For years, the PC browser market has been dominated by Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer – but niche developers Opera hope to shake things up with Vivaldi, a high-profile new option with some striking new features. Will you soon be singing its praises? Agent Strevens finds out!
In the early days of home internet use, users weren’t exactly spoilt for choice when it came to web browsers. Now, though, we take it for granted that there's a browser for every taste – and that we can change them on a whim.
In this crowded field, it's hard for newcomers to gain a foothold – but veteran developers Opera Software reckon the time is right for Vivaldi to take centre stage.
The modern browser: a short history
On 16th August 1995, Microsoft released Internet Explorer. Other browsers were available at the time – and quite a few much older than IE itself. But the fact that it was included with Windows gave it a massive advantage and it quickly became the de-facto browser on all Windows PCs. Anyone remember Netscape Navigator? You’d be forgiven if you don’t.
This remained the case for a good few years – but the problem is that usually, monopolies breed complacency. Through its various iterations and updates, Internet Explorer became bloated, slow and played very fast and loose with W3C web standards. People grew fed up with IE’s sluggish performance and began looking elsewhere for other, better browsers.
Fast forward a few years and ask people what their browser of choice is, and I'd wager you would hear one of three. As of December 2015, Internet Explorer held an estimated 15% share of the web browser market. Firefox, born in the ashes of Netscape Navigator, has a 14% share. However, these really do pale in comparison to Google's Chrome.
Praised on its 2008 release for its simple design, useful features and snappy performance, people fell in love with it and it spread like wildfire – commanding a massive 54% of the total browser market.
For the last eight years, Chrome has been the browser of choice for many people – including me, and most of the Geek Squad online team. But after all this, the bloat seems to be setting in, just as it did with IE.
I'm not the only one to notice that it isn't as fast as it used to be. Is Chrome finally losing its lustre? The Opera Software team clearly think so – and so, enter Vivaldi.
What is Vivaldi?
Vivaldi itself is a new browser – but Opera has a long history.
Back when the web was in its infancy, the Opera web browser began as a research project at Norway’s largest telecommunications company, Telenor. The initial release in 1996 gained a small following – although the browser has since become an outsider to the war being waged between IE, Firefox and Chrome.
In 2015, the creators of Opera felt their beloved browser had lost its way: it was no longer what they set out to achieve all those years ago.
In response, they set out with a new mission: to create a new browser that captured everything the original Opera stood for. It would be highly functional, flexible, and fast – and put the user at the forefront. This new browser is Vivaldi.
At its core, Vivaldi is based on Chromium – Google’s open-source browser project that also forms the basis of Chrome. This means that even though Vivaldi is only on version 1.1, performance and compatibility are top notch.
To be completely honest, after using the browser for only a short while, I am very impressed with its stability and speed – so let's take a closer look at what sets Vivaldi apart from its competition.
Turbocharge your navigation
Firstly, the developers of Vivaldi are certainly living up to their pledge to make a fast browser. In fact, other browsers feel like wading through treacle in comparison! Everything from loading a webpage to navigating the interface feels buttery smooth.
Vivaldi also makes it faster to find what you want. The default start page when you open the browser features the usual tabs for bookmarks and history – but also what is referred to as 'Speed Dial'.
This is a page with a collection of links to featured pages – but can also be customised in any way you like. If there's a certain group of pages you use for social networking, but a different group of pages you use for work, you can create folders to contain them.
Then, a simple right-click on the folder will load any pages within that folder. The result is that while other browsers just give you one set of starting pages, Vivaldi gives you as many as you want!
'Fast Forward' and 'Rewind' are two other new features that are quite interesting. Fast Forward lets you quickly jump to the next page in a sequence of pages – search results, for example. Rather than clicking around, a quick gesture with the mouse is all it takes to jump to the next page.
Similarly, Rewind lets you jump back to the first page you visited on a site. If you’ve fallen down a Wikipedia rabbit hole and are now 15 pages from where you started, instead of clicking back repeatedly, another quick gesture with the mouse and you’re back to page one!
The last feature that helps you speed up your browsing is 'Quick Commands' – and if you’ve ever used 'Spotlight' on a Mac, this will be familiar. Need to use a particular option or feature, but can’t find it in the menus? Just hit F2 and type what you want, and Vivaldi will put it front and centre. This also works for any bookmarks or items in your browser history.
Not only faster, but smarter
Another of Vivaldi's key features is a side panel, located on the left by default. This window gives you quick access to bookmarks and downloads – but has some other interesting tricks up its sleeves.
If you're using the web for research, you can use the side panel to take notes on any websites you visit, and it'll save them automatically. And these notes aren't just text: they can also include URLs, images and even attachments. These can then be linked to the website you're on and easily organised for later.
Social media users in particular will love 'Web Panels'. These mean you can be browsing the web, watching videos and catching up on emails – all while your favourite social media feed sits on the left, always in view.
Of course, it’s not only the socially inclined that can put this to use. It’s also very useful for web chats and live sports updates – or indeed anything that can be condensed down in to a narrow vertical window.
Moving on, Vivaldi’s tab-management features were a revelation to me. We’ve all been there: when using Chrome or IE with more than a dozen tabs open, things can get messy – especially using multiple tabs from one site.
But when you can't find a particular tab and are blindly clicking through, Vivaldi’s got you covered. Here, tabs can be 'stacked' – meaning all the tabs from a particular site are grouped under one tab bearing the site's name.
Hovering over that main tab gives you a thumbnail for each of the others it contains – and you can also tile these stacked tabs, allowing you a side-by-side of grid-based view of the tabs within the main browser window.
Finally, if you’re a Chrome user, Vivaldi also tries to make the switching process a little less painful. Because it's based on Chromium, all the browser extensions you’ve come to love on Chrome are available for Vivaldi, using the same Chrome Web Store interface. There are also options for importing bookmarks and other personal information from other browsers.
All things considered, Vivaldi has certainly come out all guns blazing. It's taking aim at the established, set-in-their-ways browsers with new features that aren't just gimmicks: they're genuinely useful.
Agent's Verdict
I’ve only used Vivaldi for around a week, and tried where possible to make it my main browser. In this short space of time, I still feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of what it can do.
As I continue to use it, I’m always finding nifty tricks and cool features that make browsing the web that bit easier – and the fact that this is only version 1.1 is incredibly impressive.
Will it replace my beloved Chrome? Possibly – but not yet. Being an Android user means Chrome syncs data with my phone, and I’ve come to really appreciate that integration. But if the Vivaldi developers continue as they’ve started, then I can see big things in the future as me, and many more people I’m sure, make the switch permanently.
What's your browser of choice – and have Vivaldi's innovative new features inspired you to switch? Let us know what you reckon in the comments below! And for more great articles from our Agents straight to your inbox each month, get your name down below for the Geek Squad newsletter!