The latest stable version of Vivaldi es ahora the 6.9, with some minor fixes that are released from time to time to update Chromium and apply patches. The next major one will be v6.10, and although it is difficult to keep track of everything they are doing because they do not usually publish detailed information until the moment of their release, this time we do know some very interesting changes. All of them will be obvious.
To be able to taste them, you have to install Vivaldi 6.10, which is currently in its beta channel or Snapshot, as they call it. You don't have to do anything to see the theme; it will be applied when you upgrade. The first thing you'll notice is the layout of the tabs: in a clean installation — and I can't say if it's also in existing ones — the tabs will be the same size or slightly larger, but the space between other elements will be larger. That's fine, unless you prefer the main window to be as big as possible. That extra space makes the top bar thicker.
Now, this can be changed. There will be a new “UI Density” setting within the Appearance menu, and if we choose “Compact” everything will look almost as it does now. Perhaps with slightly more rounded edges. This new feature, which will be in the settings in future versions, can be activated from vivaldi://experiments in the current version of the browser.
New icons in Vivaldi 6.10
The next thing we don't focus on is the iconsThe current ones aren't bad, but they don't have as much personality as the ones that will be in the new Vivaldi 6.10 theme. They've given a twist to simplicity and seem more casual.
And looking to the future, the same Snapshot allows us to use a new home page. In a version less than or equal to 6.9 we already saw a lot, with the possibility of accessing emails, calendar and a quick start. In a version equal to or greater than 6.10 the Dashboard can be activated, currently without translation into Spanish. It will not be seen by default when updating; it will be an experiment that must be activated from vivaldi: // experiments.
Once available, we will see something like the screenshot above, taking into account that what it shows is a new installation with almost no customization — in a Windows virtual machine, it must be said. There will be widgets that we can add:
- Calendar agenda.
- Latest emails.
- Sticky note.
- Favorites
- Chores.
- Tip of the day.
- Sources.
- Favorite sites.
- Privacy statistics.
- A Web page.
- Date.
These widgets will have a regular or tall size, the normal ones being all those in the previous capture except the web page widget, which is the tallest. Some of the widgets can be added in duplicate, like the web page widget, but others can only be added once.
At this stage of development, Much remains to be translated. We must not forget that this is an experiment. It will probably reach the stable version in the future, but they are still working on it.
Wallpapers and themes removed
The list of changes that we presented yesterday They would complete it with new backgrounds for the home page. In addition, they have removed several themes from the default installation, but they can still be downloaded from the browser themes page. The removed themes are Classic up to v6.7, Human, Blueprint and Hot Pink.
Further down the list of changes we find useful new features, such as the ability to synchronize web panels. This will save us a lot of time when doing a fresh installation on the same computer or a new one. RSS feed subscriptions can now be organized by folder.
Vivaldi 6.10 is currently in development and there is no scheduled release date. It will land in the next few weeks with everything explained here and probably with other changes yet to be discovered.