Is anyone using a non-big-3 (Chrome/Firefox/Safari) browser enough to call it their default? I haven't tried Vivaldi yet but see this non-update hitting the front page as a heads-up that it might be worth checking out; how does this company pay the bills?
I'm interested in hearing about both the options available on different operating systems and/or mobile devices and the primary benefit each provides.
On Android, Firefox Focus has become my normal browser. I really don't use the phone to browse all that much, and prefer to use a clean session each time.
On Windows, I use multiple off-label browsers[0] mostly just to compartmentalize different sessions simultaneously. Now that Firefox is headed towards supporting this as a first-class feature, I may be able to cut down to one again. I just can't bring myself to give Google/Chrome all of my browsing metadata, but I do use it for work-related access since GMail is tied in.
[0] - Qupzilla, with separate-per-window sessions in private browsing mode - no extra work from me; also K-Meleon
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Edit: Thanks for all the testimonials; I will definitely be checking these out!
I use Opera quite extensively, and have been, starting from Opera 7 or so. There was a brief gap in my usage during the time when Opera switched to blink and a lot of the old features were missing, but now it is pretty much back to feature parity (at least for the features I care about).
I think (IMHO) it has the most usable UI and apparent performance. It has nice built-in features like ad-blocking, mouse gestures (including rocker gestures), some nice single key shortcuts for moving around tabs. The V7 tabs extension [1] provides a really good experience for vertical tabs. It has also sufficient customizability, full compatibility with Chrome extensions.
I am aware that all of these are possible in other browsers, and I do use Chrome/Firefox for non-trivial amounts of time for various reasons with all equivalent customizations, but Opera just seems so much more usable and performant for me across platforms, although I can't put my finger down on one single thing that makes it so.
Edit: I have to say I'm really liking the vertical tabs on the new Vivaldi and their new features. Maybe I'll try making it my primary browser for a while.
I don't know if they have raised money yet, but the company has been created by the previous CTO of Opera, who made millions out of it.
Also, former Opera employees told me that the amount of money search engines are willing to pay to be featured in browsers is huge (relatively to the cost of running a browser company, even more so when you don't have to build the rendering engine).
I've often thought Opera should have stayed commercial. They probably would have still maintained 1% market share, but with a cool half-billion in revenue keeping it the browser worth paying for. I wonder if it's too late for Vivaldi to start charging $49 or so.
On my desktop, vivaldi has been the default since 1.10. The amount of features baked in is incredible. The only extension needed is uBlock. Everything else like saved sessions that required extensions in chrome and firefox are just there.
I've used Konqueror (Chrome's grandfather) for about 6-7 years. After Firefox 3 was released I switched to FF and even though I've used Chrome for a year or two at some point, I won't replace Firefox again unless I have an equivalent Awesome bar (Chrome doesn't cut it) and Tree Style Tabs.
Opera (Windows, Android) because I find its UI to be to my personal taste. I am looking to switch (back, a decade later) to Firefox when 57 rolls out, but unless I can get a viable alternative to Opera's brilliant Speed Dial, I might not be able to break the inertia.
It's polished, it's sufficiently customisable for my likes, it features folders, it's completely integrated in to the bookmarks system, accessible from sync'd devices, and allows for simple drag-and-drop rearrangements. All without needing an extension of any kind.
Firefox's "top sites with pinning" does only some of this, and is clunky. Every Fx Speed Dial extension I have tried is similarly lacking in some way or another.
Just installed it on my Android now, after seeing your comment. It seems to have no tab support, i.e. you can only have one web page open at a time, is that right, or am I missing something? Tried menu at bottom left (hardware) and top right (browser menu).
Correct, that is the primary feature trimmed from Firefox Focus in comparison to the main app. It fits my use case since I typically browse on my phone with a single, quick purpose in mind - like finding an address or the hours a business is open.
Same here. Actually, I find it amazing how much I like it - before, I always had ten to twenty different browser extensions installed on both Chrome and Firefox: Mouse gestures here, an "Omnibar" there, Superdrag... yada yada yada.
Because of that, I suspected that Qutebrowser would be too "bare bones" for my tastes. Interestingly, that isn't the case at all. It's amazing how much extra functionality you can replace with an efficient control scheme.
I experimented briefly with QuteBrowser, but was disappointed when standard cross-browser keyboard shortcuts that have become muscle memory did nothing.
Opera (on Mac) for daily use, because of 1-key shortcuts, mouse gestures etc that I'm used to from being long time Opera user.
Chrome is on the side for all my webdev work (but references etc are open in either Opera or Dash). Keeps development stuff vs work/private surfing separate.
Certainly lots of features I'd enjoy but I couldn't find the source and builds logs so I was a bit dubious - after doing some research it appears to be closed-source and proprietary software.
While I'm not saying it's bad because it's closed source, a web browser has access to a _lot_ of personal (meta)data and is certainly not something I'm about to trust to some black-box software that's not under review by the many.
Not saying your point is invalid but in the same context Google has access to all your stuff, including correlations to your mobile and location information and is not afraid to share it, as do others ie ISPs, possibly Microsoft.
So for browsers controlling meta data on user end has limited value without rules and laws around user data.
Vivaldi is looking better and better with each release. The only thing that seems to be missing is some kind of Profiles or Containers for partitioning identities.
It's unlikely Firefox will ever have the built-in features that old-Opera fans want in their browser, so it makes sense to support Vivaldi; it's the only realistic hope of having a decent browsing experience.
If there's anyone from Vivaldi watching this thread my one and only request: when I type www.youtube.com show me https://youtube.com as the first choice and not some inner page that I bookmarked. I constantly enter youtube and hackernews via some page that I bookmarked ages ago.
Just saw the video and... "browser for rebels?" The hipster image histogram rebel, are you planning in integrating Tor or did the marketing guy just had to much coffee that day?
I'm joking (mostly)... love the browser, thank you for your hard work.
I used Brave for a couple of months and it is really nice but at that time it was still based on Chromium and I didn't want to make that rendering engine any more popular than it already is. (Since you're indirectly supporting Chrome and Google.)
I'm back at Firefox which feels about equal to Brave in day-to-day usage (with NoScript and uBlock Origin).
While I love FF, it's so much slower than Chrome on JS-intensive sites. The Chrome feature I miss the most is the Task Manager, so I can find out which tab or extension is hogging my CPU/RAM.
Unless they fixed it recently, the location new tabs open in sometimes gets out of sync, so new tabs open in some unrelated position in the tab bar instead of next to the current tab.
The performance of Vivaldi is abysmal if you use many tabs. If you get past 50+, the UI becomes really sluggish (really slow to open new tabs, for example).
Had been using it for a few years and recently gave up for firefox. A lot of small bugs and annoying glitches like url dropdown list that contains absolutely not relevant items or cursor jumping randomly while typing address. Since recent versions firefox introduced some standard features I missed a lot like flat compact tabs.
This gets linked every time, and every time it's still not the Vivaldi source code. This is their patched version of Chromium and is not sufficient for building the actual Vivaldi browser with.
I tried Vivaldi a few weeks ago. My main problem with it was that it was missing some media add on (details escape me) needed to run Netflix on Linux. Firefox had it by default. I liked the UI and side tabs, but it's easier for me to stick to Firefox now.
Reminds me that i should pester them about touch screen support on Windows tablets. And perhaps also a option for making the tab close button persistent.
I'm interested in hearing about both the options available on different operating systems and/or mobile devices and the primary benefit each provides.
On Android, Firefox Focus has become my normal browser. I really don't use the phone to browse all that much, and prefer to use a clean session each time.
On Windows, I use multiple off-label browsers[0] mostly just to compartmentalize different sessions simultaneously. Now that Firefox is headed towards supporting this as a first-class feature, I may be able to cut down to one again. I just can't bring myself to give Google/Chrome all of my browsing metadata, but I do use it for work-related access since GMail is tied in.
[0] - Qupzilla, with separate-per-window sessions in private browsing mode - no extra work from me; also K-Meleon
--
Edit: Thanks for all the testimonials; I will definitely be checking these out!