Version 4.3 of the Norwegian Vivaldi browser has been made available today. It comes with a number of major and minor news, including privacy related.
Perhaps the most anticipated news is support for Progressive Web Applications (PWAs), which is the ability to run web applications on a user’s device as if they were installed applications. Many other browsers support this for a long time, while Vivaldi lacks this functionality.
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New in this version of the browser is that the OAuth login feature in the integrated email, calendar, and feed clients, is no longer common in these parts and the rest of the browser. This allows users, for example, to sign in to Gmail using the email section, without signing in to Google in the rest of the browser. The purpose is to make it more difficult for Google to track users across the Services.
It will not detect inactive users
Vivaldi Technologies also says no to the web-related programming interface that was introduced a few days ago under the Chromium framework – which Vivaldi relies on. This is called Idle detection API Web applications can be notified if the user is inactive, based on inactivity with the mouse, keyboard, or touch screen, the user has shifted focus to another screen, the screen is locked or the screen protector is on.
Vivaldi Technologies believes that this can be misused to track behavior, and that it is unfair to expect users to understand the privacy implications they experience by allowing websites to use it. So the company chose to deactivate the support. Users who still want this support in Vivaldi can bypass this using one of the settings.
Other news mostly relates to improving or expanding existing functionality, such as translation from/to 68 other languages, a more user-friendly setting for syncing user data, an improved panel for downloads, as well as the fact that email attachments can now be drag-and-release.
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