Switching to Vivaldi
rant about shitty browsers

Date: 2022-12-02

For the past 2 years at least, I have been using the LibreWolf browser. Which is a privacy focused version of Firefox. Which is really what Mozilla Firefox should be, however they are too busy doing non-browser related stuff.

I love the extension Sidebery for Firefox/LibreWolf, as I believe that with widescreen monitors, having tabs on top is a waste of space, especially that most browsers are shrinking tabs the more you have of them. Making it very impractical and hard to use.

Currently only Vivaldi and Microsoft Edge has options for vertical tabs in default. Both doing it greatly. The big difference is that Edge is a full proprietary browser, while Vivaldi has a proprietary UI. The later thing doesn't really bother me.

I am a tab junkie. If I am under 100 tabs, I am probably sick or something. I won't give this up. Sadly Firefox can't handle to many open sites these days, and takes a minute just to start up.

I had to look for other browsers, and we don't have many good open source ones. So I got back to Vivaldi.

I think the main difference between a browser like Vivaldi, that it has many options and Firefox looks and feels something like "our way or the highway".

Already imported my bookmarks, which is more like really just a dumping ground for some sites and videos. What I like about Vivaldi, is how they utilize sidebar, which you can put it left of right. You can have bookmarks, downloads, history, notes, translation, and windows on the side. What I don't like is that these functions doesn't have working shortcuts. Or at least I can't make them work.

Vivaldi has great customization options by default. Not just the themes, but in terms of what you want to see. Statusbar maybe look crowded but you can turn it off.

What new function I like to use is the webpanel, which makes any site load into sidebar. It's really good for things like webemail (I use it for protonmail and posteo), fediverse accounts, livescore for following sports, xe for currency converter. It basically shrinks the site or changes to mobile UI. Very handy, and it only loads when you use it, so it doesn't take resources.

So far Vivaldi has consume much less resources and loads way faster than Firefox based browsers. You can use Chrome extenstions with it, without logging in, so you can install Ublock Origins and other stuff.

Unless I encounter some major problems, I will stay with this browser for the foreseeable future.