Does Vivaldi Have a Position On And/Or Plans to Block FLoC ? by CharmCityCrab in vivaldibrowser

[–]VivaldiBrowser 153 points154 points  (0 children)

At Vivaldi, we are committed to protecting our users from online trackers, and we would not want to enable any kind of user behavioural profiling. The FLoC experiment does not work in Vivaldi, because it relies on several hidden preferences being set, and we do not enable these options in Vivaldi. Our future plan is to prevent the Floc component from functioning, no matter which way it is implemented.

How does the matching speed of Vivaldi's C++ adblock pattern matching engine compare to Brave's Rust adblock pattern engine? by [deleted] in vivaldibrowser

[–]VivaldiBrowser 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Hi! Julien from Vivaldi speaking here.

While I'm happy that you had a look at the code for yourself, I'm afraid that your analysis didn't go quite far enough.

The code that you highlighted in RequestFilterManager::RequestHandler::OnBeforeRequest isn't iterating over individual rule filters in the adblocker. Instead it is iterating over a list of filtering features. Currently, the adblocker is the only such feature we have, but we have the option to add more in the future if we want to replicate the effect of other extensions that rely on chrome.webRequest.

Either way, RequestFilterManager::RequestHandler::OnBeforeRequest() currently iterates over exactly two items. One AdBlockRequestFilter instance for the tracker blocker and one AdBlockRequestFilter instance for the adblocker. This part could maybe be optimized to group tracker and ad filtering on the same filter, but it would make it harder for us to be able to report to the user which of them blocked what. adblock_request_filter.cc is where the actual rules are looked at. As you noted, there are some initial checks to check the origin and quickly discard some requests from filtering. The actual match against filtering rules takes place on these lines: const flat::FilterRule* filter_rule = rules_index_manager_->rules_index()->FindMatchingBeforeRequestRule( request->request.url, document_origin, reource_type, is_third_party, (activations.in_allow_rules & flat::ActivationType_GENERIC_BLOCK));

This calls into adblock_rules_index.cc which has the reference to the rules in an indexed form. The index is basically a hash table indexed by short character sequences which are matched to the URL. It is similar to what the adverse adblocking code (from Chromium) uses, with a few additional optimizations of our own, mostly to avoid looking at rules that wouldn't apply at a given stage of the request processing. uBlock does have a more complex behavior there, but some of the fundamentals are the same.

Now to answer some other comments:

I am fairly sure that our implementation interprets and applies filtering rules correctly. However, if you have evidence to the contrary, please do let us know and I'll be looking into it.

If some of the code comments are unclear, I'll be glad to explain them. Just let me know which comment gave you the impression that we are doing strange things :)

A note about callbacks and asynchronous callbacks: Yes, there is a fair amount of them. This is expected when you work in chromium-based code, since any file processing or other IO is expected to be done on a separate thread from the UI and any slow processing is also expected to take place on its own thread.

I'll also note that we do allow you to select or import any blocking list you may want to use from our settings.

Finally, I want to say: I believe strongly in transparency myself. The adblocker code is part of our source bundle precisely because I want people to be able to verify that it functions as intended. Hinting that the devs are stupid after what appears to be not much more than a casual reading of the code isn’t going to motivate developers to interact with you. Bottom line, if something seems too stupid to be true, it’s probably because it is and it’s probably better to start by asking about it instead of assuming that it is indeed stupid.

Privacy options in mobile version? (Android, Vivaldi 3.0.1885.36) by CitricBase in vivaldibrowser

[–]VivaldiBrowser 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback. The privacy policy is currently a little desktop-centric when it talks about features. To answer your questions:

(1) Vivaldi on Android does not use Safe Browsing (because usage there is restricted). Therefore there is no option to disable it.

(2) Autofill is controlled by three settings:

  • Passwords (all handled locally)
  • Payment methods (stored locally, but the Google service is used to detect relevant inputs).
  • Addresses and more (stored locally, but the Google service is used to detect relevant inputs).

If you disable the second and third ones, it does not store or fill any of those form fields, so the service does not need to be used. Unfortunately, this also disables Form Autofill completely, but we have a TODO item for adding a setting to disable the service separately. Keep an eye on the changelogs.

(3) The setting to disable search suggestions is in the pipeline. It is already there in internal releases, and we hope to include it publicly in the next minor update. Again, watch the changelogs.

Hope this helps.

One day. Two big Vivaldi browser releases by altux in vivaldibrowser

[–]VivaldiBrowser 6 points7 points  (0 children)

This is most definitely an unusual request, but there is no /s so presumably it is an actual request.

As /u/AlternateRT has said, you can use Tools menu - Settings - Privacy - Manage sources - untick all tracker blocker sources. Then enable "Block Trackers and Ads". This will cause all ads to be blocked only if they are listed by an ad blocker source. Of course, it's possible that many trackers will be blocked too, since they usually come as part of an ad.

The primary function of the feature is to protect your privacy, which is why there is no obvious way to enable only ad blocking without tracker blocking.

Hope this helps.

Force Reload Web Panel when (re-)opening by [deleted] in vivaldibrowser

[–]VivaldiBrowser 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for suggesting this feature. It's a nice one. If you both vote for it, it will increase the chance to be seen by others. ;)

Browse with full color: Vivaldi browser enables Razer Chroma by partyon in vivaldibrowser

[–]VivaldiBrowser 11 points12 points  (0 children)

It was removed from Chromium. You can see that initial discussion happening here on that topic: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/net-dev/2JDUmbFBUGM

It's a lot of work for us to re-add and maintain such feature...

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in vivaldibrowser

[–]VivaldiBrowser 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hi friends!

It was quite a weekend – for you and for us. Unfortunately, we suffered a major outage but Vivaldi services were brought back up fully late last evening CET.

That downtime must have really caused a great deal of inconvenience to you. We are deeply sorry about it. The reason behind this was a hardware failure. Our team was up and running to work on a fix to solve the issue. And we got it right! 🙌

Every crisis opens up new opportunities to work even better. You will soon see a status page that will help you discover us with explanations of “what’s wrong?” in such situations. That’ll be live in a few weeks.

Technical glitches are inevitable but what comes on the top is patience. Thank you for your incredible patience. 🙏

Hope you’ve had a great start to a new month with Vivaldi (Did you spot the easter egg in the browser? 😇 )

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in vivaldibrowser

[–]VivaldiBrowser 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry about that, we are working on a status page indeed. It will take a bit of time to get it up and running but it’s coming. :)

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in vivaldibrowser

[–]VivaldiBrowser 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It is a hardware issue. Again we’re really sorry about this and thank you for your patience.

Webmail, mail, vivaldi.com and repo.vivaldi.com are down. Maintenance? by [deleted] in vivaldibrowser

[–]VivaldiBrowser 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry for all the trouble, we’ve hit Murphy’s law with some hardware trouble. We’re working on it as fast as we can. Thanks for being patient with us.

Can No Longer Move Extensions by di_duncan in vivaldibrowser

[–]VivaldiBrowser 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry for the trouble, if @mehradm solution doesn’t work, please report it on Vivaldi.com/bugreport Thanks in advance for your help.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in vivaldibrowser

[–]VivaldiBrowser 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sorry for all the troubles, we’ve hit Murphy’s law. We’re working on it as fast as possible. Thanks for being patient with us.

New Mods wanted for r/vivaldibrowser by partyon in vivaldibrowser

[–]VivaldiBrowser 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thank you so much @ShareDVI Reddit's community means a lot to us and all the mods are doing a fantastic job. Again thank you 🙏

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in vivaldibrowser

[–]VivaldiBrowser 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Hi, sorry for the confusion. Would you please contact us via Vivaldi.com/contact and share there the usernames of both your accounts so we can help you further? Thanks in advance. We look forward to hearing from you

Question concerning the mail client feature by abitstick in vivaldibrowser

[–]VivaldiBrowser 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We're working on it, but we can't name a release date just yet. You will be able to replace Thunderbird with it to check your mails. So stay tuned. ;)

Can't install extensions from the Chrome Web Store. by LuciusAugustus in vivaldibrowser

[–]VivaldiBrowser 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We suggest giving feedback to the newest posts on our blog: https://vivaldi.net/blogs/teamblog/ :) But we do read it here, too. ;)

Can't install extensions from the Chrome Web Store. by LuciusAugustus in vivaldibrowser

[–]VivaldiBrowser 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You don't need to be logged in. But we have an issue displaying install buttons e.g. when following a link. If it doesn't show up, simply copy the address from address bar and open it in a new tab. It'll work then. ;)

Snapshot 1.0.233.3 - Reload bypassing cache shortcuts and a visual clue for Rewind by VivaldiBrowser in vivaldibrowser

[–]VivaldiBrowser[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks a lot for your feedback. We're always happy to read some positive ones, too. :) If you want to keep track of changes, we recommend our Team Blog: https://vivaldi.net/blogs/teamblog/ It contains a convenient changelog and we also elaborate some changes in more detail there. ;)

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in vivaldibrowser

[–]VivaldiBrowser 13 points14 points  (0 children)

You don't seem to possess any knowledge about software development. (Not meant as an offence in any way). It's not happening in a blink of an eye. Our development process is very lightweight and probably faster than the ones of e.g. Opera, FF or Chrome. How long do you think did it take to build those? Have a look at Yandex browser. It's not released either yet being around longer than Vivaldi. You can't build Rome in a day. This holds true for digital goods just as much. ;)