Vivaldi
SoftwareI’ve been a Firefox (ne Phoenix) and Camino user since the early 2000s. No browser before or since matched its flexibility, plugin library and community.
I wasn’t tempted by Chrome. Safari was always a solid backup, but was never my primary browser. Opera, Rockmelt and Flock were interesting, but never caught on.
Then I tried Vivaldi, and within a few minutes I knew I was using something special. Started by former Opera engineers, its a Chromium-based browser with a feature matrix that eerily aligns with everything I care about. Some of my favourite features:
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Sidebar tabs. How anyone can use tabs crammed into a horizontal line in 2016 baffles me.
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Dedicated search box option, so you’re not awkwardly typing search terms into a URL bar.
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Detailed progess bar showing the KBs downloaded and remaining for a page, ala Opera
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Docked sidebars for downloads, bookmarks and notes
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It has a status bar. Haleluyah.
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One-click image disabling in the aforementioned status bar, so one can use expensive and slow Australian mobile internet.
I’m impressed.
