Vivaldi Web Browser 1.13 for Power Users Gains New Multi-Tab Management Features

[MacRumors]

Vivaldi web browser, the spiritual successor to Opera 12, released version 1.13 on Wednesday, introducing an easier way of managing multiple tabs, as well as new file download features and other improvements.

In line with the Norwegian team's aim to make Vivaldi the most feature-rich and customizable browser available to power users, the developers have created the new Window Panel. This opens a tree-style view of tabs to the side of the browser window, offering an easy overview of all open tabs as a list.

From there, users can conveniently manage tabs by dragging them to change their order, grouping tabs by topic to save space, tiling Tab Stacks to compare several web pages side by side, and hibernating unused tabs or Tab Stacks for better performance.

Within the new Panel, it's also possible to mute sound in specific tabs and pin tabs to ensure they always stay open. The Vivaldi team says it is planning to bring even more functionality to this feature in the near future.

The latest release of the Vivaldi browser also brings a number of improvements to file downloading, based on community feedback. Users now get a warning dialog when closing the browser before a download is complete. It's also now possible to pause and resume downloads, while a download speed indicator has been added to the progress bar.

Elsewhere, Vivaldi's window handling code has been rewritten, providing performance benefits that are especially noticeable on older, slower hardware.

Vivaldi browser is a free download for Mac available directly from the Vivaldi website.

Article Link: Vivaldi Web Browser 1.13 for Power Users Gains New Multi-Tab Management Features

 

[Xardas220]

It‘s a woderfull browser but it uses the deficated GPU all the time on my Macbook. >.< This is very anoying. So for mobile use it‘s not possible to use this browser because of the (very) shorter batterylife. :/
And I know about that you can disable it to use the ded. GPU but in my opinion the developer should set up the stock settings that you can use vivaldi also as a mobile browser.

 

[schrodinger_cat]

Web browser on Electron? No, thank you.
If someone doesn't know, this is a wrapper for Node.js server and Chromium. To put it simply, it has a whole server inside and a copy of Chrome browser to render interface. Result is a memory and CPU hog. This is most cheapest and cruelest way to develop multiplatform "native" apps (notice quotes). The one who pays here, is the user.

 

[c0ppo]

Web browser on Electron? No, thank you.
If someone doesn't know, this is a wrapper for Node.js server and Chromium. To put it simply, it has a whole server inside and a copy of Chrome browser to render interface. Result is a memory and CPU hog. This is most cheapest and cruelest way to develop multiplatform "native" apps (notice quotes). The one who pays here, is the user.

Indeed. You are true. But that is not the reason they chose to go with react. Reason is fast development. In less then 2 years they have managed to develop features old Opera used to have, improve on them, and then develop some more.

Vivaldi isn't browser for 'on the go' kind of people. But it is by far most powerful browser for when you are being plugged in, or on desktop. I use Vivaldi for research all the time. Tab stacking, sessions manager, and many more features like that make my research much easier.

Other then that, I use Safari. Fast, efficient and easy to use. But if I had to revert to Safari for things I use vivaldi for, I would go crazy. Pretty fast

 

[schrodinger_cat]

But that is not the reason they chose to go with react. Reason is fast development.

Well, cheap and fast are interchangeable here: you can hire more developers and development would be as fast, as with Electron, but the cost and complexity of the project would rise.
I absolutely agree, that Electron has it's place, but this is starting to get ridiculous, it's not only chat apps, we have IDEs, browsers on Electron now. What's next? A full blown operating system? This trend is worrying and I advise users and developers to be cautious about it.

 

[nvmls]

Indeed. You are true. But that is not the reason they chose to go with react. Reason is fast development. In less then 2 years they have managed to develop features old Opera used to have, improve on them, and then develop some more.

Vivaldi isn't browser for 'on the go' kind of people. But it is by far most powerful browser for when you are being plugged in, or on desktop. I use Vivaldi for research all the time. Tab stacking, sessions manager, and many more features like that make my research much easier.

Other then that, I use Safari. Fast, efficient and easy to use. But if I had to revert to Safari for things I use vivaldi for, I would go crazy. Pretty fast

An Electron browser the "most powerful" ? Sure, and Atom is the most powerful text-editor. Should I /s? These apps are wiped off in performance by pretty much any native alternative.

 

[lionel77]

Sure, Safari is the most power efficient browser on macOS, but if you are a power user who wants to do more than watch YouTube videos or only have 5 tabs open at the same time, it's pretty painful to use. As long as you use uBlock Origin or another good ad-blocker, Vivaldi is actually not that heavy on your battery, and it can handle large numbers of tabs better than many other browsers if you also make use of the built-in Lazy Tab Loading and Hibernate Tab features.

Vivaldi has a ton of features that I can no longer imagine living without. Just to list a few:

• Vertical Tabs -- so your tabs don't turn into a giant pile of partially identical favicons when you have more than a few tabs open (especially on a laptop screen), and so you can still read the titles of the 12 Amazon tabs that are currently open
• Quick Commands -- an in-browser spotlight that allows you to quickly jump to a specific tab, open a bookmark or page from your browser history, issue browser commands, etc.
• Compatible with pretty much all Chrome extensions but without Google's tracking crap
• Lazy Load Restored Tabs and Hibernate Tabs -- for less resource usage
• Better bookmark management than most other browsers
• Take 1:1 screenshots of full webpages (not just of the visible area) -- this is especially useful for pages that print to PDF very poorly
• Tons and tons of customizability -- you can change every single keyboard shortcut, theme the interface colors or let them be affected by the current webpage, customize tab handling in two million ways (e.g., remove the close tab buttons if you use horizontal tabs and regularly close tabs accidentally), etc.

If you are the type of person who is happy with TextEdit.app as a text editor, you likely won't appreciate Vivaldi. But if you are someone who actually makes changes to the default settings of an application and who is willing to spend a minute or two on figuring out stuff to be more efficient in the long run, Vivaldi might just be the browser for you.

 

[thisisnotmyname]

What is operas share of the browser market these days? Yeah I could google but I’m being lazy today as I start vacation

 

[Enygmatic]

I see the phrase tossed around a lot in various subsections, but what exactly constitutes one being a "power user"? Particularly in this context, i.e. web browsing?

 

[Joaolx]

Web browser on Electron? No, thank you.
If someone doesn't know, this is a wrapper for Node.js server and Chromium. To put it simply, it has a whole server inside and a copy of Chrome browser to render interface. Result is a memory and CPU hog. This is most cheapest and cruelest way to develop multiplatform "native" apps (notice quotes). The one who pays here, is the user.

Electron might be a resource hog but that isn't necessarily bad, besides this also isn't a browser for everyone. There is no browser that has as many features or that has developed as many features in the period of development. I can count with one hand new features that Google has introduced in Chrome in terms of functionality in maybe the last 5 years and with the other hand the ones they removed just because people didn't use them(ie. tab stacking). Since Vivaldi came out with the first stable 1.0 release they've now had 13 major updates, each with at least a new feature. Even with what you call a downside, Vivaldi runs perfectly even my basic $800 laptop with 8GB of RAM even with more than 20 tabs open all the time. Just because it runs Electron doesn't outright mean it runs slowly. The browser could even be a little slower that I wouldn't care due to its features(quick commands, web panels, search nicknames, not having to give up on Chrome extensions, tab stacking with multi view, screenshot).

Well, cheap and fast are interchangeable here: you can hire more developers and development would be as fast, as with Electron, but the cost and complexity of the project would rise.
I absolutely agree, that Electron has it's place, but this is starting to get ridiculous, it's not only chat apps, we have IDEs, browsers on Electron now. What's next? A full blown operating system? This trend is worrying and I advise users and developers to be cautious about it.

Are you a developer? If you were, surely you would know that more developers and more money doesn't mean faster development. This idea of throwing money and people into a project to make it go faster is the biggest misconception of software development by people who aren't developers. Sure, with more people and with good development techniques you maybe could build more complex things but to say that you could add more developers and go just as fast as if you were developing natively(which could possibly mean no Chrome extensions and much slower/weaker multi platform support) is very far from true.

I do agree that the trend of Electron can be a bit too much but I'm willing to ignore some of it's downsides for the advantages it brings.
[doublepost=1511370692][/doublepost]

I see the phrase tossed around a lot in various subsections, but what exactly constitutes one being a "power user"? Particularly in this context, i.e. web browsing?

Power user, for me at least, is someone who kind of uses and abuses the features of, in this case, software. I'm a power user, I like my browser to have a lot of features that enhance my browsing either making it faster or easier to do things.

ie. tab stacking with multi view(tab side by side) - on Chrome would need a window side by side but it would be in a different window which would make it confusing.
Web panels with programming language documentation.
Search nickname - do you search a lot of websites? you can set up searches for youtube and when you search for "y <insert music>" it searches for youtube. Or search IMDB by creating a "imdb" nickname, etc.
Quick commands or custom keyboard shortcuts to open tabs, search in specific websites, open bookmarks that have an alias, Clicking F2, writing "git" and I can immediately go to Github.
Built in screenshot functionality.

 

[Mike.Kane]

This feature looks interesting. I really like the clean design of Vivaldi. But not a fan of the bookmark manager, I'm using Bookmark OS instead

 

[henrikhelmers]

I've long been reading MacRumors but signed up to post this. I am a designer working at Vivaldi.

Since nobody refuted it, I figured I would sign up to say that Vivaldi is not built with Electron. Electron is a great framework for getting powerful products to market quickly. Vivaldi is built for the long haul, and we have decided to use Chromium directly. This gives us more control, though there are more things we need to build ourselves.

There is no "server" used for serving up the UI, but there is parsing of Javascript. I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have.

 

[c0ppo]

An Electron browser the "most powerful" ? Sure, and Atom is the most powerful text-editor. Should I /s? These apps are wiped off in performance by pretty much any native alternative.

I hate Atom. And with writing the word 'hate', I do mean it. I'm forced to use it often at work, and it kills me with its performance.

But... Try out Vivaldi. And try to achieve it's functions with any other browser + extensions. First, your performance will drop with that many extensions. Second, not everything is covered with extensions, so browser of your choice will still be lacking. And third and most important thing - those extension don't work not even nearly as good as vivaldi built in functions do.

I do agree, I would also love that it was written in Obj-C/C#/C++/etc., or better yet - Assambler. But it isn't.

And by 'most powerful' I'm obviously not talking about performance. I'm talking about pure functionality that you get with Vivaldi, and you simply can't get with any other browser. Of course, if you disagree, please, prove me wrong. I will gladly switch to something better

 

[schrodinger_cat]

I've long been reading MacRumors but signed up to post this. I am a designer working at Vivaldi.

Since nobody refuted it, I figured I would sign up to say that Vivaldi not built with Electron. Electron is a great framework for getting powerful products to market quickly. Vivaldi is built for the long haul, and we have decided to use Chromium directly. This gives us more control, though there are more things we need to build ourselves.

There is no "server" used for serving up the UI, but there is parsing of Javascript. I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you for clarification, I didn’t know that. I was pretty sure, you guys using Electron, it’s a big difference. Suddenly, Vivaldi looks like a pretty interesting proposition...

 

[henrikhelmers]

Thank you for clarification, I didn’t know that. I was pretty sure, you guys using Electron, it’s a big difference. Suddenly, Vivaldi looks like a pretty interesting proposition...

For us the biggest difference is that by following Chromium we have the chance to provide security updates in a timely fashion. Electron is sometimes several releases behind. I just checked https://electronjs.org, it seems like Electron still is on Chromium 58, whereas Vivaldi is on 62.

 

[stainless]

I've long been reading MacRumors but signed up to post this. I am a designer working at Vivaldi.

Since nobody refuted it, I figured I would sign up to say that Vivaldi is not built with Electron. Electron is a great framework for getting powerful products to market quickly. Vivaldi is built for the long haul, and we have decided to use Chromium directly. This gives us more control, though there are more things we need to build ourselves.

There is no "server" used for serving up the UI, but there is parsing of Javascript. I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Love seeing people who are part of the company/information active on the forums!!

While I'm not a user currently, I'm going to dl today and give it a try. I work with Patents and its regularly have 50-100 tabs open and Safari just it to frustrating for this. I hope that it will eventually have a Tab Sorting feature, if it doesn't already. When you start comparing Patent Claims A to Patent Claims B, but you have to cross reference those against Patent C and D because of likeness you can easily see how organizing Tabs and being able to view Tabs Side-By-Side is crazy important!!

Also, I support Competition so LONG LIVE Vivaldi, FireFox, Chromium!!!!!


UPDATE: Just downloaded and LOVE the Tab Stacking! This will make Patent Searches and Comparisons SO MUCH EASIER!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!

 

[schrodinger_cat]

Are you a developer? If you were, surely you would know that more developers and more money doesn't mean faster development. This idea of throwing money and people into a project to make it go faster is the biggest misconception of software development by people who aren't developers. Sure, with more people and with good development techniques you maybe could build more complex things but to say that you could add more developers and go just as fast as if you were developing natively is very far from true.

I’m a developer. I was not implying that there is a linear correlation between number of people/money and speed of development, in general. Instead there is “native” vs “cross-platform” argument. Trying to develop natively on every platform is more complex task, and you, obviously, need more people and money to do that.

 

[Joaolx]

I've long been reading MacRumors but signed up to post this. I am a designer working at Vivaldi.

Since nobody refuted it, I figured I would sign up to say that Vivaldi is not built with Electron. Electron is a great framework for getting powerful products to market quickly. Vivaldi is built for the long haul, and we have decided to use Chromium directly. This gives us more control, though there are more things we need to build ourselves.

There is no "server" used for serving up the UI, but there is parsing of Javascript. I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Thanks for showing up. And also nice to know that it's not built with Electron, even though it wouldn't bother me even if it were true in it's current state since Vivaldi performs well for it's features. I've followed Vivaldi for a few years now(haven't changed since trying it out even when it meant using alpha for more than a year) but actually never thought much about the framework used, only knew it was built on Chromium but not much more other than the UI was made with HTML and CSS if I'm not mistaken.
[doublepost=1511386929][/doublepost]

I’m a developer. I was not implying that there is a linear correlation between number of people/money and speed of development, in general. Instead there is “native” vs “cross-platform” argument. Trying to develop natively on every platform is more complex task, and you, obviously, need more people and money to do that.

Yes, but you talked as if more money and more people programming a browser natively(and/or cross-platform if you prefer, it was implied considering they currently develop for Windows/Linux/macOS) would make the project go as fast as doing otherwise, in this case Electron which Vivaldi doesn't seem to be built on.

 

[nvmls]

I hate Atom. And with writing the word 'hate', I do mean it. I'm forced to use it often at work, and it kills me with its performance.

But... Try out Vivaldi. And try to achieve it's functions with any other browser + extensions. First, your performance will drop with that many extensions. Second, not everything is covered with extensions, so browser of your choice will still be lacking. And third and most important thing - those extension don't work not even nearly as good as vivaldi built in functions do.

I do agree, I would also love that it was written in Obj-C/C#/C++/etc., or better yet - Assambler. But it isn't.

And by 'most powerful' I'm obviously not talking about performance. I'm talking about pure functionality that you get with Vivaldi, and you simply can't get with any other browser. Of course, if you disagree, please, prove me wrong. I will gladly switch to something better

Downloading it as we speak, been a while since I gave it a fair shot.

 

[Jeaz]

Well, cheap and fast are interchangeable here: you can hire more developers and development would be as fast, as with Electron, but the cost and complexity of the project would rise.
I absolutely agree, that Electron has it's place, but this is starting to get ridiculous, it's not only chat apps, we have IDEs, browsers on Electron now. What's next? A full blown operating system? This trend is worrying and I advise users and developers to be cautious about it.

No, most certainly not. Doubling the number of developers doesn't mean reducing development time in half. You seem knowledgeable about software development and should know it's not that simple.

 

[henrikhelmers]

I’m a developer. I was not implying that there is a linear correlation between number of people/money and speed of development, in general. Instead there is “native” vs “cross-platform” argument. Trying to develop natively on every platform is more complex task, and you, obviously, need more people and money to do that.

This is true, but there are a couple of factors that play to our favor. One is that Chromium is developed for many platforms, so as long as we build on that there are things we do not need to code on a per-platform basis. Second, many of my colleagues are Opera veterans. Opera also used to be a cross-platform product, built with the Quick Toolkit. So we have testers, developers and designers experienced with this type of multi-platform development.

Not saying it is easy, but it could be worse.

 

[nvmls]

Overall good stuff, the level of customization is very welcome. UI wise it's very good, screenshot feature works excellent, adding pixel dimensions on "area to file"/"area to clipboard" modes would be handy. We'll be using it strongly and recommend it as it has great potential.

A couple things we'd like to note though:

-Media playback other than youtube seems to fail on the mac client, same vids play fine on windows client (see screens below for different errors shown).
-Performance it's just not there yet for the fast slogan imho, few spikes here and there. To put an example, on macrumors home page, you click on forums and it takes a couple of seconds to "trigger" the window redirection and show the loading animation on the URL bar. This maybe one of it's weakest points considering UI is pretty polished and customization is ample.
-Considering you've got Opera devs, a built-in adblock feature as they have would be nice (contrary to what many think about Opera being sold to a Chinese Consortium, we've found it from our tests among the most stable/fastest browsers in both window/mac).


twitter one ("It couldn't play the multimedia content")


loads a bit of the vid (without playing it) and then displays controls grayed out


shows up error above


Loads forever never plays

 

[henrikhelmers]

Overall good stuff, the level of customization is very welcome. UI wise it's very good, screenshot feature works excellent, adding pixel dimensions on "area to file"/"area to clipboard" modes would be handy. We'll be using it strongly and recommend it as it has great potential.

Thank your for all those kind words. I'll try to address your feedback.

Media playback other than youtube seems to fail on the mac client [...]

If I remember correctly the current issue is that h.264 playback does not work if your GPU is blacklisted. We have top men (and women) are working on a long-term fix for media playback on macOS. We are aware, but it is really hard to get right. This probably won't help you the slightest, but the issue should only affect proprietary media, meaning that things like WebM and Open should be fine. YouTube is probably serving you content with such codecs.

Performance it's just not there yet for the fast slogan imho, few spikes here and there.

This is partially a display issue, where we are too slow to display status, and partially a lack of prefetching. But feedback noted.

[...] a built-in adblock feature as [Opera has] would be nice [...]

Noted!

 

[purplehaze0]

Looks good

 

[bjmoose]

Just tried Vivaldi, and I'm happy and impressed. Firefox, by going to Quantum, has dropped some great add-ons like Tab Mix Plus. Yes I could stay with Waterfox or another to keep that feature, though I then lose 1Password's extension as they don't support WFox.

Vivaldi though - has a great way to keep the 150 or so tabs I like to have around in a handy way, and by using Chromium, has 1Password support as well.

Hurray for Vivaldi!