A thread on developments with the Vivaldi browsers from Vivaldi Technologies (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=2819.0). This continues the Vivaldi Technical Preview Released (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=801.0) thread.Vivaldi Technical Preview Released
Vivaldi supports markdown in Notes https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-1-14-three-years-of-continuous-innovation/
Who knew?
In Firefox and Otter I can opt to work offline, but Vivaldi and "Opera" don't seem to have such an option unless I'm overlooking it?
Their philosophy is that there's an extension for everything https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/6448/offline-mode
I don't think that's quite Vivaldi's philosophy. :P
Vivaldi's tab cycler finally caught up with old Opera's
List layout for visual tab cycler (https://vivaldi.com/blog/snapshots/list-layout-for-visual-tab-cycler/)
Edit: Posted in Otter. Otter apparently identifies as Chrome now by default.
Nice. I wonder if I should try to use it at work instead of Chrome. (Chrome isn't my choice, obviously. But supposedly it works best. If indeed true it should naturally apply to any Chromium.)
Are you not allowed to install your own browser at work? I always install like five of them at any workstation.
It's about the CMS (on the backend side). Actually Chrome is also a user-based install. On reflection I'm mildly surprised something like Chrome or Firefox isn't part of the standard deployment, given that Windows 7 comes with some ancient version of IE.
Anyway, it's not something that got in my way that needed to be resolved like Windows' lack of a compose key. I find WinCompose essential to half-sane typing. Unfortunately Windows' US International layout is significantly worse than the one in Linux and you would need administrator privileges to make your own…
Windows' inability to scroll directly in windows that aren't active is also pretty terrible. Annoyingly, it works in Windows 10 with the touchpad… but setting aside that discrepancy, at work we have the (mostly superior) WIndows 7.
There are also some things I'm more tentative about, like Pulover’s Macro Creator and Ditto (clipboard manager).
AltDrag is something I would use, but it doesn't work quite right. It messes up the scrolling. (We've got those Logitech mice with nice scrollwheels. Actually it's the first scrollwheel I've ever used that doesn't, essentially, suck.)
Just about the only thing Windows has on Linux by default (or at least on Xfce) are the Windows key + arrow shortcuts: https://fransdejonge.com/2018/04/mimic-windows-snap-hotkeys-in-xfce/
Windows 10 does have nice touchpad support, although possibly not quite as nice as Apple: https://fransdejonge.com/2018/05/mimic-windows-touchpad-gestures-in-xfce-with-libinput-gestures/
Anyway, while a couple of browser tabs are integral to my current job, the only annoyance I really have with Chrome is its Ctrl+Tab behavior, but there's an extension for that. I haven't felt a pressing need to experiment with other Chromia like Opera or Vivaldi.
(I mean, Chrome's bookmarks are even worse than IE/Edge, etc. etc. but I don't really need much more than about a dozen bookmarks.)
Really the biggest reason I'm considering Opera or Vivaldi is because you can properly press escape in the addressbar. Chrome has this annoying behavior where you can't get focus back on the page without a mouse click as far as I can tell.
...to be resolved like Windows' lack of a compose key.
Yes. Ever since I discovered that CapsLk can be configured away, I can barely type on a workstation where it's not been configured away.
Anyway, while a couple of browser tabs are integral to my current job, the only annoyance I really have with Chrome is its Ctrl+Tab behavior, but there's an extension for that. I haven't felt a pressing need to experiment with other Chromia like Opera or Vivaldi.
As a minimum, I always replace Chrome with Chromium, so I know specific annoyances of Chromium better than those of Chrome.
For me, tiles are important. In a not-so-good-but-rather-common scenario, I resort to different browser windows (of different browsers) side by side. In a better case there is some good tiling inbuilt in the browser. TileTabs extension for Palemoon and Firefox is a good start, but only a start. Currently, Vivaldi and Otter are uniquely powerful in doing tiles, and I particularly like that they are doing it differently: Otter in a floating/stacking way like old Opera, Vivaldi as a wholesale mosaic.
Chrome comes with a bundled PDF plugin, bundled Flash, and a couple of extra codecs. The differences are minute to non-existent.j
The kind of tiling I (sometimes) use is browser Win key+left, Word Win key+right. But we have two screens for a reason, so I only sometimes do that to minimize mouse back & forth traffic.
The kind of tiling I (sometimes) use is browser Win key+left, Word Win key+right.
I need this kind of tiling so often that it led me to tiling window managers: open two windows and they arrange themselves automatically like that.
But the kind of tiling I was talking about is as follows.
1. Open two tabs in Otter.
2. Right-click on tabbar > Arrange > Tile
Tell me you don't like it. You can even full-screen it and the tiles are preserved.
Same works in Vivaldi, but there you can tile a random selection from a multitude by Ctrl+click. The resulting tiles have borders like in Tmux.
Tell me you don't like it.
Of course I like it. I have no idea why only Opera and MyIE2 ever offered the option. But I don't
need it. Dragging a tab off in its own window on the second monitor is typically more efficient if that's what you need to do. (Of course that only applies if you've got two monitors.)
Same works in Vivaldi, but there you can tile a random selection from a multitude by Ctrl+click.
Which is how Windows 95 through XP did it using the taskbar. Vista killed it. 7 added Win+arrows but it should've been another way to trigger the same effect.
Of course I like it. I have no idea why only Opera and MyIE2 ever offered the option. But I don't need it.
Well, I need it. And rather often.
Dragging a tab off in its own window on the second monitor is typically more efficient if that's what you need to do.
Depends on what it is you "typically" need to do. I often have a scenario with two websites side by side and a few more windows, such as text editor or processor (or both), pdf viewer, file manager, ..., and when, due to lack of space, I need to open up one of those other windows on top of the two websites, and the two websites are in separate windows, then the only efficient way to get back to the two websites is to minimise what I opened up on top of them. But if I have the two websites tiled in a single browser window, then I have two efficient (one-click) ways to get back to them: Either minimise the other window I just opened up on top of the websites or switch to the browser.
I consider several shortcuts to get somewhere more efficient than a single way.
Same works in Vivaldi, but there you can tile a random selection from a multitude by Ctrl+click.
Which is how Windows 95 through XP did it using the taskbar. Vista killed it. 7 added Win+arrows but it should've been another way to trigger the same effect.
Yes, a great loss. I have not even found a statusbar or windows-list widget in Linux that would do the same thing: Ctrl+click a random selection of opened windows and then apply some group actions on the selected windows.
Yes, a great loss. I have not even found a statusbar or windows-list widget in Linux that would do the same thing: Ctrl+click a random selection of opened windows and then apply some group actions on the selected windows.
Not even in KDE or Cinnamon? Huh, that's weird. It's just such a self-evident mechanism. No one ever taught me it was there. I don't think it was in the Windows 98 manual, although that was just a little 40 to 50 page booklet as opposed to the few hundred page manuals that came with Windows 3.11 and Microsoft Works 3. It might've been in the Windows 98 help files.
Speaking of help files… Microsoft no longer bundles the (tiny!) program that can read old help files. When I upgraded from XP to Debian I really wasn't kidding when I said it broke roughly the same amount of my workflow. What surprised me is how much better I like Linux. Partially for some of the more obvious (e.g., more developer/tinkering friendly), but mainly because I need to do so much less clicking and button pressing to get things done.
Yes, a great loss. I have not even found a statusbar or windows-list widget in Linux that would do the same thing: Ctrl+click a random selection of opened windows and then apply some group actions on the selected windows.
Not even in KDE or Cinnamon? Huh, that's weird. It's just such a self-evident mechanism. No one ever taught me it was there.
I have not taken a look at KDE for a few years now, but I'm sure that I'd find plenty of goodies there. Perhaps even ctrl+click selection somewhere.
Ctrl+click selection is nowhere inbuilt in Cinnamon, except in Nemo file manager (as it is in file managers in general). No Alt+click either. Midclick can be configured somewhat, but not that much.
It's not in Xfce taskbar either, is it? Perhaps it indicates that it's not so universally self-evident after all.
I like desktop environment taskbars and I wish they'd do more, particularly via right-click menus. Cinnamon has "Close other windows" and "Close all windows" under right-click on a window button on the taskbar. Those are useful options and should rather self-evidently be available in every desktop environment, in my opinion. More auto-layouting the windows would also be very useful. MS Windows (even v.10) has "Cascade" and "Tile" and more under right-click on the taskbar, so why not everyone else?
Overall, I have found that tiling window managers are immensely useful for layouting, but less useful for random multi-selection operations on windows. I also like how i3wm creates and deletes workspaces (virtual desktops) automatically as you use them and leave them. However, it would be even more useful if I could delete a given workspace + close all windows there when it's not in focus. Stacking window managers tend to do better with multi-selection operations, but I don't know of a window manager that has given a thorough thought on multi-selection operations with windows or workspaces that are not in focus.
It would be great if Rofi did more window operations, in addition to switching between them :)
It's not in Xfce taskbar either, is it? Perhaps it indicates that it's not so universally self-evident after all.
It's self-evident because that's how you're taught to select things with Ctrl+click/drag/arrows and Shift+click/drag/arrows.
Present-day Microsoft would probably remove it from Windows Explorer because you're taught that isn't a thing you can do everywhere else, as opposed to doing the logical thing and extending Ctrl+click selection anywhere it makes sense to…
It's probably a bit like how intuitively modifier keys worked on things like links in old Opera. People used to non-Opera browsers had been taught modifier keys never worked the way you'd logically expect them to.
Old Microsoft and maybe Apple understood how to make a reasonably consistent GUI that worked as expected. Old Gnome and still current Xfce, as well as possibly current Mac are mostly the next best thing, superior in a few minor mostly mouse/touchpad-interaction related ways.
I suppose you could argue that Windows 10 is making the GUI more consistent again, go them, but since it's not in an empowering way (i.e., you can do less and less) that's otherwise irrelevant.
It's self-evident because that's how you're taught...
Taught by whom? By reading manuals, help files, and documentation?
I have not seen anybody who is teaching computers to others. It's a totally dark area. My own skills are completely self-taught and when work stress drowns me, I can't learn anything new, I forget much of what I have learned, and I am incapable of teaching others the little that I have retained.
Occasionally I meet new colleagues who don't even know there is such a thing as right-click menu and you can select stuff there to do stuff. Sadly, instruction in the computer section is severely lacking.
Edit: Developers of corporate software products like MS Windows cannot apply their ideas consistently and take them to their conclusion. They can do only what they are told to do. At the same time, developers free from corporate constraints don't have the resources to make a polished final product. Still, I vastly prefer what has been achieved in the GNU/Linux realm.
Taught by whom? By reading manuals, help files, and documentation?
[…]
Occasionally I meet new colleagues who don't even know there is such a thing as right-click menu and you can select stuff there to do stuff. Sadly, instruction in the computer section is severely lacking.
I would imagine it is in fact taught in basic Word and especially Excel, if not in some kind of earlier basic computer skills instruction in managing files and the like. But I meant taught by regular daily use of your computer. You're taught to expect to be able to do this kind of selection, so it's very jarring when you can't do it in places that would be well-suited to it. Except in the mid-'90s there was no such thing as a jarring experience. It mostly much just worked as you would expect it to. Okay, admittedly it was a little bit jarring because Shift+click did not in fact work as expected. But instead of rectifying that issue, Microsoft just stripped it out. Or probably didn't even realize that the taskbar had been made to do that by more competent past Microsoft.
It doesn't help that Nadella is into all the cloud stuff. Have you ever used Office 365 online? On the one hand it's freaking amazing that you can quickly open a Word document or something perfectly without having to install Office, on the other hand it's horribly slow and trying to work on an Excel document with a few people at once (the main supposed attraction there) is a complete and utter disaster.
I strongly suspect real Excel on a 286 is faster and more featureful than Excel online on a top of the line Intel Core i7 model.
PS I kind of hate Excel. It has some truly bizarre design decisions, like an undo function spread across multiple open documents that I can only hope made sense back in 1980. I pretty much just prefer LO Writer and Calc, except Calc gets a bit more bogged down with humongous spreadsheets, so there's that… I think Gnumeric is probably the superior spreadsheet program. Not that I'd risk being blamed with messing up some important spreadsheet by using something other than Excel.
I've never used Apple Numbers. It wouldn't surprise me if it were pretty decent. Pyspread is cool; using Python expressions is much nicer than using whatever you call the things you type in Excel. Calligra Sheets (https://www.calligra.org/sheets/) is cool too, and if I were, ahem, crazy I'd probably just use the spreadsheet module from Microsoft Works 2 or 3, or maybe Excel 97 or 2000 (not XP).
PPS Sometimes you read the weirdest things. Like someone talking negatively about Writer's styles compared to Word's, which I actually consider Writer's biggest advantage over Word. It's in stuff like track changes that Writer is no more than adequate and really only for the past few years.
It doesn't help that Nadella is into all the cloud stuff. Have you ever used Office 365 online? On the one hand it's freaking amazing that you can quickly open a Word document or something perfectly without having to install Office, on the other hand it's horribly slow and trying to work on an Excel document with a few people at once (the main supposed attraction there) is a complete and utter disaster.
I strongly suspect real Excel on a 286 is faster and more featureful than Excel online on a top of the line Intel Core i7 model.
Yes, I have tried Office 365 Online and Google Docs too. Not bad for viewing, but definitely bad for editing, and even worse when multiple users are at it at the same time. Cloud is no good for handling multiple dynamic access. Servers are for that.
That aside, my earlier main tool (website) at work used to be Excel-based. It worked brilliantly, because whatever didn't work I was able to configure and change. Now we have a supposedly more advanced thing that has been built on all the wrong principles:
- It's a thing embedded in another thing so that I don't see the real source code and I cannot change it
- Presumably due to the first point, a bunch of glitchy "features" follow, such as that the browser cannot preserve form history in the forms, there's no right-click, there's no feedback on page loading, etc. Total crap.
- The overall design adds more steps to the workflow, massively multiplying the time to get things done...
Also features like we were just talking about, such as Shift+click, tend to be forgotten in browser-based interfaces for some reason. Luckily we can hack that together ourselves, although only to the extent of spending a few minutes finding solutions written by someone else. I run a userscript in TamperMonkey so that I can Shift+click checkboxes, and I have a bookmarklet to add sorting to tables when necessary. Combined they make up for something that IT apparently considers low priority, but we're talking about highly educated not horribly paid people wasting many hours together.
I suspect that in the open-source world there's much more "eating your own medicine" and also just people switching a lot more between roles even if they mainly stick to one or two roles.
When did Vivaldi add Chrome(ium) extension support? Since it supposedly has synchronization these days as well (though I can't seem to find it) I just might switch.
Edit: oh:
Note: Sync is currently only available in the Snapshot version of Vivaldi. Find out more about the difference between Snapshot and Stable on the Vivaldi Blog.
Edit 2: so tiling in Vivaldi is weird. It works with Ctrl, but not with Shift. Which would be okay-ish... I meant, it's no worse than Windows 9x-XP, except that you can in fact
select things with Shift to e.g. close many tabs at once. I think this worked correctly in Opera/Presto.
When did Vivaldi add Chrome(ium) extension support? Since it supposedly has synchronization these days as well (though I can't seem to find it) I just might switch.
How do you even remember the time when extensions were not there? Obviously they wanted to implement extensions asap, otherwise the extensions crowd (i.e. the overwhelming majority) would not use it.
Edit: Vivaldi's Toggle UI setting in the Keyboard section is also cool. Assign a keybind to it and bang, you got a barebones frame with the webpage.
I wanted to achieve (among other things) something like that in Otter when I was whining about True detach (https://github.com/OtterBrowser/otter-browser/issues/1240) and
minimalInterface got implemented. The problem with Otter's
minimalInterface is that it is a parameter to other actions, not an action in itself, so I have no idea what to prefix it with so that it would work in-place in the current window, without doing anything else.
I seem to be misremembering. In Opera/Presto you can Ctrl
and Shift select, minimize a bunch of things and then tile those that are open. But disappointingly it doesn't look like you can tile a selection. Of course it's also possible that the ability to do so was simply lost with Opera 10.50.
How do you even remember the time when extensions were not there? Obviously they wanted to implement extensions asap, otherwise the extensions crowd (i.e. the overwhelming majority) would not use it.
Well, what I meant was really an equivalent of UserJS/Grease/TamperMonkey. Opera/Presto does it without extensions. But being able to install TamperMonkey does the trick as well.
Anyway, since Vivaldi didn't do anything about Ctrl+scroll zooming the GUI at some point I just uninstalled it. Actually for all I know that's still a problem; I didn't even try it yesterday.
@ersi Vivaldi seems to be fairly nice. Editing bookmarks is unintuitive, but my main problem is I can't seem to figure out how to use bookmarklets? A browser that doesn't do bookmarklets is pretty useless…
On the plus side, it taught me something about Chrome: Ctrl+Shift+Del is not exclusive to Vivaldi, but Vivaldi makes it easily discoverable through the menus.
The main advantage is actually that it seems to be slightly faster than Chrome. I'm not sure how that's possible but I also recall post-2014 Opera saying something about being faster than Chrome…
A big thing Vivaldi does better than Chrome is that you can actually press Escape to lose focus the addressbar. Freaking annoying in Chrome and Firefox when you get down to it.
@ersi Vivaldi seems to be fairly nice. Editing bookmarks is unintuitive, but my main problem is I can't seem to figure out how to use bookmarklets? A browser that doesn't do bookmarklets is pretty useless…
My tiny experience with bookmarklets in old Opera times never carried over to later times. They may be very useful, but it so happens that I don't need them.
Anyway, I have noticed that when you start a thread on the Vivaldi forum about a feature or behaviour you want, sometimes things happen. And that should be a thread, not a feature request in the feature request section. The feature request section works by upvoting only, whereas in a normal forum post you can explain your issue fully, stress on the internal consistency of Vivaldi or how good old Opera used to be, and the developers just might pick it up. For example, I think that this is how/why the extra addressbar appeared in Vivaldi's hidden UI mode (use "focus addressbar" keybinds when the UI is toggled off) after I complained that it's not there, while it was a big thing in old Opera, and it is implemented in Palemoon and Seamonkey (yup, Palemoon and Seamonkey are usable with addressbar switched off).
On the plus side, it taught me something about Chrome: Ctrl+Shift+Del is not exclusive to Vivaldi, but Vivaldi makes it easily discoverable through the menus.
The main advantage is actually that it seems to be slightly faster than Chrome. I'm not sure how that's possible but I also recall post-2014 Opera saying something about being faster than Chrome…
A big thing Vivaldi does better than Chrome is that you can actually press Escape to lose focus the addressbar. Freaking annoying in Chrome and Firefox when you get down to it.
I have thoroughly stayed away from Chrome, so I cannot compare. Chromium should be close enough to Chrome, but I use it to open just one work-related webpage, so I have not explored much of Chromium either to be able to compare much.
One thing though: I use chrome://flags Overlay Scrollbars. In Vivaldi it operates nicely. In Chromium it looks glitchy (perhaps a thing with the single website I use) and I keep it at default (disabled) in Chromium.
Comparing Vivaldi to Otter, well, for example it's sad that Alt key does not do anything in Otter. When I have the menubar disabled and the Otter menubutton is there (or there's the
minimalInterface), Alt would be the natural keyboard shortcut to get to that menu. This particular detail works in Vivaldi nicely again.
Regarding the tiling, it's a pity you can't easily adjust the sizes like in Windows 10. (Or at all.)
My tiny experience with bookmarklets in old Opera times never carried over to later times. They may be very useful, but it so happens that I don't need them.
It's a bit of a toss-up between userscripts and bookmarklets. Bookmarklets are a like on-demand userscripts. Also it's much harder to write/adapt userscripts to react to dynamic page changes, whereas bookmarklets you just execute when you want. That way they can be lighter and they don't slow down page loads either.
Anyway, in my case there are aspects of my job that are horror without my table sorting bookmarklet. I've also been thinking about converting my Shift+click checkbox userscript into a bookmarklet, possibly all in one with the table sorter so it doesn't slow down every page load.
It could be beautiful: F2, one or two characters, Enter. Much more elegant than going all the way through the bookmarks menu in Chrome. But unlike in Chrome, where bookmarklets work, Vivaldi just puts the code in the addressbar without actually doing anything with it… very confusing and weird.
I'm actually dismayed to have found an aspect in which Vivaldi seems to be worse than Chrome.
I mentioned that Vivaldi seems to be faster. I wondered if maybe it's because you need a few extensions to get certain basic functionalities in Chrome where even Firefox doesn't need extensions, but even without extensions Chrome still responds more slowly. I think it's pretty odd.
Hm, today bookmarklets seemed to work. Maybe there was something odd about 'em having just been imported from Chrome or something.
Btw, something pretty annoying is that Vivaldi doesn't show you the URL yet if something takes a while to get started loading. It's actually something I reported back in Opera/Presto that I think they fixed.
There's a 2.0 release: https://vivaldi.com/changelog-vivaldi-1-15-to-2-0/
It's been that long already. :)
They added display tab cycler as list to the tab cycler. Neat!
There's a 2.0 release: https://vivaldi.com/changelog-vivaldi-1-15-to-2-0/
It's been that long already. :)
slashdoters dissatisfied https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/09/26/0713254/vivaldi-20-desktop-browser-featuring-expanded-customization-sync-across-devices-and-privacy-tools-released-qa-with-founder
I hope for their sake that they use Firefox or SeaMonkey then. ;)
slashdoters dissatisfied
In no way that was expressed at the article. Like someone would say, Fake News.
No patience.
There's a bunch of comments there about Vivaldi being a Chrome clone with a few added bits and pieces.
Which isn't completely inaccurate I suppose, but those added bits & pieces make Vivaldi a lot nicer to use. From something as simple as accidentally pressing the add bookmark shortcut (Ctrl+D) followed by Esc, the intuitive way to cancel an unintentional action. In Chrome that results in an added bookmark because you just dismissed your chance to delete it!
Add quick commands, nicknames without having to abuse the search engine system, the ability to select multiple tabs, etc. and, well, you've got something a lot closer to what I expected when Opera announced they were switching to WebKit/Blink.
...you've got something a lot closer to what I expected when Opera announced they were switching to WebKit/Blink.
Opera announced something impossible at the time: The changes would be under the hood and barely noticeable for the average user. Of course they could not keep the promise. It was not even a user-oriented promise, but a move to make monetisation of their product easier.
Vivaldi copied the highly questionable video popout from Chropera (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=801.msg74444#msg74444). Vivaldi calls it "picture-in-picture" for some reason and frames it as if an upcoming web standard.
In the future, websites will likely use the Picture-in-Picture Specification to offer this via custom buttons and better control the experience for the user.
Why is that likely? And what's the benefit?
When I select the right-click menu item (requires frantic multiple attempts on YT because YT hijacks the context menu), then that which pops out looks like the same floating thingie that occasionally appears in the YT app on Android. The popout thingie is acceptable on Android, but it does not belong to the desktop. The correct thing for a browser to do would be to permit multiple distinct windows configurable as far as the browser is configurable.
Yes, I can resize the popout, but is it a window of its own on my desktop? I have configured my window manager so that the window in focus is surrounded by big fat coloured border. This border does not get applied to the popout, so what is it? Is it still an in-the-browser thing even if detachable? When I make a screenshot of focused window, the popout is as if a single focused window, and it insists on appearing on every workspace on the same screen. And I cannot resize it with keybinds, so the window manager evidently does not have full control over the popout. What is going on?
(In my current setup I do not have a taskbar with window buttons. Would the popout appear on the taskbar?)
And why do this only with video? Why not do true detach with anything and everything?
And why picture-in-picture? Is video the same as picture? Will the feature be extended to pictures later?
I don't need answers to these questions. The fact that these questions arise show that the idea is wrong. I strongly prefer it the way Otter does it: the in-video full-screen function fills the browser viewport and then I can do with the browser window whatever I want - and I know how to do it because it is an ordinary window.
Video popout or "picture-in-picture" in Vivaldi
(https://ersi.vivaldi.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/308/2018/10/Ekraanipilt_2018-10-13_22-53-57.png)
I don't need answers to these questions.
Neither do I.
I think that Norwegian (and all Scandinavian) people do weird things.
But I like their Browser and it suits my ordinary internet routine, so I use it. It's not even comparable with Opera 12.* but such is life, specially modern life.
The source from the below table is Wikipedia. There's a browser called Coc Coc?? Fantastic.
(https://image.ibb.co/nrBFFf/2adc7c6d-496d-40d7-bda3-9de422f77c98.png) (https://imgbb.com/)
@Belfrager Edge is astonishingly high in the table. [whisper]I admit using it on Android :)[/whisper]
And I wonder how Safari still exists. Does not compute. Edit: Ah, probably some other planet where iPhone users exist is included in the statistics. I tend to forget the Apple planet.
Edge is astonishingly high in the table. [whisper]I admit using it on Android :)
I know there's all kinds of Microsoft on Android, but there's a Microsoft browser on Android?
Wow.
Ah, probably some other planet where iPhone users exist is included in the statistics. I tend to forget the Apple planet.
It could also partially be other browsers. Like Otter. Yes, surely mostly Otter. :)
I know there's all kinds of Microsoft on Android, but there's a Microsoft browser on Android?
Possibly as an attempt to compensate for losing Windows Mobile OS.
I like the way Edge on Android switches tabs. Easy tab-switching by touch is everything on handheld devices.
The UA string: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; SM-N910F Build/MMB29M) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/69.0.3497.86 Mobile Safari/537.36 EdgA/42.0.0.2741
Different spoofsters might identify this as Chrome, Safari, or anything as they please, I think.
Possibly as an attempt to compensate for losing Windows Mobile OS.
I know there are fans of Windows Phone, but frankly using a decade-old Windows Mobile device last year was an amazing experience.
But I'll give Windows Phone that the utterly ridiculous Windows 8/10 "Metro"/"Modern" interface actually kind of works on capacitive touch phones. I suppose it feels a bit like the rough idea behind Android done right — I just happen to like the idea of Windows Mobile better.
But I'll give Windows Phone that the utterly ridiculous Windows 8/10 "Metro"/"Modern" interface actually kind of works on capacitive touch phones.
Yes, the tiles are very nicely touchable. However, such tiles are not unheard of or impossible on Android either.
On Android, I switch away all animations as far as possible (Google unfortunately seems to increasingly hardwire animations into the interface). On my earlier Android (Kitkat or Gingerbread or whatever it was called), I also installed some different homescreen app that created more tiles and vertical scrolls, instead of coverflows and page swipes. On my current Android (v. 6 on Note 4) I tried a few other homescreen apps too for a while, but Samsung's default is very sensible. Samsung even implements a dual-pane view to have two apps side by side that works very smoothly and floating windows to have even more apps running simultaneously. On Google Play you can get poor imitations of that.
Did Windows Mobile have multi-app functions like dual-pane and floating windows?
And Samsung Dex actually deserves an honourable mention of trying to implement something like a desktop on Android. It is perhaps not quite as desktop-y as Chromebook's opsys, but still it shows how Android's homescreen can be stretched to different dimensions. It's just that they would need to stretch it all the way and implement a tiling window management rather than floating. Well, both tiling and floating. And enable all imaginable scaling/resizing on every app and every imaginable resolution for the desktop.
They already have the dock where you can plug in the keyboard, mouse, external harddrive, while it powers the phone. Put more ports onto that dock!
Did Windows Mobile have multi-app functions like dual-pane and floating windows?
Sure, of course you could do that, although that's not a thing that'd be very useful 99% of the time. At least on screen sizes from a decade ago. My phone has a larger screen than my old '09 GPS, which had something like 800x480 at 4.5". My Zenfone 2 has 1980x1080 @ 5.5".
Windows Mobile gave you the power of Outlook. Android gives you a simulacrum of Outlook.
There's a browser called Coc Coc??
Sorry to quote myself but I got curious about this Coc Coc browser at the ninth place of most used browsers.
Cốc Cốc browser is a product of Cốc Cốc - a technology company founded by Vietnamese engineers.
This browser is a whole new experience “tailored” specifically to the everyday needs of Vietnamese people.
... do Vietnamese Still Plant Rice?
... do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
... ?
Perhaps the browser statistics firm is headquartered in Vietnam.
About Vivaldi, by many reasons it turned the browser I use in Ubuntu. And I've experienced many many things.
Not comparable with the cult Opera12.x but the best thing near to it. (Even at a long distance)
The times are a'changing.
The one primary reason I like Vivaldi is the interface toggle. There are also other good features reminiscent of Opera, like Quick Commands and secondary address field. Then there are also features that are utterly inappropriate on desktop, such as Picture-in-Picture/video popout.
A secondary reason to have Vivaldi is that it has the Chrome rendering engine (an unfortunate necessity on the web, just like IE used to be around the turn of the century) while it is not Chrome.
In one blog post, Vivaldi CEO admitted he gave a finger to evil Google and got screwed.
We made effort to understand [Google's waffle about suspending Vivaldi's AdWords account] and to work with them on their various unreasonable demands (some of which they don’t follow themselves, by the way). After almost three months of back-and-forth, the suspension to our account has been lifted, but only when we bent to their requirements.
A monopoly both in search and advertising, Google, unfortunately, shows that they are not able to resist the misuse of power. I am saddened by this makeover of a geeky, positive company into the bully they are in 2017.
He should have known better: When you know it's evil, do not give an inch. When the demands are unreasonable and they don't even follow them themselves, thou shalt not bend.
And isn't it mildly curious that he is not telling what the unreasonable demands were that he bent to? Let's hope it was just about money...
Vivaldi, yet another Chrome fork presented in a new shell as a facelift and enhanced with a few built-in extensions.
And no it's not only the layout and the ECMAScript engine taken from Chrome but the whole construction like networking etc.
Privacy wise it offers even less user control than Chrome.
It's funny/sad to see how many of those people complaining about Google's monopoly and evilness are using their browser/forks helping Google to become even more powerful and hoggish.
As for Tetzchner, he is hypocritical to say the least...
Privacy wise it offers even less user control than Chrome.
How about a specific example so we can compare and make an informed choice.
It's funny/sad to see how many of those people complaining about Google's monopoly and evilness are using their browser/forks helping Google to become even more powerful and hoggish.
Not helping, but simply trying to survive and get things done. If it were possible to live without Google's rendering engine, I would, just like I abandoned Microsoft Windows as soon as it became possible.
Our Spatial Navigation feature is disabled in this build: It will return in the future.
It really does not invite me to update when you turn off one of your most notable distinguishing features.
Spatial navigation in Vivaldi doesn't work that well imo. Explanation here: https://vivaldi.com/blog/minor-update-5-for-vivaldi-2-3/#post-277801
Spatial navigation in Vivaldi doesn't work that well imo.
That's right, but it works better than in any other graphical browser. Except old Opera, where it works best.
It's a choice between working not-so-good and not working at all. Not much of a choice.
It should not be too hard to implement well. In Elinks and w3m it works fine.
Vivaldi for Android beta just came out. I have very high expectations (for an Android browser) but unfortunately the program is non-functional on my phone. Not even the documentation will load. It looks like they skimped out on their dead bird (https://fransdejonge.com/2018/09/im-not-sure-what-to-think-of-the-vivaldi-crash-icon/), or maybe they received complaints? It was rather tasteless.
https://vivaldi.com/press/releases/vivaldi-goes-mobile/
For example:
Another unique feature in Vivaldi is the ability to switch search engines on the fly in the Address Bar using nicknames.
Of course Opera/Presto for Android could also do this. It's weird that Opera desktop still does this while the mobile version doesn't.
(https://vivaldi.com/wp-content/uploads/vivaldi_ui_explained-980x551.png)
So the magglass icon just duplicates the address bar? Any way to get rid of the address bar then?
I may try it out for the Reader View. I am fond of Reader Views. Samsung Internet browser and Edge do it quite well, even though only on websites that "allow" it. However, in Vivaldi,
Reader View can be enabled in Settings under Accessibility options.
What? You have to dive deep into settings to enable it? I want to enable and disable it on the fly from the main menu, just like with desktop vs mobile view. Any way for users to place any setting into the main menu or as a button on the toolbar?
And tab management may be promising as well, if they allow switching to list view like in Samsung Internet browser.
I may try it out for the Reader View.... What? You have to dive deep into settings to enable it? I want to enable and disable it on the fly from the main menu, just like with desktop vs mobile view.
Actually, it turns out that enabling Reader View in the deep settings simply allows enabling it when available by the visited website. When available, Reader View can be switched on by some button on the address bar. It has a few font and colour options.
Samsung Internet browser has a bit more options in its Reader View. More crucially, Samsung Internet can theme the entire web - all webpages black on white, if you want. This is quite a crucial advantage.
And tab management is a disappointment too in Vivaldi, compared to Samsung Internet. In the tab management view in Vivaldi there is:
- No long-press to open a menu on a tile, to e.g. clone it, or to start multi-selection of tiles
- No app menu items to e.g. close all tabs, sync all, bookmark all, etc.
- No list view
- No drag-and-drop reordering (just a visual effect on handhelds, but anyway)
Samsung browser continues to be my #1 mobile browser.
Samsung browser? The idea that a phone manufacturer might make one that's substantially better than Chrome hadn't crossed my mind.
Does it do without Vivaldi's current fatal flaw of only being on Google Play?
Why would you take it from anywhere other than Google Play? Because you have Sailfish instead of Android? Well, it is available in some Galaxy Store also, but I doubt that helps. Maybe here https://androidapksfree.com/samsung-internet-browser/com-sec-android-app-sbrowser/
Setting aside custom ROMs and Sailfish (on both of which you can install Google Play but may very well not want to), the Huawei Mate 30 won't come with any Google services either.
Anyway, Opera offers a plain old APK.
Built in Alarm /Countdown in latest Beta Vivaldi. Very useful for me, well done.
(https://i.ibb.co/YWCB4zZ/Capture-Alarm-Vivaldi.png) (https://imgbb.com/)
On the desktop, Vivaldi has the best tiling options that I have ever seen.
I am considerably less impressed with the Android version. It does not stand out among other Android Chromeites the way Samsung Internet and Edge do.
I keep forgetting to try mobile Edge. The desktop browser is nothing special to me, besides that it has/had a non-Chromium engine.
The desktop Edge is simply an abject failure. Nothing to see there. But the Android version has a tile-y looking tab switcher and a fair reading view.
Samsung Internet is even better, as it can dark-style the whole web.
Vivaldi M3/Mail is pretty darn good so far.
Opera 7 comes with a totally rewritten mail and news client, with support for POP3, IMAP and (E)SMTP. The client (called M2) has many new, innovative and unique features. This means that in many respects, M2 behaves differently from most other mailers, and therefore requires some additional instructions before you start testing.
Vivaldi M3/Mail is pretty darn good so far.
Vivaldi browser, mail and calendar are my trilogy of preference these days. Together with Qwant for search engine.
Vivaldi M3/Mail is pretty darn good so far.
Opera 7 comes with a totally rewritten mail and news client, with support for POP3, IMAP and (E)SMTP. The client (called M2) has many new, innovative and unique features. This means that in many respects, M2 behaves differently from most other mailers, and therefore requires some additional instructions before you start testing.
Are you kidding? This link is about Opera 7 M2, and the document was "updated" in 2011. Still... not bad at all. I used to love M2.
Are you kidding? This link is about Opera 7 M2
That's the very webpage I read back in '02 to learn how Vivaldi Mail works.
Vivaldi M3/Mail is pretty darn good so far.
Vivaldi browser, mail and calendar are my trilogy of preference these days. Together with Qwant for search engine.
I haven't tested it yet. Does it import Opera's mail? If not, it is a big missing feature...
Not yet.
When M3 was first in early development, it could import from M2. However, the database structure and indexing had to be substantially changed, and so that capability was lost at that time. It will be back.
Besides M2, I'm sure they'll also want to add import from a few choice programs like Outlook and Thunderbird.
I haven't tested it yet. Does it import Opera's mail? If not, it is a big missing feature...
It seems so, but I never did it. Have a look
here (https://help.vivaldi.com/services/webmail/importing-and-exporting-emails/).
The best way to move all of your emails from your current mailbox to Vivaldi is to set up both Vivaldi account and your current email provider’s account using IMAP in an email client of your choice (e.g. Opera M2, Thunderbird, etc.).
True, that works well enough. I actually used Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail to migrate mails from Hotmail to another email account that way, since while Hotmail only supported a proprietary protocol Outlook Express had no trouble with the standard.
I've become a fan of Vivaldi 3.7.2218.52 (Stable channel) (x86_64), and find it the best out-of-the-box browser out there. It suits my needs for browsing, corresponding, forum reading and posting, shopping and other business -- better than I'd thought possible!
Although I admit, with Opera Mail collecting from my web accounts, I haven't tried Vivaldi's in-browser mail client yet...
I recommend Vivaldi 3.7 to anyone who feels even a tad bit disappointed by the various Operas since they jettisoned their Presto engine.
I'll use Opera 11.64 for old time's sake. I use Firefox or Safari for single-purpose stuff (locast.com tv, for instance; and internet radio -- the Brits have a good lineup: https://ukradiolive.com/jazz-fm ). On my phone, I've even been known to click Google's browser -- for quick-duration searches and maps/directions. :)
Manjaro Cinnamon 21.1.2 now includes browser Vivaldi. (https://forum.manjaro.org/t/manjaro-cinnamon-21-1-2-shipping-browser-vivaldi/81868)
Some years ago there used to be resistance to shipping corporate-ware with Manjaro. Now there's Staroffice and Vivaldi and some other things. There also used to be attention to consistency of app sources - repos only - and the users had the opportunity for AUR. But these days Manjaro ships with snapd too...
My Manjaro installations on various machines are old enough so that these new additions do not concern me, but if I need to install again, I will need to pick a different distro.
I'm fine with the snap stuff in principle, as an alternative source. What I don't like though is how in Discover for example you have to pay extremely close attention to where a suggestion's coming from. If you use the command-line or a more dedicated app like Muon that's not an issue.
Xah Lee the Emacs hacker hates Fn key on keyboards, tiling window managers, Common Lisp, and more. But he loves Mac and he uses Vivaldi browser.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vz6XiVVluI[/video]
As to tiling window managers, I made roughly the following calculation.
1. Do I need two windows perfectly side by side more often than not? Yes, I do.
2. Do I absolutely need to see the desktop background picture and reach for the icons there? No, I do not.
The first item results in more points for tiling window managers because in a tiling window manager the side by side arrangement of windows happens by itself. The user only needs to open the two apps/windows and bang, they are automatically arranged side by side.
In a common floating window manager you have to go through a special effort to tile the windows. In a tiling window manager you have to go through a special effort to make your windows floating. But how often do I need them floating, partially overlapping? Never, really.
The second item is about app launching habit. If you predominantly launch apps from the apps menu (i.e. press Win and type), then a tiling window manager will work for you, because this is the main way to launch apps in a tiling window manager.
Xah Lee the Emacs hacker is most importantly the creator of Xah Fly Keys (http://xahlee.info/emacs/misc/ergoemacs_vi_mode.html), which is a set of keybinds rewritten for Emacs based on statistics on what functions are accessed most. The functions that are accessed most have the simplest single-key shortcuts. The downside (or upside for some) of this keybind extension is that it makes Emacs modal (Normal Mode versus Insert Mode like in Vi). For myself, there are very few keybinds from vanilla Emacs that I have rewritten. I have found the original Emacs keybind set worth learning.
By the way, Vivaldi does good tiling of its own.
Fn key on keyboards
Neither do I.
Incidentally, here are some links that might interest you.
http://xahlee.info/kbd/gameball_trackball.html
http://xahlee.info/kbd/Elgato_Stream_Deck_keypad.html
So you guys are friends :) (I assume he doesn't mean you every time he says "Linux idiots" and "open source f-kheads".)
This is a good overview of the desktop environment navigation efficiency routines that he has worked out. He even hates Alt Tab and instead uses mousehover to raise (and focus?) windows, so it's good that in my tiling window manager setup I have ended up without an Alt Tab or Win Tab key combo. I think that mousehover to focus (and also automove mouse to focused window) makes best sense in tiling window managers. When I am in a floating desktop environment, particularly on a big enough screen, I prefer to keep raise and focus as separate events.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ux7b0LmjMs[/video]
His layout and the way he switches between windows, it seems to me that a good interface for him would be tabbed layout. In i3wm, you can create a tabbed layout either over entire screen (which is basically all windows maximised and on top of each other) or to any part/corner of the screen (as in the bottom right corner in the picture below - if you look carefully you see two tabs/titlebars above the terminals, indicating two terminals on top of each other). And then you can switch and cycle between them either by pressing the tabs/titlebars, by scroll on the tabs/titlebars, or by keybinds.
(https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/data/images/screenshots/i3.tb.png)
He keeps badmouthing tiling window managers across several videos, but I still haven't got the specific objection. Maybe I need to watch all of them. Quite entertaining every time he gets distracted.
When I am in a floating desktop environment, particularly on a big enough screen, I prefer to keep raise and focus as separate events.
Me too, but one thing I do actually enjoy a fair bit is per-monitor focus depending on which monitor your mouse is on. I haven't investigated if I can get that without using Synergy because it's not too bothersome. It's a bit like switching between multiple workspaces.
http://xahlee.info/linux/why_tiling_window_manager_sucks.html
So had a bad experience with Xmonad. There are two kinds of tiling window managers: Master-and-stack layout versus manual placement. I did not get quite on board with the master-and-stack, such as Xmonad or Dwm. I (very much want to) like Awesomewm as a good compromise between floating and tiling, e.g. Awesomewm has true minimise that is generally missing in tiling window managers, but there's that master-and-stack again.
With manual placement (such as i3wm and bspwm) you can open a new window wherever your focus is at the moment. A master-and-stack layout cannot halve the master side of the monitor for a new window, but i3wm and bspwm can halve any side or corner. And i3wm can do tabbed layout too, i.e. you can start opening new overlapping windows over a particular window at any point. In my i3wm setup, my main layout is tabbed, i.e. all windows open maximised, but I can arbitrarily halve one or some of them at any point.
As to switching between windows, the fastest way to flip through the entire workspace is a mouse scroll on the statusbar/taskbar/titlebars, if you are precise with this operation. This of course presupposes configuring the corresponding statusbar/taskbar or the availability of titlebars. Titlebars are available in i3wm and mouse scroll on them to flip through windows is enabled out of the box, but I have the mouse scroll turned off. I switch between windows either by hover (focus-follows-mouse enabled, of course) or mod+arrow (and since my windows are usually all maximised and overlapping, I don't have to think which arrow to use). If there are windows across multiple workspaces, I bring up Rofi to switch windows.
As to too many windows, yup, there will easily be too many on a single screen if you refuse to make use of multiple workspaces. A tiling window manager almost forces you to make use of multiple workspaces and, if that's not your thing, then tiling window managers cannot be your thing. My tabbed setup mitigates the need for multiple workspaces, but I still definitely use them several times a week.
In a multi-monitor setup, I really prefer the way tiling window managers switch workspaces on a per-monitor basis, instead of changing to a new workspace on all monitors the way floating DE's do. And on a scenario where I disconnect one of the monitors, its windows become another neat workspace on an available monitor, preserving the window layout/arrangement, instead of getting totally messed up the way they do on MS Windows.
His challenge is nice. I have my own workflow scenario that is neatly solved by a tiling window manager:
1. Have two windows side by side, using available space maximally.
2. Maximise one of the windows.
3. Now maximise the other window.
4. Position them back as in point 1.
A floating desktop environment is more trouble already at point 1, because to get two windows occupy halves of the screen is a special operation by mousedrags or keybinds and this operation cannot be bound to a single key as far as I know. Moreover, you have to go through this for each of the windows separately. In a tiling window manager, just open two windows and they tile themselves.
Second, to maximise a window, you have to first select/focus it. This much works presumably equally well in both tiling and floating environment. Then, maximise is trivial on a floating window manager, whereas tiling window managers have various workarounds for that - there usually is no true minimise or maximise in tiling window managers, and no layer/raise/lower either. In most tiling window managers, to get one window to maximise, you'd need to actually go to the other window and move it away to some background workspace. Overall, this is still an operation of the exact same level of complexity: Select and do.
Or, in a tiling window manager it can be an even simpler operation by switching the desktop layout style from tiled to "monocle" or "tabbed" (or whatever else they can be called, different terms and slightly different functions in different window managers), which automatically maximises the currently focused window and leaves the other to the background.
Third, in a floating desktop environment, if you did stuff to one window, nothing presumably happened to the other window, so it is a separate operation to both select and maximise the other window. Whereas in a tiling window manager, the other window is already maximised in the background so, for point 3, in a tiling window manager you need to just switch to the other window.
Fourth, in a floating desktop environment you need to go through point 1 again with mousedrags or keybinds for two windows separately - or, in a best case, un-maximise them each separately. In a tiling window manager, the operation would be,
- if the other window is on another workspace, bring it to the current workspace (and the two windows tile themselves automatically) or
- go with the current window to the other workspace (and the two windows tile themselves automatically) or
- if you did point 2 by switching the layout style from tiled to monocle or tabbed, switch it back to tiled.
As to too many windows, yup, there will easily be too many on a single screen if you refuse to make use of multiple workspaces. A tiling window manager almost forces you to make use of multiple workspaces and, if that's not your thing, then tiling window managers cannot be your thing. My tabbed setup mitigates the need for multiple workspaces, but I still definitely use them several times a week.
When working I like to have two contexts. I wouldn't like being forced to use more either.
this operation cannot be bound to a single key as far as I know.
Not sure what you mean? The primary reason I use Win+left/right arrow or quick drag is because being different just for the sake of being different makes it harder to use Windows. It's not quite important enough to sacrifice any precious F-keys to.
Keep in mind that through the likes of KWin and/or Devilspie2 you can set up a lot of auto-placement much the same as you can in your better tiling window managers. You're likely aware, but I've noticed some people mentioning that kind of thing as an advantage when they're just betraying they never thought to try in a regular WM. :)
Or, in a tiling window manager it can be an even simpler operation by switching the desktop layout style from tiled to "monocle" or "tabbed" (or whatever else they can be called, different terms and slightly different functions in different window managers), which automatically maximises the currently focused window and leaves the other to the background.
Well, this is normally considered a feature, at least by those of use who use floating WMs. Things stay where you put them. Incidentally even Windows has many third party apps to provide all kinds of things like this. Windows itself, however, has broken basic functionality like Control+click on the taskbar since Vista.
The primary reason I use Win+left/right arrow or quick drag is because being different just for the sake of being different makes it harder to use Windows. It's not quite important enough to sacrifice any precious F-keys to.
I understand. It boils down to the calculation how often you need two windows side by side, arranged neatly. In my workflow, that's how I'd like the computer to boot up, really, and a tiling window manager gets very close to that. It's not for the sake of being different, but having a setup I can call home and stop tinkering, finally.
Keep in mind that through the likes of KWin and/or Devilspie2 you can set up a lot of auto-placement much the same as you can in your better tiling window managers. You're likely aware, but I've noticed some people mentioning that kind of thing as an advantage when they're just betraying they never thought to try in a regular WM.
My path to tiling window managers went gradually through tools like those. I implemented various tiling layouts in Openbox too. But at heart it is still a floatie, e.g. there is no sticky-shared window border. Edit2: and now this, and I'd say it's not in line with the thing's identity and will forever remain convoluted and buggy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8N3F826XNk
Well, this is normally considered a feature, at least by those of use who use floating WMs. Things stay where you put them.
Understood. And in tiling window managers the sticky-shared window border (i.e. when you have two windows side by side, resize them both at once by dragging a single border) is a feature, not an afterthought or a third-party slap-on. It was a simple calculation of how often I need such arrangement and tiling window managers won easily.
Edit: And how do Emacs' window panes work? They look (gasp) more tiled than not. Yes, you can detach a pane to a new floating frame, but I can do the same in a tiling window manager in the rare use cases, which are actually entertainment cases, such as having a little video play in some corner of the screen.