The company behind the niche web browser, Vivaldi, has today released version 5.0 bringing a plethora of new features including shareable themes, a Translate Panel with automatic translations and a dual tab bar on Android. Each of these new features add to the already long list of things power users can do inside this browser.
With the new Vivaldi on desktop, users can more easily create themes as it handles background images more seamlessly. If you’re not very good at theming yourself, a new option has been added to download themes from the web. On the other hand, if you can make good themes, then feel free to share them on Vivaldi’s themes website so others can download and use your creations.
Also available in this update for desktop is the Translate Panel which lets you translate snippets of text more easily. To use the feature, you just open the Translate Panel then highlight any text on the page, it will automatically appear in the Translate Panel along with a translation in your target language with no additional clicks required. If you do a lot of translations, Vivaldi helpfully keeps a local history record so you can view previous snippets that you translated.
On mobile, the main change to Vivaldi is the introduction of so-called double-decker browser tabs. Phones tends to have a lot of vertical space so the Vivaldi team probably thought why not use this extra space to cram in more tabs. Having full tabs like a desktop browser makes it easier to switch between webpages as you don’t have to open a separate tabs selector like you do on Chrome and Firefox.
Speaking of optimising for the screen size, Vivaldi 5.0 for Android has been updated to work properly with tablets and Chromebooks. Similarly to the desktop experience, tablet users will now be able to open panels on the left side of the browser. The panels provide access to a variety of items including History, Downloads, Bookmarks, Notes, and more.
Commenting on the update for tablets, Jon von Tetzchner, Vivaldi CEO, said:
“Attention to detail is key when addressing needs of our users, and with the new improved tab interface, Two-Level Tab stacks, and the Panel UI on a tablet, our developers have taken usability and customizability on Android to the next level.”
To get the latest version of Vivaldi, head over to the downloads page of the Vivaldi website, there you will find a link to the Google Play Store as well as downloads for Windows, macOS, and Linux.