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Vivaldi

UPDATE July 2023: It's time for another checkup at the examination table for Vivaldi. Privacy-wise, it's still doing this crap:

When you install Vivaldi browser (“Vivaldi”), each installation profile is assigned a unique user ID that is stored on your computer. Vivaldi will send a message using HTTPS directly to our servers located in Iceland every 24 hours containing this ID, version, cpu architecture, screen resolution and time since last message.

As well as sending a bunch of requests to Google to update its extensions right at launch (but hey, I don't have any extensions yet - so what's the justification for it?). Also uses Google for the Safe Browsing threat list downloads every 30 minutes, as many other browsers thoughtlessly do, too. When you finish Vivaldi's setup wizard, it tries to load its start page, which is behind Cloudflare. If you're running Vivaldi through TOR, the CF page will refresh in perpetuity, and never let you in while it keeps making requests - what a blunder! No matter, I don't care about its shitty start page, let's check out some other things. Like the New Tab page being full of crap by default.

You can delete all this, but why should you have to? Let us set up our New Tab pages as we want to - without having to take out the devs' trash first. I can understand having the Vivaldi links in there, but why the others? Moving on to Vivaldi's actual features, let me repeat what I've said three years ago:

It's still the most featureful browser out of the box (mouse gestures, screenshots, web panels, notes...) and boasts massive amounts of customizability (in regards to tabs, bookmarks, keyboard shortcuts that no other browser can change by default)

Now you can add themes, menu positions which are fully modifiable (very good feature that more software should implement), in addition to the above. Though, it lacks gimmicks like Opera's ChatGPT, so I'm not even sure it's the most featureful now. Bing is the default search engine except for private windows, which use DuckDuckGo (is this an admission that they are violating the users' privacy in the non-private windows? haha...). Many many options, in terms of how it all works, that I don't care about that much, since I won't use this browser. The spyware and shitty defaults (even a PDF reader is enabled) simply take precedence over anything good it might have in terms of features. It also doesn't release the full source code and the phoning home every 24h can't be disabled.

Vivaldi also brings along a mail client and a RSS reader, which I didn't test at all. RAM usage clocks at 290mb with one empty tab. Again, many people will like its features - but they do not cover the other flaws. And most of those are replacable by extensions, anyway (even Pale Moon has a mouse gesture extension). I do like some of the things it's doing though, and wish they could be picked up by others - like the movable menus and modifiable keyboard shortcuts. But it's not enough considering the spywaristic and babifying defaults. Translation offers will even appear when you visit a foreign web page; holy shit, I hate all kinds of pop-ups! Whether they come from websites or the browser itself. Let the user choose when they want to do something.

Also, I have to mention one more thing that really annoys me. It seems that the font sizes for the browser UI itself can't all be modified, so if you sit far away from the screen and use a big font (like I do), you'll have to come near to read the tiny font every so often (like every time you right click). Even if this browser was perfect, this one flaw would truly ruin everything, ugh. Anyway, there is clearly some potential in this browser, just brought down by a few bad choices / maybe lack of polish or general care. Minimalists won't like it, either.