Does your Rented Computer need a makeover? Well Opera released a new web browser today called Neon that’s meant to try out a bunch of untested design ideas. Neon isn’t close to being ready to replace your main web browser it’s being called a “concept browser” — but it does have some neat ideas that are fun to try out and, in some cases, you can imagine becoming part of a major browser one day.
Neon's homepage looks far different than any other browser's. Although it still has shortcuts to bookmarks and top websites, they are displayed as floating bubbles that are on top of your desktop wallpaper. There is no obvious search engine bar either; there is just a line above all of the floating balls asking you to type something in.
At the point the browser is at now it is too slow and odd to actually become a main browser for most people, but Opera isn't exactly shooting for that. Its real goal is to experiment with new ideas and test new never before seen features. One of the smarter ideas in Neon is built-in support for split-screen browsing. Drag one website’s bubble (its tab) over top of an already open page, and Opera will offer to split your view in two. Their sizes are adjustable, though only one side of the split-screen will respond to other tabs you want to open up — the other side remains more or less fixed.
Visually it is very pleasing. The browser also does away with traditional tabs, replacing them with circular icons on the right hand side of the browser, one for every page you have open. On the left hand side of the browser are a series of browser tools; one for screenshots, another for a gallery containing those screenshots, one for downloads, and finally the most interesting button pulls out an overlay that Opera calls the player. The player collects the songs and videos available to play throughout all of your tabs.
It is now available on macOS and Windows
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