Opera has a new vision for web browsing, now materialized in their latest piece of software, the Neon web app. The new concept browser is already available for download on their official website and looks to offer interested users an entirely different way to surf the Internet.
Neon is Opera’s new way to test some forgotten design ideas that many users are already praising.
It presents the homepage in a revolutionary fashion, replacing tabs with bubbles (similar to Google+’s circles), and minimizes the clutter around the edges.
Opera partnered with graphic designer Luke Choice to create to free Neon-related wallpapers. The browser looks to be a transparent environment, so once downloaded it blends seamlessly with the user’s desktop.
Finally, you can use YouTube without switching tabs
Neon takes most features from its parent browser Opera, which means that traits like the ‘Speed Dial’ are still there, only redesigned. “Each Opera Neon feature is an alternate reality for the Opera browser,” the website states.
Visually, it will most likely attract many users looking for a minimalistic approach to internet surfing. Neon has a newly developed, never-before-tested physics engine that makes the objects and tabs move around the screen with weight and freedom.
The flexibility of the bubbles and floating tabs allows the user to create split-screen views of what they’re browsing, among other things. To do so, they only need to drag a website’s bubble to an already open tab.
The top section contains a discrete search bar, and the left-hand side acts as a simple toolbar with four distinct functions. One allows users to take screenshots of web pages quickly, and another is a gallery where they can access them.
There is also a ‘Downloads’ manager, and the fourth is the revamped ‘Player’ which can store all of the playing media in the web-browser simultaneously. So, if users leave a video or music website open, they can just access it with this function without switching tabs.
Opera Neon is a concept browser, and people can try it out
Executive Vice President for Desktop at Opera, Krystian Kolondra, wrote on their official blog that they had been building browsers for 20 years now and that the field was getting a little stale.
Their idea is to put out “an experimental browser that envisions the future of web browsers similar to the way concept cars predict the future of automobiles.”
Neon is currently available for both Windows and Mac, but the first version still needs a few tweaks before it can officially roll out. However, any user can already try it on for themselves and see what future web-surfing will look like, most likely.
Source: Opera