<story><title>Vivaldi – A Browser for Our Friends</title><url>https://vivaldi.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>StevePerkins</author><text>I check in on Vivaldi every few months to see how it&amp;#x27;s coming along, and there are some things that I like.  However, I think they&amp;#x27;re a bit TOO fixated on Opera as it was 15 years ago.&lt;p&gt;I keep waiting for bookmark sync, which today is a fundamental browser feature rather than a nice-to-have.  But the Vivaldi guys insist on pouring resources into an integrated desktop email client instead, because that was a signature feature of Opera back in the day.  However, it&amp;#x27;s probably no exaggeration to say that most users haven&amp;#x27;t used a desktop email client in over a decade.  So why is such a retro throwback feature prioritized so high?&lt;p&gt;Another example is right-clicking a link in Vivaldi, to open it in a new tab.  Every other major browser opens the link in a background tab, keeping the focus in the tab you&amp;#x27;re currently on.  However, Vivaldi automatically jumps the focus over to that tab right away... because that was default Opera behavior 15 years ago.  This is frequently brought up in Vivaldi forums, and the response from the devs is simply to grumble that old-school Opera was best and all other browsers today have bad defaults.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m a huge Opera fan, and have been for years.  However, the thing is... I just don&amp;#x27;t WANT a re-implementation of Opera from 15 years ago.  I&amp;#x27;m sorry, but desktop email is dead for most of us.  I&amp;#x27;m sorry, but Chrome has acclimated us to some slightly different default behaviors, and at this point those are the defaults that I expect and want other browsers to mirror.&lt;p&gt;You want to enable a whole new level of customization for power users?  That sounds AWESOME!  You want to provide some security and an alternative path forward, for Opera fans who worry about that company&amp;#x27;s ownership changes?  Great!  But please don&amp;#x27;t be so beholden to the Opera of 2002 that you don&amp;#x27;t make an offering well-suited for 2017.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Tomis02</author><text>Man, I really miss the skins in Opera 12, there were some gorgeous ones. I agree that the email client is not necessarily a priority, however&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Every other major browser opens the link in a background tab, keeping the focus in the tab you&amp;#x27;re currently on.&lt;p&gt;Oh wow, that&amp;#x27;s pretty bad for every other major browser. We have two use cases:
1) I want to open the link in a new tab and switch focus (presumably to read right now).
2) I want to open the link in a new tab and not switch focus (presumably to read later).
In Vivaldi you can achieve (1) by &amp;quot;open link in new tab&amp;quot;, and (2) by &amp;quot;open link in background tab&amp;quot;.
In Chrome you can achieve (2) but no way of achieving (1) without touching the keyboard. And even when using the keyboard the shortcuts are clunkier (ctrl+shit+click vs shift+click in Vivaldi), which is probably not even relevant since I regularly observe Chrome users (programmers nonetheless) using &amp;quot;open link in new tab&amp;quot; and then clicking the new tab.
We should keep in mind that most browser users are not power users. Which leads me to&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; but Chrome has acclimated us to some slightly different default behaviors&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s the wrong default behaviors, and ~8 years ago I could have listed you a dozen epic failures of Chrome&amp;#x2F;Firefox usability. I sincerely doubt there&amp;#x27;s some elaborate reasoning for why they behaved badly, most likely it was just inertia and &amp;quot;works good enough&amp;quot;. One of my pet peeves is that Chrome&amp;#x2F;Firefox don&amp;#x27;t restore your last tab session by default, which I find extremely annoying: a regular user who doesn&amp;#x27;t even know how to open the browser options will always have to reopen the previous tabs when restarting the PC.&lt;p&gt;Nowadays I rarely use Chrome&amp;#x2F;Firefox so I can&amp;#x27;t make a detailed browser comparison anymore, but from what I&amp;#x27;ve been seeing there&amp;#x27;s no reason to think they&amp;#x27;re anywhere near as good as Opera 12 used to be. I agree that the usability changes could be a shock for new Vivaldi users but it shouldn&amp;#x27;t be too hard to adapt to a better way of doing things.</text></comment>
<story><title>Vivaldi – A Browser for Our Friends</title><url>https://vivaldi.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>StevePerkins</author><text>I check in on Vivaldi every few months to see how it&amp;#x27;s coming along, and there are some things that I like.  However, I think they&amp;#x27;re a bit TOO fixated on Opera as it was 15 years ago.&lt;p&gt;I keep waiting for bookmark sync, which today is a fundamental browser feature rather than a nice-to-have.  But the Vivaldi guys insist on pouring resources into an integrated desktop email client instead, because that was a signature feature of Opera back in the day.  However, it&amp;#x27;s probably no exaggeration to say that most users haven&amp;#x27;t used a desktop email client in over a decade.  So why is such a retro throwback feature prioritized so high?&lt;p&gt;Another example is right-clicking a link in Vivaldi, to open it in a new tab.  Every other major browser opens the link in a background tab, keeping the focus in the tab you&amp;#x27;re currently on.  However, Vivaldi automatically jumps the focus over to that tab right away... because that was default Opera behavior 15 years ago.  This is frequently brought up in Vivaldi forums, and the response from the devs is simply to grumble that old-school Opera was best and all other browsers today have bad defaults.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m a huge Opera fan, and have been for years.  However, the thing is... I just don&amp;#x27;t WANT a re-implementation of Opera from 15 years ago.  I&amp;#x27;m sorry, but desktop email is dead for most of us.  I&amp;#x27;m sorry, but Chrome has acclimated us to some slightly different default behaviors, and at this point those are the defaults that I expect and want other browsers to mirror.&lt;p&gt;You want to enable a whole new level of customization for power users?  That sounds AWESOME!  You want to provide some security and an alternative path forward, for Opera fans who worry about that company&amp;#x27;s ownership changes?  Great!  But please don&amp;#x27;t be so beholden to the Opera of 2002 that you don&amp;#x27;t make an offering well-suited for 2017.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>suprfnk</author><text>&amp;gt; the Vivaldi guys insist on pouring resources into an integrated desktop email client instead, because that was a signature feature of Opera back in the day.&lt;p&gt;Really? That&amp;#x27;s dumb. Why would I want my browser to check my email? That should be another program, or just a webpage. The browser browses the internet.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I&amp;#x27;m not the audience, as I&amp;#x27;ve always liked the Unix &amp;quot;do one thing and do it well&amp;quot; approach.</text></comment>