[–] glUniform4fv 0 points 7 points 7 points (+7|-0) ago
It's been a long time since a brand new desktop browser landed on the Web.
Hahaha no. 2009, 2010, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2014
And those are just the browsers in one very specific niche that I keep an eye on.
That being said, I do welcome Vivaldi and hope that it provides an alternative for those of us put off by the past years of buzzword-motivated browser bloat in Firefox.
[–] fasthansolo 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
If you hate the bloat in FF, I suggest IceCat maintained by the FSF.
[–] lawofchaos 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago
IceCat sounds like a definite FireFox fork, am I right? I've always used Firefox myself but I'm just not liking the direction it's going in. I'm not using a touch screen computer, I don't want a fucking touch screen computer. I can understand simplifying things and I can understand the need for something to look 'pretty' but it should also work nicely with the tools that you have to access it. FireFox has become a magnificent SeaSlug. It'll look pretty in your aquarium but it's not going to work as well as one of those sucker fish thingies.
I think it's time to find a new browser not connected to Mozilla or Google. Rant rant, rant, rant.
This part made me chuckle.
After the vicious early days when the world of Web browsers closely resembled the ruthless world of the railroad barons a century earlier, the browser market settled down to something pretty boring. First there was IE and Firefox. A few years later, Apple introduced Safari. Several years after that, Google launched Chrome.
Firefox is a bastard child of Netscape Navigator and there was a time before that.
Saying "First there was IE and Firefox" is leaving out half the story.
[–] AgentOrange 0 points 15 points 15 points (+15|-0) ago (edited ago)
I'm from 8chan's /tech/ and I'd like to mention that the developers of the Vivaldi browser have been regularly posting about it, saying things such as "it's for power users!", "it's secure!", and "it's like Opera back when it was good!"
The Vivaldi devs have been pretty well called out for their spamming (or, as the /tech/ies call it, "shilling") on that site, which is probably why they've left us alone recently (I assume that they gave up their efforts since every thread they created was called out for what it was, or else that they were banned outright for their behavior.)
Since they've left 8chan, it seems they've tried to find a new site to harvest users from. Evidently they still think they can win over the tech crowd (or at least they are determined to win over the tech crowd, since tech competent users are probably the least sucked-dry datamining-wise and therefore an opportunity for immense profit,) and so they've set their sights on Voat now.
Would you put your browsing activity in the hands of a software developer that engages in such activity?
Especially when said browser is closed-source?
I'm not going to say that you shouldn't use this browser. The choice of what you put on your machine and who you trust your privacy to is yours. Treasure the fact that we (at least for now) still have choice in the matter, and, most importantly, choose wisely.
UPDATE, 3/26/15: Vivaldi shills have come back to 8chan. Thread #173264 on /tech/ is the first one so far.
When will they learn to take this shit to Facebook or Reddit or 4chan or somewhere with tech illiterates who will fall for it? -_-
[–] Kramer 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
I don't really see whats wrong or suspicious about getting the word out through social media and discussion sites... How else are they supposed to market on a shoe string budget? Though I do agree that it gets annoying after a while because it can quickly turn into spam on a forum, esp when you don't contribute to the forum other than to promote your work.
Personally I think we as users are pretty spoiled now, there are loads of really well made games and applications out there, so many that we don't even want to hear about it anymore. It takes a lot to impress these days. Those developers really need a big well-known blogger or news site to say positive things or else no one will take them seriously, even if they've made something pretty decent.
[–] AgentOrange ago
Doing it through social media and discussion sites is one thing, however, they were continuously creating threads about it back at the previous site. As soon as one thread would be saged to death, a new one would appear.
What really ground our gears, though, was that they were trying to market the browser as for "power users" and "secure", even though the tech-savvy users tend to be the ones smart enough to understand what a terrible idea using closed-source software is (nobody saw that fiasco with µTorrent coming except us, who saw it coming from years away.)
Obviously, this browser will grow in popularity, and continue to datamine its users until the devs do something particularly blatant, it makes an Ars Technica article that acts so surprised about the situation, and the devs shut down that project to come up with another vessel with which to deliver malware.
It's a terrible system that can be completely stopped by insisting on open-source software like tech competent people should. The fact that the devs "aren't going to hide the URL bar like other browsers probably might in a future update" holds no sway (or should hold none) with the actual techies.
The shilling is one thing, but thinking they can get away with pushing a closed-source browser to the techie crowd is a level of stupid that's not even funny.
I find that the current version of FF with ublock on Mac OS runs terrific. Without ublock not so much.
[–] Firetail [S] 0 points 5 points 5 points (+5|-0) ago (edited ago)
The browser appears to be a fork of Chrome (or Blink underneath) and you can load some extensions into manually such as Ad Block. The UI is also fairly customisable being fully CSS but currently you have to pop the bonnet and edit it manually yourself.
One thing I noticed is that it's fast. I'm normally a Firefox user, so I'm assuming this is what Chrome users probably experience even with an ad blocker installed.
Some of the people behind this were from Opera and their goals appear to be to restore a lot of the old Opera functionality. Vivaldi already has a bunch of extra stuff built in but it's a developer preview so be aware its not feature complete yet.
[–] The_Redditor 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
It's fast? I tried it and predictably, being built in JS and CSS, the UI was laggy as fuck compared to Chrome or even FF. I'm all for a featureful spiritual successor to Opera but let's not pitch this on the basis of speed.
[–] Firetail [S] 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
I dunno what crap tier PC you are using it on, its just as fast or faster then Firefox for me.