Monthly Archives: May 2016

Vivaldi

Vivaldi: not ready to replace Firefox

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Well, I tried. I used Vivaldi as my main web browser for a month, and while there’s a lot to like, I found I had to change the way I work to get around its limitations and problems.

The biggest problem is Vivaldi’s inconsistent and confusing handling of links, bookmarks, and tabs. The Vivaldi developers have apparently failed to grasp that links should behave differently, depending on their context.

The bookmark editor is extraordinarily clunky, which is surprising, given that it should be a simple feature to code.

A lot of basic functionality that I take for granted in Firefox and other browsers is still missing from Vivaldi. Dragging and dropping bookmarks (eg. from the address bar to the bookmark sidebar) doesn’t work. Hovering the mouse over a bookmark doesn’t show the full URL. There’s no way to edit bookmarks directly in the bookmark toolbar. The right-click context menu for images doesn’t include a ‘Properties’ option. And so on.

Vivaldi’s developers seem to be aware of these issues, and have been working on them in developer ‘snapshot’ versions of the browser. I started using the snapshot versions in the hope that I’d get some relief from the problems I mentioned, but instead ran into even more problems.

Meanwhile, I’ve switched back to Firefox. I’m still optimistic about Vivaldi, but for now I’m only using it experimentally.

Hardware

Latest Hard Drive reliability report from BackBlaze

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Backblaze provides online backup services. The core of their service is an enormous collection of hard drives of various makes, capacities and models. Backblaze tracks the reliability of the hard drives in their systems, and publishes their findings yearly.

This year’s report shows that HGST (Hitachi) drives are still the most reliable, but also shows substantial improvement in Seagate drives over previous years.

Microsoft, Patches and updates, Windows 7, Windows 8.x

Relief for Windows 7 update headaches

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As if in response to my recent post about the joys of updating new Windows 7 installs, Microsoft has just announced a solution. It’s effectively Service Pack 2 for Windows 7, but Microsoft is calling it the Windows 7 SP1 convenience rollup.

The new package will install all post-SP1 updates up to April 2016. After you install Windows 7 with Service Pack 1, you need only install the April 2015 servicing stack update for Windows 7 (KB3020369), a prerequisite for the rollup, then install the rollup, then install any updates published after April 2016.

I haven’t yet tried the new rollup, but it’s difficult to imagine how it could fail to be an improvement.

Microsoft also plans to provide monthly non-security update rollups for Windows 7 and 8.1.

Microsoft, Patches and updates, Windows 10

Windows 10 Insider Preview build 14342

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I’ve been running build 14342 for a few days now on my test PC. I haven’t experienced any new problems, and it seems to have resolved at least one annoying networking problem left over from the previous build.

What’s New in Build 14342

User Account Control prompts now look different, but their functionality hasn’t changed. There are enhancements for Microsoft Edge, and improvements for the new BASH shell integration. A new setting, Settings > System > Apps for websites doesn’t work yet, but will in the future allow you to designate an app to open specific web sites. The Feedback Hub was also improved in this build.

Build 14342 contains fixes for numerous issues in previous builds, including problems with media playback, Cortana, displays, login, the user interface, apps, location, and anti-virus software compatibility.

Interestingly, the Wi-Fi Sense feature has been disabled. There’s been a lot of debate about the security of this feature since Windows 10 was released. Microsoft says the feature was disabled because nobody was using it. The Verge has more about this, as does Brian Krebs.

Patches and updates, Security, Vivaldi

Vivaldi 1.1.453.59

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The release notes for Vivaldi 1.1.453.59 aren’t exactly overflowing with information. The current version is only referenced in the page URL, while previous versions are listed below, in a series of rather confusingly-titled and somewhat redundant sections that all look like this:

Changelog since 1.1, the fourth release.

Parsing what information is available, I concluded that this version was released to fix one security vulnerability: [Security] Address bar spoofing using HTTP status code 204/205.

It’s a security update, so if Vivaldi is your browser of choice, you should navigate to Help > Check for Updates... on the Vivaldi menu.