I've been using Vivaldi now for over a year (since early beta days), and finding it a great experience.
A couple of things I really like - (1) that the browser chrome changes to suit the colour scheme of the website that you have loaded when flicking through tabs. Makes it really easy to identify what site you are on especially if you have scrolled down past the header. (2) that they have a slider on the bottom toolbar for zooming in/out of websites. For this old guy with failing eyesight, that is a killer feature that I use all the time.
Happy to also see that the number of sites reporting "You are not using an approved browser" has reduced to nearly 0 when browsing via Vivaldi, but that is more a problem for lazy web designers who only create sites specifically for a particular rendering engine, I guess.
EDIT: Interesting Observation - I remember that in the early days, their main selling point was their command line functionality for power users. That was what made me change over back then, although ironically I never ever use their CLI tool set at all these days, and just use the mouse like always.
I note that they have downplayed the CLI functionality on their current website, so perhaps it wasn't such a drawcard for other users either?!?
LOL, next you'll be saying that we should replace coloured traffic lights with black and white "STOP" and "GO" signs?
I'd suggest you do a Google search on the human ability to discern colour as an indicator way faster than reading text. Especially if on the peripheral vision outside of direct line of sight. NASA and USAF research papers on layouts of aircraft/spacecraft instrumentation etc. too might be helpful to you.
Real world example - Right now, as I type this in another browser in the foreground, my Vivaldi browser is 80% obscured by this window, but I can tell by the right edge of the window colour that the currently active tab on it is my Google Mail.
"In psychology, the Stroop effect is a demonstration of interference in the reaction time of a task. When the name of a color (e.g., "blue", "green", or "red") is printed in a color that is not denoted by the name (e.g., the word "red" printed in blue ink instead of red ink), naming the color of the word takes longer and is more prone to errors than when the color of the ink matches the name of the color.
...
This is based on the idea that word processing is significantly faster than color processing."
Your analogy is so broken I'm surprised you even suggested it. If there were as many traffic light colors as there are websites, obviously a sign with words is superior to some color-coded nonsense.
Let's say for argument that you frequent 5 sites and we'll maintain your traffic analogy. What's easier: memorizing 5 colors and their associated speed limit or just looking at numbers on the sign?
Not broken at all. If you do even rudimentary UX analysis with people, even taking cultural differences into consideration, you will find that most people equate a red coloured button with something dangerous or that can cause an adverse effect, and green/blue with a positive outcome.
Hence why in most cases, a save button will be green or blue or another cool colour, whereas a cancel or delete button will generally be red or yellow to stand out, or else a very muted colour so as not to draw attention.
And speaking of the NASA and USAF research, I used to be a commercial pilot, and studied those UX principles that were done way back in the 40's and 50's because they are still relevant today. Most aircraft instrumentation is very colour oriented, so that in the busy working conditions of a cockpit, you know almost instantly when gauges are 'in the red' or 'in the green'. There is simply no time to read the numbers in some cases, so you tend to get used to seeing either the colours, or the relative angle of gauge needles to ascertain whether you are in trouble or not.
Similarly, if I am tabbing through Vivaldi windows, I can tell far quicker whether I am on HN by noticing the quintessential "Hacker News Orange" colour on the frame of the browser, than I can by trying to parse something like: "https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=13334188&goto=item%3Fi... on a 1cm high URL bar with my 50 year old eyesight.
I browse several other sites that use the same fawn colour for the main body of the site, but HN always has the orange outline in Vivaldi, even if the header bar is out of sight on the page.
Same for the Facebook deep blue, or the Twitter light blue, or any of my 6 different web apps, which are all Bootstrap based but have a different Vivaldi coloured frames based on their logo and other interface colouring.
There is a reason why most big brands are fussy about the colours of their logos and image assets. The fact that Vivaldi actually USES that branding in their general UI to further identify that site is a positive move IMO.
We will obviously always use the url bar to tell for sure what site we are on right now. But the color thing makes it possible to much faster tell the difference. It's a very useful feature.
A couple of things I really like - (1) that the browser chrome changes to suit the colour scheme of the website that you have loaded when flicking through tabs. Makes it really easy to identify what site you are on especially if you have scrolled down past the header. (2) that they have a slider on the bottom toolbar for zooming in/out of websites. For this old guy with failing eyesight, that is a killer feature that I use all the time.
Happy to also see that the number of sites reporting "You are not using an approved browser" has reduced to nearly 0 when browsing via Vivaldi, but that is more a problem for lazy web designers who only create sites specifically for a particular rendering engine, I guess.
EDIT: Interesting Observation - I remember that in the early days, their main selling point was their command line functionality for power users. That was what made me change over back then, although ironically I never ever use their CLI tool set at all these days, and just use the mouse like always.
I note that they have downplayed the CLI functionality on their current website, so perhaps it wasn't such a drawcard for other users either?!?