Vivaldi based on Firefox (instead of Chromium) -- Something like Comodo IceDragon
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Comodo has 2 different browsers: Dragon (Chromium-based) and IceDragon (Firefox-based). Can't Vivaldi too have 2 versions?
Is it possible / practical / economical for the Vivaldi team to create a Firefox-based version of Vivaldi?
I am an old user of OLD Opera since its inception till version 12. It used to be awesome, and Vivaldi continues its path of awesomeness (though I admit recent version of Chromium-based Opera are becoming good too). However, I think for being awesome, Vivaldi should choose a framework that allows it to be awesome; Chromium is like a jail for Vivaldi.
The only such available option is Firefox.
Chromium is too primitive and terrible on so many levels. It looks like an untrained monkey. I don't understand why every browser developer as well as any user uses Chromium --I mean Vivaldi, Opera, Edge, Comodo Dragon, Brave, etc.
Perhaps because of Google's heavy support? Or because of the very large fanbase of Chrome. Anyways, in terms of rendering and smoothness and features, etc, Chromium just sucks.
Only a few good browsers use Firefox, like Comodo IceDragon.
I wish the best browsers ever, i.e., Vivaldi and Opera, could do something like this: To create a Firefox-based version.
Rich features of Vivaldi with smooth rendering and buglessness of Firefox would be awesome.
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@victorxstc No, Vivaldi can't/won't change the engine - that could take a year or more of work!
Maybe you should look at https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/89504/floorp
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@TbGbe isn't the extra effort worth it? Chromium is really shitty.
Or perhaps, they might be able to make a single Vivaldi browser with 2 or more switchable engines, like the good-old Napster (I mean Netscape; I have really become old)
Though I am not talking only about the rendering engine; there are features that Firefox has and Chromium-based browsers lack.
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If Chromium is an untrained monkey, it also happens to be 8 feet tall and weigh 800 pounds. Every website knows that it had better work in Chromium, while they might not even bother to test in Mozilla. And that's precisely why Opera, Vivaldi, Brave and now Edge are based on Chromium.
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@sgunhouse that's very true and very sad.
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@victorxstc said in Vivaldi based on Firefox (instead of Chromium) -- Something like Comodo IceDragon:
Can't Vivaldi too have 2 versions?
Investing so much team power (money, time) on two rendering engines is not realistic. The use of Chromium engine was a longtime decision many years ago.
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@victorxstc said in Vivaldi based on Firefox (instead of Chromium) -- Something like Comodo IceDragon:
Only a few good browsers use Firefox, like Comodo IceDragon.
I wish the best browsers ever, i.e., Vivaldi and Opera, could do something like this: To create a Firefox-based version.
Rich features of Vivaldi with smooth rendering and buglessness of Firefox would be awesome.
If you don't mind that it isn't updated very often, my favorite Firefox-based Web browser is SlimBrowser.
It's small and fast. -
@AllanH thanks I use its Slimjet version.
There are a number of very good Firefox-based browsers that I am currently using (used frequently for many years), including
Slimjet,
Pale Moon,
Waterfox,
Comodo IceDragon.All of these are very good, some of them even better than Firefox in some aspects. Pale Moon and Slimjet are light and fast; Waterfox is compatible with older add-ons; IceDragon is heavy on security. Besides, most of them have the settings of legacy Firefox, which I like.
I use all of them besides Firefox itself, Vivaldi, Opera, Opera 12, Comodo Dragon, Brave, and Edge for various purposes (never ever Chrome).
But Vivaldi is something else, and with time will become way better than all of them in every aspect. This is why I wished for a Firefox-based Vivaldi. Otherwise, there are already good Firefox-based browsers there and I use most of them.
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@victorxstc said in Vivaldi based on Firefox (instead of Chromium) -- Something like Comodo IceDragon:
@AllanH thanks I use its Slimjet version.
There are a number of very good Firefox-based browsers that I am currently using (used frequently for many years), including
Slimjet,
Pale Moon,
Waterfox,
Comodo IceDragon.I've used Slimjet as well, but it's a Chromium-based browser, like Vivaldi.
SlimBrowser is the Gecko-based browser, like Firefox. -
@victorxstc, I have heard countless times that Chromium is garbage, Google spyware, etc. what is nonsensical, Chromium as such is certainly full of Google APIs dedicated to tracking users, but it so happens that Chromium is 100% OpenSource, that is to say that every company or dev that wants it, can adjust and modify it to their needs, removing all these APIs, which Vivaldi is doing since years.
In fact, surprise surprise, Vivaldi transmits less data to Google than Firefox and Mozilla, i.e. Zero (your account data and visits to Mozilla go straight to Alphabet, googleanalytics and googletagmanager, check it with Webbkoll or Blacklight)
Do you think that EDGE (independent of Windows, has introduced its own tracking APIs, but this is another topic) pass data to Google?
Firefox or forks are good browsers, but Blink is better than Gecko in current web formats, it's a fact, which is why it is the preferred engine for the vast majority of companies today.Today there are 3 engines (apart of some forks of these, like Qt, Goanna,,etc) all of them FOSS and therefore it is irrelevant which one is used, but rather what is done with them and this depends solely on the companies or the devs, not on anything else.
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More than 3 engines, but as far as browsing the others are irrelevant. KHTML from the Linux KDE Konqueror browser still exists and is under development, but is more of historical interest as the parent of both webkit/Safari and blink/Chromium. (As they have fewer developers, they're a bit slow to incorporate downstream changes.) And there are a variety of text browsers such as Links and Lynx, and a few works in progress.
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@sgunhouse, yes, KHTML, the far ancestor of Blink, but this, as you say, only historic interests. De facto are only 3 engines + 2 forks still valid but marginal, Qt5 and Goanna, maybe some experimental one more. WebKit also has it's days numbered, at the end will remain Blink as standart for sure.
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@AllanH said in Vivaldi based on Firefox (instead of Chromium) -- Something like Comodo IceDragon:
SlimBrowser is the Gecko-based browser, like Firefox.
Thanks a lot Allan, you're right. That's a nice addition to Firefox-based browsers
So now, we know 2 different brands have decided to have both Chromium-based and Firefox-based browsers: Comodo and Slim. I wish Opera and Vivaldi could do the same.
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This post is deleted! -
@Catweazle I didn't say anything at all about PRIVACY or SECURITY in my original post. Privacy/security aren't my concern or the reason for suggesting a Firefox-based Vivaldi. I have already mentioned the reason (that Chromium with its primitiveness and coarseness is like a jail for Vivaldi).
Regarding Blink being better than Gecko, as I said above, I was not talking only about rendering the engine either. I was talking also about feature richness and GUIs and being CPU-friendly and RAM-friendly, etc. My second post here to @TbGbe clarifies that to some extent.
Overall, if 2 brands have already gone the 2-version route, it is perhaps practical for Vivaldi too. I know they won't but look:
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Comodo has 2 browsers based on Firefox and Chromium. Comodo Dragon and IceDragon.
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Now thanks to @AllanH I know Slim too has 2 browsers based on Firefox and Chromium: SlimBrowser and Slimjet.
So it is not unpracticall at least. But if Vivaldi guys have already decided to stick with Chromium, that's fine by me. They are already awesome.
Couldn't edit the original post, so:
ps. I am not talking only about the engine, but about the feature-rich GUI, the surfing experience, the memory- and CPU-friendliness, etc.
pps. I am not talking about privacy either. That's not the reason I am suggesting a Firefox-based Vivaldi.
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@victorxstc Please allow me to point out a couple of things:
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I don't know how many employees Comodo has, but my guess is that the number probably have at least 4 or 5 digits (which suggests that a browser team member number has at least 3 digits) Vivaldi's number of employees have 2 digits, and we still have a long way to go to reach the third digit. (And economically, Comodo, like the other major browser vendors, have most, if not all, of their income from different sources than the browser.)
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Question: Just how much customization and do those vendors do for their versions? I guess Comodo adds some extra security functionality, but most of that can probably be shared between the releases with minimal internal changes. Making a browser that essentially reuses the original GUI and features with some styling is very different from what Vivaldi has done, as I mention in my article on the topic of maintaining a fork.
Switching engines, or using multiple engines for a product that has a large extra set of features is a very costly operation, and will take several years (my guess is min. 3-5, since one have to begin from square one again, and the team size have to be at least two or three times the current one).
And before you mention our previous company: Yes, they transitioned to Chromium in about 6-9 months, but AFAIK it was initially mostly branding and styling, and most of the advanced features people really wanted from the old version were not in that release, and AFAIK still aren't (don't look at it, at all), more than 10 years later.
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Dear @yngve I am very grateful for your nice answer. I am also thankful that a real Vivaldi team member showed up, something I had never seen on Opera forums or most other tech forums. Very kind of you.
I totally understand and am surprised and in awe to see you are doing such a great job with fewer than 100 employees. Reading your article gave me a headache; more power to you.
I don't have any issues with Vivaldi; on the contrary, I am a happy user of Vivaldi (and a happy user of the legacy Opera till version 12). Opera 12x used to be like a very personalized browser for me, and now Vivaldi is like that (only better).
If you search my username victorxstc and victorxatc2 on legacy Opera forums (if they still exist), you will see I had suggested tens of features, about 14, 15 years ago, and gladly the genius guys there kindly implemented many of my (and others') feature requests into the awesome Opera. So using legacy Opera, I felt quite at home, because it used to have anything and everything I wanted and much more. As a matter of fact, I already have Opera 12 installed on my PC; if Vivaldi hadn't fill its empty place, I would still frequently use Opera 12 despite all the security risks.
Once the legacy Opera died and became the Chromium-based Opera, we asked for the good-old features to no avail (as you too stated, many of those features have not returned to Opera, even now); so I and many others left the new Opera, until I heard the geniuses behind the awesomeness of the legacy Opera (12x) have created a new browser, Vivaldi, with many features of legacy Opera now re-appearing in Vivaldi . This was the best news ever; so again I feel at home when using Vivaldi, which has many good features of Opera 12x and much more.
- I should add that the latest versions of Opera are much better than just a simple Chromium fork. There are good original features and ideas in Opera worth being implemented. Vivaldi team might want to have a look at its latest version.
Bottom-line, I am already more than happy with Desktop Vivaldi. Just thought if it would be even more awesome to possibly dope it with good Firefox features. But I do understand your limitations and wish you all the best. Some Firefox features are worth being implemented. I am a loyal fan of smart people like you and have always promoted Vivaldi and legacy Opera as much as I could.
ps. As per your question: Yes, Comodo Dragon is mostly good in security, and it is not something very special or customized (as you pointed it out too). The only unique thing about it as far as I know is its DNS encryption and DNS tweaks. The rest of its security features are mostly Chromium features with a few tweaks here and there (like Brave). And any other feature not already in Chromium can be achieved via tracker-blocking add-ons.
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@yngve (and the prior company had hundreds of developers and substantial advertising income at the time...)