Jon von Tetzchner, CEO and founder of Vivaldi Technologies, refuses to integrate AI features in its browser and wants human engineers, not AI, to write its code.
Jon von Tetzchner, CEO and founder of Vivaldi Technologies, refuses to integrate AI features in its browser and wants human engineers, not AI, to write its code.
I’ve tried Vivaldi before in the past and it’s UI and cluttered interface turned me way off. I’ve got my own concerns about it still that hasn’t made me jump to it. That being, it relies on the Chrome Web Store to install extensions. If Google themselves decided not to have something on that store and you’re using it on Vivaldi, well you’re SOL.
That’s an advantage for Firefox, that has its own extensions. Some of us are stuck with Firefox despite their interestingly bad choices and historical lack of fulfilling promises on their own behalf. There are still key advantages with Firefox than most browsers.
And even if some of us are tired of Firefox anyway, we’ve got its forks to use.
I’m the inverse. The amount of customization and power user features are what makes it my daily driver, though I agree the reliance on Google isn’t good. Also having their sync data stored e2e encrypted with my own private key is a nice touch. Though if a heavily customizable fork of Firefox with features like that was available I’d likely switch. I don’t have the time to maintain a highly customized userchrome.css that could break with every update, unfortunately
It’s been a long time since I used Vivaldi, but I find Zen browser fits what I remember of Vivaldi.
Just like the other person, I used Vivaldi for several years, but then switched to Firefox. Zen is my current browser, and it seems to fit into the place Vivaldi had pretty comfortably. It’s not identical, but it has a similar niche.
It was when Vivaldi’s sync went down for idk, a month? that forced me onto Brave.
No reason to move back - maybe until now
just as “most users” don’t want ai baked into their browser, “most users” probably don’t use any addons, or use only one–an adblocker. ad blocking (with configurable filter lists) is built into vivaldi already, no separate addon needed. works well-enough.
that said, the chromium base and its dependency on google to provide the ‘addon store’ is vivaldi’s main detractor, because google has been putting the screws to anything that threatens their business as a data harvesting advertising company.
vivaldi does have some features not found in other browsers or other chromium browsers (excepting some in common with opera). the one i appreciate the most is the configurable toolbars, both items and their positions… similar to how you can configure firefox’s main toolbar.
i do occasionally need a chromium browser for specific tasks. vivaldi is the one i use. usually as a ‘portable’ installation that is easiest to trash when i’m done. it’s also the one i use for a couple streaming sites because it does use chrome addons (but also is not chrome, either).
Does it still have built in mouse gestures? Opera was the first one to have them decades ago and I got so used to it I need addons for that now…
i always have them disabled, but yes. it does.
Ok, thank you. I’ll probably give it a try as a backup browser.
They have improved the UI quite a lot recently imo.
That’s why I use Librewolf/Ironfox on my laptop/phone. All the benefits of Firefox and none of the half-baked promises or bad decisions!
got rid of it after i realised its more work to disable every new feature that just gets in the way.
Note you can sideload extensions essentially. Google’s been fine afaik, but if they did suddenly go crazy it wouldn’t be that hard for Vivaldi and other chromium browsers to run their own store.
They should’ve been running their own store a long time ago. Not wait until Google reaches a line that’ll trigger them to.
I feel like I could have written this comment word for word. But luckily you already did so now I only have to write this short one.