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Opera Releases "Neon", an Experimental Web Browser

posted by martyb on Sunday January 15 2017, @06:44PM   
from the no-singing-fat-lady,-yet dept.

takyon writes:

Opera has released an experimental web browser called Neon that mainly shows off new UI ideas:

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. Though it still includes shortcuts to bookmarks and top websites, they're displayed as floating bubbles that are overlaid on your desktop wallpaper. There's no discrete address bar either; there's just a line above all the floating balls asking you to type something in. Visually, it's very cool. The browser also does away with traditional tabs, replacing them with a series of circular icons on the righthand side of the browser, with one appearing for every page you have open. There are neat little animations as websites are pulled up and minimized back into their bubbles, but the animations are pretty sluggish right now in a way that hampers your ability to use the browser.

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.

There's always Vivaldi (1.6.689.40).

Also at PC Magazine, TechCrunch, BGR, and PC World.

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Original Submission

• windblows only windblows only (Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Sunday January 15 2017, @07:19PM

  by Gaaark (41) on Sunday January 15 2017, @07:19PM (#454133) Journal

  Pass.

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  --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---

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• Re:windblows only Re:windblows only (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 15 2017, @07:34PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 15 2017, @07:34PM (#454135)

  Might take time to support other OSes?

  Parent

  • Re:windblows only (Score: 1, Redundant) by Gaaark on Sunday January 15 2017, @07:41PM

    by Gaaark (41) on Sunday January 15 2017, @07:41PM (#454144) Journal

    Yeah, i know. But also, unless they make it fast and stable and non-tracking (lol), i'll still pass.

    fast and stable. why i dropped firefox.

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    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---

    Parent

• Re:windblows only (Score: 2) by driven on Sunday January 15 2017, @07:38PM

  by driven (6295) on Sunday January 15 2017, @07:38PM (#454139)

  MacOS and Windows:

  Those are the highlights of Neon for now. It’s available on macOS and Windows, so you can try it out if you’re interested. The browser is still too sluggish and odd to actually become a main browser for most people, but Opera isn’t exactly trying for that — it’s really just hoping to experiment with new ideas.

  Parent

• Re:windblows only (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @04:30PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @04:30PM (#454405)

  This is not a finished project, but an experiment. For that it is OK to support only a limited number of operating systems, even just one. And I guess if you want many people to test it, Windows is the way to go.

  When they have a final product, it's time to ask whether it supports Linux.

  Parent