Vivaldi Blog

Ctrl+F "Vivaldi" -- no relevant comments? Vivaldi is impossibly excellent. How is Arc getting so much more attention?

Want vertical tabs? Vivaldi. Side bar? Vivaldi. Workspaces? Vivaldi. Mouse gestures? Vivaldi. Vertical space? Vivaldi. Customizable speed dial? Vivaldi. Keyboard commands? Popout mini-browser? Encrypted sync? Page tiling? Chrome extensions? Multiple types of tab groups? Excellent tools for inspection, screenshotting, etc.? Total anonymity? Everything comes up Vivaldi.

And what's more, Vivaldi actually works for the USER. They spoof their ID (due to Google sabotage) that lets us use Bing Chat without switching to Chrome. They don't even ask for your email address, unlike Arc. They'll GIVE you an email system for free. Vivaldi's openly committed to rejecting Google's Manifest v3 that cripples user control over what information is collected by Google and what extensions a user can use in their own browser.

And yet Vivaldi receives virtually no attention or praise. And Arc has been showered with it for years, despite never shipping a product until today. It's... very strange. This browser is everything I could ever dream of, and it doesn't get a fraction of the attention that Firefox, Brave, or Chrome gets.

Link for Vivaldi, from the same people behind the original Opera: https://vivaldi.com

Used to be a major advocate of Firefox as power user for almost 10years after switching from Maxthon/MyIE2 as the previous best browser.

Now I just use https://Vivaldi.com ... far more customisation and features than Firefox. Even includes some of the power addons Firefox used to have as good addons... before it became the complete noob dog shit like it is now.

Seriously Mozilla can go fuck themselves (I mean they already are, they lobotomised there browser into a crappy chrome clone in all but engine backend) maybe I should make a website like majrko.fyi competently trashing every aspect of Firefox. I can't even stand it (it pales in comparison to what it could be with the previous addon system) and it's new stupid slide menu system is just a big fucking waste of time designed by idiots who haven't a clue about good workflow. And the complete lack of customisation and features compared to Vivaldi is joke (or even what Firefox used to be capable of..so sad)

At this point vanilla Chrome is just basic google garbage, but I wouldn't goto Firefox because of it's so called privacy aspects.. I'd goto Vivaldi instead for the features.. Privacy is dead.

Why limit yourself to one browser?

I use many browsers. Though Chome tends to be my main goto on the desktop for personal stuff mainly because of the good syncing system they set up early and Opera Mobile on the phone (I dropped Chrome here as it seems to be getting worse). IE I save for work on screen presentations so you don't have browser history showing up as you type plus the odd archaic system that demands IE. I use FF for some work areas to keep separate accounts. Also FF still have the best best extensions environment. And Opera for the accounts reason too.

Another browser and possible contender for my main desktop browser is Vivaldi. While not quite there this is still early days. It's being founded by some of the old Opera Browser team. They are trying to rebuild a browser with the old core Opera values and create a power user product. Check it out: https://vivaldi.com/ I'm using this also and keeping a close eye on how it developes.

Also if your browser is bogging you down due to hardware limitation try Opera 12 (old version before the big shift). It's very resource friendly.

Disclaimer: Ex-Opera employee

I completely rely on Firegestures, the premiere mouse gesture addon.

Mouse gestures are in my muscle memory. I can't live without them, and every single Webextensions Chrome mouse gestures addon either:

a) Sucks. Doesn't work at all on internal pages including new pages (which is not a blocker, but sucks), and more importantly doesn't work _well_ ANYWHERE. Inconsistent behavior, poor performance. Just unacceptable.

b) Is actually literally malware. Once Chrome extensions get popular, a shady Chinese or Russian consortium buys them up, adds user tracking, and silently updates the extension so your every move is followed.

Chrome has been around for almost 10 years now, so I'm absolutely convinced that Webextensions are unable to support _GOOD_ mouse gestures.

Now that Firefox will shortly become hot stinking Chinatown garbage, my only hope will be Vivaldi, a browser using Blink (Chrome's backend). Its mouse gestures are really close to being usable-- it only lacks configurable mouse button chording.

https://vivaldi.com/

The solution for the (as of yet) small group of people who cares about these things is very simple: community driven forks.

With the bonus that you also get a set of great (and per fork different yet handy) features.

These include:

Waterfox (Firefox) - https://www.waterfox.com/

Zen Browser (Firefox) - https://zen-browser.app/

Librewolf (Firefox) - https://librewolf.net/

Helium (Chrome/Chromium) - https://helium.computer/

Ungoogled Chromium (Chrome/Chromium) - https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium

Also as one of the major players, Vivaldi already made a stand against AI and forcefully including (agentic) AI in the web browser: https://vivaldi.com/blog/keep-exploring/. It's a Chromium based browser with a lot of nice features and deep customization options: https://vivaldi.com/

> Edge and Arc always keep your tabs in sync between devices and inside their respective workspaces

Maybe try Vivaldi? https://vivaldi.com/

I’ve got about 5 different workspaces and can flip between any of them on windows/linux whether that’s desktop or laptop.

Has a ton of features I always wanted in Firefox, but never knew I needed (I think that statement makes sense?)

OSX app is a bit meh, but might be because I’ve got muscle memory with safari.

Edit — as a DevOps main I feel your documentation/research pain. Genuinely I feel like Vivaldi solved the 300+ tabs over multiple OSes/machines problem for me. (I think my record was 500ish tabs at one point).

Edit 2 — maybe it’s not a DevOps thing. Maybe I’m just a tabs weirdo. :shrugs: