, though not as critical as blocking tools, is an essential tool for me, and is far more than just a dark reading function. This is also not a complete list of the extensions I use.
custom search engines - I have a couple dozen or more custom search engines defined. Being able to access pretty much any search tool on the internet through the search field in the address bar definitely saves time. The more you define, the more time you save; I even define multiple engines per search tool sometimes by using different search parameters. I also define a nickname for every engine, as this improves the usability for keyboard workflows.
theming - functions like this may seem trivial to some, but that's the beauty of Vivaldi. As I already mentioned, the functionality I don't want can easily be disabled or hidden. There are plenty of things Vivaldi can do that I don't care about. What's important is that it does do the things I care about well. The customizablility of Vivaldi keeps unused functionality from feeling like bloat. Furthermore, other people do find use for them, and that brings me to the next feature I make extensive use of...
the community - some might say the community preceeded the browser. The forum is my primary means of interacting with the community. The people here are incredibly helpful. It's among the very best online forums, I wouldn't spend as much time here as I do if that weren't true. The diligent assistance people provide, the additional functionality provided for Vivaldi itself through mods, all these positive contributions inspire me to give back by assisting others when I can, and submitting bugs & feature requests. Time is limited, I can't do this everywhere, but this is a community worth my time.

Cheers,
BoneTone

Pesala

I started using the first Technical Preview in January 2015.

My favourite feature is shortcuts (keyboard and mouse gestures). My most used gestures are:

History Back = GestureLeft
History Forward = GestureRight
Scroll Page to Top = GestureUp (Home)
Scroll Page to Bottom = GestureDown (End)
Panel = GestureRight, GestureLeft (F4)
Settings = GestureLeft, GestureRight (Alt+P)
Open Link in Background Tab (Over a Link) = GestureDown
Open Link in New Tab (Over a Link) = GestureUp, GestureRight
Paste and Go = GestureUp, GestureRight
Reopen Closed Tab = GestureDown, GestureUp

Catweazle

I came across Vivaldi in 2016 and I was hooked on it from the first moment, seeing its great features that differentiated it significantly from any other browser I have tried (almost all). I have seen from the beginning the great potential it has, adding a community, which has almost become family.
Although at the beginning in its v.1 it was not very stable and sometimes I had a dead birdy on the screen, until today I have never regretted using this beauty, where I only see 2 failures, it is tremendously addictive and after using it, any other browser seems Tatty.
The functions that I use the most are the Web Panel, the notes, the vertical tabs that no other has, apart from being able to stack them and view several tiled pages.

Steffie

@BoneTone
I luuuuuurve reading stuff like this! What a really well-considered passionate post -- fabbo, teehee.

@BoneTone said in When did you start using Vivaldi and what’s your favourite feature?:

tabs & tab stacks - I put the tab bar on the left and the panel on the right

Oh noooo, now you've done it [now i might need to play around all over again]! That used to be my arrangement too [& its reverse], but for a comparatively long time now i have them both on the rhs.

Since my recent discovery of the mod to reduce pinned tabs to an iconised grid, my panel is [mostly] closed [but visible], & my adjacent tab-column [at max default width] has static thumbnails off but hover thumbnails on. Prior to my discovery of that mod, i kept the panel open all the time, displaying the Window Panel which i used as a defacto TreeStyleTab functionality, & i kept the tabs-column minimised.

My primary reason for the decision to place both those features on the same side was ergonomic; to minimise the amount of trans-screen mousing i needed [my original placement was one on each side, for a sense of aesthetic balance, but soon enough the ergonomics won out].

@BoneTone said in When did you start using Vivaldi and what’s your favourite feature?:

custom search engines - ... Being able to access pretty much any search tool on the internet through the search field in the address bar definitely saves time. The more you define, the more time you save

This is a magnificent feature, without which i could not have created this essential one: http://www.montypython.net/search/search.php?q=%s
And there was much rejoicing...

@Catweazle said in When did you start using Vivaldi and what’s your favourite feature?:

tremendously addictive ... any other browser seems Tatty