I really wonder if this will make any people move from Chrome to Firefox at all because they can’t use their adblockers anymore. There are probably so few people that most of them already are on Firefox I guess.
I for one can say I’m very on the fence whether I make the jump or not, because on the one hand I don’t want to deal with MV3, but on the other hand Vivaldi is absolutely unique and Firefox doesn’t even come close to replacing it in terms of features for me.
Tab stacking, tab tiling, the sidebar with all my web panels, quick commands, the completely customizable UI… There’s so much.
What Vivaldi features do you feel are game changing? I’m not that familiar with it and would love to hear from someone who uses Vivaldi.
Aside from the completely customizable UI, I’d say tab stacking and tab tiling. Web panels are cool as well, you can have translators, calculators and whatnot in your sidebar for quick access that way. It also has a built-in RSS feed reader which is neat.
I’m not the OP, but Vivaldi has been my main browser for many years now.
The reason why some people like Vivaldi is the same reason why other people dislike it. It has a lot of additional features and customization options that other browsers don’t. You may find that cool (e.g., people who used old Opera), or you may dislike it, because “I just want a browser to open web pages.”
But anyways…here are some features that I really like and I miss in other browsers:
- Highly customizable shortcuts, gestures and command chains (macros) I use mouse gestures a lot, and on Firefox I had to install an extension to get that feature. Also one tiny feature that I love in Vivaldi, that I really miss in other browsers is to switch tabs by scrolling mousewheel while the cursor is over the tab bar.
- Easy way to add custom search engines (I assume other browsers have this too, but I know that on Firefox it’s a little bit longer process to make one)
- Many ways to organize tabs (stacking, grouping, renaming tab groups…)
- Tab tiling (arranging opened webpages in a single window, good for comparing stuff or multitasking)
- Mail client and RSS feed reader (not very polished but it’s still convenient)
- Workspaces (good for separating tabs, e.g., work, shopping, entertainment…)
- Simple markdown notes (you can access them quickly from a side panel, and u can quickly add selected text from a webpage by right clicking the text and add to note)
- Customizable menus (e.g., customizing options that are presented in the right click context menu)
- Quick commands (it’s like a command palette from which you can search history, bookmarks, run commands, do simple calculations, etc.) you could in theory make your browser UI-less and just use the Quick commands.
Those are just some of my favorites but there is a lot more…And almost all of these additional features you can disable selectively if you wish to do so.
As a fellow Vivaldi user, you know what’ll really make you sad?
There was a plugin that offered practically-identical tiling functionality in Firefox (i.e., tab tiling within one window).
It still exists, but was broken when Firefox moved to manifest. Now it tries to replicate the behavior with individual windows instead, which feels awful to use.
There’s a Firefox fork called Floorp that purportedly has Vivaldi-like tiling, but after a week with it, I couldn’t figure out how to enable it. Plus, it’s in its early stages and some of the users are vocally anti-Vivaldi (more specifically, anti-Floorp-becoming-Vivaldi-on-Firefox) so who knows—all those features might get stripped off down the line anyway.
The only thing keeping me from Firefox is native tab groups, I use that all the time.
On Chrome, you can join tabs into a colored group with a name and then collapse that group so that it occupies considerably less space in the bar. Useful to organize your browsing into tidy buckets.
On Firefox, there’s no adequate innate manner of doing that. But the browser has an add-on called simple tab groups that uses a native “hidden tabs” feature to make a similar approach. The difference is it adds a button to the left that becomes a drop-down menu, and each of the entries is a colored and named group, and pressing one, hides the rest and bring up the tabs you previously in the one selected.
I find either just as good, and instrumental to browsing. For example, I have a red group just for YouTube, where like 20 tabs are open and to or from which I occasionally drag a tab.
The other issue for me is ‘desktop site’. Firefox doesn’t remember your choice long term or short term. Every time I leave the app for more than 10 seconds it refreshes the page and resets that setting.
Chrome will remember that setting even across new tabs. It’s important to me because I have half a dozen self-hosted services I manage mostly from mobile and I find them all easier to use with that on. I use desktop sites from mobile more than any other webpages on any platform.
I guess I’m lucky and actually find both the native chrome groups and the firefox simple tab group addon that uses hidden tabs equally good approaches.
Specially since the tab groups work with the multiaccount container feature. With Chrome, I generally keep separate guest accounts and windows for that, because the sessions are bit messy otherwise.
Tab groups is what made me drop Chrome on mobile. I don’t care if it’s an option, but it’s not just the default now, it’s the only option on Chrome mobile.
I’m using Firefox for both mobile and desktop and I cannot believe how much better they are than Chrome now.
And the thing that made me completely drop Chrome from desktop was the forced sidebar search. I implemented a complicated workaround twice, but the third time it broke I just had enough.
I’m loving Firefox.
Nope, then they will continue to whine about YouTube and Twitch spamming ads even though the solution already exists.
This ^ some people are weirdly hellbent against using Firefox for basically no reason.
Had a someone I know recently which between 3 different chromium browsers to find one where the adBlock still worked on Youtube, But would refuse Firefox for the pettiest of reasons from ‘I can’t sync logins with my google account’ to ‘That browsers for NERDS’
No because brave and Vivaldi exist. Also there is Adguard app for Android or software for windows (not DNS one) and then browser doesn’t matter.
Come on, Brave is owned by an ad company. They’re only acting like the good guys to get some users
I already moved to firefox, this made me think about stop using google drive and gmail too.
Technically I would be fucked if google decided to just block my account and they have demonstrated they will do it if they feel like it
(the case in 2022 about someone sending picture of their own baby to the doctor and was automatically flagged for it. google blocked that persons account and didnt unblock it even though it was proven he did nothing wrong. The pictures werent even sent via gmail, i think, so google just scanned their private photos.)
I have separate account for youtube, but I worry in the future they might connect it to my main account and start threatening to ban it if i continue using adblock. Now i’m also kind of worried if google decides in the future that something is unacceptable, like making comments against corporations or something.
