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.