Check Out Vivaldi, a New Browser Aimed at Power Users

Former CEO and Co-Founder of Opera, Jon von Tetzchner has announced the first preview of ‘Vivaldi’, a new Chromium based browser built primarily for power users. The new browser is still in its Beta phase, and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

It features utilities like Quick Commands, the familiar Speed dial that shows your favourite tabs on the new tabs page along with gesture-based mouse controls. In addition, it gets some new nifty tricks like organising multiple tabs into one stack for easy and clutter free browsing. Another new feature allows users to take notes right in the browser along with taking screenshots.

The new browser takes a lot of inspiration from Opera, and von Tetzchner duly acknowledges that.  Vivaldi uses the Chromium (Blink) rendering engine found in Chrome and is built entirely using the latest web technologies including React, Node.js along with a number of node modules.

As of now, only the technical preview for the browser is available. Though in the coming months, it is likely to add sync, mail support, improved performance and extensions. In addition, the browser will be shaped by the community; hence it will be driven by user demands.

You can download a technical preview of the Vivaldi browser here. We tried it out for a while, and it seems to be a rather snappy browser that pays homage to Opera. The browser’s interface subtly changes colors as you navigate from one site to another to match the dominant color on the page. It’s certainly got a potential for power users, with nifty features like ‘quick commands’ that helps you search or run commands, identical to OS X’s Spotlight.