Former Opera engineers launch new web browser Vivaldi

A number people previously associated with Opera have launched a new web browser, Vivaldi.

The web browser's beta version was last year, characterised by some commentators at Computerworld as a layer of Opera's Internet browser on top of Chrome, which still held true for the version launched. The visual design of Vivaldi looked quite similar to Opera - down to the ''Speed Dial'' new-tab interface - though at the core the browser was based on open-source Chromium technology. The browser is available on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.

When a page was being loaded a progress bar showed how large the web page was and how many elements it contained.

According to commentators, Vivaldi lost points for being somewhat on the slow side, with CPU usage that seemed a bit excessive once one started using it with 20 or more tabs open at once.

Downloading and setting up Vivaldi took only a minute or so, and its bookmark importing capabilities did an excellent job of preserving one's existing configuration.

Rather than slimming down the desktop browser, making it possible to add extensions, Vivaldi was packing in a huge number of features right into the software, but at the same time, it was trying to make it easy for mainstream users to discover and use more complex features.

According to commentators, the download and setup were pretty easy and users could also choose from some layout choices, including which edge one wanted the tabs to appear on (top, sides, bottom).

On the left side of the layout are buttons for ''web panels'', which are sites one saved and  accessed with one click and opened in a panel.