Speed Dial Customisation & Iteration
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So as an avid Opera user for well over a decade now that is seriously considering permanently switching to Vivaldi I thought this thread might provide some useful feedback for the developers. There is one central and singular issue that is preventing me from migrating from modern Opera to Vivaldi on a permanent basis and that is the customisation options and iteration of Speed Dial. Vivaldi's Speed Dial is excellent in terms of its concept and evolution from the Speed Dial that originated with Opera. You have a slick and sleek interface with the innovation of multiple Speed Dial sections (just wonderful; I'm still in awe that Opera never introduced such a fantastic idea) but quite crucially there are currently zero customisation options for Speed Dial and we're in the dark as to whether those options are in the development pipeline. For example there is no option to change the Speed Dial background. No option to customise zoom on the tiles to determine how many tiles are visible in the interface. No option to remove the plus Speed Dial button. You hit Vivaldi's Settings and Speed Dial doesn't even have its own dedicated section in Vivaldi's Settings interface. This may sound like an issue that shouldn't hold much priority but Opera practically built its empire with Speed Dial and Vivaldi in theory and concept has a superior evolution of Speed Dial but at the moment it feels like an early prototype of that evolution as opposed to something finished. I totally understand that Vivaldi is still only on Technical Preview 2 and we're seeing weekly snapshots that iterate this version of the browser (meaning there's months and years to come where Vivaldi is only going to get rapidly and substantially better) but I'm being completely honest here when I say that because Speed Dial isn't in finished form I'm unable to confidently switch from modern Opera to Vivaldi. I'd love to switch because Vivaldi is being supported and evolving at a faster rate than Opera ever did with a much stronger core and some amazing concepts introduced in the Technical Previews; but until Speed Dial is iterated and improved I just can't make the switch. Does anyone else remotely feel the same? I keep downloading the new snapshots every week hoping to see a newer iteration of Speed Dial and am yet to see one. Are improvements to Speed Dial coming in the development pipeline?
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Of course, many improvements of Speed Dial are inevitable. That said, if it took a long time to improve much, I would not mind.
Vivaldi is already my default browser, but there are things I am VERY eager to see introduced/fixed, so that I can actually uninstall some other browsers (and email clients)
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I need to be able to place the bookmarks bar vertically on the right. I need to be able to have favicons only on it - no labels.
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I need a rugged, competent email client built in, and I need to be able to set it as the system MAPI client.
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I need a couple of the pages I have to use for my work EVERY DAY to not crash 100% of the time.
Then I'd like to see Contacts sync with Google Contacts, a calendar that syncs with Google, some more UI customizability, smoother, more predictable, more reliable bookmark operation (including Speed Dial), better speed and resource efficiency, annoyances like "open in background tab" and poor tab differentiation (with vertical tabs) solved. I'd like it to start up quicker, have better zoom controls, allow me to use my own PDF plugin, clean up a couple of glitches with tab stacking and pinning, stay open when last tab is closed, permit selection of startup mode and home pages, including start in Speed Dial and Speed Dial as homepage, etc.
THEN I would like to see speed dial improved.
THEN I'd like skins.
So I'd love for speed dial to be awesome as well. But not FIRST thing.
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I will agree with the comment about the speed dial.
For me (and I think for many people) it is the start page, and starting point in any browsing activity.
Therefore, I agree that it should be improved.
Some of the suggestions:
1. Option for custom thumbnail image (already mentioned in another topic) - it will allow faster loading of the page, and will be more distinctive to the users than full page snapshots.2. Option for custom number of rows and columns.
3. Page should be limited with number of tiles (limited with previous option), and not to scroll indefinitely.
4. Option for more folders is excellent but it could be improved with mousewheel scroll of folders in speed dial (like Maxthon).
5. Fixed place for speed dial tiles ie. swapping just the two tiles and not moving all the following tiles when we move one tile (this can be really frustrating for people who are accustomed to position of their dials).
I apologize if I put too much focus on speed dial page, but I have noticed that browsers do not have the complete solution for this. There are extensions, but not the complete out of the box solution, which could be big advantage.
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I like vivaldi
[ul]
- Speed dials need to be fast and accurate.
- To be fast and accurate, users need to identify bookmarks/folders quickly.
- To identify bookmarks quickly, custom thumbnails with distinguishable colors/visualisations are needed.
[/ul]
Right now, the majority of my speed dials all look the same: small text on white backgrounds.
My experience may not be universal, but there sure are a lot of websites with white backgrounds out thereHint: See how Opera 29 does speed dials.
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Features are coming.
They have to redo 20 years of evolution in few months, so they have to choose what to implement first and what can wait a little more. SD is in a decent shape but is far from perfect looking at the cusomizzation options.
That said some of the customizations you are looking for are already possible with solme little extra tweaking.
Take a look here https://vivaldi.net/en-US/forum/all/2822-tips-tricks
you will find the links to many suggestions an threads about the customizations already possible
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Awesome! Thanks!
For the benefit of those who came to this thread looking for ways to change speed dial thumbnails, please see:
https://vivaldi.net/en-US/forum/all/2777-adding-custom-thumbs-in-speed-dial -