About that browser comparison by Vivaldi...
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For those not on the know yet, the Vivaldi Team recently published this page comparing itself to Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, Opera, and Brave: https://vivaldi.com/compare
Now, due to the nature of these kind of comparisons, I think it is very fair to say that it was going to end up biased towards Vivaldi.
But to be frank, at times some of these comparisons seem to be grasping at straws with no benefit whatsoever or no clear purpose, and in some cases, the comparisons are outright wrong.Take two of the first few comparisons: "Unlimited tab groups" and then, again, "Unlimited tabs in split-screen". I have no idea why there was a need to even mention these been unlimited. For the latter, none of the other browsers even have a tab tiling feature, so adding the "unlimited" just seems unnecessary; simply comparing the presence of tab tiling would have been enough.
As for the former, as far as I can tell, you are also able to create as many tab groups as anyone would probably reasonably want to create in both Chrome and Safari (maybe Edge, Opera, and Brave too, but I can't test those), so the "unlimited" really doesn't adds much value to the comparison; I suppose that's why the comparison claims partial support, but I think the page could instead highlight that Vivaldi let's you display tab stacks in a few different ways - like they did with their first comparison point of having two-level tab stacks.
But then there are some comparisons that seem to be outright wrong, take the "save tabs for later" comparison. I believe this is referring to the reading list. This one confounds me, because I know for certain that all the browsers in the comparison have it. Safari in particular, which the comparison strangely says it doesn't support, has in my opinion a far superior implementation of this since it also let's you save the page for offline reading.
Another example of this is "bookmarks manager" comparison. Every browser in the comparison absolutely has a bookmark manager, but here the comparison only claims that Vivaldi and Firefox have one, while the other 5 either have "partial support" (which for such a feature doesn't really make much sense) or no support. Are they as robust as the one found in Vivaldi or Firefox? No, but the fact remains that they do have one; in fact, here's another comparison page that was made by Firefox for that exact same point where every other browser is correctly marked as having a bookmarks manager.
This is a minor one, but in the "editable toolbars" comparison, it is claimed that only Vivaldi and Firefox have it, but Safari also has this (in fact, it has had this for far longer than Vivaldi has been around, given how it is a standard feature of built-in macOS apps, such as Finder). You could even change the placement of the address bar like so.
This would mean the "custom address bar placement" comparison is also technically wrong, but I think that was concerned about being able to place the navigation toolbar at the bottom, which no one besides Vivaldi can do, so I'll let it slide, but perhaps it would be best to highlight this fact in the comparison.Lastly, there's the "universal browser search" comparison. There's nothing wrong with this one per se, because I'm not entirely sure what it's referring to about Vivaldi. If it's about quick commands, then yeah sure, nothing is wrong, but in that case, why not call the comparison "quick commands" accordingly? On the other hand, if it is strictly referring to searching things about the browser, like bookmarks, open tabs, or browser keyboard shortcuts, then the other browsers deserve to be marked with partial support as well; Firefox, Chrome, and Safari all have the ability to search bookmarks and open tabs through the address bar (I presume Edge and Brave would likely have this as well).
Overall though, there's no way else for me to put this, this page feels rather disingenuous to me. Though frankly, I feel this same way about Firefox's comparison page, or really for any comparison page made by anyone that aims to compare their own product againts others.
After all, these kinds of comparisons always strive to put the product of the benefactor in the best light possible by glaringly putting to comparison those features which the competing products obviously will not have (in this case, that would be two-level tab stacks, tab tiling, the built-in mail client and calendar); admittedly though, this is the purpose of comparison pages.
I don't doubt that the Vivaldi Team should be able to proudly present what's unique to Vivaldi. But the way comparison pages highlight them always brings that feeling of disingenuity to me.
Now, that feeling of disingenuity could be remedied by pointing to where Vivaldi is still lacking compared to other browsers, but I now that this would run counterintuitively to what comparison pages are meant to achieve in the first place, which is why no one has done it. But I think this could be spun off in Vivaldi's favor as well.
What I'm suggesting to add to the comparison page has already been kinda done minutely in this blog post, where the Vivaldi Team admitted to their own "browser fail of 2021". To expand on it, the comparison page could include places where Vivaldi falters, but aims to improve, which I think could dispel the disingenuous feeling I mentioned with sincerity.
Let's take as an example the "Mobile OS availability" comparison by Firefox's page. While there it was used to highlight that neither Safari or IE are readily to all popular mobile OSes, it could be used by Vivaldi to emphasise a commitment to eventually reach full mobile OS availability, like it was done in the blog post. That would entail expanding the comparison table indicators from just marking "full support", "partial support", and "no support", but also "pipeline"/"in progress" (similar to how some feature requests are marked this way or as in the forum).
Another example of something that could be included like this in the comparison page would be workspaces/better sessions. This feature was recently marked as in progress, but both Opera and Safari (despite calling them "tab groups", this Safari feature shares far more in common with Opera's workspaces than to Vivaldi's tab stacks) already have it, so the comparison page could highlight that it will come to Vivaldi as well.
I don't really have high expectations that the comparison page will be updated to include shortcomings of/possible improvements to Vivaldi (as I said, it is counterintuitive to what a comparison page is meant to achieve), but I hope that the comparisons that are already present in the page that I mentioned are at least fixed.
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@AltCode What did you expect? It’s marketing blah blah meant for potential users who have never touched Vivaldi. Could this be done in a better, more coherent way? Perhaps, but then the target group wouldn’t understand a word anymore. It wasn’t written to be read by us.
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@luetage At the very least I would expect the comparisons to be accurate, "marketing blah blah" or not. Having incorrect comparisons like the ones I mentioned makes me believe they those aspects of the other browsers were not properly checked, so they should be fixed if the page is to remain there.
And, in the worst case imaginable, someone that is a potential user that notices those inaccuracies in the comparison may incorrectly assume malicious intentions from the Vivaldi team.
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@luetage said in About that browser comparison by Vivaldi...:
What did you expect? It’s marketing blah blah meant for potential users who have never touched Vivaldi.
Having some marketing experience myself, I feel comfortable saying that if it's blah blah, then it's not want you want as a company.
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@AltCode said in About that browser comparison by Vivaldi...:
For those not on the know yet, the Vivaldi Team recently published this page comparing itself to Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, Opera, and Brave: https://vivaldi.com/compare
I don't see Brave in the comparison list at all ... for privacy (had they included Brave), Vivaldi would lose to Brave, I would say: https://privacytests.org/
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@treego
Hi, they should had add Brave to the list but the privacytets.org page is published by the Brave team.
There was a big discussion thread about but I am to lazy and not interested much to search for it.Cheers, mib
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@treego Brave used to be in the comparison page, but some time after I created this thread, it seems like it was removed.
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@AltCode That's what I'm thinking right now... Vivaldi Team has some malicious intentions
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@quicksand4627 Yes, clearly. You make a lot of sense. I applaud your sharp wit.
Oh wait. Maybe they chose to compare themselves with the 5 most used browsers in the market, which Brave is not a part of. This would mean there were no mailicious intentions… hmm. But how could that be? Vivaldi is clearly evil and tries to manipulate us. I can’t make up my mind : /
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Said:
the online translator in Vivaldi. Although he is, however, he is the worst of all.
Is it valid to evaluate a browser by its translator? (competing with GG and MS)?
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Said:
the online translator in Vivaldi. Although he is, however, he is the worst of all.
Is it valid to evaluate a browser by its translator? (competing with GG and MS)?
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We may need to ask to Lingvanex about fix and upgrade the experience.
Translation despite speed | Many times won't work
Kept Usual/Selected languages on Top | You need to scroll constantly to choose between
Change target | Instead of give a disappearing errorThat's what I've seen,
3rd mostly on mobile -
@barbudo2005 said in About that browser comparison by Vivaldi...:
Is it valid to evaluate a browser by its translator?
Yes, of course it is if it is listed as one of the features that it includes.
Comparison charts made by any vendor are sure to be biased; it is better to look at comparisons made by independent reviewers, if you can find one that is truly independent. Follow the money trail.
Maybe a channel like Techgumbo ?
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Said:
Yes, of course it is if it is listed as one of the features that it includes.
I don't agree with you.
Lingvanex is free. How much would Vivaldi have to pay to use the translator of large corporations as GG or MS or one of similar quality?
The underlying problem is that people have been told that a browser should be all-inclusive.
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The problem is simple, if someone is not happy with Lingvanex then install this extension:
Google Translate:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-translate/aapbdbdomjkkjkaonfhkkikfgjllcleb?hl=enor this:
DeepL Translate
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/deepl-translate-reading-w/cofdbpoegempjloogbagkncekinflcnj -
I have them too.
Just to remind Lingvanex that being built in a soft, should at least work and have the minimum settings.
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@barbudo2005 Why on earth should reviews not compare the translation tools?
The problem is that the comparison in the table is biased, because it cherry-picks privacy as being more important than accuracy or wide-ranging language support. It shows Vivaldi as the only one with full support for a Private full-page translate tool.
An impartial comparison would point out that other browsers also have a translation tool, which is superior to Lingvanex, but perhaps not so good for privacy.
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So the conclusion is that you can't have the best of two worlds: Privacy and Quality, so you have to choose.
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@Tsvetkov1964 There’s no reason why you couldn’t choose both. Lingvanex is perfectly able to bring the gist of a text passage across, if you need higher accuracy the most popular choice is DeepL at the moment, which you can add as a search engine and then create a command chain out of it. This automates opening the current selection in the translator.
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Said:
I use the best online translator - TWP - Translate Web Pages
In what is better than Google Translate if?
"The pages are translated using the Google or Yandex translation engine (you choose).
And how's my privacy?
Privacy policy: We do not collect any information. However, to translate, the contents of the web pages will be sent to Google or Yandex servers."