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Vivaldi, the new Web browser for power users

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cyberdiva:
AddOns become abandoned. Or you might need to wait for an update after a browser update. I understand why people might love updates and i use some in other browsers too but i will feel far more "secure"  with builtin features.
-Bending_Unit (March 09, 2015, 03:46 PM)
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To some extent, I agree with you.  Indeed, years ago I made the same arguments in explaining to friends and colleagues my preference for Opera.  The other side of the coin, however, is that with add-ons, you don't have to wait for the browser's developers to build in the features you find you need, and if your preferences don't coincide with what the browser's developers regard as important, one of the hundreds of add-on creators may come up with just what you need.

cyberdiva:
I used Opera 8.52 for a long time.  I liked that it did most of what I wanted out of the box.  But I noticed an intolerance to rational suggestions on the forum. 
-MilesAhead (March 09, 2015, 04:29 PM)
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Yes, this drove me crazy.  I found both the Firefox forums and the Opera forums to be filled with fan boys and trolls.  The atmosphere discouraged me from even reading the messages.  One of the many things I like about Pale Moon is its forum: the tone is generally polite and even friendly, and queries generally receive knowledgeable responses from informed users and from the developer, who participates quite actively. 

Curt:
The good news is that it's being created by some of the folks who created Opera, which was in many ways a great browser. The bad news is that Vivaldi is being created by some of the folks who created Opera, who stubbornly resisted add-ons.-cyberdiva (March 09, 2015, 03:33 PM)
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When I read about the Vivaldi browser, I thought (almost) exactly what our diva just said; "What about addons? How can anyone in their right mind think they can create a new Internet Browser to compete with Firefox, Pale Moon and Chrome - without first letting a thousand unpaid, software authors write a gazillion extensions, to make the browser useful? Wow, that Vivaldi company will have to make it a fantastic browser!"

Edvard:
I use Opera mainly because it is faster than the others - ALL the others (at least on my box...).  The switch to using the webkit engine (and webkit IS just an engine) wasn't what bothered me, it was the dumbing-down trend I'd seen in other browsers.  When I was a Firefox fan, I thought the "Firefox button" was a good idea (all the menus, 10% of the space!) but then they took that away and left me with a hamburger and a box of pictures.  :-\
Opera went the same way, taking away many of the old Opera's features, and axing a bunch of fairly serious configurability (really? no way to change the default search engine? seriously?) and I usually blamed it on the switch to webkit, though I am now beginning to think that was on purpose.

I have tried Vivaldi, and it really does look like they're trying to bring back the old Opera, even starting a browser-centered community-driven site (Vivaldi.net) that has email, blogging, forums, etc. (MyOpera, anyone?).
As it stands, Vivaldi starts up rather slow for me, and it has that weird Metro square-iness look that is REALLY out of place on my Linux box, but so far, it's... OK.  Not as fast as Opera, but it renders some stuff better, and I'm looking forward to seeing what improvements are waiting in the future.  For now though, it's an also-ran that I'll keep my eye on.

xtabber:
Opera has been my favorite browser for Web surfing since version 3.50, 16 years ago. Hard to believe now, but a single user license cost $35 back then!  Yet it has never been my default browser, if only because too many sloppily designed commercial sites simply don't work properly with it.

The new Chromium Opera is definitely faster, but at first was missing too many essential features to be usable.  That is no longer the case and it is now my primary surfing browser.  I haven't completely removed Opera 12 from my system, but I have unpinned it from my taskbar and haven't used it for a while.  Opera Chromium seems to work fine anywhere that Chrome does, without the snoopware and invasive baggage that Google builds into Chrome. Opera Chromium has a growing number of extensions of its own and can work with many Chrome extensions.

While Firefox remains my default browser on Windows, it is definitely beginning to suffer from bloat and weird UI decisions. If not for the Classic Theme Restorer extension, I might have dropped it.  I also use SeaMonkey on Windows.

I've almost completely abandoned Firefox on Android. It's become just too bloated and slow to be usable.  Chrome works best on that platform, of course, but I also use Opera for Android and Dolphin, which allow more private browsing without having to load an incognito tab every time I look something up.

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