Another new release of Vivaldi appeared earlier this week, with no announcement or anything resembling release notes on the Vivaldi web site. The announcement blog is full of details on developer snapshots, which are of no interest to regular folks.

As with the previous release, I only became aware of the new version when I ran Vivaldi and an update dialog appeared. According to that dialog, the only change in Vivaldi 1.4.589.38 is a new version of the Chromium engine.

This morning when I fired up Vivaldi (I still use it for social media), it popped up an update message. Luckily, I actually read the change notes in the message, so I can tell you that Vivaldi 1.4.589.29 consists of an engine (Chromium) update, plus a few bugfixes.

I say ‘luckily’, because as I’m writing this, there’s no announcement of the new version on the Vivaldi blog, and no release notes of any kind. Sheesh.

A new release of Vivaldi features enhancements to theme support, including theme scheduling. Panels can now be different widths, and middle-clicking the garbage icon now restores the most recently closed tab.

Wait. Theme scheduling? Does anyone really need this? Frankly, I wish the Vivaldi developers would focus on the core issues, like tabs, bookmarks, and link handling, which are still a mess, in my opinion. Why is Vivaldi the only browser that doesn’t highlight the contents of the address bar on right-click?

The Vivaldi 1.4 release announcement has additional details, including a complete list of changes.

The people behind the alternative web browser Vivaldi keep hammering away at it, improving features and fixing bugs. With the release of version 1.3, Vivaldi is closer than ever to being a legitimate contender in the current browser war.

Still, Vivaldi has more than its share of problems. Some aspects of the user interface remain visually clunky or difficult to use, including the bookmark editor. There’s still inconsistency in the way links and bookmarks are handled.

I’ve been installing developer snapshot builds of the browser when they become available. In reviewing the change logs for these snapshots, I noticed a surprising number of ‘regression’ bugs being fixed. I understand that developer snapshots are not intended for regular use, and are likely to be rough around the edges, but each of these regressions belies a lack of communication and coherent effort among the developers.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m actually rooting for Vivaldi. I continue to hope that the Vivaldi developers get their act together and produce a version that I can once again consider seriously as a replacement for Firefox.

The people who make Vivaldi were happy enough with a recent developer snapshot of the browser to release it as version 1.2.

Whether or not you agree that Vivaldi is ready to be your main browser (I don’t), it is improving. Version 1.2 adds custom mouse gestures, per-tab zoom level, and new settings related to the ‘new tab’ page.

I’ve been trying to find an alternative to Firefox for a while now. In my opinion, Firefox is growing increasingly flaky. I’m getting tired of having to start over with a new profile when something goes wrong.

Lately, I’ve concentrated most of my attention on Opera. But that browser still lacks a native bookmark sidebar, and while the functionality can be added via add-ons, subsequent Opera updates often cause problems.

So I’ve turned my attention to Vivaldi, a browser created by an Opera co-founder. After a long beta period, Vivaldi 1.0 was recently released, and so far, I like what I see.

Vivaldi’s design is partly a response to the trend of excessive simplification in the major browsers (and elsewhere, including Windows 10). Simplicity is useful for regular users, but where does it leave IT professionals and power users? The answer is – at least for now – Vivaldi.

At its core, Vivaldi uses the same Chromium engine as Google Chrome and Opera 15+. But that’s where the similarity ends, because Vivaldi is much more configurable that those other browsers. For example, the tab bar can be moved to any edge of the screen, and tabs can be stacked. There’s a native sidebar, in which bookmarks can be displayed in a tree structure. Any site or page can be added to the sidebar. You can add your own notes to the sidebar.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be using Vivaldi as my main web browser. If all goes well, I’ll make the switch permanent, and put Firefox and Opera out to pasture, along with Internet Explorer and Edge. I keep those browsers around for those few remaining sites and services that just don’t work elsewhere, as well as for testing.

I’ll post my conclusions once my evaluation is complete. In the meantime, here’s a review of Vivaldi 1.0 at Ars Technica.

Vivaldi 1.1 is now available.