After following the footsteps of Mozilla, and becoming too much like Chrome and Safari, a spiritual successor to Opera is being released by former Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner.
Von Tetzchner says his Vivaldi browser is designed with power users in mind -- 30 open tabs demand less memory than 10 tabs open on Chrome.
That's just one enticing aspect. While so far just a technical preview is available, it's pretty clear von Tetzchner is focused on making browsing, and managing tabs, more user friendly and intuitive.
For example, when closing tabs, its only when a cursor hovers over the tab space that users see the exit 'x' button. A batch of closed tabs are recalled with ease as users can simply relaunch Vivaldi and all the tabs from the previous section return. Users can also use the "Trash" button in the toolbar for two-step recalls of past pages.
There were some issues in displaying some pages, but the glitches seem to disappear after switching the browser into full-screen mode.
On an initial look. Vivaldi just doesn't look or feel like any browser in play and that aspect is what its creators hope will drive support as well as create a fan base.
"At some point it will need to fund itself and to reach that point we will need a few million users," says von Tetzchner. "I have no doubt that we will reach that number quite easily."
As Tech Times reported, von Tetzchner isn't the only browser maker busy these days. There may be a browser battle looming given the sneak peek at Microsoft's impending Windows 10 browser, Spartan, a successor to Internet Explorer. The browser's user interface has tabs and other features that make it seem more parallel to Firefox and Chrome than to Internet Explorer. It will be using engines such as the Chakra JavaScript and the Trident, which are part of Internet Explorer. Unlike the latter, it will allegedly support extensions. One of its key features is the ability of its web pages to be annotated with a stylus.
Vivaldi is starting now on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Mobile versions of the browser are planned, though von Tetzchner hasn't committed on a release window.
