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Topic: Otter advantages over Vivaldi (Read 35511 times)

Otter advantages over Vivaldi

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 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!

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #1 –
Note that you can run Vivaldi (and probably all Chromium-based browsers) with the --single-process flag,

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #2 –
@Frenzie, yep, that might be even true for our QtWebEngine backend (haven't tested yet).
Nadszedł już czas, najwyższy czas, nienawiść zniszczyć w sobie.
The time has come, the high time, to destroy hatred in oneself.

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #4 –
Hm, it works for me on Linux. Oh well. :P

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #5 –
Just updated both browsers. Vivaldi is being crashed single-process anyway.

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #6 –
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.  ;)

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #7 –
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

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #8 –
Quote from: The Solutor on

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.

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #9 –
@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 *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. :-)
Nadszedł już czas, najwyższy czas, nienawiść zniszczyć w sobie.
The time has come, the high time, to destroy hatred in oneself.

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #10 –
Quote
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.

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #11 –
Quote from: Emdek on

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).

Quote
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.

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #12 –
Quote from: Freeman on
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?

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #13 –
@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. ;-)
Nadszedł już czas, najwyższy czas, nienawiść zniszczyć w sobie.
The time has come, the high time, to destroy hatred in oneself.

Vivaldi is suspect software

Reply #14 –
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.

Re: Vivaldi is suspect software

Reply #15 –
Quote from: rincewind on

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.

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #16 –
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.

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #17 –
Quote from: Pref on
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. ;-)
Nadszedł już czas, najwyższy czas, nienawiść zniszczyć w sobie.
The time has come, the high time, to destroy hatred in oneself.

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #18 –
Installed Vivaldi, tested  :yuck: 
deleted.

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #19 –
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.

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #20 –
Quote
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.

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #22 –
Quote from: ersi on

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

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #23 –
Quote from: The Solutor on


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 is quiet interesting - in terms of ram use by otter compared to other browsers...

Re: Otter advantages over Vivaldi

Reply #24 –
Quote from: Rolf on
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.