Will History be less creepy after Vivaldi shuffles it?

OSLO, NORWAY: The Vivaldi browser is trying to rewrite the History feature giving users insights into their online behavior.

“We want to make browsing history more useful than ever before,” says Jon von Tetzchner, CEO at Vivaldi Technologies. “Instead of having to scroll through hundreds of lines, Vivaldi gives a comprehensive overview of history, presented in a visual way. This lets our users analyse their online activity and helps them find what they are looking for.” With each release, Vivaldi strives to improve every aspect of the program, and 1.8 is no exception. Its latest release also includes more options for taking notes in the browser, powerful sound control for tabs and other improvements, the company shared.

As per what the company further claims, this feature lets Vivaldi users quickly scan through visited websites and get helpful hints for finding old URLs besides showing history in a calendar view with detailed statistics about previously visited sites. Graphs and a color-coded heat map overlay add another dimension, showing peaks of online activity and key browsing trends.

All this data, as per the company, helps find previously visited web pages even when users cannot remember the right search term. Vivaldi is confident that now history puts searches in context – it may be easier to find an old URL if the user recalls seeing it on a certain day when he or she was particularly active online. In addition to that, users can filter search results by date, title, address and views.

What's perhaps more notable is that all of this information is claimed as one that is strictly private and local to a user’s computer – Vivaldi doesn’t collect user’s history data.

“The new History feature shows the kind of data that could be tracked by third parties,” says von Tetzchner. “Instead of trying to monetise our users’ browsing patterns, we are giving them this data – for their eyes only.”

With the ability to analyse this information, users can decide if they want to adjust their online behavior or remove certain items from the list.