Originally published at: http://www.sitepoint.com/vivaldi-operas-spiritual-successor/
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new browser. Yes another one. Vivaldi has been released as a technical preview and the application has an interesting history…
In 1994, Opera was produced as a research project by Telenor, a Norwegian telecommunications company. The application featured a browser, email and news clients in lightweight package which could fit on a single floppy disk (for those of you who don’t remember, floppy disks were like chunky USB drives or SD cards which held up to 1.4Mb of data!) The browser was one of the first to implement original features such as W3C standards, tabs, speed dial, turbo mode and a huge range of configuration options. Opera never gained a massive market share but had a scarily passionate group of followers. Until recently…
Opera found it increasingly difficult to keep up with other vendors especially since the browser was available on wide range of devices including feature phones and Nintendo game consoles. In 2013, they abandoned their own Presto engine, adopted Google Blink and streamlined the company (management speak for laying off staff). Opera 15+ is a fine browser but there’s little to distinguish it from Chrome and it offers few of the features users loved in Opera 12.
Vivaldi Technologies was founded by former Opera co-founder and CEO, Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner. I’m guessing the name comes from Antonio Vivaldi — who composed Opera! Their ambitious aim:
The browser we once loved [Opera] 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.Continue reading this article on SitePointSO WE CAME TO A NATURAL CONCLUSION:
We must make a new browser. A browser for ourselves and a browser for our friends. A browser that is fast, but also a browser that is rich in functionality, highly flexible and puts the user first. A browser that is made for you.