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The Vivaldi Browser Now Has Mail, Calendar, and An RSS Reader Built-In (theverge.com) 56

The Vivaldi 4.0 release is launching today, and includes a built-in email, calendar, and RSS reader. The Verge reports: The email client supports IMAP and POP accounts, so you can connect the vast majority of email services to it, and you can easily have messages open up in tabs rather than taking over the current window -- handy if you're the type who often needs to bounce between emails. The search is also, in my experience, very quick. The calendar and RSS reader also include most of the features I'd expect, along with a few really cool bonuses. For example, the RSS reader also supports YouTube channels, which could be handy for those who are worried about an algorithm deciding not to show a creator's videos.

The other headline feature of this Vivaldi update is built-in translation. The browser will be able to translate entire webpages (automatically, if you want) in 50 languages as of today, but the company says it'll be expanding to support 109 languages soon. While the Mail tools are desktop only, the translation is also available on Vivaldi for Android. Vivaldi has also come up with a solution for those who don't want these features taking up room in their browser: you'll be able to choose between three layouts, which will give you a basic web browser, one with a few power-user features, or the all-in-one experience with email, calendars, and RSS. All the features will still be available, even in the "Essentials" layout, but they won't be taking up space in the interface.

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The Vivaldi Browser Now Has Mail, Calendar, and An RSS Reader Built-In

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  • by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @10:08PM (#61472166) Journal

    Welcome to the future [seamonkey-project.org]

  • by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @10:10PM (#61472168)

    Mozilla ditched Thunderbird while Vivaldi introduces an embedded email client. What does Vivaldi know that Mozilla doesn't?

    • they know they have always made their broswers feature rich - the vivaldi guys are the opera guys
    • From an economic perspective it makes sense: You can make some money from a web browser. It's unlikely you'll be able to make much of an standalone mail program. Most people use: Their work provided client (Often Microsoft Outlook) or webmail or their smartphone.
      Also Mozilla seem to barely being able to develop just Firefox. They seem to be firing lots of people lately.
      I do love and use Thunderbird but I understand why it doesn't get any support from a commercial entity
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Well my take on it is that Mozilla deemed that Thunderbird wasn't very useful either, which is why they split it away from Phoenix/FireFox years ago and then finally dumped it on someone else for maintenance and updates. Vivaldi is just reinventing a wheel that has been deemed irrelevant by others.

      • I don't know about Vivaldi's latest, but Opera was the fastest browser by far and was pretty low memory compared to IE and Firefox.

  • The day they offer scrolling tabs is the day I never use Firefox again. Probably won't actually happen, but still it is a fantastic browser.

    • If you could set an option to have normal mouse clicks like every other program, it would be half-way decent. Why do browser makers hate a workable UI so much?
  • by swell ( 195815 ) <jabberwock@poetic.com> on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @10:37PM (#61472206)

    Good luck with Vivaldi Mail. I just spent hours with it and none of the first four email accounts I tried could run. Mostly due to failure to verify with the provider. Each one works well with both webmail and Thunderbird. There was supposed to be a way to import RSS feeds from Thunderbird but I couldn't find it. The browser offered to import my bookmarks & history from Firefox; but it found 5 copies of Firefox data on my computer and ended up importing some ancient stuff. There was no way to tell which was which version and I only have the latest version of the program.

    Firefox.app takes 375MB on my Mac disk; Vivaldi takes 505MB (but includes extra functionality).

    It's really sad because I like the Vivaldi people and what they seem to be trying to do. I'll try again with v4.2 perhaps.

  • In other words (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @11:01PM (#61472254)

    Zawinski’s Law strikes again

  • Al those services just add more vulnerabilities to the application. Hope they have it locked down well.

  • Would be nice to access Usenet groups from my web browser.

  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @11:22PM (#61472304)

    I've been using Vivaldi regularly for a while, after I got tired of Chrome resource usage but still wanting/needing a Chrome based browser for plugin support.

    It's really stable and I like the other feature it offers around organizing bookmarks and things...

    That said I probably will not use it for email so that aspect is lost on me, but it doesn't; mean I'd stip using Vivaldi.

  • by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @11:26PM (#61472310)

    Installed it in the Spring, tried it in Summer and Fall, uninstalled it in the Winter.

    • Winter was always the best part, especially the Allegro ending. That browser is just broken beyond belief. They have many ridiculous bugs that haven't been fixed for 2 years, because there's other "more important stuff" to deal with first. Their bug-fixing priorities are incredibly strange. I recommend anyone who's considering it to read their forum. Or just try it for yourself and feel the pain after you slowly realize that one thing after another is broken in a way that annoys you (click a Slack alert? Na
  • Is this a genuine alternative browser or just another wrapper around WebKit/Blink?
    • Is this a genuine alternative browser or just another wrapper around WebKit/Blink?

      It's just another Chromium skin

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        It's just another Chromium skin

        It is quite a bit more than a "skin".

      • Given that Chrome has a nearly non-existent UI, not to mention an unchangeable UI (as in our way or the highway), I am glad Vivaldi exists.

  • Back in ancient history, it was nice that browsers could also read your email. While there were (obviously) email clients, the selection wasn't great, and it was nice to have another choice.

    Today? I imagine most people use some form of webmail. Those of us who are paranoid techies have other solutions firmly in place. I'm not sure what niche a mail client in Vivaldi will be able to fill. Plus, it seems like a lot of additional support work for their developers.

    The RSS client makes more sense, imho.

    • No, it isn't needed.
    • The RSS client in Vivaldi does not support folders to separate feeds and I couldn't find an opml file importer. Those are the 2 main drawbacks. Actually, those are dealbreakers. Couldn't be bothered manually recreating the RSS entries from my current RSS client (QuiteRSS) to the Vivaldi RSS client, so I didn't check if it is more stable with 200+ different feeds than my current setup.

      When those two things are fixed, I will try the Vivaldi RSS again, as there is promise.

  • It's a mix-and-match of various software utilities that can only interoperate with each other, can not be detached or used directly, etc, etc.

    You know what would be awesome? If i could easily interface with each program to perform complex tasks that no single one of those programs can complete on its own, no matter who made it.

    Then again, i view things from a maybe odd, unusual perspective.

    • by myid ( 3783581 )

      If you're using a Mac, check out AppleScript. A single AppleScript can send commands to multiple apps, telling the apps to get or set data, or to do other commands such as opening a window. An AppleScript can get data from one app, and send the data to another app.

      For example, you can write an AppleScript that tells a Numbers spreadsheet to return selected data in the spreadsheet to the AppleScript. Then the AppleScript sends that spreadsheet data to Safari, and tells Safari to run a certain JavaScript in t

  • It's *another* Calendar

  • by kackle ( 910159 )
    For those who are "antiquing" (for fun or otherwise), the latest version of Vivaldi runs on Windows XP when I tried it 2019. Chrome didn't. Firefox didn't.
  • "Geeking-out is the way: Tweaking software to get it working just right for you is a totally underrated pastime."

    Guess I'm not using Vivaldi then

  • ... why put an email client inside a browser? I didn't understand it when Opera did it, it was one of the reasons I punted Opera. Two separate functions, two separate use cases. My email client is always open, my browser is usually closed. Why keep the browser open all the time just so I can get email?
  • Wasn't one major factor in Netscapes downfall was the fact that their product bundled too much crap in it. Browser, Newsgroup Reader, Email, HTML IDE...
    Now any of these features weren't that bad however being that most people just wanted to view web pages, the time it took to load Netscape back in 1998 compared to IE which did cheat by integrating into the OS, so some of the load-up time was in the OS Boot, started up right away and you were ready to work. Having it load and download and check email off o

  • "We have this idea for a killer-application"
  • As this is not a browser done by assholes, it gives you a neat, nice choice on upgrade what model of 3 you want and only one has email, RSS and clandar.

  • I want my browser completely separate from any other software - I *just* want to use it to *browse* the web, I'm not interested in a fuck ton of options in a "suite of applications" - I hated that with Netscape communicator, I still hate it now.

    I hate email, I avoid it as much as I can, using it because I have to.
    Don't get me wrong, I loved the *original* concept of email - short text based messaging - but that was destroyed a long time ago.

    RSS readers? - well, yeah, they were cool, but they are so redundan

  • been using vivaldi for a bit since google shut off its api to 3rd party browsers and i was using chromium - i just want a browser - no additional inbuilt functionality. if i update, do i actually have to install this stuff? is there a version without it available?
  • Dunno but I read something something end of big tech blah blah on the site, then the video turned me off after 5 seconds, won't go back until they stop wasting my time.

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