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.
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.
Yeah I tried Floorp awhile ago and it looked interesting, but very early development and jank as hell. It might be something to keep an eye on as long as they keep adding more stuff to it…
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.
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)
The reasonable alternative in Firefox is search bookmarks. Create a bookmark with search url target and %s placeholder, and give it a search keyword. Then you can search with keyword search text.
Vivaldi-to-Firefox here with a little insight! Firefox addons can have the permission to hide tabs, and there are addons that take good advantage of this. Simple Tab Groups can essentially replicate Vivaldi Workspaces, as well as Sidebery if you want something a bit more on steroids in the form of a sidebar.
While I’ve got you here, I’ve had issues with Vivaldi not being able to block Google search results I don’t want to see. Might’ve been me not setting my blocklist up properly, but it works on Firefox with uBlock Origin and Safari with Adguard. Seems like Vivaldi doesn’t support some of the more advanced filtering that Letsblock.it uses for that - AdGuard works.
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.
You can customize the Firefox UI entirely by making modifications to userChrome.CSS.
Yeah, but that’s too complicated, Firefox needs better customization options built into the actual browser itself. Something I can just open the options and change how it looks with a few clicks.
And there are some really good addons for tab management in Firefox.
I’ve tried using a few, the only one that even came close to anything in Vivaldi was Sideberry and even that just felt like an inferior version of what Vivaldi natively has.
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.
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.
Yeah I tried Floorp awhile ago and it looked interesting, but very early development and jank as hell. It might be something to keep an eye on as long as they keep adding more stuff to it…
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.
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:
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.
The reasonable alternative in Firefox is search bookmarks. Create a bookmark with search url target and
%splaceholder, and give it a search keyword. Then you can search withkeyword search text.Vivaldi-to-Firefox here with a little insight! Firefox addons can have the permission to hide tabs, and there are addons that take good advantage of this. Simple Tab Groups can essentially replicate Vivaldi Workspaces, as well as Sidebery if you want something a bit more on steroids in the form of a sidebar.
While I’ve got you here, I’ve had issues with Vivaldi not being able to block Google search results I don’t want to see. Might’ve been me not setting my blocklist up properly, but it works on Firefox with uBlock Origin and Safari with Adguard.Seems like Vivaldi doesn’t support some of the more advanced filtering that Letsblock.it uses for that - AdGuard works.deleted by creator
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.
Yes, tab stacking and tiling keep me using Vivaldi at work. They’re great, and I remain super sad that there’s no real equivalent in Firefox.
I still use Firefox on my personal computers, but I silently weep a little bit whenever it would be super useful to stack or tile tabs.
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Tab stacking, tab tiling, the sidebar with all my web panels, quick commands, the completely customizable UI… There’s so much.
You can customize the Firefox UI entirely by making modifications to userChrome.CSS.
And there are some really good addons for tab management in Firefox.
Yeah, but that’s too complicated, Firefox needs better customization options built into the actual browser itself. Something I can just open the options and change how it looks with a few clicks.
I’ve tried using a few, the only one that even came close to anything in Vivaldi was Sideberry and even that just felt like an inferior version of what Vivaldi natively has.