Nearly after two months of the release of version 1.7, Vivaldi-the preferred browser of power users is back with its latest version. The version 1.8 update for the desktop browser focuses on privacy and browsing patterns of its users worldwide. It brings in a redesigned ‘History’ section and improvements to existing features such as note-taking and sound control among others.
The most significant update is the brand-new History tab for the browser. Apart from presenting the user history in a chronological order, the browser will display the online browsing pattern of the user in a graphical format as well. This will enable them to have a look at their online habits, locating sites more easily and further aid with visual cues. Unlike other browsers, users have been given an option to hide useless buttons and irrelevant graphs.
The stats are displayed on the right along with a calendar showcasing the total of page views and visited pages, and the top domains that you visited. The time of the visit is listed there, the page title, the address (including whether the page was secure or not), and the number of views are also shown by Vivaldi. You can search the history by various filters such as date, the name of the website, time etc. All of this data is processed locally and hence is not transferred onto the cloud.
Talking about the history of this feature, Jon von Tetzchner, CEO at Vivaldi Technologies, said,
We want to make browsing history more useful than ever before. Instead of having to scroll through hundreds of lines, Vivaldi gives a comprehensive overview of history, presented in a visual way. This lets our users analyze their online activity and helps them find what they are looking for.
Alongside, a fresh note-taking feature has also been introduced. Previously, users could make notes in the side panel. With this update, they can now create notes just by dragging and dropping the desirable content on the notes menu of the sidebar. This feature will work with other applications as well. You can even right-click on the text on the website you are currently browsing and select ‘Copy to Note’ from the drop-down menu to create a new note. It’s similar in nature to Pocket or Evernote and will come in handy to save content or links.
In addition, you now have the option of tab muting as the browser offers three options — allow sounds in all tabs; only let the active tab play sound or let the background tab play sound until there is no sound from the active tab. This will allow users to control unwanted noise via a convenient mute/unmute feature.
Other minor changes include enable/disable auto-updates on Windows, options for the home page, ability to open links in the current tab from the right-click menu, display hibernated tabs in grayscale, translation improvements for Chromium and an easy image search toggle.
