Vivaldi 5.0 released with impressive updates and arguably making it the best Linux web browser today. Read on for the release coverage.
The popular open-source Chromium-based web browser Vivaldi made itself the best web browser with the release of major version 5.0. Looking at all the features, it looks like it is a pre-Christmas gift for the Vivaldi fans. The major highlights are the complete user control of UI customization via browser themes, sharable themes with your friends, automatic live translations and mobile UI updates.
With these changes, Vivaldi becomes the most customizable web browser today, while giving you a superfast browsing experience. Let’s dig in.
Table of Contents
Vivaldi 5.0 release – New Features
Express Yourself with the world with Themes
Theme support was there already. But this time, you can create them from ground-up, change the defaults to make it uniquely yours. Even if you feel like a different look of your browser during the entire day/night – that is also possible via scheduling theme changes.
Say, you need a productive morning look with vibrant color, a lazy lunchtime look with sober color and probably dark mode at night. All of these are not possible. Cool, isn’t it?
Theme editing is now super easy with options to edit background image, deleting your themes that you created, and faster and accurate preview while customizing your own look.
The new Theme editor is where the real action happens. The theme editor gives you options to edit colors, settings, backgrounds and may other options such as tab bar transparency, rounded corners’ radius, etc. Now your imagination is only the limit on how you want your browser to be.
Now, the fun part
Vivaldi 5.0 brings two new options – Open Theme and Export Theme in the theme editor. The export theme allows you to create a .zip file of your current theme and share with your friends and family. Cool! That’s not all, you can also open the themes shared with you as well.
Want to share your creation, with the world? That’s also possible via a newly designed Theme Gallery by Vivaldi. You can upload your creativity directly in your themes.vivaldi.net for the entire word to see. And you can also view and browse many exciting themes created by the Vivaldi community and experience theme right in your browser.
Translation is easy now
Translation is always a problem while browsing the web. Today, Google Translate tool is the best out there, and it integrates well with Google Chrome. But you may be skeptical using it for privacy and other reasons. To make the matter worse in web browser space, Firefox doesn’t have native translation feature as well. Vivaldi already had translation launched a while back, powered by Lingvanex.
The Translation panel now shows you LIVE translation as you select a snippet of text while browsing. You don’t need to click Translate or go for entire page translation. This is a game changer feature for those who learning new language or studying articles for their school work. This feature works when auto translate is enabled from settings.
Selected text translation can also happen by typing or pasting a selected text into the Translate Panel or by simply translating the selected text from the translation icon, context menu, or even a shortcut. Both the selected text and its translation can be viewed in the Panel.
What about privacy? Vivaldi said, all the recent translations are stored in their Iceland server and protected. They do not parse your translation history and make a profile for targeted ads.
Using Vivaldi in Android Mobile Device? Check this out!
If you are using Vivaldi in Android modules or tabs, you are really in for a treat. For the first time in the world, Vivaldi brings two-tab-stack feature. It has two rows of tabs stacked, with separate options to created new tabs. Read about this in detail here.
Closing Notes
If you ask me, Vivaldi is the most customizable browser available today, hands down. It stands out among the list of Chromium based browsers for privacy-friendly, most customization options. And this release also a testament to that. That said, I wish Firefox also brings up some more features for customizations. But that’s a different topic on where Firefox is heading towards.
Image credit: Vivaldi
