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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.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 15 2017, @07:52PM
What is the big deal exactly? I see nothing extraordinary, except for a return to the MDI (Multi-Document Interface) of yore (which was the start of Opera, mind you).
The bubbles aren't anything different from what Opera (and Firefox, and Chrome) have as their start page. The difference is that these 'wobble' when hover over them... big deal!
The search thing in the middle is something I've had in Opera and Firefox for ages as well, it's called the address bar.
The only thing that other browsers "don't have" is that whole snapping sites next to each other (even though I can do the same by lifting a tab into its own window and placing the two windows next to one another.
So, seriously, I don't get what makes this special...or even different from what we have right now. Can someone (an opera-fanboi preferably because they'll have the most arguments) explain what I'm missing please?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 15 2017, @08:17PM
"explain what I'm missing please?"
You're missing an appreciation for slick graphics. Didn't you watch CSI?. It's sort of like the new desktop applications we have at my job. There's lots of slick animations and charts with smoothly transitioning graphics ultimately aimed at presenting the same information that I previously got from an Excel spreadsheet. The pointy-haired bosses think it's a huge advancement. To me it's more of a pain in the ass.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday January 15 2017, @08:19PM
I don't even think it's special, and I submitted the article! We are reaching the point where browser innovation means repeatedly overhauling the UI and seeing what sticks around.
I barely use Vivaldi either although it has a lot to like (if you can handle another Webkit/Blink browser).
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(Score: 4, Informative) by Marand on Sunday January 15 2017, @09:30PM
The only thing that other browsers "don't have" is that whole snapping sites next to each other (even though I can do the same by lifting a tab into its own window and placing the two windows next to one another.
It's not one of the big three, but KDE's Konqueror has had splitting for years. Since KDE 3.5 I believe. You can split the view multiple times horizontally and vertically and browse in a tiling window manager-esque way. Could mix local filesystem views as well, making it very flexible. Likely never caught on because large enough screens to make it viable for browsing came later.
Konqueror has always been pretty good, with some interesting decisions. Just was hampered a bit by the renderer, khtml, so it's a bit ironic that Apple's khtml fork, webkit, and webkit's fork, blink, now dominate. Khtml indirectly rules the world, but its own rendering still lags behind, just now it's losing to its own children.
Of course, you can switch Konqueror from khtml to webkit with a menu setting now, so it's no reason to avoid it any more.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday January 15 2017, @10:12PM
Blink goes beyond Webkit! Muahahahahahahaha!
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(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @04:41PM
While Firefox doesn't have it by default, there's an extension to do it; indeed, at least two: Tile Tabs [mozilla.org] and Tile View [mozilla.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Sunday January 15 2017, @09:42PM
Opera Neon wipes away your desktop clutter by bringing your computer’s wallpaper into the browser.
This was also done ages ago, by an office suite. Sun's predecessor to OpenOffice, Star Office, used to have a fake desktop that used your wallpaper and desktop shortcuts but intermingled shortcuts for recent and new documents with it. You could leave it open and use it instead of your normal desktop. At least, the *nix versions of the time did this.
It was both annoying and at times useful, and I couldn't decide if I was happy or not when Sun ditched the idea.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 15 2017, @09:51PM
The only thing that other browsers "don't have" is that whole snapping sites next to each other (even though I can do the same by lifting a tab into its own window and placing the two windows next to one another.
As usual, there's an add-on for that: Tile Tabs [mozilla.org].
(Score: 2) by Desler on Monday January 16 2017, @02:42AM
The only thing that other browsers "don't have" is that whole snapping sites next to each other (even though I can do the same by lifting a tab into its own window and placing the two windows next to one another.
That's strange. I've been doing this on an iPad with iOS10 for months now.