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HotCakeX's avatar
Dec 24, 2019

Top Features that Microsoft Edge should learn from Vivaldi browser

I just tested the latest Vivaldi browser and I really liked its features, they are very useful and some of them even were already requested in this forum by different users.

 

  1. The ability to resize only the UI using a slider. (so when I installed Vivaldi, the first thing I noticed was the small UI that was similar to Google chrome and I hated it, so i went to the settings and i was impressed there was this option that let me make the UI bigger without affecting zoom level of page contents)
  2. Vivaldi has big tab previews like Edge classic and it can Also be resized using mouse, so technically not like Edge classic but better than that because user can resize the previews.
  3. a side bar that user can add any website to and use it without going to other tabs. (I added my Instagram and Twitter feeds to the side bar so i can check them while browsing other websites.)
  4. Vivaldi lets me choose different themes and colors for the browser regardless of my Windows 10 accent color, this is super helpful.
  5. The ability to move the whole tab bar area to bottom/left/right/top. it's like Windows 10 when you can put your whole Taskbar to the left/right/top/bottom.
  6. All of these customizations happen without the need for a browser restart.
  7. Websites change the color of the browser UI. going to YouTube turns the UI red, going to Twich turns the UI to purple, Amazon and IMDB make it yellow, Facebook makes it dark blue and so on. Edge has this capability but it only applies to sites that are added as app (PWAs). this needs to be the default behavior of Edge so that it will feel more real when visiting a website. also for example if there are 4 tabs open (YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Amazon), switching to each tab also changes the UI color.
  8. in Vivaldi the default search engine is Bing which I really liked and again was impressed!
  9. Lots of mouse gestures, custom controls and everything. it's a simple looking browser but with advanced and detailed settings page. there is no useless thing in Vivaldi that I could complain about.
  10. The ability to stack up tabs to get a meaningful view of the tab bar when user has more than 30 tabs open which is very normal these days.

 

I tested Vivaldi on Windows Sandbox because it was my first time so I played it safe but now I'm installing it directly on my computer to use it besides Edge until the new Edge has all of these super useful features.

 

I should mention that Vivaldi does not have PDF inking or highlighting.

 

 

  • YgorCortes's avatar
    YgorCortes
    Steel Contributor
    Grouping tabs is the best one for me, it's incredibly helpful and productive. Vivaldi really is an amazing browser! If only it looked as good as Edge does...
    • HotCakeX's avatar
      HotCakeX
      MVP
      Yeah for real, though they started back in 2015 so they had almost 5 years.
      I think it will take around 2 years for Microsoft to make Edge the perfect browser...
    • HotCakeX's avatar
      HotCakeX
      MVP
      Oh and about the side panel, I've seen various times when people in this forum asked for downloads section and bookmark section to be on a side panel like in Edge classic.
      also saw a few people asking for the ability to add notes in the browser.
      in the Cortana discussion in this forum lots of people asked for the ability to have a sidebar for quick searches.
      Vivaldi got 'em all 🙂

      I couldn't figure out how to access the flags of Vivaldi though
  • Maan2003's avatar
    Maan2003
    Iron Contributor
    Not a very fruitful exprience Quick Command by F2 are awesome they are like vscode and is like start menu That suggested and the global search bar Tab Preview are great. side panel is not good and stealing that F4 from the omnibox. tab opening is bit slower than edge. The trash can button is for history I like saved sessions feature. Ctrl+F11 Hide UI is also great. Please tell if I could change keybinds/key shortcuts. The combo of Hide UI and F2 is a feature that I would absolutely love to see in Edge
    • HotCakeX's avatar
      HotCakeX
      MVP
      I've been messing around with Vivaldi and found out it has a pretty decent sync!
      I have it installed both on Windows sandbox and host OS, when I change the location of tab bar from top to bottom, i can see the same change happening on the other Vivaldi in only few seconds (4-5 sec).
      extension sync and favorite sync is very fast too.
      I like that it shows when the last sync happened.

      I haven't looked into the keyboard mapping and shortcuts yet, I've been mesmerized by its interface so far.
  • relu84's avatar
    relu84
    Iron Contributor
    Vivaldi has several features I think all browsers should have. I love the 'fast forward' and 'rewind' buttons, the ability to have messenger.com on a sidebar and many, many other things. However, what Vivaldi does not do well is performance. Website rendering is fine and on par with other Chromium browsers, but the UI is terribly slow - stuttering animations, sometimes a delay between a click on something and reaction. If they would fix that I would be a big fan 🙂

    So far, Edge doesn't seem to use anything other than the original Chromium for its UI. I think it is all we are going to see, at least in "1.0" and some changes might come in the future, but the team is not going to focus on it until the first stable release happens.
    • Of course, the version 79 that is going to be the first stable release has been feature locked for more than a month now, it's just there for minor bug fixing.
      anything new should come in Canary channel, Stable channel lacks too much features for me to use it.
      I also noticed the slowness and glitches on a few occasions when I tried to use certain features of Vivaldi's UI
      • ppnacho's avatar
        ppnacho
        Iron Contributor

        Llevo mucho tiempo usando vivaldi y si que tiene cosas muy interesantes, pero esa lentitud en el manejo de su interface es lo que me esta echando para atras.

         

        Entre sus muchas funciones, tiene una funcion que echo mucho de menos en el edge chromiun y es la de consultar las ultimas url escritas. El IE lo tuvo siempre y es una pena que desaparezca.

         

         

        No es cuestion de consultar el historial, sino de consultar las urls que copias y pegas o simplemente escribes. Ohala esta caracteristica la implementen en el nuevo edge. Ya hay hilos de otros usuarios solicitando lo mismo. 

         

        Un saludo

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