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back to article Vivaldi Jon: Mobile – yes. Feeds and an ad blocker… probably not

Hats off to any woman or man who is fighting the dumbing down of software. Twenty years ago our pocket computers were as sophisticated as any desktop, only more reliable. Now they’re vastly more powerful, always connected, but the apps are sub-Fisher Price. No, scrub that: today’s apps would insult a toddler. Opera founder …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Until they find a way to approve exceptions to cert errors

    It isn't really for power users, is it? I was so fed up of Chrome nagging me every time I connected to internal servers I switched back to FF. Vivaldi still does this, as it is based on Chromium.

    *I know the cert isn't valid* stop nagging me about it!

    3 2 Reply
    1. Lee D Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Until they find a way to approve exceptions to cert errors

      "Power users" put proper certs into their internal services (rather than connect over https:// when they aren't bothering to even use a cert to do so).

      You've no excuse with LetsEncrypt. They are actually free nowadays, and accepted by all known browsers.

      0 4 Reply
      1. DougMac
        Reply Icon

        Re: Until they find a way to approve exceptions to cert errors

        I've got plenty of internal appliances that wouldn't work with LetsEncrypt. They aren't going to handle internal only domains either?

        But I'd agree with putting proper certs on, with an Enterprise CA, and pushing out your trusted roots properly.

        Don't get in the habit of clicking through errors all the time, you'll miss the time when you really needed to pay attention to that bad one.

        3 0 Reply
  2. Kraggy

    "people feel they need a blocker because of the irritating ads"

    IMO that's the least important reason for using an ad blocker .. MALVERTISING is by far the most likely way people's PCs are getting hit these days and until the Ad industry learns how to stop serving 'bad ads' to us then Ad Blockers are a MUST for anyone serious in trying to defend themselves, coupled with NoScript's ability to block iFrames.

    12 0 Reply
    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      All the popular blockers work fine in Vivaldi: I've been using Ghostery without problems for months. Given scarce development resources I think that's fine. It also keeps the company out of the legal firing line because users have to choose to install a blocker.

      2 0 Reply
  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Web design wisdom around 2000-2008 said that controls were a balance between overwhelming the user, and making the user feel empowered by control. I hate the app driven trend towards full retard. That's a race to the bottom:

    Figuratively because Gaussian wise, there's always a stupider user.

    Literally because the simplest interface is a single red button which produces farst noises.

    4 0 Reply
  4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    No ad-blocking

    Thanks for saving me the waste of time trying it out. Power users indeed!

    3 5 Reply
    1. AegisPrime
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Re: No ad-blocking

      No *built-in* ad-blocking - uBlock Origin/AdBlock Plus/Ghostery/Privacy Badger et al all work perfectly in Vivaldi.

      6 1 Reply
  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I was interested right up to the point where I read the words " uses the Chromium engine".

    Thats why I dumped Opera. I dont think there is a browser now that I 100% like, and coming from someone who once had a paid sub to Opera (back in the pre Firefox days) Thats a sad place to arrive at - "progressing" backwards it seems

    2 4 Reply
    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      What's your beef with the engine they use?

      Writing HTML engines to deal with the real world is hard™. It really does make sense to collaborate on this. Maybe, once Firefox is compatible with Chromium extensions you'll be able to choose different renderers.

      3 2 Reply
      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Opera stuck to the standard and didn't display many pages.

        Since the "standard" is now whatever works on chrome it does at least display the pages.

        I suppose Chrome is the new IE6 might be regarded as progress.

        ps although it is odd that Google sites tell you to upgrade Vivaldi to the latest version of Chrome

        1 0 Reply
      2. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        If I wanted the Chrome engine I would install Chrome.. Opera lost me when they joined the Google borg.

        2 0 Reply
  6. Updraft102

    "Twenty years ago our pocket computers were as sophisticated as any desktop, only more reliable. Now they’re vastly more powerful, always connected, but the apps are sub-Fisher Price."

    Vastly more powerful?

    The most powerful mobile phones today are about on par with a 2007-era Core 2 Quad desktop. Which one is vastly more powerful than an I7-6700k desktop PC? I believe I would like to see that.

    0 4 Reply
    1. Paul Kinsler
      Reply Icon

      Re: Vastly more powerful?

      Presumably, pocket computers are "vastly more powerful than pocket computers were before", not " vastly more powerful than current desktops".

      3 0 Reply
      1. Jeffrey Nonken
        Reply Icon

        Re: Vastly more powerful?

        Or they simply meant that cellphones are vastly more powerful than they were 20 years ago.

        0 0 Reply
    2. Charlie Clark Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      The most powerful mobile phones today are about on par with a 2007-era Core 2 Quad desktop.

      They're quite a bit beyond that except for single-threaded stuff: or since when could Core 2 Quad's encode 4k video in real time? (Yes, I know it's the video chip doing it but the point still stands).

      1 0 Reply
  7. Alan Sharkey

    I quite like it. It uses a lot less CPU that FF (which is my current default) and is the only other one that has a decent bookmark bar.

    1 0 Reply
    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      I still find the UI sluggish on MacOS: there is about a 1 second delay between clicking on anything and things starting to happen.

      I can live with that as long as the other stuff gets added.

      1 0 Reply

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