Perennial also-ran and ugly duckling web browser Vivaldi gets some much-needed improvements in its newest incarnation, version 1.6.

Bookmark, address bar, and link handling have all been improved. For example, hovering over a bookmark now (finally) shows the bookmark’s URL in the status bar. The oddball bookmark editor is still with us, but at least it doesn’t take up so much space in the sidebar. There’s a new option for opening search results in a new tab. Middle-clicking links and bookmarks to open them in a new tab seems finally to be working consistently. And clicking on a URL in the address bar (again, finally) highlights the URL.

It’s nice to see progress on this potentially useful browser, but there’s still work to do. Bookmarks in the bookmark toolbar can be right-clicked and edited or deleted – unless they’re in a folder. There’s still no option to switch to newly-opened tabs.

I continue to use Vivaldi for social media sites, but not as my main browser. Maybe some day Vivaldi really will supplant Firefox, but it isn’t there yet.