Switch from Opera - what I miss
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I recently made the switch from Opera to Vivaldi because of its new design among other reasons.
Still, I want to give my impression what I'm missing from Opera where it, IMHO is probably really better than Vivaldi, where the latter might be enhanced and bettered.
The sidebar in Opera does a better job for me, except for the fact that you can't have customized ones:
Overall the sidebar seems to work more stable and is more intuitive in my eyes. Also the mediaplayer function is much more enhancend than creating a shortcut in Vivaldi for let's say Spotify. That the panel can be drawn almost to 80% of the screen whereas it is limited in Vivaldi by only a bit more than half the screen is a drawback.I'm missing automatic picture-in-picture mode as well. Don't know if it can be enabled in Vivaldi.
The screenshot feature in Opera is much more enhanced as you can edit your screenshots there as well.Aria - the AI chatbot - gives me much(!) better translations than Lingavex in Vivaldi, unfortunately. And I'm missing Aria a bit generally so I will keep Opera installed at least on my private machine.
A feature like Flow would be handy. I think, that Notes might be considered an aquivalent for it.
Although I haven't used it lately, the new Opera One R2 has got a spiltscreen feature (unfortunately limited to only two sites). But it's very easy to use: Simply draw one tab into the one open. And voila, you have it. It's a bit more complicated when using Vivaldi.
I'm still a bit torn between, as some of Opera's features are more appealing to me than Vivaldi's. The iOS app also is less cluttered than Vivaldi. And when I have customized Vivaldi to my liking it looks very much like Opera.
My other main reason for choosing Vivaldi over Opera are concerns about the latter's ownership and business model. Although I haven't found anything being proved, there's still some uneasiness with me. As far as I know, Vivaldi has way better credentials than Opera (maybe not the browser but the firm behind it).
I hope, you get what I want to say here. I want to give you some impressions about my own experience which may not be peculiar to me only.
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@Leuchte812
Hi, nice insights from a Opera user and welcome to the forum.
Just a few comments:
AI will never come to Vivaldi, there was a clear statement about from the Vivaldi team.
We have about 5000 feature requests in the forum, you can imagine the most of your missing features was already requested.
A user created a page where you can search for existing request and vote for it with the like button in the first post.
For example Media Control:
https://lonmcgregor.github.io/VivaldiFeatureRequests/#tag=&req=media&minscore=0&tagsEnabled=
Panel sizing was requested too, iirc.Check the command chain feature, you can do what no other browser can:
https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/shortcuts/command-chains/
What possible in Vivaldi using CSS and/or Java script is stunning, example:
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/89427/vivaldi-gx-revisited-updated-opera-gx-mod?page=1Cheers, mib
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@mib2berlin Thank you for your extensive and friendly response. Of course I can create my own shortcuts to Perplexity or ChatGPT in the sidebar. I don't use them so much then. But translating with Aria was a bliss, really good.
Nevertheless I'll try out what my user experience with Vivaldi will be.
I won't do much editing under the hood. I'm more of a educated user but still only a user nonetheless. But I'll try customization as much as it's possible.
For me there's also this aspect, as I pointed to: Using Vivaldi feels better than Opera although I don't question that the people over there who are developing it are decent people. It's more about the owner structure, actually.But thank you for all these links nevertheless. I'll do my best.
P.S. I am a returning user. Was using Vivaldi from 2018 to 2022
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@Leuchte812
I forgot, we have some really advanced translators like DeppL or G. Translator but you never know what they do with your text.
Training there AI's?
Lingavex is not so advanced but you know what the Vivaldi team does with your data, nothing.
By the way, I use Google translate in a panel because of the text correction. -
@mib2berlin It's good to have choices. And for me it's not having one or the other, but maybe to use both according to the respective user case.
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I hope, you don't mind me writing, that I've switched back to Opera . I was still missing these kinds of features that I wrote about.
And compared to Opera, Vivaldi was very heavy on my Windows work laptop, keeping the fans running. And writing in Vivaldi felt slow and lagging, I'm afraid.I also like both, the Android and even more so the iOS-App by Opera better, less cluttered an more polished in my eyes.
That's not to say, that Vivaldi is a bad browser in 2024, on the contrary. I will keep it installed on my private MacBook. And maybe in a not too long time, it will become my favorite again.
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@Leuchte812 On desktop, I have several browsers installed. Vivaldi is default, but I occasionally switch to Opera and Brave. Opera was my previous default.
On mobile, for various reasons, I'm different again.
On Android, Opera is my default (and I actually use Aria quite often here).
On iPad, Brave is my default.
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@wintercoast I understand, what you and @Leuchte812 are talking about.
Opera now has come a long way in terms of features, handiness and design. It's a really good browser, as far as I see.
BUT, there's this elephant in the room: 72.4% of their shares are owned by Kunlun Tech, China, and additional 10% by the latter's CEO privately - giving him control by his more than 80% of shares.
I mean they always say that they are a publicly traded company on NASDQ as they're not. Shareholders can easily be outvoted by the parent company and they are Chinese with some shady precedences already.
Opera Ltd is situated on Cayman Islands although everyone thinks, it's still Norwegian.
Even if liked the browser by function and looks, I wouldn't trust even when they try to defend themselves by stating that they're Norwegian and have plenty of shareholders. Both isn't the whole truth. Unfortunately. -
@wintercoast, respect Opera, certainly an tecnically advanced browser, but on the other hand the worst data hog out there, with a list of trackers as long as my arm (see Exodus privacy), even its "VPN" is a scam, its a simple proxy with Operas own server, logging all your activity. Even Chrome itself is more private.
Brave, well, it has a good privacy, blocking all trackers, except those from the sponsors, mainly cryptocompanies nd also Facebook. Also not so private as it says, but anyway better s Opera, despite less features.
AI, apart from the hype of it, not followed by Vivaldi for the mencioned reasons, it is also absurd to ad an stock AI to the browser, because can be usefull for some users or not for others. Locally stored AI for more privacy is also not an option, because AI needs a lot of data power, not given in a normal PC to be minimal efficient.
It's way more usefull that every user add the AI selected among the more than 7000 out there for any kind of tasks which fits exact his needs.
I use eg. Andi as main search engineNormal ChatBots added by default to the browser don't make sense for me.
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@Catweazle @Leuchte812 I'm aware of the deficiencies you mention but I just don't place them as high in my hierarchy of drawbacks as you do. I prioritise overall features and usability. That's what drew me to Vivaldi, not privacy and security. The latter are pretty good but if another browser is even better, that in itself would not cause me to switch. I look at features as a package.
