Vivaldi to give abusive sites the middle finger with built-in ad blocking

I don't like Vivaldi...

I prefer Bach & Beethoven.

I'll get my coat... =-)P

Companies don't drop everything for 1 individual that can't use the browser properly.

Whop-de-do they changed the icon several times (so have the other browsers). This affects the browser how ?

Drag-n-drop of bookmarks works just fine or the manager page would be rather pointless.

Vivaldi is nothing like Chrome to use. You are mistaking Chromium core for Chrome browser.

Email is coming and being tested internally. It is not a core browser component so has different priorities

"all kinds of Phillips hue colour nonsense". 1 optional GUI enhancement that was easy to add is hardly all kinds of nonsense, and oooh now there is Razer support so make that 2.

Yes a whole 2 of them !

WhatsApp oh dear, 1 (admittedly major) feature has been broken between updates. This is a common "feature" of the modern world of software, get over it.

If you think you can build a top-flight browser from scratch in 2019 you need a reality check.

Vivaldi is best for nerds, researchers and people that know what they are doing, rather than stroppy kids.

Do you have anything to contribute to the article topic ?

To me it seems like they've downloaded the whole Google safe sites list themselves and checked each site to categorise it, and the browser talks to the Vivaldi mothership to get the categorised site list instead of the Google mothership.

No Vivaldi does not automatically download offensive sites.

Perhaps you should re-read the article. If that does not help, then the problem is you don't understand the things you are complaining about.

Ever saved something by posting a form, then carried on browsing for a bit, then back buttoned back over the bit where you posted the form? You know the way it didn't create another copy of the thing you saved? That's why a webpage needs to "hijack the back button".

"All these things are fundamentally bad ideas that have very little legitimate use."

And yet if anyone mentions there's such a thing as a web developer the snobs on here are looking down their noses and making out there's no actual skill or value in web development.

If you don't understand a technology how about you investigate it rather than just shouting that it's shit?

A rule that *every* UI I've ever used breaks:

- The user gives you the orders, carry them out.

If they click End Task... end the damn task. If they click on a button, make that button perform the action. If they are clicking on a Stop button - that takes 100% absolute priority over the process they are trying to stop. If they are clicking a button in a UI... you make it show they clicked it IMMEDIATELY... and then queue the fractions of a second of task it takes to do, rather than "wait".

Linus Torvalds once expressed something similar - user actions are the highest-priority request on a desktop operating system. The file-copy can take a fraction of a second longer - but the button that says copy should depress immediately to let you know it's happening. No process on the machine should be so overwhelming prioritised that the error message takes a minute to appear, the machine chugs, the screen doesn't draw properly, the mouse stutters, the UI doesn't update, or anything else.

Not one desktop operating system that I know follows this. Not one mobile operating system, either. When I press the Home button on my Android phone - take me to the home screen. Everything else can wait until I'm there. When I tap an icon, initiate that action, everything else that's happening can delay until I'm not tapping the screen again. When I'm drag-dropping, don't let ANYTHING pop up or stutter the process, they can all wait for me to do what I'm doing - giving the computer a command.

When it's a server, we don't need to worry, but even there - if root says do something, on the command line - then just do it. It's more urgent than any hour-long RAID resync in the background and might well be critical to that RAID-resync and/or cancelling it if it's slowly trashing data.

By way of a bonus, this makes the computer feel a billion times more responsive even if it's actually taking slightly longer to do the background actions. Which is the right way round. I can bring a computer to its knees by scheduling the Windows Search database update when a user is in the middle of doing something. That just shouldn't be possible.

Nobody does it. And yet "user-initiated action" is very, very, very easily distinguished from background processes and running programs and every other type of input.

The user is king. Not doing what they say is failing at being a useful tool. Every example of a rogue action on a computer is a prime example of not respecting this - pop up windows, persistently annoying notifications, swipey-slidey-hidey menus, viruses being able to bring a computer to an absolute halt and stop the user removing them, Cancel buttons and file copy dialogs that just do their own things when busy and totally ignore the user, forcibly changing the default browser, etc.

All the UI/UX designers in the world have somehow forgotten / ignored this for 40 years, despite being frustrated in their own use of machines by the exact same thing.

legitimate use

"All these things are fundamentally bad ideas that have very little legitimate use. "

On the contrary...

How else are users going to be tricked into installing some dodgy "antivirus/cleaner" app unless their browser throws up a scary warning that claims their device is infected?

Most of all these dodgy apps contribute a lot of advertising bucks to Google and are consistently some of the most downloaded apps on the Play Store. (Mainly due to the fraudulent virus scare tactics)

And then there are the Tech Support scams that make heavy use of Google's Captcha and Google Analytics API's and also contribute to the overall generated traffic stats.

So, how dare you say that have very little legitimate use!

Re: Nice, but...

Yes, the implementation described here is a bit half-assed. The user should be able to remove and add sites to the list (and not have the changes overwritten when the browser phones home. Ho hum... I suppose I could put the Vivaldi site in my blocking hosts file.).

Re: Nice, but...

Firefox allows the blocking of autoplaying videos already. Shouldn't be too difficult for Vivaldi to manage

Re: Nice, but...

"Automatically blocking abusive sites is good, but it would be even better if they didn't rely on Google's definition of what is or isn't abusive."

Exactly. Pretty much the first things on any blocking list should be Google's tracking and advert domains, closely followed by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, etc.. Blocking abusive sites isn't much use if you deliberately omit by far the biggest offenders from the list.

Re: Not enough!

Yeah but your lists will include all regular ad-services. Even the standard easylist is way bigger than the google list.

Vivaldi are only blocking bad sites, not annoying sites, hence the use of the phrase "...on the very naughty list."

I would agree that a bigger list is in order, but trackerless ads should still be allowed.