Vivaldi is the best browser I've ever used

FlooferLand

Not sure where to post this, but I've been using this browser for the past 2 days and I've fallen in love with it the second I first saw it (for the curious, I found it while looking on YouTube for light-weight open-source browsers)

Everything about this browser makes me fangirl, from the Linux-first privacy-focused devs to the thousand useful features, the pretty UI that looks like it'd fit in really well with GNOME's GTK/Adwaita user interface, and I can go on and on (and i will)

While I haven't been using all of Vivaldi's features much, like the side-bar, I have my tabs set to be laid out vertically on the side and this by FAR makes browsing so much more enjoyable for me. It looks weird, feels weird, and I kinda wish there was an "auto-hide" thing for it when my mouse wasn't over it because it takes up a bunch of space. But, I tend to have a ton of tabs open, and being able to see the title of all those tabs while also being able to categorize and sort trough them using workspaces has likely already saved me like a whole 1-2 hours worth of time scrolling trough tabs having to hover over them to see their titles.

The account sync too. I've always been worried about losing all my tabs and bookmarks with Firefox, always having to save my tabs as bookmarks and save that as a JSON file and then load that back in after reinstalling my OS, because I honestly don't trust Mozilla enough to use account sync. Vivaldi's sync being encrypted, having options for 2FA, and having trustworthy devs is really neat.

The whole backstory of the browser feels like something you'd see in a movie too XD
With the CEO of Opera essentially being kicked out by investors and Opera becoming.. whatever it is now with Opera GX.. Only for the CEO to come back with a blast and make a better browser than them.

And, while I usually don't feel great using projects that are source-readable and not open-source, I could tell from a singular interview the devs feel the same thing I've seen a lot of other reputable devs like the guys at Obsidian feel; that code might get reused for a Vivaldi clone that becomes more popular than Vivaldi itself, and with Vivaldi being relatively unpopular (the literal first time I heard about it I thought it was a niche proprietary browser that secretly sold user data; Like the way Chrome and Edge say they protect your privacy LMAO as well as the boat-load of proprietary mobile browsers) its respectable.

Community seems nice too :3
Like with the whole silly Vivaldia game being a thing and how nice the devs seem. It almost feels like everyone is part of some weird Vivaldian family (I'm coining that word). Especially since this browser is pretty niche, the community tends to share a lot of interests and stuff in common.

Sorry I keep on typing xD
Genuinely only have good things to say about this browser. It also feels more like an Intellij programming IDE than a web browser, and I'm not sure whenever it's a good thing or a bad thing but I'm pretty sure I can make it feel more comfy using themes XD

If any devs or contributors see this, I have finally stopped my whole "All web browsers suck I don't know which one to use, why can't anyone make something modern and not be an offensive Tencent-data-selling corp" internal dialogue because of you, so thank you!
Also, funny thing I noticed. Your browser has more UI and features than 2 browsers combined while still taking a bit less RAM and CPU than Chrome, Brave, or Firefox xD
Also really like this forum, feels like I'll be talking a lot more about random browser stuff even unrelated to Vivaldi here!

Pesala

@FlooferLand The Tab Bar can be collapsed to an icon by double-clicking on the separator between the web page and the tab bar.

The Panels can be displayed on the right and the tab bar on the left, or vice versa.

Welcome to the Community. Here are a few links for your bookmarks that you may find useful:

FlooferLand

@Pesala said in Vivaldi is the best browser I've ever used:

The Tab Bar can be collapsed to an icon by double-clicking on the separator between the web page and the tab bar

Welp that's neat! Will definitely be using that.
Still wish there was an option to set the side bar to show all tabs on hover if the mouse hit the right side of the monitor or something, as this makes me have to rely on slowly shifting my mouse trough every tab to see the titles; There's no way to temporarily maximize it like I've seen some other software do.
Luckily there is no hover delay making me wait an extra second on every tab hover, so I am pretty satisfied with this xD

Thank you for all the links btw! Also for the reply, did not expect one, especially this fast

Pesala

@FlooferLand Vote for Option to Autohide Tab Bar / UI.

isak

@FlooferLand said in Vivaldi is the best browser I've ever used:

It almost feels like everyone is part of some weird Vivaldian family

Welcome to the family!

marialeal

@FlooferLand welcome to our community, and thank you for taking the time to write all this!

FlooferLand

Thank you!! And thank you for making my literal dream web browser (and mail client, apparently xD. I haven't given the mail side a shot yet because it seems like it'd consume more system resources being locked behind a toggle and all, might give it a shot sometime)

Y'all give off the same silly wholesome family vibes I've seen forums for tiny Linux distros give off, will definitely be chatting here more often! (or trying to at least XD)

ingolftopf

@FlooferLand
Hello and welcome here!

Have fun with the browser, the forum and on "Mastodon": 'VIVALDI SOCIAL', social.vivaldi.net

I think,
you've come to the right place.

Take a look at everything at your leisure.

It's a lot.

You can already create your own signature if you like.

ingolftopf

@FlooferLand
One more small question:

Discord and the good open source messenger [Matrix], how does that fit together?

(Not entirely seriously meant.)

FlooferLand

@ingolftopf said in Vivaldi is the best browser I've ever used:

Discord and the good open source messenger [Matrix], how does that fit together?

Oh the about me thingy. It's not like a link/bridge thing, I just mean I use both platforms and have the same username.

FlooferLand

You can already create your own signature if you like.

Also signatures spoop me XD
There's no markdown preview on the forum when you're editing your signature, so not knowing how it'll show up as well as not knowing if it'll be embedded into the message or if it'll change for all older messages when i change it, kinda confusing XD. Stuff that always turns me from using signatures

ingolftopf

@FlooferLand
The signature, if any, is placed under all previous messages.

All changes are also applied immediately.

It can also be deleted at any time for all messages.

Catweazle

@FlooferLand, one of the best presentations in a long time, warmly welcomed to our family. The only disadvantages of Vivaldi are that after using it, all other browsers will seem crappy and the danger of getting a blister on the scrollfinger in the settings and in our Theme page.

WildEnte

@FlooferLand said in Vivaldi is the best browser I've ever used:

I haven't given the mail side a shot yet because it seems like it'd consume more system resources

Not everyone wants mail buttons in their web browser, that's why there is the toggle. Apart from the initial building of the search index mail is not using more system resources - if you ran a separate email client that would require more resources, because they all need to run their own engine to display HTML email, which Vivaldi is obviously coming with anyway.

ingolftopf

@WildEnte
Thank you, an important argument.

FlooferLand

@Catweazle I just checked out the themes page because of you and oh my god, Firefox themes are a joke compared to this
Also I've gotta agree even themes and the VERY useful vertical tabs and workspaces aside, I still wouldn't be able to use a browser that's not Vivaldi. Somehow Vivaldi has made me use a lot more of the features Firefox had, despite never having wanted to use those features back on Firefox; start pages/site shortcuts and bookmarks for example, everything feels more essential and closely integrated together on Vivaldi for some reason, it's like even the features other browsers have are more prominent.

I got a Windows 98 theme and everything besides the fonts, some icons, sliders, and scroll bars look straight out of the 90s
Are those things due to some quirk in the theming API, or is it due to the theme itself? I remember someone saying all the UI used CSS for styling, but I haven't noticed any theme change the size of any element so far so it doesn't seem like its the case.

FlooferLand

Definitely trying out the mail client now. I only ever need to use email when I'm browsing the web, and part of me is hoping there's a magic "Copy code to clipboard" button whenever it detects a number in an received email like there is in Android but that seems like a lot to ask xD

My current email client uses like 50 MBs of RAM at most, but I'd do anything to have one less tray icon XD
tons of tray icons

sorry I've replied so late, did NOT feel like 3 days just passed, feels like the last time i talked here was yesterday.

nomadic

@FlooferLand said in Vivaldi is the best browser I've ever used:

Are those things due to some quirk in the theming API, or is it due to the theme itself? I remember someone saying all the UI used CSS for styling, but I haven't noticed any theme change the size of any element so far so it doesn't seem like its the case.

The UI does use web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), but themes can't add custom CSS beyond what can be applied to the icons in the icon packs.

It actually used to be possible to inject CSS that affected the rest of the UI with a theme by sneaking it in a <style> tag inside an SVG icon, but that was a bit dangerous, so <style> tags are now removed from all uploaded theme icons. Think I probably made the only theme that ever exploited this ability while making the bug report (it doesn't work now due to the safeguards).

If you want to use CSS to alter the UI, then you can head over to the modding forum to get some pointers: https://forum.vivaldi.net/category/52/modifications The pinned posts at the top are good for getting started.

FlooferLand

I see!
Any reason themes haven't gotten custom CSS support? Besides themes potentially getting outdated and breaking

nomadic

@FlooferLand It is mostly that it is too hard to moderate.

With full custom CSS in themes, you could make themes that:

Hides the entire browser UI (you could even add a delay so it didn't occur within 30 second theme preview on install). Then you would have to go digging through profile files to fix it or rush to fix it in that 30 second or less delay before the UI was hidden on new windows.
Hide the theme section from settings and blank out any tab showing the theme store to lock a user into your theme.
Alter settings pages to make users accidentally delete settings.
Sneak inappropriate content in that would be hard to notice on a brief inspection before approving the theme to the store (again making use of delays).
Inject CSS specific attacks. Although, they normally involve a link to an external source, which could be automatically stripped.

There are just too many possibilities for nefarious behavior with the freedom that CSS provides. The people responsible for approving themes would have to be much more diligent if it was allowed and have a good understanding of CSS.

CSS mods are much easier to manage for users. If one does something that messes up your browser UI, just delete the file. You can also link to a forum post with CSS if it complements your theme. Did that with my rewrite of Vivaldi GX that makes Vivaldi look like Opera GX: https://themes.vivaldi.net/themes/1LVJ2Z9xJx9