MILL PARK (digi.no): Jon von Tetzchner is fully back in the media spotlight – his new browser Vivaldi has been well received by two “technical sneak peeks,” which are functioning, but still lacks some of the features developers jobs with.
More space
The profile Opera entrepreneur is still living in Boston, USA, where Vivaldi now being managed from, while the bulk of the development happens at offices in Oslo and Iceland. Offices yes – since last’ve namely Vivaldi moved into its own premises at Aker River, just a stone’s throw away from the original offices of the Opera.
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Von Tetzchner allows herself a trip to Oslo once in a while, and last digi.no met him, it was precisely in connection with the launch of the first test version of Vivaldi. A launch that came out of the blue for many, even though the team had been doing the project for quite a while.
– After I stopped in Opera I thought I should do something else. In the end we moved to the US to try something new. Meanwhile I tried myself on the other side of being an investor, invest in some startups, and also came in time with Innovation House, said von Tetzchner, before he mentions an important point in the history of Opera:
– Decisions Opera takes in the period, firstly to drop Presto (rendering engine Opera had relied on for years, journ.’s note.). It seems I was wrong. I think we had built up a code base that was horrible good, but it is clear that it took a lot of maintenance. The decision to kill Presto was really taken a bit earlier, before I joined as chief, in the period afterwards, I tried to influence the betting more, but it was not an unexpected decision.
– To go for another user’s something else. Firstly I saw the response of the users – Opera had a symbiotic relationship with users, worked very closely with them, and the response was very distressed. I was in the same situation. What should I use? Including email, I was spoiled by using Opera’s email client and then simply no other solution.
– that came the idea of creating a new browser. Then it was almost 2013.
It goes forward for Vivaldi.
Set ye in the US and worked?
– We had the germ of a team. It was a probing phase, we spent some time in 2014 in a way we are working to find out how to do this here. We had some discussion about how we should have had this. I was then in the US, but the team was scattered. We wanted to keep things a bit hidden and would not contact lots of people. Some of those who came to us were former Opera folks, so I hired someone in Iceland who were not part of the Opera system. It was never the plan to recruit Opera people conscious.
– we did things in secret until last spring, when we went live.
Vivaldi got immediate attention, the browser would obviously not compete with giants like Chrome or Firefox, not even with Opera. It would also bring back the old Opera feeling, that the original users had missed.
The user experience is significantly
– It’s not just Presto it’s all about, another thing was the interface. Opera always thought differently, and we have the same philosophy. We will adapt to the user, we should not be afraid to add advanced functionality, it should be easily accessible. It’s a different philosophy than any other in the browser market. When we went live, there were many who agreed that we needed an alternative to the simple browser, said von Tetzchner.
There has never been any secret that audience Vivaldi is not “most people”, but demanding network users. Again – the core audience for Opera as it was in the old days. Those who would like to help, be able to influence the development, those working on specific ways.
You can almost see the old Opera offices of the window to Vivaldi. Deliberately? Photo: Thomas Marynowski
– A common only user to visit websites do not need us. But those who might have 30 tabs open at all times, actively using bookmarks, user keystrokes and “gestures”, the kind of thing to save time and be effective. One might ask themselves how many there are, I think there are quite a few. It is not the majority of the market, but ten percent? Twenty?
We can not help but ask about the features that von Tetzchner feel separates Vivaldi most out from the crowd, and that is most suited to your audience?
– It is perhaps the handling the windows, what is unique about it is that you have lots of tabs, and then we let you create tab stacks . When you then can “tile” the sides afterwards – the value of it is when you have a large screen with very high resolution.
Or multiple monitors?
– In so far, but what has happened is that 4K screens is something that comes. It will become more and more normal future. We’ve had a hold on 1080p a while, it was the maximum in many ways, not least for your laptop. But now we’ve got the iMac computer station with 5K screen, you’ve got laptops with 4K, you can buy a 40 inch 4K display to 3000 kroner. It is new. Earlier when they had a big screen meant that one could see things larger. Now you can see more. There is another type of problem. It is clear that when you look at a Web page on a 4K monitor so it is 75 percent air. It’s better to utilize it to have more pages and several stacks side by side. There is a real power user-esteem. It’s the kind of thing we think it’s fun to work with.
The first test version of Vivaldi was downloaded 400,000 times in a very short time.
It is thus well established point now – Vivaldi is for special interests. But still you come far without keeping an eye on how the market evolves and what the broad trends are. More people are using the web on the go. Although Opera has become a major player when it comes to mobile browsers, especially in countries where infrastructure is poorer developed. What is Vivaldi’s thoughts on this?
– We have clear ambitions to go in the mobile direction. The largest share of Opera’s mobile users are using Opera Mini. It compresses. Opera Mini is still running at Presto. It was a very efficient code base. Using Chromium costs too much, and that is why Opera has not taken the switch. We have certain limitations in relation to the code base we use, since we use Chromium. So we will see – we will create a mobile product, but this by being able to go to the smallest phones with the code base we have is not something we should prioritize.
But we can get a hint when a possible mobile version coming?
– We have no time frame on it. We have begun to look at it, we must think about how we can reuse code to the greatest possible extent. We have no product to show, the focus is getting ready desktop browser, and then we take the mobile browser afterwards.
What platforms would then have been most interesting? Is it just Android applicable?
– The main problem is that we want to use the same code base, and it will not on iOS. So it will mean a much larger boost. We will adapt to the platform, but where we must do double duty. As long as Apple is blocking alternative browsers so it is difficult to get to.
When digi.no visited Vivaldi was relatively empty, but the company is now over 20 people and including several former Opera employees are moving into. Photo: Thomas Marynowski
– There has been a change at Apple in terms of how well the engine can be accessed should run, it can run as fast as theirs. But there was no question of being able to post their own motor. We use the WebKit we too, but via Chromium. So it’s a challenge. But a lot can happen …
Looking ahead
With fine new offices, new releases in the pipeline and a generally high level of ambition, one can interpret to the staff grows. We ask entrepreneur whether they bet on hiring new employees in the future.
– We now have a decent team, and it comes in some new people. Opera now had a round in which they pretended awful lot of good people go, we picked some of them, and we would gladly picked all. But we can not. We get anyway, strengthening of staff, confirming von Tetzchner.
This is connected with the impending beta version, which is prototype these days. Von Tetzchner also says that the much-publicized email client, which should be built into the browser, also developed continuously. – There are several people working on the code daily. It’s not that we wait with it, it worked on all the time, assure von Tetzchner.
There are more that have occurred in the browser world since the last. Giant Microsoft has after all decided to shelve Internet Explorer in upcoming Windows 10, and pursue a new, lighter and cleaner browser called Microsoft Edge. This is probably not the same audience as Vivaldi, but we wonder still on impressions.
– It is of course positive that something is happening. For us purely strategic, it is positive that there is interest for browsers. It’s easier to get attention when there are more people working with the same. It’s an interesting change. In practice it is an upgrade of the existing browser with some visual changes, but note functionality is such fun.
Also read: This disappears with Microsoft Edge.
Browsers are thus again become a topic – and it happens more on this front than ever. Vivaldi is clearly ready to become an actor, and especially hijack the part of the user population that once fell Opera. Just follow von Tetzchner and his team – they go nowhere.
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