Yet another release of the excellent browser, Vivaldi. Version 3.8 of the one and the only follower of the classic Opera 12 ideas brings more control on bookmarks to your hands, and also features great improvements in the privacy area. This version doesn't include Google's FLoC, and allows you to prevent cookie content popups from appearing on sites you visit.
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Vivaldi is most feature-rich web browser available today on the market. Made by the true professionals who were behind the classic Opera 12 browser, it can provide you exclusive, convenient and amazing browsing experience, which you will never find anywhere else. There are web panels, page filters, impressive built-in tools like Notes and screenshots, the user interface that really follows your preferences, customizable hotkeys - we can continue this list for long.
Vivaldi 3.8 includes a built-in option to hide cookie consent popups. It is part of the built-in Ad and tracker blocker feature. It uses subscription lists to block cookies, similar to how it blocks ads.
There is no currently a one-click UI to access these options or manage cookie consent requests, but dev are working on it.
The official announcements details how it works.
Users are often required to click on multiple steps to manage such cookies, including hidden options, a dialog on every single page, or at times no way to deny them at all. Naturally, this makes for a frustrating browsing experience.
This leads to clicking “allow” or “accept” without realizing that unwittingly users just gave permission for trackers to create behavioral profiles about them.
Often, these clicks happen due to the fact that a website may not work without accepting the cookie dialog. Vivaldi does not believe that this should be considered “consent”, and this tactic should not be allowed at all.
No FloC in Vivaldi
The FLoC component has been blacklisted from this update onwards. This means it will not be downloaded and will be removed if it has already been downloaded.
FLoC stands for Federated Learning of Cohorts and, in theory, should enhance users' privacy by reducing the amount of data advertisers get, and making it harder to create a unique ID for each user. The problem is that a website will get your FLoC group ID from the very first time you open it, and learn everything about your preferences and habits right away. Besides, every FLoC group consists of 1000 users only, so the browser fingerprinting technologies get even more data to track visitors.
Panel and Tab bar transparency
With version 3.8, Vivaldi allows enabling the transparency effect for the tab row and web panels. There is also the blur effect for the frosted look of the background. You can enable or disable this in Settings.
Bookmarks improvements
Vivaldi changes the Ctrl + D action behavior. Now, they you press Ctr l +D, it won't display extra dialogs, e.g. to specify the folder for your new bookmark. Instead, it will directly create a new bookmark for you. Clicking on the bookmark button will invoke the window with extra options, including:
- Quickly filter between regular bookmark folders and speed dials folders
- Search for an existing bookmark folder or create a new one directly in the dialog.
- A complete tree-view, with all folders available to expand and collapse
Other changes
- A quick command to disable Mouse Gestures.
- A quick command to open the Extensions page.
Download Vivaldi 3.8
You can get the app installer from its official web site.
Also, you can read a more detailed changelog with all the bug fixes and improvements on the official Vivaldi website.
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