From me to you: A dev’s take on Vivaldi
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A recent addition to the team, developer Trond Kjetil reflects on switching to Vivaldi and working on older bits of code to improve performance.
Click here to see the full blog post
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I love webpanels, but as I'm using macOS, there is a serious problem since the start. All webpanels reload if you toggle the UI, or add/remove any webpanel. – I'd really like to see this fixed.
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improving [...] the URL input field
While there is still much to be done on this front, thank you for working on it.
[pwa] are gaining traction [...] That’s a golden opportunity for Vivaldi’s Web Panels.
I absolutely agree! I would love to see them get more attention. (Context menu, zoom controls, and extension support seem the most obvious issues with them, if you don't mind me weighing in).
Another feature that whets my dev appetite is Notes. While a great feature that I use a lot, we can certainly make it fly even higher with some extra time, love and attention.
I'll plug some mods made by the community that do wonders for this: https://forum.vivaldi.net/post/279203 by @tam710562 and https://forum.vivaldi.net/post/175520 by me.
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I love and use most of the features. The only thing I miss now is the iOS app. Even a very basic browser with sync would do!
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Focus point for next 6 months:
Tab switching and opening should be smooth. This is vivaldi performance weak point.Example:
Keep ctrl and hit "t" 20 times as quick as you can. wait and observe.
Now do the same on opera or chrome.Opera and Chrome handles this instantly with high fps. Vivaldi can hang for a few seconds and struggles with displaying something that resembles animation.
Improving that would help me spread the goodness of Vivaldi.
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due to lack of customization (yup, still) all the effort put in sync (and many other gadgets) was in vain, without basics gadgets mean nothing
there's still so much to do before first stable release, but I hope you'll get there soon -
@jacekn: I highly agree with this! Also, opening a new private window (CTRL + SHIFT + N) is also a lot slower than in other browsers. It takes Vivaldi maybe two seconds to open it. Other browsers open it almost instantly.
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@zakius: I am curious, what basics are missing?
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@jacekn I can't confirm this, opening SD tabs in Vivaldi has been blazingly fast and solid since 2.0, contrary to Opera with which you can puke because of the constant fading in/stroboscope effect designed to cover up their huge, unsolved performance problems behind it (white flashing). Vivaldi is every day getting more and more solid, while Opera is falling apart to pieces as of late.
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@jacekn: Hi, I add 21 Tabs in < 1 second on Linux laptop and some more on my Workstation booted in Windows 10 Pro. May you create a new thread about with your System specs and so forth.
May a bit off topic but performance is king.Cheers, mib
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Hi Trond Kjetil Bremnes, as you have already said improve performance, the speed never enough us.
For the Web Panels, in addition to that already requested by others, i would like:- possibility to reload the panels after a certain time, configurable setting for each individual Web Panel, as some should not be reloaded;
- to make the extensions work inside the Web Panels;
- the possibility of loading a Web Panel at the start of Vivaldi.
Thank you.
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As much as I like Vivaldi and as much as it's been my main browser since before 1.0, I have to agree that the UI needs improvement in terms of performance.
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@killchain: True
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I"m interesed in that the web panels were able of hiibernate, I open something a web panels with the intention of check something and late i don"t give use, and the unique form that hibernate the web panels is close the browser and open the browser again.
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@npro: True story, I really agree with you, Opera since the update in that add the apis of Facebook, Whatsapp, Vkotact, Telegram the browser have big problems of performance.
And they try to solved the problems with changes in the UI... wtfSorry for my bad English
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@vakkotaur: Well I'm intersed in that they will add syncro with all options, all web panels and all custom themes. All things... It's a joke...
But the others basic things I believe that is reference to the mobile synch...Yes the people are angry because they want a Vivaldi Mobile and synch with this...
I'm fine without Vivaldi Mobile (for now), I use Firefox Browser that is very very fast and I add complements. -
Thank you for your work.
Indeed, Notes is a very important feature that sets Vivaldi apart. In the future it would be great to see some enhancements in the form of text resizing or other simple text formatting options as mentioned by @LonM .
Excellent work so far.
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Hi Trond,
Thanks for sharing your experience. I never thought I would use the Notes feature (I disregarded it in the old Opera), but it's incredibly tempting (and powerful). I do have a question, though.
If I start using it regularly, it will become a core part of my workflow. How can I be sure that the notes are safely saved and backed up ? And I will be able to access them, and search them, years from now ? Without risking to nuke them when updating Vivaldi, or refreshing my profile ?
Is it even reasonable to use Notes that way ? Or are they meant for more short-term use ?
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Since a couple of days ago I wanted to send you a message to thank you for the quality of your work and of your communication. It's of stellar quality. It's awesome
I also love the idea of PWA in panels ! That's excellent !
As of what you should focus on, I already stated that I think the URLBar should be rewritten from scratch, even if I understand it's not possible, and that you are doing your maximum.
For the rest, I would agree with the rest of the comments : opening and switching tabs feels very slow to me. Not native at all.
And I wouldn't be against a bit of love for the menubar too -
Great!
Could you please also work on New Tab Generation speed? It was really slow in the first iterations of Vivaldi and it's gotten better throughout the years but it's still slow on older systems and laptops.
If you go back to Opera 12.x and hold "Ctrl+T" for 3 seconds, you will notice how fast and responsive it was when it spawned more than 20 tabs in a jiffy! But do that in Vivaldi and you WILL feel the jerky and laggy behavior of Vivaldi when generating new tabs in an instant.