New version of the browser now up for grabs

Jun 20, 2019 08:02 GMT  ·  By

Vivaldi browser has just received another major update, and this time the improvements are truly significant.

First and foremost, Vivaldi 2.6 introduces what the developing team calls an “abusive ad-blocker,” which is a new tool specifically supposed to block adverts that rely on abusive technologies supposed to make them misleading.

One such example is a popup that blocks you from leaving the site or click the back button, so with this release, Vivaldi makes all these systems useless.

The abusive ad-blocker runs on a list of sites that is maintained by the parent company itself. Vivaldi developers say the list is stored on end-to-end encrypted systems, so no data is revealed when the browser retrieves it from the main server.

“Going forward, the blocklist of abusive ads gives us the opportunity to consider adding similar, related functionality for the benefit of our users. The way that we’ve implemented this functionality is an interesting step in the direction of relying less on third-party services,” Vivaldi says.

Further Razer integration

Additionally, this new release adds further profile options, like customizable avatars, adding and deleting profiles and editing avatars right in the popup.

There are lots of other improvements in this release, like options to filter saved passwords, an enhanced search field that now displays the favicon of the active search engine, as well as support for Razer headphones. The previous update introduced Razer Chrome integration, and with Vivaldi 2.6, the browser makes another step towards providing users with an experience specifically tailored to their devices.

There are also several performance enhancements, as the team wanted to improve working with many tabs at the same time.

“There is a marked improvement if you tile tabs into split-screen views, or often move tabs to new windows. Opening, closing, and resizing of Panels in the sidebar is also much snappier,” Vivaldi says.

You can download Vivaldi browser for Windows, Linux, and Mac using these Softpedia pages.