If you know me, you know that I love talking about mine Favorite web browserVivaldi, and just last week the team behind it released what it called the biggest update ever for the browser. This update introduced a new design language with floating tabs, some new icons, and a brand new feature called Dashboard that allows you to add widgets to a home page so you can quickly see information from different websites and Vivaldi features at a glance.
But even though Vivaldi touted this as a big update, I think it actually feels a bit small, and there's a lot more that could be done to make this browser better. In fact, I think this update adds more things to complain about than improvements I really needed. So let's take a look at all the things that still need to be done after Vivaldi's big 7.0 update.
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5 Importing data should be easier
I was wrong, but not completely
Last week I complained that Vivaldi didn't provide the ability to import feeds using an OPML file, which was causing the problem Feeds feature a little less useful for me as I never want to set up all my feeds manually again. Luckily, someone pointed out in the comments that Vivaldi actually allows importing feeds via OPML, and I'm incredibly grateful for that.
However, when I learned this, I became aware of another problem: Vivaldi doesn't educate its users well about this at all. The option to import data into Vivaldi is located in the Vivaldi menu in the upper left corner under Files > Import from Applications or Files. Sure, if you know the interface that's enough, but I never knew this option existed, let alone that you could use it to import all sorts of things. In fact, this menu offers a ton of options for importing browser data, email files, notes, and yes, feeds. But that is never mentioned everywhere.
When I want to add feeds, my instinct is to open the Feeds page and click the Add button. The same basically applies to all of these functions. How would a normal user know that this ability exists if it is not mentioned in any of the relevant areas? Even if you open the Vivaldi settings window and go to the Feeds section, you cannot import files from there. Vivaldi needs to shift these options to meet users where they are more likely to go first. At least this has gone from a major complaint to a fairly minor issue, so I apologize for misunderstanding this before.
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4 Fix the errors
This new update adds a major new issue
Vivaldi 7.0 added a lot of things, but the most notable for me was a bug where pinned tabs take up all the vertical space along their position. Not visually, but when I hover my mouse over a part of the current page that is directly under one of my pinned tabs, Vivaldi behaves as if I were hovering my mouse over the tab itself, and clicking it switches to the tab , instead of interacting with the UI element I'm actually pointing to. The best I can explain is the video below.
I don't know how something like this can happen, but of course it shouldn't happen, so it needs to be fixed as soon as possible. It was very frustrating.
3 All of my data is still not syncing
Signing in during setup should be a basic step
Syncing data was a big complaint I had with Vivaldi before this update, and one of the issues I mentioned has actually been fixed: faster syncing. Vivaldi 7.0 introduced instant sync, making switching from one device to another much easier. But the other two big problems were not addressed.
First, log in during setup. I understand that there is probably some overlap among Vivaldi users with people trying to move away from an account system that stores all of their data, but for most people, having a Vivaldi account is more beneficial than not, and syncing plays a big role in this. I just installed the latest version of Vivaldi on a computer from scratch and as before I wasn't prompted to log in when setting it up. When I logged in, all of the sponsored bookmarks created by Vivaldi by default were synced back to my account. If you just ask me to log in before creating browsing data, this could be avoided and I would have quicker access to my synced data while I go through the rest of the setup process.
Additionally, Vivaldi still doesn't sync all types of data that I would have liked. It syncs browser data, but since we're using a Vivaldi account, why not sync other data too? Sync my email accounts so it's easier to set up on a new PC, and sync my feeds so I don't have to manually import them and mark them as read every time. It's frustrating that on a new computer, not only do I have to manually add feeds, but I also have to check which articles I've actually read, since all added feeds are marked as unread. Syncing this information across devices would save me a lot of time and frustration.
2 Improve the address bar
Something is still wrong
I've often complained about the slowness of the address bar in Vivaldi and, to give the team credit, this appear improved with the latest update. However, there is clearly something wrong with Vivaldi's approach here.
See, the browser allows you to enable or disable certain types of suggestions in the address bar, and I usually turn them off Frequently visited pages. The reason is that on this basis Vivaldi will sometimes make suggestions that don't make sense to me. For example, when I type postIn my history there are two main options: mail.google.com and mail.sapo.pt (a Portuguese email service). Now I visit mail.google.com daily and several times a day, while I visit mail.sapo.pt once a week at best. However, Vivaldi always suggests the latter to me as I type post in the address bar, which caused me to open the wrong page several times. That's why I disabled this option so I get the right suggestion every time.
But disabling this option also seems to be the reason why there are split second delays in updating the best result when I type something. As I have already described as I type XDA and press enter, I often do a web search instead of opening the website. Therefore, the logic for the proposed results needs some improvement, although the delay I mentioned has gotten better.
1 Build the dashboard
The foundation is good, but much more is needed
Finally, there's the big, shiny new feature that makes Vivaldi 7.0 the biggest update yet – the Dashboard. While this is a very interesting addition, there are some major issues that prevent it from being truly useful for me.
First of all, the sizes of the widgets are very limited. You can only choose between regular and large widgets, and even the large widgets are pretty small if you want to add a website as a widget. I think a manual resizing option would be the best approach, but perhaps there are certain increment values so that things still look reasonably consistent.
I also think that some of the widgets aren't really useful for Vivaldi features. I can open important emails or messages from my feeds, but I can't use the dashboard itself to mark items as read, which is a shame. I wish I could interact with these features directly from the widgets so I wouldn't still have to open the Mail and Feeds pages separately to clear my notifications.
Likewise, I can write a note using the Notes widget, but that note doesn't seem to sync with the Notes sidebar and I can't access notes from my sidebar in the dashboard. I can somewhat understand the idea of keeping these things separate, but the lack of ability to connect them is, in my opinion, a missed opportunity.
We are so close to perfection
Vivaldi 7.0 has definitely brought some welcome improvements and additions to what is still my favorite browser, but there is still a lot of work to be done to make it the perfect browser for me. I don't think I'm asking for too much here, so hopefully the team will make these improvements sooner rather than later.