Please consider rebalancing features vs stability vs performance
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As a new user, I just want to vent a little regarding the balance of new features compared to the stability and performance of the browser.
Initially I wrote this as a comment below the linked news article, but I don't want to publicly vent below a well meant announcement and discourage new users. That's why I put it here, where I hope it finds the right people and does not create a bad image publicly. Also I want to make sure at the start that this is not some kind of "if you don't do this and that I will leave the browser again"-post. I will definitely remain as a user, because I like the concept, company and community. And also want to thank the vivaldi general team for the work they are doing. But I also want to give some feedback from my browser journey.
After using Vivaldi for a few weeks, I have the impression that the main goal of the browser is to "replace" the operating system and all it's other applications by including all imaginable programs and features into the the browser. There's a mail client, there's a calendar and feed reader, etc.
I left Firefox half a year ago, because Mozilla was not focussing anymore on building a good browser experience, but were adding feature by feature which made the browser slow and put ads directly into my face after every update (VPN, Relay, etc.).
This is generally not a bad thing, but when at the same time the browser becomes barely usable on my old hardware, while I was perfectly able to use bloat-less forks like LibreWolf or Waterfox. At some point, I was so done with Mozilla about this, that I wanted to try some chromium browser and I switched to Brave for some time. There, I was again severly annoyed by the unnecessary bloat the browser brought. It was basically that same shit that firefox added, but with additional crypto stuff. Still, compared to firefox, brave kept the ability to remain performant and fast during browsing and did not feel clunky on my old hardware.
But here, also after a while I was just fed up with that behaviour that brave will put some features into my face and makes buttons reappear after browser updates. Also, I just don't like Brendan Eich for many obvious reasons. With that whole r/BuyFromEU thing I learned about Vivaldi and much more preferred the concept here. So I switched again.
On my first try, the "Sync" servers were down for a few days. I think it was sometime back in December/November 24. Little bit of a bummer, but I waited some time and retried, everything good. Now, having used Vivaldi for a few weeks and can share some impressions I have:
First one, and the biggest bummer for me, is that Vivaldi internal Ad Blocking makes the browsing experience clunky! Actually, in my opinion the opposite should be the case. What I compared is the website heise.de
- without ad blocking
- Vivaldi Ad blocking
- UBO in Vivaldi&FF
- Brave Ad blocking
while on the sheer numbers vivaldi-ad-block actually performed well against UBO in Vivaldi/FF, which means the site load page is around 1s in debugger and I receive around 3MB of resources if cache is disabled. Compared to no ad block (5s and 12MB resources), you can say that the ad block works well.
But for some reason, UBO in Vivaldi&FF and Braves Ad blocker shows elements pretty quickly and during the 1s load time, while the Vivaldi ad blocker does not show anything until the 1s load time finished, then everything pops up immediately. I can understand this behaviour, but it just feels clunky.
One other thing I recognised with Vivaldi Ad blocker is, that if I switch back tabs to some pages with lots of ads on them, like heise or youtube, the page does not show at all until I reload them. If I disable Vivaldi ad blocking and use UBO/Ublock light, this does not happen at all.
The whole thing get's much worse if I do not use my M1 Mac Mini, but I switch to my 2016 Macbook with Intel CPU. Here, the numbers and the "clunky" feeling on Vivaldi is even worse.
Finally, what I can see with Vivaldi is something similar happening that turned me off with FireFox already, which is that (things I consider) basic features like ad blocking do have severe issues for weeks and seem to be not well maintained, while there's a lot of (in my opinion) unnecessary bloatware like mail/calendar/vpn added to the browser.
I general, I would not mind the bloatware too much, if all other things work fine. But in my few weeks experience with general performance, ad blocking and the sync server problems, they just don't.
Theres a german word for this, "Schade!", which basically means "what a pity", and to me it really is a pity because there's a lot of things I like and will continue to like about Vivaldi, but I would really prefer if there's a higher focus on the basics and less focus on adding new "non-browser-features" that should actually be covered by the operating system. -
@tsmt
Hi, I use only Linux and Windows so cant test this directly on MacOS.
The sync server issue was the first major outage since sync was implemented, 7 or 8 Years?
So not a good time to start with Vivaldi.
Performance is on par or faster with all other Chromium browsers I use, Opera, Brave, Edge for example.
The features you may meant bloat nothing if you don't use it, the mail client for example.
The Brave and opera ad blockers are very good, Vivaldi is list based and the default lists are selected to work on most pages.
I use Heise on a daily basis and get sometimes one ad, no other issues on this page with adding custom lists.
Coming from the old Opera 1-12 the mail client was one reason to change to Vivaldi.
No idea what you meant by "covered by the operating system".
I hope I get never pushed to use the default mail client of Windows.
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Thanks!
The sync server issue was the first major outage since sync was implemented, 7 or 8 Years?
Yeah, I thought so, stuff like this happens and will be fixed. But indeed, for people who seek to join it's a bad moment and impression. Nevertheless, being a Developer myself I'm aware how difficult it is to guarantee 24/7 uptimes.
The Brave and opera ad blockers are very good, Vivaldi is list based and the default lists are selected to work on most pages.
I use Heise on a daily basis and get sometimes one ad, no other issues on this page with adding custom lists.Yes, I think Vivaldi adblock is also skipping some ads from partners, at least that's how I think the business model works. I'm fine with that model and that's also why I would like to use the Vivaldi ad blocker, but as mentioned I have the high impression that it makes surfing clunky. If I turn it off and switch to UBO, indeed Vivaldi seems to be on par with Brave and Chromium, and faster than firefox
Coming from the old Opera 1-12 the mail client was one reason to change to Vivaldi.
No idea what you meant by "covered by the operating system".
I hope I get never pushed to use the default mail client of Windows.Oh indeed I hope the same. I see that Vivaldi is somehow a successor for Opera and I actually was never a user - because I never really got the point why so much software should be integrated into a browser. I'm a Thunderbird user basically ever since. With "covered by the operating system" I actually included other 3rd party software, but I think to handle E-Mail I want to switch applications, not browser Tabs. But with email I get why Vivaldi/Opera do it, since it's also "Internet".
Being here for the first few weeks I'm just afraid that the focus is too much on features than stability. As mentioned, working in the field myself I just saw too many projects going downhill because the readmap was being focused on features and went more into ignoring bugs and other issues.
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@tsmt welcome to the forum, and let me say that at least I can really appreciate that you signed up to give thoughtful feedback and context. This is how it should be done! So please read my reply as an explanation rather than as a rebuttal of your points.
@tsmt said in Please consider rebalancing features vs stability vs performance:
I have the impression that the main goal of the browser is to "replace" the operating system and all it's other applications by including all imaginable programs and features into the the browser
This is indeed the core of everything. Vivaldi's motto was for a while (maybe still is, didn't find the reference within 5 seconds) "More features, not less". If you look at https://vivaldi.com/features/, then right at the top they say what they seek to do: "Vivaldi wants to help solve your browsing problems without you having to resort to add-ons. With options galore, you’ll find the features you need, right out of the box."
The browser market is full of players, and you need to have a differentiator. Vivaldi's raison d'être is to offer a suite, implementing all sorts of useful things, mostly based on wishes from the community. It doesn't have to have the best implementation of the feature (say, ad blocker, which is important to you). Some other player that focuses just on that aspect will likely be better there, be it as an extension (uBo) or laser focused browser (Brave). It's ok not to be the best when you are sufficiently good.
In a highly competitive market, you need to have unique selling points to occupy a niche where you can grow. The concept to integrate many features works out for Vivaldi. If you look at the sheer number of feature wishes in the Feature Wish section of the forum, you can see that many people want things added. Vivaldi has done a really good job creating a very feature complete browser that is still really fast, as many tests have shown over and over again.
As for Mail & Calendar, many people who joined Vivaldi when they started 10 or so years ago started using the browser because the integration of Mail & Calendar & Feeds was a promise right from the start. I for one don't mind too much that the ad blocker can be improved, it's good for my purposes. I'm here mostly because I want my email and calendar client integrated in the browser. Others use Vivaldi because of its customizability. And many use it because it just has many useful features built in.
The core idea is: what Vivaldi is should be the individual user's choice. So it's something else for everyone. It's entirely your choice what it is for you, and also if it is the thing you want to use in the first place. But what it's not going to be is a browser that becomes focused on a specific feature - that is the niche some other browsers can take.
Usually on Win11 running Vivaldi Snapshot builds. Opinionated about working efficiently with email. Folders are evil | Mail workflow: receive, read, reply, mark as read, done.
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@tsmt There are over 5,000 requests for more features, or for improvements to existing features. Some have been on the list for seven years, have hundreds of votes, but we are still waiting for them.
We could use More Feedback on Feature Requests and some should be easy to implement.
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@WildEnte said in Please consider rebalancing features vs stability vs performance:
@tsmt welcome to the forum, and let me say that at least I can really appreciate that you signed up to give thoughtful feedback and context. This is how it should be done! So please read my reply as an explanation rather than as a rebuttal of your points.
Thanks! I really tried to not seem to be too harsh with what I wrote. As mentioned, I'm probably some kind of predamaged being with my latest experiences.
Reading what you wrote actually gives me some kind of understanding what the plan and idea behind Vivaldi is. And in some way, it even makes sense. Thinking about the Mail client as an example it's overall just a "move" of where functionality in my computer is placed. Sure, there might be arguments as mine that Emails should be in a seperate program, but on the other hand you can save yourself from installing and running a whole program if it's part of your browser. Same goes for feed reader and calendar. I think in todays world, every computer is actually running a browser 24/7 any way.
Also, what I actually like is what you mentioned about extensions. I'd actually enjoy if bitwarden is the only extension I would really need to install in my browser.
@Pesala said in Please consider rebalancing features vs stability vs performance:
@tsmt There are over 5,000 requests for more features, or for improvements to existing features. Some have been on the list for seven years, have hundreds of votes, but we are still waiting for them.
We could use More Feedback on Feature Requests and some should be easy to implement.
Oh this is very interesting and I did not see that yet. Thanks for pointing this out, I will try to get an overview for some of them and maybe give a
if I see something I'd really like to see. -
Not sure if you are aware, but you can totally disable the email, calendar and feeds.
I think it makes sense to do that if you are more interested in stack, workspaces, GUI customization etc.
Email, calendar etc. make a lot of sense for user who don't put a lot of demands on the browser in areas such as stack and workspaces.
I can see those as being a market differentiator that can expand Vivaldi user base significantly.
I personally am not interested in those and never will be, because I use and abuse the browser in other areas and having these enabled would make the performance likely worse.
