What is your favorite browser?

Danois

@jon It is my default browsing. Completely customizable, I adjust it to my way and it has many options and pluses such as blog, note taking, RSS reader, translator and much more.

Dave Mac Farlane

@[email protected] Of all time? Galeon

Today? I don't like any of them.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@driusan

Interesting. I had to look up Galeon.

Did you try Vivaldi?

Dave Mac Farlane

@[email protected] Yes, I didn't dislike it but I stopped using it because it was Chrome based. Even if you have the best of intentions wrt neutering all the evil shit Google sneaks in, there's no guarantees you don't miss something.

(Since then Firefox's leadership has gotten bad enough that I don't know if that's really a differentiating factor anymore, which is why I say now I don't like any of them.)

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@driusan

We try our best. We have a dedicated team of developers that have been building browsers for years. Many were with me at Opera.

I am not sure what you are looking for in a browser, but quite likely we have it, at least when it comes to functionality and flexibility.

Anyways, I hope you find a browser you like soon!

Dave Mac Farlane

@[email protected] With the vendor capture at the W3C having made standards complex enough that it's now impossible for independent developers to realistically ever implement a new engine it's unlikely I'll ever love a browser again. Maybe servo one day.

I do think you try your best and appreciate your attempts at trying to create a new browser and Vivaldi's involvement in the fediverse, so in the interest of your market research what I most look for in a browser are:

1. Speed
2. Simplicity
3. Ad blocking
4. A lack of surveillance capitalism monitoring
5. A lack of any involvement with A.I. or crypto

I don't think Vivaldi is guilty of 4 or 5, but it's built on an engine by a company where that is its DNA. It's increasingly a problem with Firefox as well, but all things being equal I still prefer to vainly use a different engine to at least hold off the monoculture a little longer.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@driusan

As you may know, we built a browser from scratch at Opera. Gradually we built a team of 100 working on it. We wrote all of the code our selves and we did not use libraries much.

Following the standards was not the most difficult. Dealing with browsers that did not was. It all started with Mosaic, that ignored standards and then Microsoft tried to take them over. We all fought back through the W3C and things did get better, but then there would be sites that would deny access to our browser, not least Google, Microsoft and Apple.

We built a project called Open The Web, where we tried to get sites to code to the standards and not block us. We also tried to get Mozilla in on it, but they said no.

Anyways, building a browser from scratch is not an option for us and we had to choose an engine and we felt that Chromium was the safest option.

When it comes to your points. You are right on 4 and 5 and on 3 we do provide an ad blocker that we continue to improve. When it comes to speed, there is not much difference between browsers today, when it comes to displaying pages as they mostly use the same core, but when it comes to speed of use, I would think we do well. In particular if you use keyboard shortcuts, mouse gestures and the like.

Dave Mac Farlane

@[email protected] You're persuasive enough that I'm willing to give it another shot since Firefox's management has went all in on A.I. Like I said, I had nothing against your browser other than its choice of engine when I switched back to Firefox.

I understand that you have technical reasons for having chosen it, but I think you misjudged the impact of that choice from a cultural/social standpoint with respect to Vivaldi's most likely users.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@driusan

Glad you will give it a try. I hope you like it.

You are right. It is quite possible more users would move our way if we were based on Gecko. It just felt like a dangerous move and one we could not afford to get wrong.

I think we can play an important role in the Chromium community. Opera did play an important role at the W3C. We had more people contributing to the Web standards than anyone else. A strong Vivaldi can play an important role in Chromium, but we need to grow a bit first.

Chas4

@jon I tried to vote but it was not registering my vote from what I could see

sleepy62

@jon I would love to support Vivaldi more than I do but I worry about the Chromium base and also Firefox has its own plugin ecosystem.

zbrando

@jon @rob I'll give it a spin again, also because sooner or later the new Outlook will come.
I never used folders, my complains are more about the UI, I find the Outlook UI more comfortable.
Can I open the mail client always in a new window? With lot of tabs and workspaces I can't find it. 🥴

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@zbrando @rob

If you have more details on what you prefer in the Outlook UI, feel free to share that with me. Always interested in feedback.

If you want to have the mail client in a separate window, the easiest way is just to have a separate install where you run the mail client.

Other than that, finding the mail tab is easy if you click a folder in the mail panel. You can also pin the mail tab so it is always in the left corner.

There is a bit of learning curve here and it will be different from Outlook, but IMHO it is worth it.