Lightness and intuitiveness of Vivaldi to reach more users
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This is a thread to collect ideas, which can make Vivaldi more popular by casual and less-technical users. I hope Vivaldi pays more attention to non-technical and medium-technical users ^^ I would call me a medium-technical user (:
I think the browser should be full of features, but feels and look light....and above all, it should be intuitive.
Take the screenshot button for example:
This feature is very "casual" and cool. For me it should be in the side bar, that would be much more intuitive and could not be overlooked. It's a cool feature but it's hidden and placed next to technical features
( more for computer experts or playful nerdy stuff )
The new Opera developers gaved this feature much more attention for example and put it stylish in scene.The easy setup of Operas start site is also a very clever way. that kind of intuitiveness are the reason why Opera gaining more users in last years.
And I hope the presentation of the bookmarks will be revised, for non-technical users like my parents it looks to complicated and overloaded. That's why i can't for example replace Opera-Blink through Vivaldi.
I hope that Vivaldi will also appeal to the other users in addition to the technical experts.
Finally Vivaldi want reach to more people, so it's important to have strong points and appeal to people outside Vivaldis traditional target group. -
@crosky This topic is much too vague to be a feature request that users could vote for.
- Choose a clear and concise title for the topic and describe the feature in more detail in the body of the post.
A specific request such as Move the screen shot tool from the Status Bar to the Panel toolbar would make sense, but it is already covered by the general request for Confirgurable Toolbar
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@pesala said in Lightness and intuitiveness of Vivaldi to reach more users:
@crosky This topic is much too vague to be a feature request that users could vote for.
- Choose a clear and concise title for the topic and describe the feature in more detail in the body of the post.
A specific request such as Move the screen shot tool from the Status Bar to the Panel toolbar would make sense, but it is already covered by the general request for Confirgurable Toolbar
yeah, you are right. it's more a thread for general discussion
^^
a thread where we can collect ideas that Vivaldi can build a broader userbase. -
@crosky I am not too familiar with Opera Blink, although I have the latest version 51.0 installed just for testing purposes.
Does it have a Welcome Page that is better than Vivaldi's?
What feature in the Status Bar do you find to be nerdy? Page Actions are certainly nerdy, but Tiling, Image loading, and page zoom?
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@pesala at Opera easy setup is intuitive and a easy way to change, themes, wallpappers and other stuff. works very fast and adresses the most important things.
@ Status Bar. not primary nerdy ^^ ....you can also say work-fixated. hope you understand what i mean.
the screenshot feature will be not noticed like at Opera Blink for example....it is a popular feature for casual users.I just want that Vivaldis userbase grows, because Vivaldi really deserves this. But for this it's important to think and feel outside the Vivaldi box ^^
And yeah the start page is a good idea, but the whole browser and the interface needs this approach, without sacrificing features of course.
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In general, casual-user-friendliness is nice, of course, as long as it doesn't damage the "nerdy" users' experiences.
And I agree that the presentation of the bookmark page isn't clean and I think the information that's shown when you've clicked on the bookmark button should be minimal. I am very nerdy, but I can see that the presentation is unnecessarily cluttered. You can hide all those "nerdy" pieces of information until the user asks for them.
Having said that, I have no idea when the developers will start to polish existing features for maximal utility by a maximal range of users because they are always busy in implementing features.
Rough edges are fine because this is a browser for nerds . . . which seems to be the current policy. Just my personal observation.
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@ryofurue As the browser is far from complete, polishing as a focus will have to come later. That said, when a bit of polish seems obvious and easy, the developers still do it before returning to the major task - building features.
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Lightness and "intuitiveness" (read: dumbed down, featureless user interfaces), is what drove me away from other browsers.
I want my browser to be a feature packed monstrosity of web productivity. If I need to follow a three day course to become efficient with it, then I will. I spent 10 years learning to use my text editor and now consider myself a novice user.
Current vivaldi is extremely intuitive to me. These abstract qualifications such as lightness, intuitiveness (and to be honest productiveness as well) are not really measurable and thus cannot be implemented as such.
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@ryofurue said in Lightness and intuitiveness of Vivaldi to reach more users:
In general, casual-user-friendliness is nice, of course, as long as it doesn't damage the "nerdy" users' experiences.
And I agree that the presentation of the bookmark page isn't clean and I think the information that's shown when you've clicked on the bookmark button should be minimal. I am very nerdy, but I can see that the presentation is unnecessarily cluttered. You can hide all those "nerdy" pieces of information until the user asks for them.
Having said that, I have no idea when the developers will start to polish existing features for maximal utility by a maximal range of users because they are always busy in implementing features.
Rough edges are fine because this is a browser for nerds . . . which seems to be the current policy. Just my personal observation.
Yes, the informations, presentation and full bandwidth of the features should not scare the user. I can only say from my experience that my parents handle the bookmarks in Opera Blink very well - it is kept very clean, the heart to save the bookmarks is very meaningful and
recognizable for them and the thumbnails are very useful for my parents to quickly recognize saved bookmarks.And even i as a medium-technical user personally don't like the presentation of Vivaldis bookmarks, because this tree-style with titles and beside the associated adresses look a little bit confusing and overloaded
to me ^^The URL-adresses next to the bookmark titles for example, should be informations that appear on the page below or somehow hidden until you click on a special "i" button ( information button ) imo ^^ Of course it should be possible to activate the "i" button permanently.
@caine said in Lightness and intuitiveness of Vivaldi to reach more users:
Lightness and "intuitiveness" (read: dumbed down, featureless user interfaces), is what drove me away from other browsers.
I want my browser to be a feature packed monstrosity of web productivity. If I need to follow a three day course to become efficient with it, then I will. I spent 10 years learning to use my text editor and now consider myself a novice user.
Current vivaldi is extremely intuitive to me. These abstract qualifications such as lightness, intuitiveness (and to be honest productiveness as well) are not really measurable and thus cannot be implemented as such.
The full-package aspect of Vivaldi is the core of Vivaldis existence and thus it's technical user. This aspect is going nowhere and will always stay - that's clear. Therefore no one have to worry, i'm sure (;
But it is also clear that the target group of tech-savvy users is limited, that's why in the end the medium-technical users and the non-technical users are important for you too. If Vivaldi can reach more of non-technical and medium-technical users it will be a big plus, reach more people from the mainstream and people which looking for alternatives to established browsers and services should also be a goal....of course Vivaldi can not be big as Chrome ( not for now : P ^^) Really, i see great potential to reach much more people.
After all, the Browser also has to make money and reaching more people means that
Vivaldi will have greater immunity to develope the Browser, which we all want (: -
@crosky said in Lightness and intuitiveness of Vivaldi to reach more users:
But it is also clear that the target group of tech-savvy users is limited, that's why in the end the medium-technical users and the non-technical users are important for you too.
Is it clear? Non technical users couldn't tell you what a browser is in the first place. These users don't make conscious choices and are wooed into another direction altogether: the replacement of the general browser with dedicated apps on mobile. It points to the inevitable future for the average user, who before long won't even have use for a desktop anymore.
So yeah, Vivaldi is directing their efforts at another audience, and that's probably wise if you are developing a browser in a saturated market.
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Some people seem to misunderstand the motivation of this discussion because the following two ideas as mixed up:
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Target Vivaldi to average users.
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Polish Vivaldi, without damaging techy users' experinces, so that even average users find it attractive.
I think Crosky is advocating strategy 2. I'd like to add that polishing in general will enhance experiences, not only of average users but also of techy users. It's a proverbial "win-win" situation.
Bookmarks is a good example. Even techy users won't deny that its presentation is cluttered now. You can clean it up without making it less convenient.
Of course, polishing isn't a current priority as Ayespy suggests.
Footnote: What we should do with the bookmarks is besides the point of this discussion, but I have this idea: The bookmarks should be presented similarly to the way files and folders are presented on Finder (Mac), Explorer (Windows), or file manager (Linux). By default, they are presented as icons or previews. You can switch to a simple list view or a powerfull tree-list view, if you like. On clicking on a bookmark item, its details are displayed on the right-hand side of this "Finder (Explorer, etc.)". You can even edit those details on this right-hand panel.
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@ryofurue Using thumbnails for bookmarks is useless. Unless one zooms in really close (see below) the auto-generated thumbnail is useless for recognising the page. I want to strip all thumbnails from bookmarks so that I can read and edit the URL more easily.
Presenting bookmarks as thumbnails would only work for users with 10-20 bookmarks. Scrolling through hundreds of thumbnails would be a right pain.
Removing the thumbnail from the Add Bookmark dialogue would help to make it less cluttered. There is no option not to add the thumbnail and nothing can be done with it at present. It's just there for use in Speed Dials.
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I think that Vivaldi, in spite of its multi-function that it includes, can be overwhelming at first only for a hard-core IE user.
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@crosky said in Lightness and intuitiveness of Vivaldi to reach more users:
... i as a medium-technical user personally don't like the presentation of Vivaldis bookmarks, because this tree-style with titles and beside the associated adresses look a little bit confusing and overloaded to me...
Most people who are conversant at all with computers intuitively recognize and adapt to tree-style, simply because of its long usage in things like paper filing cabinets, File Explorer, and the inherent parallels with current computer file-storage structures. It's the way it is because it's the way most peoples' logic works in locating things by reasoning from the most general down to the most specific... assuming, of course, that users bother to take the small amount of time to learn how to do it (if they don't already know). If some other presentation structure is to be used, it needs to be optional, because otherwise it will confound the working habits of the large number of users who naturally think in terms of a tree structure.
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@ryofurue said in Lightness and intuitiveness of Vivaldi to reach more users:
Some people seem to misunderstand the motivation of this discussion because the following two ideas as mixed up:
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Target Vivaldi to average users.
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Polish Vivaldi, without damaging techy users' experinces, so that even average users find it attractive.
I think Crosky is advocating strategy 2. I'd like to add that polishing in general will enhance experiences, not only of average users but also of techy users. It's a proverbial "win-win" situation.
...A lot revolves around what one considers to be an "average" user. If one means a 'numerically average' user in the browser marketplace, then those users are largely already on mobile or using Chrome, Opera, etc. on laptops - and will likely stay with those browsers. If one means a 'user of average computer competency,' then it's a much tougher (and debatable) definition to pin down... although it arguably involves a smaller number of more-competent users than those generally represented by a numerical-average user. Given that Vivaldi came into being as "a browser for our friends", I believe it's primarily focused on users with a modicum of computer skills, although it's also not intending to exclude numerical-average users.
That said, polish should always follow the rough-out. It's how almost everything in life is designed and built. Polishing something before it's fully roughed out is a recipe for never-ending rework, restructuring, and re-polishing. Limited resources mean limited directions for effort. In that case, Vivaldi's owners and developers have to be the ones to best determine when to commit effort (and for how long) to polishing or to roughing-out more features. Moreover, they're best equipped to understand where their priorities and work-flow best permit pausing to polish without inadvertently expending effort on something that will only be torn back up by another in-flow feature addition. Certainly, users ought to have input into the process, but at the end of the day, it's for the makers to call the priorities and path(s).
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I think that anyone who uses more than a smartphone knows that it is a tree structure because of the structure it has in its directories and knows what functions are used by Vivaldi, at least most of them, since more than one of them they have already used it in the form of extensions in Cgrome or Firefox.
The only goal of not using Vivaldi would be to have a PC vintage with very few resources or Netbook, where it is advisable to use a browser that consumes as little as possible (Midori, QupZilla?) , in which case Chrome and Firefox would likewise be discarded.
Nothing to do with having a PC or Laptop (I have been using a Laptop for 10 years) -
@ryofurue said in Lightness and intuitiveness of Vivaldi to reach more users:
I think Crosky is advocating strategy 2. I'd like to add that polishing in general will enhance experiences, not only of average users but also of techy users. It's a proverbial "win-win" situation.
yeah you are right. i talked about ways and ideas to reach new, more users and make Vivaldi more attactive for for them and users in general....and in the same time to continue to focus on many features.