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Customizable search engines
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@KumarArnim1 I have never seen this or a screen like it appear in the Android version of Vivaldi, and I spent about an hour last night trying. Are you sure this is actually a thing in Vivaldi for mobile?
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@Viqsi This feature is available natively on Chromium for Android, and as a result, on most Chromium-based browsers such as Chrome, Opera, Brave... except Vivaldi. This means they deliberately removed it for some reason (hopefully a good one)...
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Oh wow, how is adding a custom search engine not a feature yet.
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@WatsinAnem They didn't remove it. The engine part of the browser and the actual browser part of the browser are not the same. it is not built in to the Vivaldi browser yet. Patience.
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It's now sorta-kinda-maybe in, as part of Vivaldi 5.3 on desktop and on mobile. I can't edit search engines directly on my phone yet, but I can edit them in my desktop browser and then they show up in my phone.
So... yay?
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This is just bizarre. You can sync search engines across devices, but only edit them on your desktop? This seems completely backwards. Why implement the harder feature (sync) than the easier one (edit locally)?
Also, many people don't like to log in to anything that they don't have to. Mainly for privacy, but also to reduce the number of network connections to help battery life.
Have to say, this new feature is weird (and unusable for me).
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Just to underline my point, here is how you can actually add custom search engines in Vivaldi Android:
It's literally as simple as putting a row into an SQLite database. You can do it yourself if your phone is rooted. This should be in the UI, it's so basic and simple.
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@Ayespy said in Customizable search engines:
@WatsinAnem They didn't remove it. The engine part of the browser and the actual browser part of the browser are not the same. it is not built in to the Vivaldi browser yet. Patience.
@Ayespy The engine that you are talking about is called Blink and Chromium is basically ungoogled Chrome browser using Blink. Chromium, the browser, is open-source. Vivaldi uses more than just Blink, the rendering engine. For example, if you navigate to vivaldi://settings page, you will see that it's identical to that of Chromium. This shows that under the hood, it's mostly Chromium source code and not just the rendering engine. Only a fraction of Vivaldi is proprietary code, which is mainly the UI (tab stacking, customization page...). In fact, this is detailed in their own article on the Vivaldi blog.
If you compile and install the latest version of Chromium, the custom search feature that I mentioned before is available.
It works as follows:- Visit a search engine webpage that conforms to OpenSearch description format
- The url is automatically recognized and the option to set that search engine as the default appears in settings
The source code could be borrowed and implemented in Vivaldi. As @KumarArnim1 pointed out, it was indeed present at some point in Vivaldi but they deliberately removed it.
The real question though is why did they remove it in the first place?
@adzarooni said in Customizable search engines:
This is just bizarre. You can sync search engines across devices, but only edit them on your desktop? This seems completely backwards. Why implement the harder feature (sync) than the easier one (edit locally)?
Also, many people don't like to log in to anything that they don't have to. Mainly for privacy, but also to reduce the number of network connections to help battery life.
Have to say, this new feature is weird (and unusable for me).
I also agree with this user. Not everyone needs search engine sync. They could have left the Chromium feature as a simple stop-gap solution. For most people using esoteric search engines like Searx, it's more than enough.
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@adzarooni said in Customizable search engines:
Why implement the harder feature (sync) than the easier one (edit locally)?
Because it's the other way around, actually - it was much easier to implement Sync than creating a proper search engines editor for Android.
But the latter will come too, of course - don't worry. Actually, in order to implement search engine sync, more changes had to be made on the desktop, rather than on Android.@adzarooni said in Customizable search engines:
It's literally as simple as putting a row into an SQLite database. You can do it yourself if your phone is rooted. This should be in the UI, it's so basic and simple.
I'd argue that signing up for a free account and using your desktop and the browser you're already familiar with is much easier than rooting the phone (not to mention the risk of voiding the warranty or even bricking your phone) and having to use the desktop anyway, with software that an average user has probably never heard of, and executing commands they don't even understand. But that's my opinion.
Nevertheless, syncing the search engines is just one step forward - but we're not stopping there. We want to offer more possibilities, and we will expand this feature in our future releases.
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@pafflick said in Customizable search engines:
Because it's the other way around, actually - it was much easier to implement Sync than creating a proper search engines editor for Android. But the latter will come too, of course - don't worry. Actually, in order to implement search engine sync, more changes had to be made on the desktop, rather than on Android.
You're clearly going to know more about the codebase than I am, so I'll take your word for it. However, I find it weird that a sync feature (with all of its complexities) is easier to implement than a few text boxes and a one-line SQL add command (yes I understand you have to sanitise inputs, etc). You also seem to have contradicted yourself a little since you admitted that a whole bunch of extra work had to be done on the desktop (not to mention the backend) to bring this feature to Android.
@pafflick said in Customizable search engines:
I'd argue that signing up for a free account and using your desktop and the browser you're already familiar with is much easier than rooting the phone (not to mention the risk of voiding the warranty or even bricking your phone) and having to use the desktop anyway, with software that an average user has probably never heard of, and executing commands they don't even understand. But that's my opinion.
That's not what I was getting at. I'm not suggesting that regular users use this method. What I was suggesting is that, from a coding point of view, not much work has to be done (text boxes and SQL add) to make this locally editable.
@pafflick said in Customizable search engines:
Nevertheless, syncing the search engines is just one step forward - but we're not stopping there. We want to offer more possibilities, and we will expand this feature in our future releases.
Thanks for that. I was expecting this to be the case but it just seemed the wrong way around to do things. I also hope I didn't come off as rude, the situation just seem odd to me.
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@adzarooni said in Customizable search engines:
You're clearly going to know more about the codebase than I am, so I'll take your word for it. However, I find it weird that a sync feature (with all of its complexities) is easier to implement than a few text boxes and a one-line SQL add command (yes I understand you have to sanitise inputs, etc). You also seem to have contradicted yourself a little since you admitted that a whole bunch of extra work had to be done on the desktop (not to mention the backend) to bring this feature to Android.
The developers working on Vivaldi Desktop are not the same as those working on Vivaldi Android. And syncable search engines has been requested for a quite a long time for desktop, so it makes sense that they have added that feature. And if search engine sync was in place for desktop it would also made sense to add it for Android, since the Android browser already had a sync implementation that could be extended with this new feature.
If the choice was between "add a search engine editor for Android" and "add search engine sync for the sole reason of being able to sync custom search engines to Android", then it would probably be more logical to just add a simple editor on Android. But given the full picture where Android can piggyback off of the desktop version...
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@adzarooni said in Customizable search engines:
I find it weird that a sync feature (with all of its complexities) is easier to implement than a few text boxes and a one-line SQL add command
You're missing the fact, that the Sync backend has already been implemented on Android before. So it was a matter of sending a few extra data rows using the existing code (I'm oversimplifying this here, ofc, but you get the idea).
Making a proper search engine editor/manager will be much more complicated and time-consuming, so for now you'll have to use a desktop. IMO it's better than not being able to customize the search engines at all, as was the case before the 5.3 update.@adzarooni said in Customizable search engines:
You also seem to have contradicted yourself a little since you admitted that a whole bunch of extra work had to be done on the desktop (not to mention the backend) to bring this feature to Android.
Yes, we had to rewrite the code for search engines on desktops to make them compatible with the Android code, to allow syncing them between these platforms. It was easier to rewrite the code on the desktop, so we went with that approach - yet still, it was a tremendous task nonetheless. Actually, we had to delay the release of the search engines sync because of that, and we're still finding and fixing some minor issues that were caused by this change.
Please excuse me, but I'm not seeing any contradictions in my post?
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@KumarArnim1 That's a bit of a heavy accusation to make, and possibly an inappropriate one - seeing as though that would be the sort of policy that led folks to abandon Opera. I've certainly had my own concerns in the past, and I do think the roundabout way this is doable is a little convoluted... but nonetheless, it's there and doable. And that alone speaks against any such "sponsorship protection" motivation - because if you're going to impose search engine choices anyways, what point is there to building a synchronization infrastructure for them? They're all going to be the same anyways, so just hardcode them, right?
So no, that suggestion doesn't hold up. It was dubious then and it's kind of absurd now. I'm mildly miffed at some of their choices of engineering priorities (is an editor really that hard?), but glad that there's at least something. No sinister sponsorship theories needed.
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@Viqsi I really didn't mean anything the wrong way. I am extremely sorry if it came out in the wrong way, didn't mean to hurt anyone was just proposing what I think. I understand my theory has a hell lot of flaws but it's not something I really want to accept as a matter of fact.
seeing as though that would be the sort of policy that led folks to abandon Opera. I've certainly had my own concerns in the past, and I do think the roundabout way this is doable is a little convoluted... but nonetheless, it's there and doable. And that alone speaks against any such "sponsorship protection" motivation -
Being a user, I definitely would love to hear a clarification about it from the higher ups because the only thing I might be demanding here is transparency. I understand there might be decisions a company might take to better it's products but atleast please consider posting a valuable synopsis even if the decision is about the company business to give them the money to sustain. I don't think anyone here is foolish enough to think a company can run without profits only on passion so we are more than welcome to accept it. PS:- the business part is a different matter to support my idea of transparency it has nothing to do with the comment i made above. Again I am extremely sorry for giving out a lame baked theory. I will try my best to refrain myself from doing it anymore.
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@KumarArnim1 So the problem with changing search engines now that sync was enabled, is nothing more than a complication. Purely technical. It is exacerbated by extensions on desktop and the action of extensions on the browser that devs did not realize when setting up the service. It has nothing whatever to do with Vivaldi's business preferences, and Vivaldi does absolutely nothing to prevent or limit your choice. The implementation of sync from desktop demonstrates this. In the case where a user does not use extensions (such as in my case) there was never any problem with selecting/changing search engines on desktop, and now with sync having them reflected in mobile.
Vivaldi DOES have business arrangements with search providers, so that they can earn money and keep the lights on and the doors open. But you, luckily, are not bound in any way by these arrangements. Your search preferences are entirely up to you, now that desktop and mobile can be synced.
I fully expect that Vivaldi will implement mobile-only search engine editing as well, as time and resources permit.
Volunteer Mod and tester on Windows 11 Home X64, i7-13700 @ 5.4 GHz turbo; Intel UHD 770 graphics; 1TB NV2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD; 32 GB DDR4-3200 RAM. Community Code of Conduct
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@Ayespy Believe me when I say it was extremely wrong on my part to judge Vivaldi without doing a proper research. I was a completely naive idiot to point out Vivaldi devs without any clue what's actually going around behind the scenes. My comment was nothing but a mere combination of nonsensical stuffs all the more reason why I removed that post. Thanks for understanding
@Ayespy said in Customizable search engines:
I fully expect that Vivaldi will implement mobile-only search engine editing as well, as time and resources permit
Yep I am totally sure they will figure it out one way or another. I wouldn't be surprised if version 5.4 came with editable search engines as matter of fact.
