Does Vivaldi really need to be so proud?
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Okay, before you all jump on me. I
Vivaldi and want it to succeed -- which might mean different things to me.I see no reason why Vivaldi can't be the most popular browser, #1.
user-agent
Why doesn't Vivaldi swallow it's pride and just pretend that it's Chrome?
I understand from one of Jon's recent interviews that Vivaldi has 1.2M active users. Brave said last year that they have 5M and Chrome says 2 BILLION (2000M) active installs. Vivaldi also claimed 1M active users 5 years ago (no growth). I've been told by friends that they try Vivaldi, use it for a while, love some of the innovations but find it doesn't work for 1 or 2 sites and go back to what they were using.
In fact, the biggest complaint that I have with Vivaldi and the ONE THING that gives me pause from putting it on my mother's desktop (and recommending it to other novice users) is that Vivaldi is not a 100% browser solution.
No matter how much we love all the goodness of Vivaldi which I personally can't live without, we know it's still unfortunately true today. There more than a few sites, often big sites, that won't run with Vivaldi and there's always a new one -- it's like trying to plug a leaky dyke.
Brave doesn't announce
Here's the browser identification from Brave.
At least for now while you (we) are trying to grow the user-base, what is the advantage of having our own user-agent string that can be detected and blocked?
Some thoughts about the "why"? -- i.e. advantages
- auditing companies won't count Vivaldi users unless they know the users are using Vivaldi
- it feels good to be honest and forth-coming
I really don't know what the advantages are.
Pros to hiding our own user-agent
- less incompatibility issues and more sites will work [This should be enough]
- less complaints and more happy users
- better user retention
It's a no-brainer to me -- what am I missing?
And if Vivaldi is intent on keeping it's user agent string then it should (a) have a dedicated developer evangelist who can get all user-agent detection libraries to properly detect Vivaldi; (b) load at least the top 1m sites to detect incompatibility -- you can hire me; (c) have a point person who's job it is to reach out to all the webmasters which are using these libraries to detect that Vivaldi or who have sites that block functionality to the Vivaldi browser
PS I love the 2.6 build! It feels a lot more stable -- doing the normal / boring stuff well (i.e. being a browser) should be job #1.
Brave Browser Reaches Four Million Active Users - September 3, 2018
Google says 2 million Chrome installs - 3 years ago -
@qpongo said in Does Vivaldi really need to be so proud?:
auditing companies won't count Vivaldi users unless they know the users are using Vivaldi
This is what it really comes down to.
- Vivaldi needs a revenue stream to exist
- Vivaldi wants to do this by partnering with search engines, sponsored bookmarks etc
- These partners want a guarantee of return on their investment
- The partners need metrics on the userbase size
- They can only get this if vivaldi announces itself as vivaldi
Vivaldi could just pretend to be chrome. But then it risks losing its revenue stream.
The whole thing is a chicken-and-egg problem. People are turned off Vivaldi because of UA issues, which means there are less people using Vivaldi, which means Vivaldi can't get as much revenue, and sites are less informed about Vivaldi so are tempted to block it.
The options are either:
- Deal with the hell that is web developers abusing the user-agent feature / kowtowing to google chrome
- Find an alternate revenue stream that doesn't require metrics
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@qpongo Brave probably had to forfeit their user agent, because websites blocked the browser, not because of any compatibility concerns, but because of the fact it blocks ads by default. That's a deciding difference.
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@luetage said in Does Vivaldi really need to be so proud?:
@qpongo Brave probably had to forfeit their user agent, because websites blocked the browser, not because of any compatibility concerns, but because of the fact it blocks ads by default. That's a deciding difference.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
I had a lot of hope that Brave's BAT token stuff work work -- it's time for a new web-model to exist.
But Brave's BAT token idea (or the implementation of it) appears to be a disaster if the weekly "Brave Community Summary" email is representative. Usually, more than 50%, sometimes 100% of the chosen posts that are included in the weekly email are about problems with BAT tokens, usually people not getting paid.
Example from Brave's weekly newsletter...
Why send out this email to the entire user group? Why make this the first post?
BRUTAL?I have a lot of ideas for new revenue streams.
Hopefully, I will get to preset them before the company meeting. HINT, HINT...
This isn't one of my revenue ideas but....
How about only turning on the user agent for a filtered list of domains which include those that have some affiliate relationshipo with Vivaldi? And include the main domains that are pumping up these statistics?
And, what's to stop the Vivaldi sales team from sharing their own install/update/user count statistics when they make these sales calls?
Or turn this whole thing into a big PR news story as to why Vivaldi can't have their own user agent.
PLUS start publicly sharing (even weekly) the audited Vivaldi statistics and shame others for not being so transparent.
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I have yet to encounter a site that doesn't work with vivaldi because of its user-string.
I would also argue that the site programmed in a way that makes it unusable depending on the browser user-string is probably a site not worth using. -
It would be nice to set user agent string in Settings instead of an extension, since I hate everything Apple this is what I would set
"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) Vivaldi/2.6.1546.4"
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I have been using Vivaldi as my main (and more or less only) browser since a couple of months after the release of the very first tech preview, and as far as I can remember I've only been "user-agent blocked" once in that time (WhatsApp Web, which happened a couple of snapshots ago and has since been resolved).
Personally, I think having a custom user-agent string is useful as it serves to promote the browser (although said promotion is probably not very large), gives it a more clear identity (i.e. not just another chrome clone), and of course helps with the revenue stream.
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@Komposten But Vivaldi is just that – a chromium browser. The user-agent shows it too…
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@luetage Vivaldi is a Chromium browser, yes, but not a Chrome clone. Much like (and maybe more than) e.g. Opera, Vivaldi is much more than just Chromium.
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@Komposten That's exactly what the phrase implies. Vivaldi is one of countless "chrome clones". You can of course argue it, but there is no denying it. Chrome clones is simply what people condescendingly call browsers, which are based on chromium. You are using the phrase condescendingly too and somehow think Vivaldi is above it, but I don't think that's completely fair. I'm pretty sure both Opera and Brave developers and users would argue these browsers distinguish themselves significantly from Chrome too, just like Vivaldi.
Oh well, it doesn't really matter anyway. I for one am a proud chrome clone user ^^
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@MaxKarlErnst said in Does Vivaldi really need to be so proud?:
I have yet to encounter a site that doesn't work with vivaldi because of its user-string.
I would also argue that the site programmed in a way that makes it unusable depending on the browser user-string is probably a site not worth using.I have three, and though I would only classify one as "must use."
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@LonM said in Does Vivaldi really need to be so proud?:
- They can only get this if vivaldi announces itself as vivaldi
If that's true, then what is the purpose of the referrer string at the end of the URLs for the sponsored properties? Isn't that the smoking gun right there, making the user agent redundant?
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@rseiler that reports directly on the individual usage of referral links. But Vivaldi needs to be well enough known before the deals are signed, be that can't really be done without analytics.
I don't think this is a perfect solution either, far from it, but it's the way things are and difficult to change the mindset that UA is in any way important.
