New Vivaldi release for Windows, Mac & Linux.

[paulk@writing.exchange]

@jon AWESOME!

Thank you.

[jon@social.vivaldi.net]

@ed , I think moving away from Chromium is not an option at this time. Having made a browser from scratch before, Opera, I know what it takes to build a browser from scratch and there is a reason companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft have not done it.

I think there is great value in us growing and being able to contribute more to the Chromium project. I think that can make a significant difference.

[sirrichard@social.vivaldi.net]

@jon @Vivaldi Thanks for great update. Right from the beginning enabled auto hide in Vivaldi flags. Would be great if it would be possible to toggle each bar auto hide separately, but otherwise works great.

[ed@livellosegreto.it]

@jon thanks for the reply and for sharing that experience, really appreciated.

[jon@social.vivaldi.net]

@sirrichard @Vivaldi

That is something we are still working on, but you can select which elements to hide in the settings.

[dallo@pouet.chapril.org]

@jon @ed would building on top of gecko or servo would be a solution? It would help avoid the chromium monopoly.

[ariarhythmic@ohai.social]

@jon somehow, that blog post sounds AI-written

[sirrichard@social.vivaldi.net]

@jon @Vivaldi Thanks, didn't notice that auto-hide interface in settings at first :)

[richih@chaos.social]

@ed @jon I'm at the point of wanting away from the BS browsers, I'd happily pay for a subscription to you if you were Open Source.

[jon@social.vivaldi.net]

@dallo @ed

Not really. At Opera we built a browser with as much as 350 million monthly users. Still we had to deal with compatibility issues as sites would block us. Not least sites by Google, Apple and Microsoft. That is after building the browser core with the best standards support of them all.

It is most natural for us to go with Chromium to ensure compatibility. Making things work with multiple engines is also too time consuming. I think it is best that we put in the resources to influence Chromium in the best possible direction. A Strong Vivaldi can do that.

[sesav@mastodon.social]

@jon This browser has been eluding me for a long time, idk why. 🥲

Why do people choose Vivaldi?

[jon@social.vivaldi.net]

@sesav

I guess you have to ask our users, but I believe there are a number of reasons users choose us:

1. Features. Just a lot of useful features. Workspaces, tab stacks, tab tiles and a lot of flexibility in the UI.

https://vivaldi.com/features

2. Privacy. Built in tracker and ad blocker and a stand against the surveillance economy.

3. No integrated AI.

4. No Crypto currencies.

5. Made in Europe. Headquarters in Norway, team and servers in Iceland and developers in Norway and Iceland and a few in other European countries.

[sesav@mastodon.social]

@jon Thanks for the reply!

I like the browser approach that avoids crypto and AI, everything you described, and the fact that all the infrastructure is in Europe rather than the US. 💪

And I like Norway! 🇳🇴 ☺️

[dallo@pouet.chapril.org]

@jon @ed are there example of such influence on chromium? If not, how Strong Vivaldi must be to compete with Google?

[tragivictoria@mastodon.catgirl.cloud]

@jon@vivaldi.net hard to give message to big tech while being a Chromium reskin :(

[jon@social.vivaldi.net]

@dallo @ed

At Opera we had the largest team of any company engaging with writing the Web standards we all use today. There are some guys working on Chromium today that are former Opera people, but sadly they do not work for us.

We can contribute more and have more of an influence with a larger company. Currently we spend a lot of time just modifying and improving functionality, but we are not getting much of our changes into Chromium. We hope to change that, but first we must grow more.

[tragivictoria@mastodon.catgirl.cloud]

@dallo@pouet.chapril.org @jon@vivaldi.net @ed@livellosegreto.it considering Chromium is a Google project made by mostly by Google, i dont think some downstream can really influence them at all

[dallo@pouet.chapril.org]

@jon @ed alright good luck with that.

[csolisr@hub.azkware.net]

@jon @ed It's reasonable to stick to a well-tested engine, as long as you make sure that upstream doesn't start deprecating vital functionality (like Manifest v2). In that regard, do you have any particular blockers that stop you from releasing the source code for the rest of the application? I can't trust myself to put my personal passwords in a browser that may or may not be secretly funneling them elsewhere, and relying on Ghidra and Wireshark to verify it is suboptimal.

[dataknightmare@mastodon.xyz]

@jon as long as you avoid "AI", I'm in.
(WTF is "AI" doing in _anything_, in the first place, is beyond me)