Because Otter is single-process browser, it's his general advantage over Vivaldi. Multiprocess browsers are for buggy plugins and to avoid memory leaks only, as I think. Reliable browser should remain single-processed, getting benefits on speed on memory usage. Before Otter, I didn't know that single-process architecture is available on WebKit engine. On my home machine with 1 GB RAM, Otter uses 2-3 times less memory than Opera 12.17. Bravo!
Minimalistic, system theme based interface is second advantage, as for me. Current Vivaldi alpha doesn't have Bookmarks item in his menu, but Otter has. For the first time, I'm ready to use classic bookmarks only, unless personal bars (https://github.com/OtterBrowser/otter-browser/issues/688) not yet implemented.
When "mouse gesture down over link" and "scroll tabs holding right button" gestures get implemented, I could try to migrate completely to Otter. Oh, also urlfiler.ini and user.css are needed.
As for now, I'm using Otter to surf on Vivaldi forum. :D Big thanks to Otter developers!
Note that you can run Vivaldi (and probably all Chromium-based browsers) with the --single-process flag,
@Frenzie, yep, that might be even true for our QtWebEngine backend (haven't tested yet).
Note that you can run Vivaldi (and probably all Chromium-based browsers) with the --single-process flag,
:left:
Hm, it works for me on Linux. Oh well. :P
Just updated both browsers. Vivaldi is being crashed single-process anyway.
Frankly I care very little about the multiprocess/single process thing (single process is more or less buggy on Vivaldi, Opium, Chromium and so on).
For the end user what counts, after all, is the final result.
What Vivaldi people did right (IMO, obviously) is the priority order.
Vivaldi is still plenty of bugs, but has already a speed dial working, it has a user recognizable will to implement the email function, it has a function to import settings from Opera and so on.
Emdek, on the other hand, focused the development more to fix anything under the hood before starting to add more features.
While I respect his arguments I believe that was a not productive approach (and I told him in less "suspect" times).
I was really enthusiast when I read about the Otter project (an still I'm) but the fact is that with Vivaldi I felt @home since the day one, I felt somewhat @home using Qupzilla and Opium, but I still feel "naked" using Otter.
That's not a suggestion to give up (absolutely not) , but a renewed suggestion to rethink the development path.
My two cents. ;)
any sane programmer starts with making stable and optimized foundation
then goes after new features, otherwise you end up with buggy unresponsive app
with bunch of things stuffed in that simply crash and burn
I'd say otter is on right path
also check what happened in past with Mac OS "Copland"
and with MS Windows "Longhorn"
they both suffered with feature creep and crap foundation
Frankly I care very little about the multiprocess/single process thing (single process is more or less buggy on Vivaldi, Opium, Chromium and so on).
For the end user what counts, after all, is the final result.
What Vivaldi people did right (IMO, obviously) is the priority order.
Vivaldi is still plenty of bugs, but has already a speed dial working, it has a user recognizable will to implement the email function, it has a function to import settings from Opera and so on.
Emdek, on the other hand, focused the development more to fix anything under the hood before starting to add more features.
While I respect his arguments I believe that was a not productive approach (and I told him in less "suspect" times).
I was really enthusiast when I read about the Otter project (an still I'm) but the fact is that with Vivaldi I felt @home since the day one, I felt somewhat @home using Qupzilla and Opium, but I still feel "naked" using Otter.
That's not a suggestion to give up (absolutely not) , but a renewed suggestion to rethink the development path.
My two cents. ;)
You're comparing a browser made from the ground up by a single developer with occasional help from limited people, all on their free time without any financial support with a browser made by a group of people working full time around the clock with full financial support and companies behind them, they even have some knowledges and experiences from the old Opera development members aboard.
What he has done so far, making a very comprehensive brower from the ground up, is nothing short of amazing.
@The Solutor, sure, we are starting to harvesting that ground work already, as QtWebEngine backend proved that we are almost ready for easily extending browser by additional modules (well, the missing part is making it proper library, so such modules could be distributed as .so / DLL). Thanks to existing APIs it took ~three days to exploit almost all that was possible in current state (granted, it has APIs similar to QtWebKit, but some stuff is dramatically different or missing, lots of basic stuff requires abuse of JS, at least for now).
See here:
https://github.com/OtterBrowser/otter-browser/tree/master/src/modules/backends/web
Some concepts that guarantee extreme flexibility (menuBar.json, menuButton.json) are already in place, some are in progress (toolBars.json) and other have design phase almost completed (contextMenu.json), and these are just for UI itself.
The point is, we can have something that "works" earlier and then do lots of rewrites (possibly introducing regressions) or spent more time on detailed planning (that part accelerated recently thanks to Frenzie) so we can start bigger stuff (*cough* #42 (https://github.com/OtterBrowser/otter-browser/issues/42#issuecomment-72354703) *cough*).
Still, some rewrites are inevitable, as I had to that one big shortcut by letting QTabBar to have bigger influence on tab ordering and stuff than WindowsManager (I really like concept of model and view suggested on these forums one year ago, but that was too big task back then, now we at least have plans how to do it properly).
And now, thanks to Vivaldi, I'm kinda forced to start harvesting our APIs to expose more user visible changes. ;-)
BTW, I don't want to criticize Vivaldi, as going that way was the only way for them to do it (cofffee gave a hint why they cannot do it using different approach).
It's better to have two similar browsers than none (especially if they aren't similar to Chrome / IE / soon Firefox ;-)), lets make software, not war. :-)
You're comparing a browser made from the ground up by a single developer with occasional help from limited people
I'm perfectly aware of that, Indeed I'm not questioning the programming choices, the sw robustness or whatever.
I'm talking of "marketing" choices.
A fact (call it sad but true if you want) is that almost always look pays more than substance.
Now in the specific case "look" coincides with usability, is not just matter of eye candyness.
I believe that people orphaned from opera are already used to some inconsistencies on the page rendering and some incompatibility with some web sites, but the same people Is used to a bunch of functions that are missing elsewhere.
That's my point.
IMO a poor implementation of the speed dial (and the one from vivaldi IS poor atm) is better than no speed dial, an incomplete side panel is better than no side panel at all, and so on.
That said, given I'm not a coder and I can't help on that way, In the past year I tried to help advertising Emdek's work, in any occasion, and I will do the same in the future, and I consider the above suggestion a different form of help, not a complain.
I hope my point is clear.
And now, thanks to Vivaldi, I'm kinda forced to start harvesting our APIs to expose more user visible changes. ;-)
Competition is always the pepper of life ;), so for me Vivaldi is a welcome entry as it was Otter, as it should be Fifth browser (I haven't tried it yet, but looks like it has the same aim as Otter).
It's better to have two similar browsers than none (especially if they aren't similar to Chrome / IE / soon Firefox ;-)), lets make software, not war. :-)
100% agreed.
Oh, also urlfiler.ini and user.css are needed.
Can you describe how urlfilter.ini differs from adblock (implemented in Otter right now)? What specific kind of content blocking would you like to see?
@The Solutor, our issue is that we still don't have something like this:
http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/
https://okular.kde.org/formats.php
As we have a lot of various features already, just not many of these that are game changers. ;-)
This morning I wanted to visit a project's homepage from within synaptic package manager, so I clicked the homepage link and what happened? Vivaldi came up sluggish and presented me his redunant initial page (and not the project page I wanted to visit)! I did NOT set vivaldi my default browser, I even still have qupzilla set my default browser in the LXQT system settings, and Vivaldi has made himself more important than this LXQT setting - without asking me. My conclusion: Delete vivaldi immediately - so I did.
This morning I wanted to visit a project's homepage from within synaptic package manager, so I clicked the homepage link and what happened? Vivaldi came up sluggish and presented me his redunant initial page (and not the project page I wanted to visit)! I did NOT set vivaldi my default browser, I even still have qupzilla set my default browser in the LXQT system settings, and Vivaldi has made himself more important than this LXQT setting - without asking me. My conclusion: Delete vivaldi immediately - so I did.
So that is what you call a problem ? :lol:
frankly this kind of sentences (no matter if in favor or aganist something) sounds like childish excuses rather than technical evaluations made by an adult.
Well, the main advantage for me now is speed. It is visible.
As Otter now has too little basic features, and I need a full browser to import everything from Opera 12, I still use FF, it has nicely working add-on with a tab sidebar.
But definitely Otter has more simplified look, which for work is very important, and already has overwhelmingly more customization options than Vivaldi.
As someone here mentioned the very general issue of a marketing approach let me make a wider comment regarding this subject.
1. Is Otter going to be only for Geeks or also for Mortal People (that's me :D ?
If only for Geeks it will die, and bring no money to the Author who--I think--deserves in the future some financial benefit out of his work. Mortal People can yield the fruits.
2. Hence, the answer for the 1st question affects everything.
Let's assume the project should deliver financial benefits meaning it should be done also for Mortal People. And here we have got the absolutely most important issue:
to deliver many, many features, options but also many of them buggy
or
to deliver first the most basic features but working well, and then to develope advanced things.
Why is it so important?
Because someone here said something that Otter should firstly contain a lot of fireworks, and features even if they do not work but they would attract the users. And this is absolutely wrong attitude nowadays. It worked 10 years ago. Today the most modern trend (around 2-year old) in software industry is to test, test, test, and then deliver properly working product. Not everybody got this, of course (Ubisoft hue hue :) but this is the direction. How do we know that? Let me give you some good examples. Lately Lollipop 5.0 has been firstly introduced to Poland, and useful idiots were really proud of it: "we have been appreciated". Oh, yeah. You have been beeing tested before delivering it to supermen. The same applies to PayPass cards. Does anyone believe that we, in Poland have the most advanced IT infrastructure? But we are on the top of implementing PayPass technology. Why? Testing before offering to supermen. Sad to say.
Hence, this is the main trend now. Do not release buggy thing. Release something working.
All this agile and scrum software development has one main goal: to remove as many bugs as possible, and to deliver the final product almost or possibly perfect.
So, to the Author, it is your choice to develop many fireworks at once, and few of them working perfectly or to decide which ones of them are the most needed, then to polish them, and then, once they work, to build them up with advanced things.
Let me point out at the end that however, I am not a programmer, I have used Opera since 2001 until the bloody euthanasia of Presto. And I used this for work, not for fun. Well, mostly. :) And nothing else.
1. Is Otter going to be only for Geeks or also for Mortal People (that's me :D ?
If only for Geeks it will die, and bring no money to the Author who--I think--deserves in the future some financial benefit out of his work. Mortal People can yield the fruits.
2. Hence, the answer for the 1st question affects everything.
For both, but power users have a priority. ;-)
Installed Vivaldi, tested :yuck:
deleted.
I was an Opera user when still using Windows 3.1 and dial-up internet. A fast, small browser was and is my first priority... add to that standards compliance and the ability to restrict cookies or other privacy leaks, and Opera stayed my favourite browser until recently. And Otter seems to fit the bill much better currently than Vivaldi.
Speed, small size and stability combined with configarability (which can come later) and security are the most important reasons why I preferred Opera in the first place and why I prefer Otter to Vivaldi currently. Yes, it would be nice to add all the rich features of later versions of Opera (including skins and integrated e-mail/newsreader/...), but try to keep the stability and speed above all. The one thing I still miss in Otter, is the ability to turn images off/on/only downloaded on the fly.
Yes, it would be nice to add all the rich features of later versions of Opera (including skins and integrated e-mail/newsreader/...), but try to keep the stability and speed above all.
Lightness, stability and security are surely important things, but are the mission of dozens of browsers, to stand out of the crowd Otter must be feature rich, starting from the ones that made Opera so great.
Otherwise it will be a "yet another nice open source project" and nothing more.
There are ideas a-brewing to undermine the Otter project https://vivaldi.net/forum/all/1664-suggestion-hire-the-guy-making-the-otter-browser
There are ideas a-brewing to undermine the Otter project https://vivaldi.net/forum/all/1664-suggestion-hire-the-guy-making-the-otter-browser
Oh, the horror! The bliss!!!
- H P Lovecraft
:-)
As I understand it, Otter is open source, and Vivaldi isn't, That would mean that Otter and Vivaldi couldn't be merged. However, they could still *hire* him. It would probably be difficult to handle such a situation, still having both browsers.
I personally would very much like to have both browsers. They would complement or supplement each other, because they have a somewhat different set of functionality. They have different development aims - bugs free first vs features first. And of course, if one of them falls, perhaps the other will still be there.
As of now, we also have a third, sorry a Fifth browser, aiming at making an Opera- type of browser. http://www.cupoflinux.com/SBB/index.php?topic=2379.0 . Perhaps Otter and Fifth could cooperate instead? I mean, while *not* trying to merge all functionality and features.
I for one would love to have all three of these on my desktop - Vivaldi, Otter and Fifth. :-D
Now it's up to Mr Otter himself I suppose to reassure us on this matter.
cheers/Rolf
Competition is always the pepper of life ;), so for me Vivaldi is a welcome entry as it was Otter, as it should be Fifth browser (I haven't tried it yet, but looks like it has the same aim as Otter).
Fifth Browsers propaganda (http://fifth-browser.sourceforge.net/propaganda.html) is quiet interesting - in terms of ram use by otter compared to other browsers...
Perhaps Otter and Fifth could cooperate instead?
Emdek has considered this. The tools for programming are too different. The author of the Fifth avoids Qt.
Fifth = failure, only Linux supported
Vivaldi = failure, chromium browser
I can't even believe someone on Vivaldi forum topic above wrote
If Vivaldi matures, we don't need Otter
hello ? - any - ANY chromium based browser is resource hog !
they use plugins, and every plugin acts as new Browser Process that eats
equal amount of Memory
what kind of idiot found to compare that shit with Otter which is extra lightweight
somehow people (read kids) don't even know what Browser is and what backend Engine is
its all same to them
well shit lets all buy 16 gigs of RAM and 16 core CPU and be happy .... pfff
And why do we need another closed-source Chrome clone?
Fifth = failure, only Linux supported
Vivaldi = failure, chromium browser
I can't even believe someone on Vivaldi forum topic above wrote
If Vivaldi matures, we don't need Otter
hello ? - any - ANY chromium based browser is resource hog !
they use plugins, and every plugin acts as new Browser Process that eats
equal amount of Memory
what kind of idiot found to compare that shit with Otter which is extra lightweight
somehow people (read kids) don't even know what Browser is and what backend Engine is
its all same to them
well shit lets all buy 16 gigs of RAM and 16 core CPU and be happy .... pfff
I am the one who wrote that. I'm 61 and a somewhat technically advanced user. Opera was my default browser beginning with ver. 6, when we were paying for the license.
The rest of that quote was, "If Otter matures, we don't need Vivaldi."
From strictly a user standpoint, what is important to me is function. If the browser does the things I want and can be conformed to my work flow, I essentially DON'T CARE what's going on under the hood. If I have my integrated email client included in a panel in the interface, my bookmarks bar that I can arrange vertically on the right, my vertical tabs, also on the right, and if I can switch quickly and smoothly from one element to the next, it concerns me not, whether it's consuming half a gig of RAM, or four gigs. It's working. If it has a feather-light footprint and does NONE of the above things, that's utterly irrelevant, because it does not serve my needs.
BOTH browsers aim to replace Opera 12. I'm happy to see either one do it. Whichever one does it, renders the other supernumerary as to my user needs.
I would caution against getting too partisan, too insular, too snobbish about browser inner workings, and remember that most people who are pissed about the loss of old Opera were mad because they lost that interface - not because they lost the inner workings.
Welcome to the forums, ayespy :)
...remember that most people who are pissed about the loss of old Opera were mad because they lost that interface - not because they lost the inner workings.
I completely concur. To me too the interface, particularly its configurability, was the most attractive feature of Opera. Now we have entered a race between Otter, Vivaldi, and possibly also Fifth, to get this back.
However, also open-source approach is important. Should the project fail for whatever reason, with open-source licence there's a chance that a next developer, anybody, will take over where the former left off. Now, good open-source software gets abandoned often enough without any hope of continuity, but at least there's a chance that someone will take over some day.
With corporate licence there's no such chance even in principle. The current Opera ASA has the resources to continue the development of their product, but they are not doing it, and they are not letting anyone else do it either. Even Vivaldi (Tetzchner) could not re-create something too closely resembling old Opera, if he wanted to.
I would caution against getting too partisan, too insular, too snobbish about browser inner workings, and remember that most people who are pissed about the loss of old Opera were mad because they lost that interface - not because they lost the inner workings.
That's also because Opera literally said it was just an under-the-hood change. It clearly was not. Because of that statement people expected them to come out with something more like Vivaldi than what they came out with.
I just have to facepalm to that guy...
if you don't care about what is happening to your machine
then use crappy chrome or any of its clones
they all accept plugins that makes YOUR user experience opera-like
heck its a browser, it works, so use it...
allow me to *facepalm*
want a snoobish attitude ?
here's one, I've been using Opera since v5, altho v7 grew best on me back in the days
also with attitude of yours alike, no wonder all software is going for unoptimized pile of garbage system
so much easier to buy gaming rig just to be able to surf the freaking internet
now allow me to *facepalm* again
That's also because Opera literally said it was just an under-the-hood change. It clearly was not. Because of that statement people expected them to come out with something more like Vivaldi than what they came out with.
I noticed that there were some early commentators who were skeptical already at the early announcement of a contract between Google and Opera, in conjunction with the major personnel overhaul. Back then, the users were kept in the dark about any possible change to the browser. Those commentators saw immediately (and, in hindsight, rightly) that Opera would turn into a sad Chrome clone, even before any announcement about the change of product was made.
Personally my disillusionment came only after the "under the hood" announcement, though still before I saw the desktop Chropera Beta. I saw what was about to come because I happened to update to Chropera Mobile first, which made my phone choke. After this I didn't even need to take a look at the desktop Chropera to know how hopelessly evil it was.
The commentators who made the correct predictions before this were truly far-sighted. Perhaps because they had been through a few disappointments of comparable nature and magnitude already :)
I'll just make a last reply here, and then leave you folks to your tea and biscuits. It's pretty clear a significant share of commenters are living in a sort of alternate reality, receiving positive reinforcement from each other, and contemptuous of the outside world. I fear I could not make myself at home, nor be accepted ultimately, any more than a mainstream pediatrician at an anti-vaxxer rally.
My rig is nothing like a gaming rig. Any gamer worth his salt would laugh me out of town if I were to claim it was. Still, it runs all browsers, sometimes several at a time, without running into hardware problems. I did not claim or imply one should not care what his happening to his machine. I merely made the point that, on the whole, users care about USE, rather than technical niceties. The stated aim of both Otter and Vivaldi has been to restore the user experience classic Opera aficionados lost when Presto was abandoned. I applaud that aim, because I think it's both valid and valuable. Clearly, what PARTS of that user experience mattered to a person was a unique mix of traits for each user. The fact that classic Opera was able to satisfy so many unique (and in some cases non-overlapping) needs made it the fifth-most-popular (in a market of dozens) browser in the world.
The thrust of my comment, as has been acknowledged in the past by Emdek, was that VISIBLE features matter. Users care first about what they can see and touch in the experience, and second about matters like resource footprint and security. Emdek has shown a reluctance to reveal any feature before it is "fully ready," and I think this reluctance, plus a shortage of available developer-hours has led to a project which, to a bystander, looks frustratingly slow in progress toward its stated goal.
Vivaldi, by contrast, has both more guys, and a different emphasis. It's trying to show as much as it can, as fast as it can, without actually blowing up anyone's machine, and in less than a week attracted half a million users, and is likely pushing a million now. Its forums and blogs are a hotbed of activity, with hundreds of new comments every day. What does this demonstrate? That users care about USE. It does not prove that one browser is good and the other bad, that one is superior to the other, or that one project is more noble than the other. It demonstrates that users care about USE.
One can endlessly debate the ethics and virtues of open source versus closed, crass commercialism vs technical finesse, and I have no position in these debates. Literally, none.
But I will point out that there is no topic at the Vivaldi forums called "Vivaldi advantages over Otter," and nothing but admiration on that site for the aims and the efforts of the Otter project. It would seem no one over there feels the need to convince themselves that their interest in the project they are flocking to needs to be defended.
To the degree one engages in an effort here to validate this project as BETTER than another, and seeks reinforcing feedback from other members within an undeniably small club, one will only succeed in adding blinders to one's blinders, and missing chances to attract a big enough user base to preserve project momentum toward ultimate success. My advice was not to get too damn busy patting yourselves on the back. Yes, you need to believe in what you are doing, in order to continue doing it. No, defects in what someone more successful is doing, is not proof of your own virtue. What will prove the virtue of the project will be its ultimate success. The universe has signposts pointing toward success, if you will heed them.
I've preached long enough. I'm out. Just do me a favor and don't quote me out of context any more, as "proof" of how stupid users are, and to justify why you are too good for the crass and ignorant internet.
lol the ego on you
better shoot yourself and spare us melodrama of "use"
there's reason why people are bitching on every release why is something broken
on every instance of chrome & its clones that are "ready"
:jester:
I'll just make a last reply here, and then leave you folks to your tea and biscuits. It's pretty clear a significant share of commenters are living in a sort of alternate reality, receiving positive reinforcement from each other, and contemptuous of the outside world. I fear I could not make myself at home, nor be accepted ultimately, any more than a mainstream pediatrician at an anti-vaxxer rally.
A rally of one, I guess? As far as I can see, there is one user that has replied to your posts in an aggressive way. I think that comments like "what kind of idiot found to compare that shit with Otter" are out of place in a forum. But I don't think that represents the attitude of the majority of the forum, in fact the rest of the users have replied to you in a totally civil way (and some of them agreeing with your view, e.g. ersi, "I completely concur") so I think generalizing and talking about a rally is unfair. Although I can perfectly understand that you posted in a bad mood after you have been called idiot, I think you should rethink your view of the rest of the posters.
I did not claim or imply one should not care what his happening to his machine. I merely made the point that, on the whole, users care about USE, rather than technical niceties. The stated aim of both Otter and Vivaldi has been to restore the user experience classic Opera aficionados lost when Presto was abandoned.
I agree. I'm a pretty technical user and open a huge lot of tabs, so I do care about things like single-process or RAM usage, but most users don't. And even in my case, those issues take a back seat to UI and functionality. I would be quite happy with a browser with all the functionality of Opera Presto even if it's hurdled by the Chrome engine, than a very lightweight browser with less functionality.
The thrust of my comment, as has been acknowledged in the past by Emdek, was that VISIBLE features matter. Users care first about what they can see and touch in the experience, and second about matters like resource footprint and security. Emdek has shown a reluctance to reveal any feature before it is "fully ready," and I think this reluctance, plus a shortage of available developer-hours has led to a project which, to a bystander, looks frustratingly slow in progress toward its stated goal.
Vivaldi, by contrast, has both more guys, and a different emphasis. It's trying to show as much as it can, as fast as it can, without actually blowing up anyone's machine, and in less than a week attracted half a million users, and is likely pushing a million now. Its forums and blogs are a hotbed of activity, with hundreds of new comments every day. What does this demonstrate? That users care about USE. It does not prove that one browser is good and the other bad, that one is superior to the other, or that one project is more noble than the other. It demonstrates that users care about USE.
I totally agree about visible features being the most important. But for the record, currently for my particular priorities, Otter is ahead of Vivaldi in visible features and functionality. It has more mouse gestures (including down over a link), it has the standard menu bar AND title bar (Vivaldi allows me to show a menu bar, but it's collapsed with the titlebar), it has per-site settings including proxy settings... that's stuff that I use, and especially the menu bar thing is very important for me personally. I understand that other people have different priorities and for them Vivaldi may be ahead in functionality, but that's very far from a universal truth.
Re the Vivaldi forums having much more activity than this one and the browser having more downloads, well, it's a browser made and endorsed by no less than the former Opera creator, with much more resources for marketing and getting the product known, and it had a thriving community even
before the browser was released or even announced. So I don't think it's fair to say that the relative sizes of the communities or number of downloads are an indicator that users prefer Vivaldi to Otter.
But I will point out that there is no topic at the Vivaldi forums called "Vivaldi advantages over Otter," and nothing but admiration on that site for the aims and the efforts of the Otter project. It would seem no one over there feels the need to convince themselves that their interest in the project they are flocking to needs to be defended.
Vivaldi is the larger project, with downloads in the hundreds of thousands, the support of Von Tetzchner, a company and a large development team, so it's not strange that people don't feel the need to motivate themselves. Otter was seen as in danger when Vivaldi was announced, probably some users thought that Emdek could abandon the project if he didn't have enough motivation, so it was important to make it clear to him that we need Otter! We need to stick together because we are the underdog.
To the degree one engages in an effort here to validate this project as BETTER than another, and seeks reinforcing feedback from other members within an undeniably small club, one will only succeed in adding blinders to one's blinders, and missing chances to attract a big enough user base to preserve project momentum toward ultimate success. My advice was not to get too damn busy patting yourselves on the back. Yes, you need to believe in what you are doing, in order to continue doing it. No, defects in what someone more successful is doing, is not proof of your own virtue. What will prove the virtue of the project will be its ultimate success. The universe has signposts pointing toward success, if you will heed them.
I totally agree with that. However, note that the thread is not a back-patting fest, it contains self-criticism as well, as can be seen in the first page of the thread.
@Al-Khwarizmi:
I appreciate your civility. Exley's attitude is certainly not unique here, though possibly in the minority.
For me, personally, I can't use Otter yet. I've tried. It simply doesn't contain any of the features I need daily. When the project was first launched, I was cautiously optimistic it would render a viable result in some sort of reasonable time frame. I'm already in my 60's, after all :) . I've found its progress, as to items that make me able to adopt a browser, frustratingly slow - even slower than Chropera, which is also too slow.
Vivaldi was a breath of fresh air in that respect. It had more of the features I truly use, at the jump, than Otter or Chropera. I understand the loyalty of Otter's users to the project. I had sort of hoped Emdek might lend his considerable talents to an effort in which I already saw more promise, because many hands make light work. I get why he declined. But when I saw people here going out of their way to diss Vivaldi and pump up the glory of Otter, I grew a little concerned ("whistling past the graveyard" to boost one's confidence, you know?) that false confidence might hinder Otter's progress and rob us of a SECOND shot at an heir to Opera 12. Still, I continued to watch silently, even though I had already uninstalled Otter from my box - along with Pale Moon and a couple of others. Hope dies last, right?
When I was being actively ridiculed here for expressing the idea that either Otter or Vivaldi coming into its own would eclipse the other (it would in my book) I could not remain silent - not because I was being called stupid but because the FACT that users will neglect an unfinished project if a mature one meets their demands, was being called a stupid idea. Emdek was right to say more visible features need to come to Otter. That concern deserves more attention - not less. So I spoke up.
I only replied here again because to fail to respond to your civil post seemed impolite. I'm not trying to argue for a particular position. In all sincerity, good luck to you, and to Otter.
@ayespy, which features are you missing the most?
@ayespy, which features are you missing the most?
Good of you to ask. What I need for my daily workflow are side tabs, bookmarks bar I can place vertically on the right (preferably arrangeable any way I like, including bookmarks interspersed with hierarchical folders), the ability to organize bookmarks alphabetically with a click rather than dragging and, last but not least, a stout and capable email program that I can have open in a panel on the left. This enables me to work left-to-right and back again, getting an assignment by email, clicking on the first tab necessary to begin work on it and referring back to the email as necessary while working, and, when done, sending my results back to the requester by email - and at no time during the entire process do I have to change from one program to another, or lose sight of any of the elements of the process.
In order to sort of fake this workflow in neuOpera, I had to install a shitty extension that enabled half-baked side tabs, and keep Opera+extension open in 3/4 of the window with mail accounts and list open in 1/4 of the window, overlapping, so I could switch back and forth, one to the other.
So those are the elements I miss most. I don't use gestures, spatial navigation, hotkeys, chat, P2P or RSS client, don't download masses of anything, don't convert currency, don't listen to music or watch videos to speak of, don't do development or design, rarely save notes, don't upload files, don't game at all (at ALL), don't have a YouTube account, tweet, use any social media to speak of (outside of checking in with our grown kids far away on facebook occasionally) or do any of the other obscure and technical things classic Opera was so good for. I just do the above. In order to do it, I ran classic Opera with zero extensions or widgets.
@ayespy
The positioning of toolbars that you are missing from Opera is missing both in Otter and Vivaldi. I have included the message about this in Otter issuetracker several times, but for now at least the tabbar can be positioned anywhere. In Vivaldi no toolbar can be positioned this way, at least I cannot find how to do it.
As far as I can see, Notes are pretty much the only feature that Vivaldi has and Otter doesn't, whereas you don't even use this, yet you somehow think Vivaldi is ahead.
Specifically what features are missing in Otter, compared to Vivaldi, that you would like to see us to catch up with? For example for me this is Notes, and some form of userCSS switcher similar to Opera as much as possible. Both are present in Vivaldi, and Otter would do well to catch up with these to ensure beyond dispute that it's ahead in development.
It's a good idea to have old Opera, Otter and Vivaldi side by side on the machine to be able to compare their features in specific detail.
As far as I can see, Notes are pretty much the only feature that Vivaldi has and Otter doesn't, whereas you don't even use this, yet you somehow think Vivaldi is ahead.
Vivaldi's bookmarks panel/manager is superior. Otter currently shares Opera/Blink's lack of ability to e.g. select multiple bookmarks the way you expect.
It's a good idea to have old Opera, Otter and Vivaldi side by side on the machine to be able to compare their features in specific detail.
As I'm using Opera/Presto (slightly) less, I find my browsing to be spread across Otter, Opera/Blink, and Iceweasel. I might include Vivaldi on account of spatial navigation once they've worked out the quirks, but the GUI's utter lack of nativity is annoying to say the least.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fpolymathicmonkey.smugmug.com%2Fphotos%2Fi-Q8PW7hn%2F0%2FO%2Fi-Q8PW7hn.png&hash=4f02852fd8f06499dd1dbaced29a9522" rel="cached" data-hash="4f02852fd8f06499dd1dbaced29a9522" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://polymathicmonkey.smugmug.com/photos/i-Q8PW7hn/0/O/i-Q8PW7hn.png) (http://polymathicmonkey.smugmug.com/photos/i-Q8PW7hn/0/O/i-Q8PW7hn.png)
Notice how Opera/Blink automatically adjusts the zoom level to your DPI setting, although given that you can set a default zoom level in Opera/Presto and Otter that doesn't matter much.* The important thing here is the menus and window decorations. Also Vivaldi reacts like some kind of sloth, presumably for the same reason.
On the one hand Vivaldi is quite early in its development. On the other hand, most of its GUI-related problems are part of fundamental design choices, much like in Opera/Blink. And choosing to have a GUI that's not only non-native (like Opera/Presto), but
counter-native?** The program would have to be phenomenal for me to be willing to overcome such a hurdle. Winamp in the late '90s and Opera in the early 2000s are the only programs I ever came across which fit that bill, and Opera has always been near-native.
* Incidentally, that's lacking in Vivaldi.
** Not unlike Opera/Blink in a way, but Opera/Blink is still more native where it counts. As far as DPI goes, it's arguably more native than even Otter.
As far as I can see, Notes are pretty much the only feature that Vivaldi has and Otter doesn't, whereas you don't even use this, yet you somehow think Vivaldi is ahead.
Vivaldi's bookmarks panel/manager is superior. Otter currently shares Opera/Blink's lack of ability to e.g. select multiple bookmarks the way you expect.
Well, for me Vivaldi's multiprocessing and horrendous interface are such putoffs that I frankly avoid using it, even though I still have it installed in one of my machines. I haven't gotten around to their bookmarks yet.
As to Otter's bookmarks, I will be happy with nothing less than a perfect replica of old Opera's bookmarking. Admittedly it's nowhere near that yet. And I'd like cookie management also resemble bookmarking a lot, complete with drag&drop, multiple selections, Trash (blocked but recoverable cookies) etc. It would be awesome. I will write about it more thoroughly when I have had time to think it through properly.
It's a good idea to have old Opera, Otter and Vivaldi side by side on the machine to be able to compare their features in specific detail.
As I'm using Opera/Presto (slightly) less, I find my browsing to be spread across Otter, Opera/Blink, and Iceweasel. I might include Vivaldi on account of spatial navigation once they've worked out the quirks, but the GUI's utter lack of nativity is annoying to say the least.
I am only happy with old Opera's spatial navigation. I don't think any webkit will ever be able to replicate it, but I would be okay if Otter would be able to do the same as Elinks: Move spatially from link to link in the visible webspace. Webkit browsers annoyingly start their spatial navigation from the beginning of the page, even though I may be watching the middle or bottom.
Additionally, Opera is able to move along some HTML elements, such as titles. I have not seen a webkit browser doing this. Elinks does not do it either, but at least it moves along links very well.
And then I'd like to see a proper Duplicate Page - draw a duplicate straight from cache, no connecting to internet. Old Opera lost this ability at some point. For now only Elinks does it right.
Webkit browsers annoyingly start their spatial navigation from the beginning of the page, even though I may be watching the middle or bottom.
Yes, that's super annoying and it's exactly the kind of quirk I meant. Shift+Up is supposed to start at the bottom. Shift+Left and Shift+Right are supposed to start around the middle on their respective opposite ends. Escape is supposed to deselect. It doesn't seem to be able to spatially navigate in frames. Navigating over a hover menu (like "My Messages" above) doesn't trigger hover. That's all I was able to find wrong with it in probably less than a minute. But the fact that it's there with Opera's default keyboard combination — for me that's pretty brilliant marketing. It seems to say "it's nowhere near done, but we'll fix it up", much like that mail panel that only says "coming soon."
@ayespy
The positioning of toolbars that you are missing from Opera is missing both in Otter and Vivaldi. I have included the message about this in Otter issuetracker several times, but for now at least the tabbar can be positioned anywhere. In Vivaldi no toolbar can be positioned this way, at least I cannot find how to do it.
As far as I can see, Notes are pretty much the only feature that Vivaldi has and Otter doesn't, whereas you don't even use this, yet you somehow think Vivaldi is ahead.
Specifically what features are missing in Otter, compared to Vivaldi, that you would like to see us to catch up with? For example for me this is Notes, and some form of userCSS switcher similar to Opera as much as possible. Both are present in Vivaldi, and Otter would do well to catch up with these to ensure beyond dispute that it's ahead in development.
It's a good idea to have old Opera, Otter and Vivaldi side by side on the machine to be able to compare their features in specific detail.
Odd. I have tabbar positioned on right in Vivaldi, with visual tabs, and cannot find how to reposition it in Otter. In Vivaldi, address bar can be set top or bottom, and you can resize address field and search box. You can zoom with a slider. Cannot find such settings in Otter. Cannot find a bookmarks bar in Otter. Vivaldi's bookmark bar can be set top or bottom, and can show labels only (no favicons) if you wish. I expect side placement and favicons only, momentarily. All toolbars and panels in Vivaldi offer multiple positions in Settings, clearly and unambiguously.
You don't have speed dial yet (not a deal-breaker for me, but in Vivaldi any folder and multiple folders, with hierarchical folders, can be set as speed dial). You don't have notes yet. I barely use them but Vivaldi has them. Can you save to PDF yet? Can't find it.
Does Otter have a mail developer yet? I noticed you were advertising for one. Vivaldi's mail client is nearing completion. A working version was accidentally released temporarily two weeks ago.
Native or non-native UI means little to me, so long as I can find and use things.
Do you have tab stacking yet? I don't use it much, but I have it.
I notice Otter has private mode (window or tab) - don't need it yet in Vivaldi, but expect it - and session management, which I don't use.
I notice a page I have to use every day works in every browser but Vivaldi and Otter. It crashes Vivaldi and does nothing in Otter. Hah.
Otter does not have copy-without-formatting, and I have installed that extension in Vivaldi. Otter does not have extensions.
Otter does not have address field completion. It's not well-implemented in Vivaldi yet, but it is there.
So these are some of the things I notice. Again, not to get in to a pissing contest, I am not against Otter. Keep at it. Win me over. It's not impossible.
@ayespy, all these features are planned, although mail client will take more time...
Odd. I have tabbar positioned on right in Vivaldi, with visual tabs, and cannot find how to reposition it in Otter.
You can drag it using toolbar handle when toolbars are unlocked, just like in native applications.
Can you save to PDF yet? Can't find it.
Should be available as virtual device in printer dialog, might be platform dependent.
Otter does not have copy-without-formatting, and I have installed that extension in Vivaldi. Otter does not have extensions.
We have such action (
CopyPlainText).
Odd. I have tabbar positioned on right in Vivaldi, with visual tabs, and cannot find how to reposition it in Otter.
In Otter, drag the tabbar from the visible thingy at extreme left.
Other toolbars cannot indeed be re-located in Otter. And I haven't found a way to do it in Vivaldi either, admittedly because I am not looking closely enough into Vivaldi.
You can zoom with a slider. Cannot find such settings in Otter.
Surely you can see the slider in Otter :S
Cannot find a bookmarks bar in Otter.
Admittedly not there. Very much requested. The bookmarks section in general needs work to live up to expectations.
You don't have speed dial yet (not a deal-breaker for me, but in Vivaldi any folder and multiple folders, with hierarchical folders, can be set as speed dial).
I prefer the original Opera's speed dial. No folders. Speed dial items up to the ninth must be accessible by Ctrl+number. And the whole thing should be possible to turn off, so the keybinds may be assigned to some other function.
But yeah, not there in Otter, again.
You don't have notes yet. I barely use them but Vivaldi has them. Can you save to PDF yet? Can't find it.
Does Otter have a mail developer yet? I noticed you were advertising for one. Vivaldi's mail client is nearing completion. A working version was accidentally released temporarily two weeks ago.
Well, good for Vivaldi. It's all planned for Otter too.
I think eventually Otter is bound to select a ready-made opensource mail app and weave it onto Otter as a module or extension.
Native or non-native UI means little to me, so long as I can find and use things.
Interface consistency and customisability means a lot to me. I even want webpages to have the same fonts and colours that are best legible for me. This is why I use console apps a lot. Otter's interface harmonises very well with system themes.
Opera was able to style the entire internet uniformly (webpages in user mode) and it's a truly heavy loss to not have it anymore. No other graphical browser can do the same.
Do you have tab stacking yet? I don't use it much, but I have it.
Pinning is there. Stacking and true detach are planned. When implemented, Otter will be the only browser in the world to have true detach. Opera had it until v.9.2.
I notice Otter has private mode (window or tab) - don't need it yet in Vivaldi, but expect it - and session management, which I don't use.
Session management in Otter is exactly as it used to be in Opera, so those who wanted it like this have it. In my opinion it's slightly defective (as was in Opera - "Open in current window" should be a sticky option) and I hope for improvement.
I notice a page I have to use every day works in every browser but Vivaldi and Otter. It crashes Vivaldi and does nothing in Otter. Hah.
Upstream issue? Those are the hardest bugs and may remain unattended.
Otter does not have copy-without-formatting, and I have installed that extension in Vivaldi. Otter does not have extensions.
Extensions or at least scriptlets are under work right now for the next release. Copy without formatting is there, but only as a keybind (Ctrl+Shift+C), not as a menu item. Menu items are not configurable enough yet.
Otter does not have address field completion. It's not well-implemented in Vivaldi yet, but it is there.
The underdeveloped address field is the only serious reason why I cannot advocate Otter widely yet. Once the address field is okay, the browser will be ready for average users.
But I will never be able to advocate Vivaldi. Multiprocess architecture bogs down people's computers. Everybody has Chrome for that anyway. Vivaldi will provide no alternative in this respect.
Ah. The handle-dragging thing is something none of my native Windows apps do, so I didn't know to look for it. Good to know.
As to relocating toolbars in Vivaldi, it's done in Settings. There are radio buttons to chose this or that location, or the location (as in old Opera) known as "off."
I agree multiprocess is a bug, not a feature, but the more that can written into the root application (which appears to be Vivaldi's aim), the fewer processes will be spawned by extensions, etc. I can live with a process for every tab (I have plenty of memory and CPU bandwidth), so long as that resource impact is optimized, and there aren't a ton of extension processes (because all needed functions were built-in).
I personally will recommend whatever browser seems to me to be most useful. I am not prejudiced against closed source, multi-process, non-native UI or any of that. I am agnostic as to form, so long as I get function. I suspect this is the attitude of a large portion of the browser market, even when a particular user wants a unique set of functions.
OK - so I put tabs on the right. They are oriented vertically so that one can't read the tab. Is that right? I prefer horizontal tabs, one on top of the other, at the right edge of the browser window. Can Otter do this?
Yes, I found the slider. It's faint on my screen, so I had missed it before.
OK - so I put tabs on the right. They are oriented vertically so that one can't read the tab. Is that right? I prefer horizontal tabs, one on top of the other, at the right edge of the browser window. Can Otter do this?
No, not at the moment. It's planned in the issue tracker, but not done yet: https://github.com/OtterBrowser/otter-browser/issues/110
I agree it's a rather important feature.
OK - so I put tabs on the right. They are oriented vertically so that one can't read the tab. Is that right? I prefer horizontal tabs, one on top of the other, at the right edge of the browser window. Can Otter do this?
No, not at the moment. It's planned in the issue tracker, but not done yet: https://github.com/OtterBrowser/otter-browser/issues/110
I agree it's a rather important feature.
In Opera at some point, post 8.5 I think, the tabbar became resizable by dragging. When the tabbar was dragged large enough, it displayed the thumbnails instead of webpage titles. When positioned left or right, the tabbar eventually (by v.11) only displayed the thumbnails.
You already have thumbnails, so perhaps it can be implemented. I see why people would miss it, when they have big horizontal screens. I tend to have square screens.
I recall all of this, of course, having used Opera from ver. 6 - but thumbnails were never mandatory. Right up thru Opera 12 you can turn them off (right-click tabbar, customize, turn thumbnails off or on).
On Vivaldi with tabs on top or bottom you can still drag thumnails closed, but at sides they show by default (and then shrink as you add tabs past the vertical capacity of the UI) unless you pin the tab. I expect the option to simply turn them off, to return globally.
When positioned left or right, the tabbar eventually (by v.11) only displayed the thumbnails.
I don't think thumbnails arrived quite that early? More important, if you right click on the tabbar → customize, you can choose to enable or disable thumbnails in tabs. Alternatively use opera:config#UserPrefs|UseThumbnailsInsideTabs.
When positioned left or right, the tabbar eventually (by v.11) only displayed the thumbnails.
I don't think thumbnails arrived quite that early?
I don't remember and not in the mood to find out precisely.
More important, if you right click on the tabbar → customize, you can choose to enable or disable thumbnails in tabs. Alternatively use opera:config#UserPrefs|UseThumbnailsInsideTabs.
Yes, and this turns the tabbar nicely into a list of webpage titles, aligned horizontally.
Otter displays the titles vertically, does not allow resizing the tabbar and does not convert the titles into thumbnails. Not the kind of features I care about, but it's a difference from later Opera versions.
I always thought disabling the tabbar and using the window panel was a lot more useful than the vertical tabbar. I think the thumbnails gave the vertical tabbar more right to exist, although I wouldn't ever use 'em.
I always thought disabling the tabbar and using the window panel was a lot more useful than the vertical tabbar. I think the thumbnails gave the vertical tabbar more right to exist, although I wouldn't ever use 'em.
I guess this would kind of make sense if you didn't want the mail panel open all the time, and access to your tabs and bookmarks at the same time. With mail open, there is no visible window panel (a panel which I never used, BTW). Community, thy name is diversity.
Ideally you'd be able to have an arbitrary number of panels open at once. On my new UHD monitor (you know, the one where Vivaldi is nigh unusable :P) I have a comparative abundance of vertical space in spite of its 16:9 aspect ratio. The real reason for a lack of vertical space even on monitors with more of it than your average hardcover book has always been illegibility of smaller fonts, not because they were small, but simply because less than 8-10px didn't carry enough detail. In other words, I could have e.g. the windows, bookmarks, as well as transfers panel open simultaneously and there'd be no more scrolling involved than on my old monitor.
Anyway, if you were able to use modifiers like Ctrl and Shift on the tabbar then the windows panel wouldn't necessarily be as advantageous (although it still has quick find).
Hey.
I just noticed that all my post disappeared from here.
Not really a nice behavior from your side.
The moderation log contains no record of such a thing. What are you talking about, exactly?
I double checked, you are right.
I was tricked by your mention to the 16/9 resolution, something we discussed together.
But was actually discussed in a different thread.
So, sorry for the misunderstanding.
Cheers. :)
Oh, Vivaldi has tiling https://vivaldi.net/forum/vivaldi-browser/2737-viewing-two-or-more-tabs-simultaneously#22055
@ersi, easy to do, but needs some love for polishing:
http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qmdiarea.html
The main reason why we don't have it yet are are reports about extra overhead for some users.
Some other recent features noticed in Vivaldi:
- Fast Forward
- Spatial navigation (independent from and additional to the webkit's spatial navigation), too heavily animated and still behaving a bit unexpectedly (i.e. not always clear where it turns next).
- Attachments in Notes.
I care about the first two features, not at all about the third.
Spatial navigation should be light and unanimated. I would prefer it also to be as native to the rendering engine as possible, but since the idea with Otter is to support multiple rendering engines, I guess I cannot have any high hopes with spatial navigation.
@ersi, do we have any JS experts here?
It should be possible to implement spatial navigation entirely using JS, but that would require some work...
Attachments in notes? Next step is embedding Facebook and Google share buttons there? :-D
@ersi, do we have any JS experts here?
It should be possible to implement spatial navigation entirely using JS, but that would require some work...
Frenzie. Not sure if he would like to implement spatial navigation, but he knows JS.
One of the things that is extra bad with Vivaldi's implementation at the current stage is that webkit's version of spatial navigation is there too along with Vivaldi's shiny glittering animated spatial navigation, so when people talk "spatial navigation" in the forums they may be meaning different things, and when they use it, the different navigations interfere with each other.
If/when Otter implements its own spatial navigation, then webkit's embedded/inbuilt spatial navigation should be disabled somehow.
And when you say "JS", in this context it sounds like this kind of spatial navigation is an
extension by definition, not an inbuilt feature. I am of this opinion: Extensions, userscripts and scriptlets should have their own dedicated folder(s) in the profile directory, so that users could examine them, modify them, learn from them to create their own thingies, and then be able to share the thingies. This community spirit was an important attractor around Opera.
Attachments in notes? Next step is embedding Facebook and Google share buttons there? :-D
In FF I lately noticed some paper airplane button (Share) and a smiley button (Chat) that have emerged with updates. I hid them out of the way of course, but maybe they do stuff in the background anyway. Luckily I use FF only at work.
The only Share function I recognise is "Send link in email".
Frenzie. Not sure if he would like to implement spatial navigation, but he knows JS.
Something like that already exists actually.
https://github.com/mikehostetler/jquery-keynav
Demo here (https://web.archive.org/web/20110210144604/http://mike-hostetler.com/jquery-keyboard-navigation-plugin).
@ersi, QtWebKit allows to enable / disable it, it should be disabled by default.
@Frenzie, does it work nicely with SELECT?
It's not too complicated, although if we had to bundle something like it then it cannot use jQuery.
@Frenzie If spatial navigation in JS exists, then surely Fast Forward exists too, maybe even in several forms, and it's just a matter of slapping it onto Otter.
Otter advantages over Vivaldi
Vivaldi is based on deception. They promised to do "browser for our friends". But did indoor bug tracker without feedback. They interviewed users to learn needed features and settings. But not working on the resulting list, but doing unnecessary things. In recent years, the old Opera was a joke that all of her troubles on what the developers your browser is not in use. Vivaldi inherited the worst traits of his predecessor. It is pointless to compare Otter and Vivaldi, because Otter better by nature. Technical specifications of little importance.
@Frenzie, does it work nicely with SELECT?
I have no idea. I figure all of the offSet logic is presumably the hardest part, but I haven't given it much thought. The keyboard handling part of the equation should probably not be in JS but the location finding logic should do well enough. However, I think it'd be pretty hard to get it right. Otherwise we'd have seen something semi-decent from a non-Opera source by now, I'd think?
@Frenzie If spatial navigation in JS exists, then surely Fast Forward exists too, maybe even in several forms, and it's just a matter of slapping it onto Otter.
This should be pretty simple — much more of a few spare hours kind of project than spatial navigation. There's the obvious link rel=next and checking page links against a few words like "next". Auto image-gallery like in Opera would be harder (and I don't think it's implemented in any clones). However, since this is really a pair with rewind it should imo be built into the browser even if it utilizes some helper JS. For inspiration it looks like there's a Chrome extension here (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fastforward/bclfjoomnokgllmiiidbdfjakojplnbo) and a Fx extension here (http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/_rewindforward.html.en), but aside of some assistance in figuring out what to check for there shouldn't be any need for that.
However, I think it'd be pretty hard to get it right. Otherwise we'd have seen something semi-decent from a non-Opera source by now, I'd think?
Well, similar fears prevented me from starting this project at least six months earlier. :-P
Plus the addressbar is the most important missing mainstream feature at the moment. ;)
Btw, the toolbar customization stuff is great!
@Frenzie, yeah, it has to be finally done for next beta. ;-)
This isn't so much an advantage over Vivaldi as an advantage over every other browser except Opera/Presto, but the fact that no other download panel or indicator seems to have any information about the source URL is amazingly frustrating. Oddly enough, in spite of its Operatic flirtations Vivaldi doesn't either.
(Of course, above all Vivaldi remains unusable because of its DPI issues.)
Otter is preferred by me above Vivaldi because:
- it has more responsive GUI
- it renders pages faster
- Shift-F2 (turbo bookmark) in Otter works far better than does the Quick Command feature in Vivaldi for me; the Quick Command feature in Vivaldi is not quick
- Website preferences and F12 is brilliant in Otter as it was in the old Opera; Vivaldi does not do this as well
- Otter opens faster
- Otter's Full-Screen feature is better than Vivaldi's--I like the auto-hiding of tabs in Otter; Vivaldi does not have this
- Multiple tabs are handled far better in Otter than in Vivaldi; Vivaldi bogs down with several tabs--not so much in Otter
- Panel opens/closes faster in Otter
- Otter is more configurable and more intuitively configurable if one is a former Opera Presto user, especially
- GUI is less distracting in Otter
- Otter feels like Opera-Presto; Vivaldi feels like Chrome
...more to come ... as I think of more ...
Otter is far less resource hungry.
Otter opens a new tab by double-clicking tab-bar. Vivaldi does not have this.
Otter has user css - in Settings / Preferences / Advanced / Content.
Otter has user css - in Settings / Preferences / Advanced / Content.
Vivaldi has a pre-installed list of styles, like Opera had. The only problem with it is that it seems to be untweakable. Leaving no possibility to configure things is always the wrong way to go.
I was a great fan of the (user) styles list feature in Opera. The old and best set of CSS files can still be obtained here http://www.fredfred.net/download/Opera/styles/user/ Hopefully some equivalent of this gets implemented in Otter.
Has anybody read this?
New in version 1.0.167.2 Snapshot (May 5th, 2015) (Vivaldi)
To be able to serve you, our users and friends, in the best possible way, we need to know a little about you. We need to know how many you are, what HW/OS you have and where in the world and which language you use. This helps us make the right priorities on our resources. Starting with this build, Vivaldi will connect with our servers for this purpose only once per day. We do not collect any usage data. So, on first run Vivaldi generates a unique ID for your installation.
I had great expectations for Vivaldi but since I read the above quoted text I simply stopped using Vivaldi- for me it has turned spyware.
I am new to this forum and I would like to ask (please excuse me of my question has been already answered)- can otter be run in portable mode and shall we expect a portable version which will write all its data and settings inside its own folder? Thanks in advance.
@smaragdus
Is the quote from Vivaldi EULA?
I am new to this forum and I would like to ask (please excuse me of my question has been already answered)- can otter be run in portable mode and shall we expect a portable version which will write all its data and settings inside its own folder? Thanks in advance.
There's a corresponding switch to start Otter. In Linux it's
otter-browser --portable. In Windows it should be
\path\to\otter.exe --portable, I suppose.
(For example Vivaldi is the chromium based, Vivaldi is a Qt based (With possible multiple browser engines support) ). And we shoudn't start any kind of war between fans of different browsers. i think it is better to have two (or more) similar and very good browsers than don't have anything at all. So let's make software not war :-) .
1. err WHAT ?
2. their goals are not the same at all, vivaldi goes for modern kids, otter goes for what opera was
3. vivaldi uses shit resource hungry foundation, otter does not
@ersi
The quotation is from Vivaldi's changelog in Softpedia:
http://www.softpedia.com/progChangelog/Vivaldi-Changelog-248977.html
See- New in version 1.0.167.2 Snapshot (May 5th, 2015)
Is it true that there is a single developer behind Otter project? If so this is a mammoth task.
By the way I am at bay with browsers. Before I used mainly Firefox and Opera (before the advent of abominable Australis and ChromeOpera. Since I cannot stand Australis and the removal of customization in Firefox I am still using an outdated version of Firefox. I thought of migrating to Pale Moon but I was unable to integrate it with Free Download Manager. I tested SeaMonkey but not all Firefox add-ons (the main reason I still stick to Firefox) are compatible with SeaMnkey. I also tested several Chrome clones (SRWare Iron, Slimjet, Maxthon) but I liked none of them. Then I reverted to resurrected K-Meleon but it lacks many features I need. Since I consider Vivaldi to be spyware it is no longer an option for me. I had a look at Midori but I wasn't impressed. I then tested Otter and besides the several crashes I experienced it still lacks manu features too. I suppose that one day all old (real) Opera features will be re-created but the problem is the engine- for me Presto was the best engine and it cannot be re-created. It would be great if Presto was open-sourced but unfortunately this will never happen. With few exceptions (SeaMonkey, Pale Moon, K-Meleon, Otter) all browsers have been dumbed town beyond usability. I dream of a browser that doesn't suck.
@smaragdus
If you want to discuss browsers, you are at the most right forum on the internet. I replied here https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=81.msg42198#msg42198
Otter uses QTWebkit
but unlike stupid chromium clones, it is single process application
and doesn't make plugins to choke on sys resources
2. When all sites will use HTML 5, plugins will be useless.
do you even know what plugin is ?
browsers use either external plugins (flash, silverlight...whatever else)
or internal (html5 video which is actually H264 plugin, ogg support)
ah debate can go on and on
to me its all plugins, a set of code that processes its own BS
the fact that HTML5 video (onVP H264 compressed variant) is better than flash is debatable
first because most sites especially Youtube still didn't convert all "HD" videos to HTML5
mostly switching to HTML5 you'll end up on 320p or if lucky 480p video
flash is also dominant because of its scripting, tho many pages abused it and people
frown now about it
in any case if a browser can SANDBOX any plugin, then there is no problem in either way,
Java claims to have its own sandbox, but its a lie
Flash at least on Opera 11 is sandboxed, if plugin crashes, it gets error within its own frame
SIlverlight... dunno who sane uses that crap but whatever lol
@smaragdus, creating portable version become much easier recently:
To create a portable version, create a file named "arguments.txt" with this line:
--portable
We have more than one developer, although not all of them have enough free time to be active every week.
@exley, I have bad news, Qt is deprecating QtWebKit and after Qt 5.6 it won't get much care, they won't even ship it in binary form...
http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2015-June/022090.html
I guess that we need to again start thinking about Gecko backend (initial research was done long time ago).
BTW, AFAIK there is a way to force Blink to use single process, but I'm not sure if it is possible with QtWebEngine.
oh hell oh damnit
otter was my only hope :(
and while that may stay, but engines differ
at least some sites done in STRICT HTML 4 //css 2.1
they render different in Gecko and Webkit
@exley, we can keep QtWebKit, although there will be almost zero upstream support...
but main question is why, did those people drop most compatible layout engine ?
@exley, maintenance costs, use of Blink requires less work, even when their APIs are unstable.
thats weird to me...
@exley, we can keep QtWebKit, although there will be almost zero upstream support...
What about KHTML or some alternate Webkit forks?
What are the advantages of Gecko over Blink?
Doesn't Gecko kill the CPU?
Any other sane engine choices(that compile on Linux)?
Honestly I would not mind it if you just implemented Blink.
Why do I prefer Otter over Vivaldi?
Vivaldi is not open source.
It simply feels dirty to not use an open source browser on an open source system.
@bluedragon77, QtWebKit almost killed KHTML (or maybe managed to do that, I'm not sure if it is still available in kdelibs frameworks of KDE5 or it is still used by someone) before getting deprecated itself, so no, it is not really an option nowadays (and QtWebEngine is kind of a descendant of KHTML anyway)...
Currently Gecko is the only viable alternative, there are Qt bindings (although I'm not 100% sure if it is cross-platform in that form) ans soon Servo should be finally usable.
I would like to try the latter, but we would need someone to help with bindings.
Konqueror still uses KHTML and apparently it does support HTML5 and CSS3.AFAIK WebKit is a fork of KHTML.
But servo is certainly an interesting option.
Edit:I have checked just now, KHTML's HTML5 support on html5test.com is 83...so rather bad. And their Css3test score is 21%.
It is too bad that there are such few choices now when it comes to browser engines.
@bluedragon77, Konqueror could be considered dead already in KDE4. ;-)
And history of KHTML and WebKit is quite complex, some of changes from WebKit were merged back to KHTML.
Also KHTML used to have own set of issues and quite incomplete support for both HTML5 and CSS3...
Too bad.
Hopefully if one day Otter browser will become big enough and have enough open source development power behind it, it will make its own or fork another layout engine.
@bluedragon77, forking is bad, better way is to cooperate with others, as WebKit used to do in the past (Qt integration used to be part of upstream repos, but got removed for some reason).
As for our earlier conversation, look here:
https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=127884&p=340535#p340535