January 12th, 2017- Opera today has showcased its first ever concept browser, codenamed Opera Neon.
Today’s web browsers are getting dated
“Web browsers of today are basically from the last millennium, a time when the web was full of documents and pages,” says Krystian Kolondra, Head of Opera browser. “With the Opera Neon project, we want show people our vision for the future of the web.”
Since its inception twenty years ago, the internet has become such an essential part of our lives. Every day, billions of people access it using their favorite web browsers. But the internet keeps changing, and so must the browsers.
Since a year ago, Opera has stepped up the game for browsers, introducing novel features such as free VPN and native ad-block, but the company realized it’s now time for someone to properly challenged the browser industry.
What is Opera Neon
Opera Neon is a concept browser built from the same browser engine as the Opera browser, and designed to allow you to focus on the most important part of the internet: the content. Opera Neon will provide users fun ways to interact with the web content, including the ability to drag and push things around, and to even pop content from the web.
A completely new user interface debut in Opera Neon. It includes:
- New start page using your current desktop background image
- A left sidebar with video player, image gallery, and download manager
- A new visual tab bar on the right side of the browser window, making it easier to distinguish the relevant tab
- An intelligent system which automatically manages tabs. Like gravity, frequently-used tabs will float to the top, while rarely-used tabs will sink to the bottom.
- A completely new omnibox, supporting top search engines and open search
Also, new ways of enjoying web content have been added:
- Video pop-out, which lets users continue to watch videos when on other web pages
- Snap to gallery – snapshot and crop any part of a web page and save to the gallery for later use.
- A split screen mode which allows for two pages to easily be opened and simultaneously used.
Opera Neon and Opera browser
Opera Neon is a concept browser, meaning a vision for the future of browsers. It will not replace the current Opera browser. However, some of its new features are expected to be added to Opera this spring.
Opera Neon concept is available for testing as a free download for Windows and Mac from here www.opera.com/neon.