Vivaldi, the new Web browser for power users

Interesting development in the desktop browser world, a new web browser from some Opera folks.  I'm not exactly sold on this, and I was never a huge fan of Opera, but I do agree that I don't like this trend towards making the browser feel and look more and more invisible -- removing menubars, addressbars, statusbars, etc..

Desktop browsers have largely followed this overall trend of slipping into the background. Every new release sees them simplifying their interfaces and removing features that their data collection tools indicate are only used by a small handful. RSS icons disappear, toolbars get hidden away, the URL bar will likely disappear soon for many...

There is, however, still that five percent that actually did use the RSS icon, liked their status bar, and will most likely abandon any browser that hides away the address bar. The power users may be the minority, but they still exist. Exactly what constitutes a power user is up for debate, but looking at the recent history of Web browser "advances" one thing seems clear, the power user is not the target audience. The person who wants to be in control of their experience and customize it to their liking has been left behind by most browsers.

The power user's current solution to the simplification, arguably the infantilization, of the Web browser interface is to get all those missing features back with add-ons. This works to a degree, but it introduces a ton of extra code, some of it written by programmers far less capable than those contributing to the code of Firefox or Chromium. This inevitably means add-ons slow things down. The problem is bad enough that a future version of Firefox will even have a feature dedicated to letting you know which of your add-ons is slowing you down.

http://arstechnica.c...ser-for-power-users/