Full Circle Magazine FR

Vivaldi is a new web browser from one of the two original developers of the Opera browser. Opera is still with us, but as Jon says: “The browser we once loved has changed its direction. Sadly, it is no longer serving its community of users and contributors — who helped build the browser in the first place. So we came to a natural conclusion: we must make a new browser. A browser for ourselves and for our friends. A browser that is fast, but also a browser that is rich in functionality, highly flexible, and puts the user first. A browser that is made for you.” - Jon Install Installing is easy. Simply visit https://vivaldi.com and click the download button on the front page. From there, choose your 32/64-bit DEB file. When downloaded, double click on the DEB to install, or install using: sudo apt-get install vivaldi-beta_1.0.344.37-1_amd64.deb You may need to adjust that command depending on the version number in the filename by the time you read this. You start Vivaldi using your usual Unity/desktop launcher. On first start, Vivaldi will ask if you want to import data from another browser, and what data to import.

Layout Vivaldi has a familiar layout. Very top-left is the Vivaldi icon. This is your menu for File, Edit, View, etc. Top of the screen has your tabs, navigation buttons with URL and quick search, and below that is (if you want it displayed) your bookmarks bar. You’ll also notice what looks like skip forward/back as you’d see in a media player. These are what Vivaldi calls fast-forward and rewind buttons. Can’t say I’ve used them much, if at all, but apparently they’ll take you to the first page of the site and predicts the next page. The left side of the screen has a vertical bar (above) which has buttons for (top to bottom) bookmarks, downloads, notes, and an icon to let you add additional panels. Yes. Notes. You can click the notes icon and save quick reminders for yourself. The ‘+’ button allows you to attach images, or files, to your note. Very handy. The first thing I noticed was that pages loaded much faster in Vivaldi than in my usual Firefox. And I mean almost instantly. My broadband isn’t the greatest, so having a page load within a second/two was a revelation to me.

Settings Clicking the cog icon at the very bottom left of the screen displays the Vivaldi settings (left). The settings are divided into categories such as appearance, tabs, privacy, etc. Or, if you want the full Monty, you can click ‘Display All’. The settings window has a search feature which is handy for those hard-to-find features. Everything is in here such as default start page, showing/hiding various bars/menus, interface scale, default font type/size, light/dark theme, and access to the numerous keyboard shortcuts that it uses. Tweaks Initially, I thought Vivaldi was a complete rewrite of a browser, but it turns out that it uses Chromium as a foundation. Which is no bad thing as this allows the user to install Chrome extensions. I tried this out by, of course, installing AdBlock. Vivaldi has a few tricks up its sleeve, though. A nice touch is that the navigation bar and tab will take its colour automatically from the page you’re on (above). For example, as I write this in Google Docs, the tab and bar is blue. If I switch over to my Gmail it will turn red.

A handy feature in Vivaldi is tab grouping. What I’ve been doing is opening both my Gmail accounts and grouping them into one tab. If you look closely at the red tab in the photo, you’ll see that it has two red bars above it. That’s two tabs in one. I can click that to switch between (in this case) two tabs. But there’s more! You can also right-click on the tab and click ‘tab stack’ and it will split the screen to show your tab group. Couple that with the note-taking bar and you’re set! Privacy I’m no privacy expert, so can’t comment on its security, but I’d have to assume it is pretty secure if it’s using Chromium as its underbelly. You can click the Vivaldi button and choose File > New Private Window, and it will display a new window with a yellow icon (with a black key) and with a black URL bar (below).

Missing: What Vivaldi doesn’t do, but I hear is coming, is the synchronisation of bookmarks between devices. This doesn’t bother me as I use EverSync to go between (formerly Firefox) Vivaldi on my desktop machine, Firefox on my laptop, and Chrome on my tablet and phone. Flash is also missing from Vivaldi. Whilst some replies in their forum recommend installing Chrome (to use its plugins), or to install the Pepper Flash package(s) from the repos. I couldn’t get Flash to work with Vivaldi after trying both ideas. Conclusion: I have to say, I’m pretty impressed with Vivaldi. I wasn’t expecting much (since it’s only the second beta), but it certainly seems faster and I love the tab grouping and screen-split features. Give it a try. You’ve nothing to lose.