Why Create An Opera Fork?
That’s probably one of the first questions that comes to mind when you hear about a new browser which sprang out of a project which is live and kicking such as Opera.
Well, according to Vivaldi team which, as said above, includes some of the people who used to work on / for Opera, Opera is no longer serving the community who helped build it in the first place:
“the browser we once loved has changed its direction. Sadly, it is no longer serving its community of users and contributors who helped build the browser in the first place.”
Therefor a new project has been founded with aim of reconnecting the browser back to its roots, the contributors and the community.
For those who haven’t had the chance to experience much with Opera as of yet and sees it as the underdog browser who tries to catch up with the big league browsers such as Firefox or Chrome –
I’d like to mention you that Opera was / is the home of some the browsers most useful and innovative technology, for instance the “Speed dial” feature that now all major browsers include in their homepage was actually originated form Opera.
I remember back at the day, that was the killer feature which got me using Opera in the first place…
Vivaldi Features
So what does Vivaldi already has to bring to the table?
Well, although the browser is currently still in a Tech Preview phase, it already managed to build a quite stable infrastructure and set a multitude of features ready for use (it’s almost on par with the top 5 browsers).
Vivaldi’s Notable Features Are:
Quick Commands – allow you to quickly search through various settings, history, open tabs, bookmarks and more with a single keyboard shortcut.
Notes – take notes while browsing and add screenshots right in the handy Notes panel.
Tab Stacks – lets you group multiple tabs under a single tab thus clearing the mess in case you have many tabs open.
Of course, besides those there are plenty of other great features that are included with the browser by default such as, tab-preview, speed dial, auto-hiding sidebar and many configuration options as well.
The latter bunch of features was also included in Opera browser until recent by default.
vivaldi notes
Apart from the features Vivaldi currently supports, there are also many features planned for future releases of the browser among those are: built-in mail, sync feature, spatial navigation – navigate using only your keyboard, extensions and performance improvements as well.
Get Vivaldi
Fortunately, even though it’s only a tech preview version and the browser is still doing its first baby steps, Vivaldi is already available for all 3 major platforms – Windows, Linux and Mac.
To install it, simply head over to its official website (link below) and download the version appropriate to you.
Linux users note – either look for a prebuilt package in your distro repository or download the currently available packages from Vivaldi’s website which are Debian or RPM installer.
