Tip #471

Check image Alt text on mobile devices from the image’s context menu.

Alt text provides additional information about the images you find on web pages. On the one hand, it makes the content on the page more accessible, for example, for people who use screen readers, but Alt text is also displayed when, for one reason or another, the images fail to load. Even if you don’t rely on assistive technologies and the content loads without issues, you might still want to take a look at the description of the image.

To view Alt text in Vivaldi on Android and Vivaldi on iOS, long-press on the image to open the context menu, where the Alt text will be displayed as the first thing in the menu.

In Vivaldi on iOS, the whole description is displayed. On Android, if the text is too long, you need to tap on it to display it in its entirety.

A web page with an image open in Vivaldi on Android. The image has been long pressed to display the context menu and Alt text.

Tip #341

Enable Reader View for a distraction-free reading experience on Vivaldi on Android.

Web pages often come with a lot of content on them and focusing on the article you’re there to read can be a bit difficult with all the distractions. Enabling Reader View aka Simplified View on Android removes all but the main article, allowing you to focus on what’s important.

To enable Reader View on Android:

  1. First, go to Settings > Web Pages > Accessibility.
  2. Enable “Simplified view for web pages”.
  3. Then find a web page with an article you’d like to read. When Reader View can be enabled, a prompt will appear on top of the page.
  4. Tap on “View” to enable Reader View.
An article open in Vivaldi on Android with Simplified View prompt highlighted.

Tip #179

Light or dark? Choose the theme you prefer on the Vivaldi Forum.

Whether dark mode is easier on your eyes or you just enjoy the aesthetic, you now have the option to switch between light and dark themes also on the Vivaldi Forum.

To switch themes on the Forum:

  1. Click on your avatar in the top right corner and select Settings from the menu.
  2. In Select a Skin section, select your preferred Theme – Default (light) or Dark.
  3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save Changes.

Tip #174

Add alternative text to images you post on Vivaldi Social and Community Blogs.

Alternative or alt text is a short description of what is shown on the image. It is shown when the image can’t be displayed and is indexed by search engines. More importantly, alt text is used by screen reader software that helps visually impaired people browse the web. To contribute to making the web accessible for everyone, it’s strongly encouraged to add proper alt text to any images accompanying your posts on Vivaldi Social, Community Blogs on Vivaldi.net and other places on the web.

To add alt text to images you post on Vivaldi Social:

  1. Add an attachment to your post.
  2. Click on Edit in the top right corner of the image preview.
  3. Enter a description.
  4. Click Apply.

To add alt text to images in your blog posts:

  1. Upload or add an image from the Media Library to your blog post.
  2. Select the image.
  3. In block settings on the right side, look for Image Settings.
  4. Enter a description in the Alt text (alternative text) section.

Keep the description brief. If the image has text, it’s good to include it in the description. There’s no need to add alt text, if the image is only decorative and not related to the content.

Media editing window on Vivaldi Social with an example image and description.
Adding a description to an image on Vivaldi Social

Tip #131

Use Shift + arrow keys to navigate between links and elements on web pages.

To focus on the next and previous elements on a web page, you can use the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, respectively. Depending on your goal, that might result in having to press the same key or key combination many, many times.

You can navigate faster through the whole page with just the keyboard using Spatial Navigation. While holding down the Shift key press the arrow keys to move to elements left, right, above and below the currently highlighted element (has an orange border around it). When you’ve focused, for example, on a link on the page, press Enter to open it.

Tip #119

Adjust text zoom level to make reading on Vivaldi for Android more comfortable.

Whether the text on the phone screen is too small for you to read or the opposite, your eyesight is great and you want to fit more text on the screen, Vivaldi for Android has a text scaling setting for you to make use of.

To change zoom level for texts on Vivaldi for Android:

  1. Go to Vivaldi menu > Settings > Web Pages > Accessibility.
  2. Move the text scaling slider between 50% to 200% until the example text in the box below is comfortable to read.

You can also enable Force enable zoom for instances, where the web page tries to prevent text scaling.

Two phones with the same article open in Vivaldi browser. Left one with 100% text scaling, the right one with 140% text scaling.