What I Learned | Here I will share what I learned about technology, engineering, architecture and business

This document will, not only, explain why I believe Vivaldi is the best web browser right now in 2020, but also, give a few ideas how a user can get the most out of it.

1. It is a Chromium-based browser

This has the following benefits:

It has excellent tools for developers
It accepts any extension from the Chrome Web Store which again gives the possibility to have more alternatives for the Start Page.
It can be launched as an APP by adding –app=”url address” at the end of command line to launch the program. These apps don’t have the ⫶ button that apps created by Google Chrome have, which gives a menu with tools like find and print but you can still use those tools with Ctrl + F and Ctrl + P respectively.
The fact that a gigantic company like Google maintains The Chromium Projects is a warranty and even more now that other big companies like Microsoft and Opera use it too.

2. It is the most customizable web browser

It is so customizable that you can even make it have a Minimalistic Look or even System Console Look, so as to access all the hidden elements by keystrokes.

I don’t say this is the best way to use the browser but just to show the customization power of the browser. However, this has the following benefits:

To maximize the view of the window that holds the web site
To gain the habit of using keystrokes which is faster than moving the mouse to a location to click.

This is a list of some important keystrokes:

Function	Keystroke
Focus on the Address Bar	`Ctrl` + `L`
New Tab	`Ctrl` + `T`
Close Tab	`Ctrl` + `W`
Change Tab	`Ctrl` + `Tab`
Go Back a navigation	`Alt` + `🡄`
Move Forward	`Alt` + `🡆`

To use the web browser as a viewer for multiple local documents that the user may need daily for reference, such as:
- MD formats (extensions needed). It is especially important for Markdown documents since the web browser is currently the best way to read those types of documents.
- PDF
- HTML (saved websites for example)
- MHT (extension needed)

The Bookmarks Bar or the Panel could be used to have a quick access to those documents or even images, audios or videos, but there is a problem with this idea which is that these local files don’t have favicons.

Until Vivaldi adds the ability to change the marker favicons, here is a tutorial on how to change the marker favicons with the help of this extension.

Minimalistic Look

These are the settings that need to be set to have a Minimalistic Look:

Hit F4 to hide the side panel
In the Appearance settings, activate 🗹 Use Native Window for the Window Appearance
In the Address Bar settings, uncheck ☐ Show Address Bar
Optional 1: In the General settings:
- Choose ◉ Specific Pages for Startup with
- Write about:blank in the Startup Pages field
Optional 2: In the Tabs settings, choose ◉ Blank Page for New Tab Pages

System Console Look

All the steps to have a Minimalistic Look need to be done before continuing here:

In the Tabs settings, uncheck ☐ Show Tab Bar
In the Appearance settings, choose ◉ Horizontal Menu for the Menu Position
To have a black Start Page you need to create an HTML document that can be used as the Start Page. To do that:
- Copy the following code 👇 :

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head><style>body{background-color:#000}</style></head>
<body></body>
</html>

- Paste it in Notepad
- Save it as black.html somewhere in your system where it will not be deleted by accident, for example: c:\Users\Your_Name\black.html
- In the General settings, choose to Startup with ◉ Specific Pages
- Type file:/// + the path to the black.html file in the Startup Pages field. Use slashes / in the path

3. It has unique and excellent features

These are some of the features not found in other browsers:

Tabs that can be stacked (if the option is enabled). To do that, just drag a tab on top of another.

A Tab Cycler can be activated to show a snapshot of the web sites wile pressing Ctrl + Tab

Themes that matches the colors of the visited website

The following table shows what part of the browser matches the color of the visited website and the color code of the part that don’t change.

Theme	Active Tab	Inactive Tabs	Background
Vivaldi	#FFFFFF	✔	✔
Human	#403F3A	✔	✔
Hot Pink	#412D38	✔	✔
Subtle	#F6F6F6	#DCDCDC	#CCCCCC
Dark	#555555	#282828	#2E2E2E
Blueprint	✔	#263248	#2E3A50
Beach	#F1EFEA	#45C7B7	#29B2A
Light	✔	#ECECEC	#ECECEC

Tile View several pages, side by side. To do that you have two options:
- Select the tabs you want to view together (Ctrl and Shift keys can be used), then Right-Click > Tile Tabs
- Create a Stack of the tabs you want and then Right-Click > Tile Tabs
Capture entire pages or areas in PNG format
Snapshots on mouse over tabs. Stacked tabs show a snapshot for every web page so that you can select the one you want to go to or delete.
Panels (F4 to show/hide) that give a quick jump to the most used websites or web apps, such as social networks, news or calendars. It is also very useful for developers to test the mobile versions of their web pages or web apps.

The Panels can “Float” on top of the main website instead of pushing the website to the right by activating the _Floating Panel_ option. _Auto-Close Inactive Panel_ is also an interesting option.

To be fair, Opera also has a panel like this but it is not the same. In Opera, the panel holds apps that come pre installed and, if you want to add more, you need to find it in the Opera Addons website. By the way, there are not many options there. The Panel however can install ANY responsive website very easily. The following, for example, are just websites that can be installed in the panel and they will look like apps::

✔ Wikipedia
✔ Google Translate
✔ Google Calendar
✔ WhatsApp

To connect to WhatsApp you need to:

Right-click on WhatsApp icon
Select Show Desktop Version
Click on the ☖ icon to reload

Sessions allow to save all your open, selected or stacked tabs so that they can be reopened when needed
Notes Panel has Markdown support ( Ctrl + Shift + O to show/hide)
Dark or Light themes based on the time of the day

The Start Page

I put this apart because all major Web Browsers have some kind of Start Page.

It is difficult to say which one has the best Start Page because that depends on what is more important for the user.

However, all Chromium based browsers, such as Vivaldi, Edge and Opera, have the benefit of using an extension for the Start Page if the Browser don’t have a specific feature.

For Example, Google Chrome and Edge, don’t have the feature of grouping bookmarks in the Start Page, which Vivaldi has by default, but they can install one of these extensions to have that feature too.