I do not know the full story but it goes something like this: Opera was bought out by a Chinese firm for 1.2 billion, not bad for a browser that never became really popular. I used it for almost three years myself because it was so fast compared to all the others early on (I even paid $40 for it, before it was free, yes, $40, but back in those days it was worth it), but eventually Firefox, IE, etc. caught up and became just as fast or even a tad faster. Also felt, like other users, that Opera had "lost its way". Voila, just like the creators of the original Drive Image from Powerquest formed Storagecraft and created ShadowProtect after they were bought out by Norton, the original engineers from Opera have left and created Vivaldi browser. Still in beta: PLAY TIME!!!

https://vivaldi.com/story/

Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

No longer in beta, recent review: http://www.pcmag.com/review/343672/vivaldi
Opera is still around, now owned by a Chinese company.
Also, Mozilla's ex-CEO is working on a new browser, Brave, still in beta.
Nothing like competition to keep all these companies on their toes.
Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

Let's see... how safe do I feel about using a Chinese browser? Hmmm... LOL

I will take a look at Vivaldi though.

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Patty MacDuffie
Computer Haven Administrator

Live Long and Prosper
Mr. Spock

Yes, just neat having some new options after so many years of dominance by just several browsers. Glad to see Edge out there also as a new choice. WE NEED CHOICES!
Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

How is THIS for choices? This thread made me think of the original Mozilla browser, Netscape. I didn't bother following through with any of the links but it would seem that it is still out there and available with a 2016 version.

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Netscape was discontinued in 2007. I remember in its last incarnation it actually had TWO rendering engines, the Mozilla and IE, and you could switch back and forth, depending upon which worked better at whatever site you were at. Sheesh, talk about making things complicated.
Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

You've got Maxthon out there as well, I think Manny still uses them, I did for awhile, can't remember now why I stopped.

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Joan Archer
http://crossstitcher.webs.com

Joan, if I remember correctly, Maxthon was simply a skin for IE. Yes, it added some neat features including an ad killer (which did not work so well, I tried it), but it was still the IE rendering engine with some extra stuff added. Fact is, most of the other browsers, ALL of the major ones INCLUDING IE ITSELF, have now included this stuff. I do not know anything about Edge, which may be an excellent browser, I do not have MS10 to play with.

Long story made short, Maxthon was not really a true browser, just stuff added to IE, and some of its rather neat stuff has been incorporated into all the other browsers, including IE, or surpassed.
Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

Myself basically use Opera as a mobile browser. But the second one is really new to me. When it release I will try for sure.

Not quite. Maxthon was not an IE overlay but used it's own two engines [Webkit and Trident]. From my point of view there's not much difference between browsers anymore. It's really about what features you like. For me, it's having tabs at the bottom. Vivaldi can do that and actually I like it but bottom line once you get used to a browser it'll take some major downgrade to change to something else because you are so accustomed to where everything is. As long as a browser doesn't get in the way I don't think any one is better really.

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Best regards,
Manny Carvalho
MS-MVP since 2002

At the moment I use Firefox for a lot of things and Edge for others. I've found if I use Firefox when in Facebook and try to play one of the couple of games I play, they're the match 3 or more type game, everything is jerky and there is often a delay between me clicking and the piece actually moving. It is very annoying and makes it virtually impossible to play, but play the same game in Edge and everything works smoothly and as it should.

I'll stick with those 2 for the time being as they work the way I want them too.

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Joan Archer
http://crossstitcher.webs.com

http://arstechnica.com/information-tech ... ion-users/

Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

I still have Vivaldi, Acadia, but I've gone back to using Edge as my default browser. I don't like these new builds nearly every day, can't stay on top of new features, and can do without almost all of them anyway. I prefer simple.

I had subscribed to the Vivaldi RSS feed so I could stay on top of new releases - there were new items in that feed almost every day, sometimes two or three. It just got to be too much.

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Patty MacDuffie
Computer Haven Administrator

Live Long and Prosper
Mr. Spock

Yeah, Patty, I gotta agree with you there, simplicity is best. Who in the world has the time (or technical prowess to test all this stuff?) Vivaldi may be an excellent browser for the geeks, but most folks, including myself, want simplicity, which is why they (Vivaldi) are not making any money; there are so many good, simple browsers out there right now.

Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

I wonder if these folks, and others like them, ever survey ahead of time to find out if people even want a new browser. Oftentimes people want something so they assume others do also. There probably are those who do - but how many.

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Patty MacDuffie
Computer Haven Administrator

Live Long and Prosper
Mr. Spock