What is your favorite browser?

Trinsec

@[email protected] @[email protected] Interesting. So is this basically the Vivaldi of browsers with a Firefox engine?

Jamie Allison

Pretty much, except, it's better with memory resources. And it lacks some features that I never used in vivaldi. It does not have a built in mail and RSS reader.

Skaifer

@jon Vivaldi and Zen browsers. Cuz I like customizability. Zen feels faster though. Vivaldi and Fennec on Android.

thesdev

@jon Firefox on Android supports extensions, wish Vivaldi did the same!

thesdev

@jon I'm positive it's been done with Chromium before too, by the Kiwi browser.

Germán Enríquez

@jon
I use #Zen because its #Firefox without the drama. Plus workspaces!

P4

@jon Opera from before the switch to chromium remains my favorite to this day, every browser I've used since doesn't feel as feature complete or as fun as Opera did.

djbiker

@jon I'm a Vivaldi supporter since V1. Because of open privacy (MV3) and open finger printing support I use more & more FF and Zen in the last months ... ;-( But I love Vivaldi, great team support and the Vivaldi style

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@p4 , I am very proud of what we built at Opera at that time, but you will find that and more in Vivaldi now.

Ex Ef Ex

@jon Vivaldi loyal since its early days for its customisability and ear to the user, even though I find its hosting of user accounts quite glitchy.

SajalGhosh

Hi @jon

As a technology enthusiast, I’d like to share my perspective on this.

Firefox has been my go-to browser for a while, mainly because of:

1. Multi-Account Containers: Perfect for managing multiple profiles or accounts seamlessly.
2. RAM Efficiency: It’s lightweight and doesn’t hog system resources.
3. Privacy Focus: With its 100% open-source nature and stellar reputation as a privacy-first browser, it’s hard to beat.

Vivaldi, on the other hand, has a special place in my heart for its unique and productivity-oriented features:

1. Page Tiling: A brilliant tool for working with multiple pages side by side—ideal for multitaskers.
2. Plain Text/Markdown Notes: This feature is a gem for academic researchers and avid readers like me, making it easy to jot down notes directly from web pages.
3. Web Panels: Super handy for accessing frequently used sites without leaving your main tabs.
4. Customizable Dashboard: A lovely productivity hub and a virtual assistant.

A Few Observations

While Vivaldi excels in many areas, there are a couple of things I’d like to highlight:

High RAM Usage: Vivaldi can be quite demanding on memory.
Text-to-Speech Feature: Adding a natural and seamless "Read Aloud" feature would make it even more user-friendly.

Cheers

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@thesdev , we did give it a try, but found that it would require a lot of work to keep it up to date. We have instead focused on building capabilities into Vivaldi which are the main reasons people want extensions.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@geillescas , I have not tried them, but it looks like they have taken some inspiration from Vivaldi. Even marketing.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@dbug13 @trinsec , it is interesting how many browsers take inspiration from Vivaldi. I guess we must be doing something right.

Ralf Demuth

@jon
@Vivaldi is my favorite because it gets so much right, right out of the box and is made by good people.

Nia

@jon Firefox on Desktop, Vivaldi on mobile.

Vivaldi is close for me on Mobile because it works really well, but I'm using the Fennec version of Firefox from F-droid currently and it's a favorite, with Vivaldi close behind. Close on mobile because it's the second closest thing for me on privacy goals, and Firefox & forks on Android are a bit buggy.

Firefox (preferably forks) on desktop fully because of the UI being open source, no slight against Vivaldi for that, I fully understand the reasoning for not doing so. I just prefer open source so I bias towards as much as possible of it when not overly difficult to do so.

I do not trust Mozilla, more open source nature of the app allows me to take trust of ownership out of the equation a bit, especially so with forks.

Annelies Kamran

@jon
Vivaldi because tabs, RSS reader, dashboard. Other: Duck duck go for privacy. I also use Firefox and its forks like Librewolf, but not as much. I haven't even heard of some of the browsers mentioned in the replies; will have to check them out.

schnedan

@jon I used FF since its first release, its my workhorse, and I use a lot of privacy plugins. I like the Interface, its fast, zoom is good, And my perception is, the plugin interface is more open and there are more powerful plugins as with chome based browsers

also I liked opera in the past and such the vivaldi concept is really nice.
its fast, the redraw when zooming is distracting, zoom could have more finer steps,

zbrando

@jon For me on Windows performance is more or less the same for all the above browsers. Edge is decent and do all what the average user needs. I like Vivaldi because is tweakable (I like the idea of the mail client but something on the UI doesn't work for me, maybe I'm only used with Outlook). Firefox because I use it since it was Phoenix and I'm so sorry it is dieing.

schnedan

@jon I never tested if vivaldi could replace my thunderbird... but is mixing stuff in one programm really a good idea?
perhaps I will try in a VM one day.

and I would like to see if vivaldi would support other mastodon instances...

PS: on Android vivaldi is my favorite but please: fdroid store!