I switched to using the Vivaldi web browser a few months ago. There are several web browsers to choose from today, completely unlike it was when I first got on the web in 1994. You can read about the evolution of web browsers here. I’m going to tell you about all the web browsers I’ve used, but I won’t include those I didn’t use for more than a day.
My First Web Browser
When I got on the web in 1994, the only choice I had was the web browser that was bundled with the software from my internet service provider. It was a version of Netscape Navigator. The company that created it morphed into the Mozilla Foundation and eventually released Firefox in 2004.
Netscape Navigator wasn’t a great web browser, but it was all I could use with Windows 3.11.
Internet Explorer
I switched to Windows 95 when it came out, and it was only 16-bit platform at the time. When the 32-bit version came out, I switched to it. Like many others, I started using Internet Explorer because it was free and bundled with Windows. When Firefox came out in 2004, I switched to that. Although it was far superior to Internet Explorer, many websites were designed to work with Internet Explorer. I had to keep switching back and forth.
Chromium and Google Chrome
Google unleashed Google Chrome on Windows in 2008. It was based on the open-source project called Chromium. I used Chrome for two or three years until I started using Linux instead of Windows. That’s when I switched to Chromium.
I used Chromium on Linux until the day Google decided to disable syncing with it. Since I prefer syncing to all my devices, I switched to Firefox for a while. I soon decided to try something else because the routine to make and launch profiles in Firefox annoyed me to no end.
Using profiles on both Chromium and Google Chrome is easy, and I would have switched to Google Chrome if it supported other platforms correctly. It doesn’t support the Raspberry Pi at all, and it doesn’t store bookmarks with the Android version.
Enter the Vivaldi Web Browser
I tested Vivaldi when it split away from Opera (I also tested Opera), but I only switched to Vivaldi full time a few months ago. The only real reason is that I can sync it to all my devices. It’s based on Chromium, so creating profiles on it is just as easy.
There are a lot of options with Vivaldi, half of which I’ll never use. If I couldn’t hide the side panel and the status bar, there would have been a problem.
Vivaldi Is It
I’m done. Unless Vivaldi screws up, I can’t see any reason to switch to another web browser. I use it on all my devices now.
Image by Vivaldi Technologies, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons