17 ms·

Opera Neon concept browser

318 points by napolux 10y ago

konart 10y ago
Opera 12: http://i.imgur.com/ItevlTB.png http://i.imgur.com/ItevlTB.png Just saying...
nialv7 10y ago
Funny how they are using Mac in their demo video, while the browser only supports Windows.
- fnordsensei 10y ago
  I'm running it on a Mac right now. It does behave oddly when in full screen though.
- TobbenTM 10y ago
  The browser supports both platforms, just shows you a OS-specific site based on what you're on.
satysin 10y ago
This is what Microsoft Edge should be doing (innovating) and not just trying to cram in Microsoft services like OneNote. Honestly Edge is still such an awful browser and it is the default browser in Windows 10 which has been out for 18+ months now. Shocking.
- FlorianRappl 10y ago
  I wouldn't call it horrible, but starting from their promised solution (IE without all the crap; lightweight + innovative) not much is delivered. The browser feels buggy and slow and I do not see much innovation.
  - taivare 10y ago
    SVG brakes badly in Edge , I check all the time , they'll run fine in Chrome and Firefox but not Edge !
sprokolopolis 10y ago
This is a really neat concept that seems to be inspired by some of the mobile browsers out there. Flynx, Flyperlink and Link Bubble all use the (facebook-chathead-style) bubbles that sit over other apps and the UI. They are very convenient on mobile and allow you to do other things, while pages are loading. In my opinion, this browser consumes too much screen space with the browser windows being smaller windows inside the Neon container. I would prefer if they ditched the outermost container window and let the bubbles handle the hiding/moving of the browser, like the mobile browsers I mentioned above. Maybe there is a bubble that lives in the top right that sucks up and hides all browser bubbles and interface elements, then invokes them all when the user wants to show the browser again. I welcome any experimentation and innovation in the browser space. I do really like the idea of easily-tiling browser windows. In the future, I would love to be able to adjust the size and padding of the bubbles to allow more viewing space in the browser windows. The original Opera had cascading, individual windows within the browser, before switching to tabs. They have sort of come full circle. I currently use opera as my primary browser, but I really miss the tab spaces that Firefox had. I feel like the bubble concept provides a great opportunity for pinned bubble groups that contain groups of websites that I use together. I could have a meta bubble for sites that I use specifically for work, or for my favorite news sites.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
dvcrn 10y ago
I like how this feels, but sadly without 1Password and AdBlock I can't consider using it for now. It looks like it's running pretty much on the same tech as normal opera and chrome. Here's to hope that extensions are coming soon! /edit: looks like extensions is still available in the menu, it just doesn't resolve to anything.
aakarpost 10y ago
Neon is fast compared to Chrome.
mkhpalm 10y ago
Well this is kinda cool. I wouldn't use it (in its current state anyway), but it's cool. It seems like they're trying to turn a browser in to a type of desktop, kinda like Chrome OS I guess. My first impressions though are the left sidebar is incredibly unresponsive, and both the left and right sidebar need to be able to be hidden so the browser window isn't so small.
skrebbel 10y ago
On Windows, the page title is "Opera Neon concept browser for Windows". Maybe rename to [for Mac and Windows]?
- jedimastert 10y ago
  Or maybe take out the operating system
  - Aaargh20318 10y ago
    If you look at the page with $OS it looks like there is only a version for $OS available. I can see how that might lead to headlines like this. I also initially assumed it was a mac-only app.
    - cbr 10y ago
      In Chrome on Linux it reads "Opera Neon concept browser for Windows"
      - pluma 10y ago
        ... with no mention of Mac. So the point is still valid.
    - yread 10y ago
      If there was a version for Minix, now that would be newsworthy!
- wjoe 10y ago
  On Linux, it says for Windows too, with no mention of the Mac version (and presumably no Linux version exists)
  - skrebbel 10y ago
    I guess they just have an `echo (if os == mac then "Mac" else "Windows")`
Zelmor 10y ago
I like the screen-cap utility. All the rest seems useless, knowing that people already litter their desktops with a million icons.
- leadingthenet 10y ago
  But why duplicate the screen-cap utility already available on your OS (which works exactly the same way)? Do I not get it?
  - sp332 10y ago
    It does save the original URL with the screenshot, which I guess is convenient. I prefer Firefox's version which lets you snap individual elements precisely, but it's hard to use. ("Inspect element", then right-click the node and "screenshot node".) They do have an experimental first-party extension called Page Shot that makes this easier to use, and adds full-text search to boot! https://testpilot.firefox.com/ https://testpilot.firefox.com/
  - lsh 10y ago
    vivaldi has a screencap facility as well that will capture the whole web page or just selections of it. it's a fairly recent addition. prior to that it would take screencaps when record notes about a site but only the current viewframe.
- Mithaldu 10y ago
  The screen-cap utility is the most useless thing they have to offer, as it'll inevitably recompress stuff that already had been compressed. It would be much more useful to have a tool to actually get you the link of the image you're seeing no matter how much the site tries to hide it.
julienmarie 10y ago
I switched from Chrome to Opera a couple of weeks ago and I don't see myself switching back. Little details make the difference: Better ram and battery consumption ( for now ), better tab management, integrated ad blocker and turbo mode when I'm using my phone as a hotspot ( living in a country with awful internet, it's really useful for basic browsing ). And as it's chromium inside, it's compatible with Chrome extensions.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
avar 10y ago
For anyone hoping for a Presto revival it's Chrome under the hood: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_2) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/53.0.2785.21 Safari/537.36 MMS/1.0.2459.0
- stymaar 10y ago
  It is most likely Blink under the hood[1], but the user agent doesn't give you any information on that subject. This is Edge's user agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/42.0.2311.135 Safari/537.36 Edge/12 It's almost the same except the MMS/number being replaced by Edge/number, and Edge is using a totally different engine than Chrome. [1] business-wise I don't see any good reason to revive a engine dead for 4 years (Presto) or even worst, develop a brand new one.
- pawadu 10y ago
  Opera moved to webkit in 2012 (2013?) and then to Blink soon after googles announcement.
  - jason_slack 10y ago
    does this mean they are using webkit, chrome and mozilla under the hood for rendering pages? All 3? What is the benefit? If a page is designed for Chrome then Opera could render it as intended and not how Webkit might render it, which could be wrong?
    - chucky 10y ago
      No. Their rendering engine is pure Blink. All browsers' user agent's contain mentions of more or less every browser that ever existed for historical compatibility reasons.
    - 0x4a42 10y ago
      Safari uses Webkit (a fork of KHTML), Opera and Chrome use Blink (a fork of Webkit), Firefox uses Gecko. Except on iOS where all browsers are forced to use a crippled version of Webkit.
the_duke 10y ago
Wow. You can open websites with icons. And you can take screenshots. Pretty amazing. (There might be more to Neon, of course, but if there is, the video is horrible in showing it off).
- StavrosK 10y ago
  As opposed to the font of amazing usability innovations that are Chrome, Safari and Firefox? I'll take something over nothing any day.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Seem to effectively be a continuation of their Coast browser on iPhone.
- Nagyman 10y ago
  Why start with snarky sarcasm if you admit there might be more to it than the video? There's also a bunch of copy on the page if you scroll past the video. * The tabs are represented by little screenshots; nice for navigating. Yet to determine how this scales with MANY tabs (I see, it scrolls vertically... hrm) * The split screen is pretty cool; many times I need to work between two tabs and alternating between them in Chrome is generally a pain * Videos can be played outside of the tab; cool if you want to continue browsing while having a video visible (think tutorial while visiting documentation pages) * All the dev tools are seemingly available – sweet * The page URL and title are big and nicely visible * It looks awesome for touch. I don't have a touch laptop though :( * Screenshots ... meh. I use OSXs built-in tools.
StavrosK 10y ago
This made me realize how little innovation there is in the browser space today. Opera used to innovate extensively before the sale, and it looks like at least they're trying to keep doing it. I'm also hopeful for Vivaldi. Chrome and Firefox are completely stagnant, unfortunately.
- KevanM 10y ago
  Whenever I've jumped ship, I've jumped to a simpler or faster version because the advances (at a perceived performance loss, or further UI changes). Opera used to be really fast, but then it started to come with lots of other useless tools (email, bittorrent client tool) and try to be an internet package So I jumped to Firefox which was simpler and Thunderbird was a separate client. Then that started to be clunkier, so I tried Chrome, which was faster. Much like laptop getting thinner, the gains are in the wrong area. What I want is a fast, secure browser that can remember history and bookmarks - everything else can be an add-on.
- Kostic 10y ago
  I am really blown away by Vivaldi but I can't, sadly, start using a closed source browser. Browsers are an important (maybe the most important) programs today. I simply can't allow myself to get locked into a closed source browser today.
  - lexnova 10y ago
    https://vivaldi.com/source/ https://vivaldi.com/source/
- draw_down 10y ago
  Boy oh boy, I dunno about that, particularly Chrome.
- problems 10y ago
  Honestly, I wish Firefox was more stagnant and less "let's clone Chrome's every misfeature, who needs the ability to modify the browser UI?".
- 10y ago
martinstartsup 10y ago
Interesting bubbly new browser! Just the blog post says: "Some new features you won’t have seen in a browser before: (...) A vertical, visual tab bar on the right side of the browser window that makes it easier to distinguish between tabs." Really? I use it everyday in Vivaldi Browser :)
- Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
  And it was in "their" own Opera 12 as well.
cataflam 10y ago
In a hilarious twist, when trying to download Opera Neon for Windows with Opera for Windows, the download is blocked: http://i.imgur.com/5kIyxzw.png http://i.imgur.com/5kIyxzw.png
- andrewvijay 10y ago
  Simply shows that their teams are not in sync with security policies or they don't have one.
  - cataflam 10y ago
    Probably just an oversight or a typo. They've now changed the link to https.
- roryisok 10y ago
  Worked fine for me, Opera Developer Edition?
  - cataflam 10y ago
    They changed the download link to https.
- ReverseCold 10y ago
  Isn't that your local antivirus? I know that's how that works in chrome.
  - cataflam 10y ago
    That's from Opera. See http://help.opera.com/opera/Windows/1781/en/private.html http://help.opera.com/opera/Windows/1781/en/private.html "If you are browsing on an encrypted connection (https:// https://), Opera checks to ensure that all parts of the site are encrypted. If Opera detects that any live elements of the page, for example scripts, plugins, or frames, are being served by an open connection (http:// http://), it will block the insecure content. This means parts of the page may not display properly. Opera advises against allowing insecure content to load into an encrypted connection. The best way to protect your sensitive information is to interact only with secure content. When Opera detects insecure content and blocks it, a warning will appear in the right side of the combined address and search bar. If you do not care about the security of your connection with the site, you can click the warning to show an Unblock button. This button will allow the blocked content to be loaded onto the page, and the security badge will change to show an open padlock, reminding you that you've allowed insecure content to display on an encrypted connection."
skrebbel 10y ago
OK, I'm giving it a roll. First impression: very positive. It's notably great on touch screens. The "tabs" and buttons are nice and big - no more accidentally closing a tab I meant to open by fat-fingering it. It brings back a bit of the UX goodness that was IE11 on Windows 8 (before you snark, IE11, despite its terrible engine, had a fantastic fullscreen mode in Windows 8 with fantastic UX for touch, which got removed in Windows 10). It doesn't seem to support extensions so I can't replace my normal Opera with it - that's a shame, I would've. The fluffy floaty icon bubble is a great start screen. Remove all the advertised nonsense sites and pin your favourites there (it was easy to discover how) and somehow I find finding stuff easier than it was in Opera classic's Speed Dial page. On first impression, at least. The chrome does take a fair amount of screen real estate though. Not sure I'd need the address bar to be so big and present.
- bhauer 10y ago
  The full-screen IE11 experience on early-generation Surface models was fantastic. Yes, IE11 had a meager JavaScript engine and several rendering quirks, but it was exceptionally quick at plain HTML, CSS, SVG. It used GPU acceleration for rendering earlier than other browsers; animation and scrolling were silky smooth. And that tablet-oriented UI was top notch. It's a shame it was removed in Edge on the desktop/tablet. I would figure Edge could provide it as an option and maybe even optionally enable it when Windows 10 is switched to its "tablet mode." Maybe some day. Incidentally, the same touch UI still exists in Edge on Windows 10 Mobile.
robertoestivill 10y ago
It reminded me of LinkBubble, and android application to open links in a background webview, see the loading progress and have them accessible as a floating bubble while doing something else. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.linkbubble.playstore&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.linkbubble...
iplaw 10y ago
Snap-to-gallery is an awesome feature addition for casual users, and I'd use it but-for having a Snagit license.
panic 10y ago
They should bring this to tablets! Tabs on the side would be a natural fit -- your fingers naturally rest near the side of the touchscreen.
- skrebbel 10y ago
  Or just get a Windows tablet / 2-in-1 :-)
dtnewman 10y ago
I am generally pretty hesitant to change browsers, but I actually really like the feel of this. It's super clean and the keyboard shortcuts are the same as what I'm used to so it seems like it should be an easy switch. Definitely something worth looking at. I'll probably try this out over the next few weeks. My only gripe so far is that when I click command+w, I want it to default to closing the window when I am on the blank search page (i.e. where the browser goes by default when you open up a new window), but it only seems to close the window if you have a page loaded. EDIT: This isn't a big deal. You can close the window in that case with command+shift+w, but the behavior feels inconsistent to me (that the window closes with just command+w when a page is loaded, but otherwise you need shift).
- dgrealy 10y ago
  One thing that bites me occasionally with the current browsers is when I'm closing a lot of tabs with cmd-w but go too far and accidentally close the last one and loose the window. Windows close with cmd shift w so this behavior makes sense to me. I like your attention to those shortcuts though I think we have similar standards:)
  - makecheck 10y ago
    In a few apps on the Mac I have made good use of the Keyboard Shortcuts part of System Preferences to prevent this. If destructive behavior is a bit too "easy" in an app, I remap the command to something complex. I think my Quit in Firefox for instance is now command-shift-control-Q or something.
  - ek750 10y ago
    The three browsers I use have command shortcuts that undo the accidental window closures. Though I have to wonder how much resources are taken by the undo feature.
    - sleepychu 10y ago
      > accidental window closures Really? Not just tabs. The danger is you have 5 tabs open, you only want one of them but you accidentally close all of them, now you've lost the window with the tab you wanted.
agounaris 10y ago
Very nice ideas on this!! I love it!
V-2 10y ago
Very basic (no extensions and thusly no adblocker, no LastPass, no mouse gestures etc.), but it's a concept version, I get it. Certainly worth considering as a light-weight browser number 2 for me. I like it as a fresh take at browser UX design that's been more or less settled for a while now.
tatoalo 10y ago
If you want to download it while using another OS you can actually use their download link and just edit the last part of the URL string with the destination OS name.[1] I've actually tried from windows using the 'mac' parameter and it actually downloads .dmg extension, I don't think there's a linux version at the moment. [1]: http://www.opera.com/computer/thanks?ni=stable_neon&os=mac http://www.opera.com/computer/thanks?ni=stable_neon&os=mac
- poshus1984 10y ago
  Yes I read their blog about it they do not release linux version.
zerr 10y ago
I see a lot of C++ books in the background :)
mtgx 10y ago
I was beginning to like Opera (again) right before it got acquired by a Chinese company. But then I saw how they ruined the Opera Max [1] app, and so I expect the same to happen to the Opera browser in the near future. [1] http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/10/31/opera-max-turns-nagware-now-prompts-users-re-enable-every-12-hours/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/10/31/opera-max-turns-nagw... If you want to experiment with a new browser that also uses Chromium and has native ad-blocking, try Brave: https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/
- thewhitetulip 10y ago
  I don't understand why everyone hates add so much, I understand that excessive adverts are bad, ads are the reason that the Internet is what it is now, if we hadn't had ads to monetize content, then everything would cost money + be inside paywalls.
roryisok 10y ago
I use Opera as my main browser right now because I want a webkit browser without google using it to spy on me. Glad to see they're still innovating
- hackuser 10y ago
  Does Opera collect data on users? Also, what about Brave?
  - roryisok 10y ago
    Maybe Opera collects data on users, I don't know. Probably. Maybe I'm naive but I trust them more than Google. I'd forgotten all about brave since the launch, must try it out. Both brave and opera have built in ad blockers. I admire the effort but in practice the opera one is not as good as ublock. Ublock blocks ads but also blocks trash like taboola, which is not technically advertising, but is far more insidious. And ublock is available for opera, not sure about brave. Must try it today
xenostar 10y ago
Tried it out, app stopped responding within two minutes of use. Had to force quit. I think I'll wait for it to mature a bit before trying again.
pknight 10y ago
Try clicking on the lock icon in the address bar, very neat!
- vflagr 10y ago
  That's default Chromium behaviour :)
  - pknight 10y ago
    I don't have site specific permissions showing in the other chromium based browsers I use, like this: http://imgur.com/a/ApCfK http://imgur.com/a/ApCfK That's new to me
    - yathern 10y ago
      That's been in chrome for a quite a long time now I believe.
    - mishac 10y ago
      On Google Chrome i get the exact same thing.
kevinSuttle 10y ago
That logo is BRUTAL.
rch 10y ago
Before leaping to vehement criticism (as I almost did), recall that Opera's market includes televisions and video games. A physics engine for browser chrome and a name-recognizable designer actually make some sense here. Still missing the old Opera though - I use neither televisions nor game consoles. -- http://www.operasoftware.com/press/releases/devices/giving-gamers-two-windows-to-the-web-the-opera-browser-for-nintendo-dsa http://www.operasoftware.com/press/releases/devices/giving-g...
- stonogo 10y ago
  Opera's embedded browsers still use Presto. I wonder if this is an attempt to replace that.
andrepd 10y ago
Why for Mac? It seems to be available for Windows too, at least?
- vflagr 10y ago
  When on the download page for Mac it doesn't mention Windows download anywhere. I assume OP doesn't realise it's available for Windows, I didn't realise at first either.
Advaith 10y ago
They didn't use the Macbook pro with the touchpad in the video :P
cpmsmith 10y ago
The caption to https://www.xkcd.com/934/ https://www.xkcd.com/934/ is finally coming true.
fullofit 10y ago
This doesn't make sense until the browser and the OS shell are combined into one thing.
Yhippa 10y ago
Split screen mode is such a good idea and I wonder why other browsers haven't implemented that yet. Would make devices like Chromebooks a lot more productive to me.
- nashashmi 10y ago
  Chromebooks can do split screen mode. But over the years, the extent and capability has gone up and down from feature-rich and complicated to simple-and-uninnovative. I forget what it is like now.
- redka 10y ago
  Would be even better if you could have incognito tabs in there as well
- notatoad 10y ago
  window management is the operating system's job, not the browser's. you can do split screen in any browser by putting two windows beside each other.
  - globuous 10y ago
    That's true but there are counter examples: For instance, I'm very thankful that my text editor and terminal allow me to split panes within their window rather than through multiple instances handled by the OS. I seem to prefer having panes/tabs vs window instances when alt-tabbing. Especially if I have two browsers splitting my viewport and a couple full sized browsers. This makes it very annoying to alt-tab only between the two half screened browser windows. On OS X anyway. I actually tried using OS X's full split screen, but that creates a new virtual desktop. And even with reduced motion (which helps a lot avoiding headaches when working on multiple windows), it's still too slow/animated for me to switch between my virtual desktop with split screen browsers and other virtual desktops with editors/terminals etc. Finally, what's nice about split panes vs window instances is resizing. Resizing one pane resizes the others. Whereas resizing one window does not resize the others (at least not on OS X's default floating windows. But even something like Spectacle. Someone knows of a tiled window manager that resizes all windows when resizing one btw ? Looking for something like dwm for os x)
rahilb 10y ago
I thought it was interesting that they specify the Desktop Wallpaper is free. I wondered if anyone had ever paid for desktop wallpaper: apparently people do http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=desktop+wallpaper&LH_Complete=1&LH_Sold=1&rt=nc http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=desktop+wallpaper&LH_Com... I wonder if I could write a script to sell royalty free wallpaper on ebay, if all the sellers have the rights to the images they are selling, and what kind of person pays for wallpaper.
- dchest 10y ago
  A user once asked me if subscribing to our newsletter — with announcements about our software releases — was free. Since then I added "free" ("Subscribe to our free newsletter") to every subscribe form I designed.
- flukus 10y ago
  > I wondered if anyone had ever paid for desktop wallpaper For a while Windows 10 was basically a free OS supported by wallpaper micro transactions.
- JadeNB 10y ago
  > what kind of person pays for wallpaper. Non-technical users. I think that technical users often forget how lucky we are that we can make the assumption that often good, and sometimes even the best, tools are free.
febed 10y ago
So should one be concerned about private data ex-filtration since Opera is now owned by a Chinese consortium [0]? This is a major reason why I gravitate towards Vivaldi inspite of being an Opera power user back in it's heyday. [0] http://tech.eu/brief/group-chinese-firms-acquire-opera-software-1-2-billion/ http://tech.eu/brief/group-chinese-firms-acquire-opera-softw...
- toyg 10y ago
  Probably in the same way you should be if you're keeping your files on Dropbox.
tadelle 10y ago
If they integrate built-in VPN to neon, I can switch from Opera Developer to Neon without looking back...
cwyers 10y ago
Mods, can we get the title changed? It's for Windows too (and maybe Linux, I can't verify that). I downloaded it. It's... interesting. It may be a few days before I have a real opinion of it, though.
dperfect 10y ago
I really like the concept, and I want to use it in full-screen mode (to make it feel more like a first-level OS experience even if it isn't), but sadly once you open a website in full-screen, the rest of the browser chrome goes away. Of course there are times when I'd want it that way, but there should probably be a separate option for full-screen with the browser chrome. I know this is basically just an early prototype, so I can't really be critical. If anything, it's just such an effective and impressive prototype that I already want to adopt it for daily use :)
- batuhanicoz 10y ago
  So this is my problem too but somehow I've managed to do it. I've went into the Mission Control state and dragged the Neon app into a new screen. It was a pleasant full-screen experience with only the app full-screen and not an individual tab, which is what I expect from the full-screen mode. Problem is when I tried it again, it didn't work. Not sure what's wrong but this is a newly released software so I'm sure they'll fix it. Apart from that, it's really amazing. I especially LOVED the media control features. edit: Got it now. Go into the full-screen mode when there no active tabs. Works perfectly after that.
glomph 10y ago
So many of these new features seem like really they should be window manager features. I am a user of tabs but I occasionally think they also should really be a feature of the window manager and not the browser.
Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
No source, no deal (let alone no Linux support). With projects like Vivaldi and now this, are we really heading back to the dark ages of non-portable closed source browsers?
agumonkey 10y ago
The in-browser split is good. The tab -> home too. The presentation is sub par to me, wasteful and cut for no reason. Good ideas, pretty sure all browsers could copy that quickly but still, good ideas from Opera.
MarcScott 10y ago
I just want a browser that I can use without taking my fingers away from the home row, but I guess I'm in the minority of users.
- hackuser 10y ago
  This Firefox add-on helps with one such issue, navigating tabs: * Single Key Tab Switch https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/single-key-tab-switch/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/single-key-ta... I configured mine to use Vim navigation keys (h for left, l for right). As long as the focus isn't in an input field, it works great.
isaac_is_goat 10y ago
A closed source browser owned by the Chinese? No chance.
- aphextron 10y ago
  Completely agree even if it's downvoted
SloppyStone 10y ago
I don't understand vertical tab bars at all. Why not give an option to change it to horizontal? Also, seems quite resource heavy.
- wongarsu 10y ago
  The line length of readable text is quite limited, yet our monitors are wider than they are high. Since websites still contain a lot of text they profit more from getting the full screen height than from getting the full screen width. Hence vertical tab bars. I'm not a fan of the giant pictures they use as representations of tabs when my tab bar fits ~40 tabs in one screen height. But I guess that heavily depends on user preference.

318 points by napolux 10y ago

konart 10y ago

Opera 12: http://i.imgur.com/ItevlTB.png http://i.imgur.com/ItevlTB.png Just saying...

nialv7 10y ago

Funny how they are using Mac in their demo video, while the browser only supports Windows.

fnordsensei 10y ago
I'm running it on a Mac right now. It does behave oddly when in full screen though.
TobbenTM 10y ago
The browser supports both platforms, just shows you a OS-specific site based on what you're on.

satysin 10y ago

This is what Microsoft Edge should be doing (innovating) and not just trying to cram in Microsoft services like OneNote. Honestly Edge is still such an awful browser and it is the default browser in Windows 10 which has been out for 18+ months now. Shocking.

FlorianRappl 10y ago
I wouldn't call it horrible, but starting from their promised solution (IE without all the crap; lightweight + innovative) not much is delivered. The browser feels buggy and slow and I do not see much innovation.
- taivare 10y ago
  SVG brakes badly in Edge , I check all the time , they'll run fine in Chrome and Firefox but not Edge !

sprokolopolis 10y ago

This is a really neat concept that seems to be inspired by some of the mobile browsers out there. Flynx, Flyperlink and Link Bubble all use the (facebook-chathead-style) bubbles that sit over other apps and the UI. They are very convenient on mobile and allow you to do other things, while pages are loading. In my opinion, this browser consumes too much screen space with the browser windows being smaller windows inside the Neon container. I would prefer if they ditched the outermost container window and let the bubbles handle the hiding/moving of the browser, like the mobile browsers I mentioned above. Maybe there is a bubble that lives in the top right that sucks up and hides all browser bubbles and interface elements, then invokes them all when the user wants to show the browser again. I welcome any experimentation and innovation in the browser space. I do really like the idea of easily-tiling browser windows. In the future, I would love to be able to adjust the size and padding of the bubbles to allow more viewing space in the browser windows. The original Opera had cascading, individual windows within the browser, before switching to tabs. They have sort of come full circle. I currently use opera as my primary browser, but I really miss the tab spaces that Firefox had. I feel like the bubble concept provides a great opportunity for pinned bubble groups that contain groups of websites that I use together. I could have a meta bubble for sites that I use specifically for work, or for my favorite news sites.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

dvcrn 10y ago

I like how this feels, but sadly without 1Password and AdBlock I can't consider using it for now. It looks like it's running pretty much on the same tech as normal opera and chrome. Here's to hope that extensions are coming soon! /edit: looks like extensions is still available in the menu, it just doesn't resolve to anything.

aakarpost 10y ago

Neon is fast compared to Chrome.

mkhpalm 10y ago

Well this is kinda cool. I wouldn't use it (in its current state anyway), but it's cool. It seems like they're trying to turn a browser in to a type of desktop, kinda like Chrome OS I guess. My first impressions though are the left sidebar is incredibly unresponsive, and both the left and right sidebar need to be able to be hidden so the browser window isn't so small.

skrebbel 10y ago

On Windows, the page title is "Opera Neon concept browser for Windows". Maybe rename to [for Mac and Windows]?

jedimastert 10y ago
Or maybe take out the operating system
- Aaargh20318 10y ago
  If you look at the page with $OS it looks like there is only a version for $OS available. I can see how that might lead to headlines like this. I also initially assumed it was a mac-only app.
  - cbr 10y ago
    In Chrome on Linux it reads "Opera Neon concept browser for Windows"
    - pluma 10y ago
      ... with no mention of Mac. So the point is still valid.
  - yread 10y ago
    If there was a version for Minix, now that would be newsworthy!
wjoe 10y ago
On Linux, it says for Windows too, with no mention of the Mac version (and presumably no Linux version exists)
- skrebbel 10y ago
  I guess they just have an `echo (if os == mac then "Mac" else "Windows")`

Zelmor 10y ago

I like the screen-cap utility. All the rest seems useless, knowing that people already litter their desktops with a million icons.

leadingthenet 10y ago
But why duplicate the screen-cap utility already available on your OS (which works exactly the same way)? Do I not get it?
- sp332 10y ago
  It does save the original URL with the screenshot, which I guess is convenient. I prefer Firefox's version which lets you snap individual elements precisely, but it's hard to use. ("Inspect element", then right-click the node and "screenshot node".) They do have an experimental first-party extension called Page Shot that makes this easier to use, and adds full-text search to boot! https://testpilot.firefox.com/ https://testpilot.firefox.com/
- lsh 10y ago
  vivaldi has a screencap facility as well that will capture the whole web page or just selections of it. it's a fairly recent addition. prior to that it would take screencaps when record notes about a site but only the current viewframe.
Mithaldu 10y ago
The screen-cap utility is the most useless thing they have to offer, as it'll inevitably recompress stuff that already had been compressed. It would be much more useful to have a tool to actually get you the link of the image you're seeing no matter how much the site tries to hide it.

julienmarie 10y ago

I switched from Chrome to Opera a couple of weeks ago and I don't see myself switching back. Little details make the difference: Better ram and battery consumption ( for now ), better tab management, integrated ad blocker and turbo mode when I'm using my phone as a hotspot ( living in a country with awful internet, it's really useful for basic browsing ). And as it's chromium inside, it's compatible with Chrome extensions.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

avar 10y ago

For anyone hoping for a Presto revival it's Chrome under the hood: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_2) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/53.0.2785.21 Safari/537.36 MMS/1.0.2459.0

stymaar 10y ago
It is most likely Blink under the hood[1], but the user agent doesn't give you any information on that subject. This is Edge's user agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/42.0.2311.135 Safari/537.36 Edge/12 It's almost the same except the MMS/number being replaced by Edge/number, and Edge is using a totally different engine than Chrome. [1] business-wise I don't see any good reason to revive a engine dead for 4 years (Presto) or even worst, develop a brand new one.
pawadu 10y ago
Opera moved to webkit in 2012 (2013?) and then to Blink soon after googles announcement.
- jason_slack 10y ago
  does this mean they are using webkit, chrome and mozilla under the hood for rendering pages? All 3? What is the benefit? If a page is designed for Chrome then Opera could render it as intended and not how Webkit might render it, which could be wrong?
  - chucky 10y ago
    No. Their rendering engine is pure Blink. All browsers' user agent's contain mentions of more or less every browser that ever existed for historical compatibility reasons.
  - 0x4a42 10y ago
    Safari uses Webkit (a fork of KHTML), Opera and Chrome use Blink (a fork of Webkit), Firefox uses Gecko. Except on iOS where all browsers are forced to use a crippled version of Webkit.

the_duke 10y ago

Wow. You can open websites with icons. And you can take screenshots. Pretty amazing. (There might be more to Neon, of course, but if there is, the video is horrible in showing it off).

StavrosK 10y ago
As opposed to the font of amazing usability innovations that are Chrome, Safari and Firefox? I'll take something over nothing any day.
digi_owl 10y ago
Seem to effectively be a continuation of their Coast browser on iPhone.
Nagyman 10y ago
Why start with snarky sarcasm if you admit there might be more to it than the video? There's also a bunch of copy on the page if you scroll past the video. * The tabs are represented by little screenshots; nice for navigating. Yet to determine how this scales with MANY tabs (I see, it scrolls vertically... hrm) * The split screen is pretty cool; many times I need to work between two tabs and alternating between them in Chrome is generally a pain * Videos can be played outside of the tab; cool if you want to continue browsing while having a video visible (think tutorial while visiting documentation pages) * All the dev tools are seemingly available – sweet * The page URL and title are big and nicely visible * It looks awesome for touch. I don't have a touch laptop though :( * Screenshots ... meh. I use OSXs built-in tools.

StavrosK 10y ago

This made me realize how little innovation there is in the browser space today. Opera used to innovate extensively before the sale, and it looks like at least they're trying to keep doing it. I'm also hopeful for Vivaldi. Chrome and Firefox are completely stagnant, unfortunately.

KevanM 10y ago
Whenever I've jumped ship, I've jumped to a simpler or faster version because the advances (at a perceived performance loss, or further UI changes). Opera used to be really fast, but then it started to come with lots of other useless tools (email, bittorrent client tool) and try to be an internet package So I jumped to Firefox which was simpler and Thunderbird was a separate client. Then that started to be clunkier, so I tried Chrome, which was faster. Much like laptop getting thinner, the gains are in the wrong area. What I want is a fast, secure browser that can remember history and bookmarks - everything else can be an add-on.
Kostic 10y ago
I am really blown away by Vivaldi but I can't, sadly, start using a closed source browser. Browsers are an important (maybe the most important) programs today. I simply can't allow myself to get locked into a closed source browser today.
- lexnova 10y ago
  https://vivaldi.com/source/ https://vivaldi.com/source/
draw_down 10y ago
Boy oh boy, I dunno about that, particularly Chrome.
problems 10y ago
Honestly, I wish Firefox was more stagnant and less "let's clone Chrome's every misfeature, who needs the ability to modify the browser UI?".
10y ago

martinstartsup 10y ago

Interesting bubbly new browser! Just the blog post says: "Some new features you won’t have seen in a browser before: (...) A vertical, visual tab bar on the right side of the browser window that makes it easier to distinguish between tabs." Really? I use it everyday in Vivaldi Browser :)

Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
And it was in "their" own Opera 12 as well.

cataflam 10y ago

In a hilarious twist, when trying to download Opera Neon for Windows with Opera for Windows, the download is blocked: http://i.imgur.com/5kIyxzw.png http://i.imgur.com/5kIyxzw.png

andrewvijay 10y ago
Simply shows that their teams are not in sync with security policies or they don't have one.
- cataflam 10y ago
  Probably just an oversight or a typo. They've now changed the link to https.
roryisok 10y ago
Worked fine for me, Opera Developer Edition?
- cataflam 10y ago
  They changed the download link to https.
ReverseCold 10y ago
Isn't that your local antivirus? I know that's how that works in chrome.
- cataflam 10y ago
  That's from Opera. See http://help.opera.com/opera/Windows/1781/en/private.html http://help.opera.com/opera/Windows/1781/en/private.html "If you are browsing on an encrypted connection (https:// https://), Opera checks to ensure that all parts of the site are encrypted. If Opera detects that any live elements of the page, for example scripts, plugins, or frames, are being served by an open connection (http:// http://), it will block the insecure content. This means parts of the page may not display properly. Opera advises against allowing insecure content to load into an encrypted connection. The best way to protect your sensitive information is to interact only with secure content. When Opera detects insecure content and blocks it, a warning will appear in the right side of the combined address and search bar. If you do not care about the security of your connection with the site, you can click the warning to show an Unblock button. This button will allow the blocked content to be loaded onto the page, and the security badge will change to show an open padlock, reminding you that you've allowed insecure content to display on an encrypted connection."

skrebbel 10y ago

OK, I'm giving it a roll. First impression: very positive. It's notably great on touch screens. The "tabs" and buttons are nice and big - no more accidentally closing a tab I meant to open by fat-fingering it. It brings back a bit of the UX goodness that was IE11 on Windows 8 (before you snark, IE11, despite its terrible engine, had a fantastic fullscreen mode in Windows 8 with fantastic UX for touch, which got removed in Windows 10). It doesn't seem to support extensions so I can't replace my normal Opera with it - that's a shame, I would've. The fluffy floaty icon bubble is a great start screen. Remove all the advertised nonsense sites and pin your favourites there (it was easy to discover how) and somehow I find finding stuff easier than it was in Opera classic's Speed Dial page. On first impression, at least. The chrome does take a fair amount of screen real estate though. Not sure I'd need the address bar to be so big and present.

bhauer 10y ago
The full-screen IE11 experience on early-generation Surface models was fantastic. Yes, IE11 had a meager JavaScript engine and several rendering quirks, but it was exceptionally quick at plain HTML, CSS, SVG. It used GPU acceleration for rendering earlier than other browsers; animation and scrolling were silky smooth. And that tablet-oriented UI was top notch. It's a shame it was removed in Edge on the desktop/tablet. I would figure Edge could provide it as an option and maybe even optionally enable it when Windows 10 is switched to its "tablet mode." Maybe some day. Incidentally, the same touch UI still exists in Edge on Windows 10 Mobile.

robertoestivill 10y ago

It reminded me of LinkBubble, and android application to open links in a background webview, see the loading progress and have them accessible as a floating bubble while doing something else. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.linkbubble.playstore&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.linkbubble...

iplaw 10y ago

Snap-to-gallery is an awesome feature addition for casual users, and I'd use it but-for having a Snagit license.

panic 10y ago

They should bring this to tablets! Tabs on the side would be a natural fit -- your fingers naturally rest near the side of the touchscreen.

skrebbel 10y ago
Or just get a Windows tablet / 2-in-1 :-)

dtnewman 10y ago

I am generally pretty hesitant to change browsers, but I actually really like the feel of this. It's super clean and the keyboard shortcuts are the same as what I'm used to so it seems like it should be an easy switch. Definitely something worth looking at. I'll probably try this out over the next few weeks. My only gripe so far is that when I click command+w, I want it to default to closing the window when I am on the blank search page (i.e. where the browser goes by default when you open up a new window), but it only seems to close the window if you have a page loaded. EDIT: This isn't a big deal. You can close the window in that case with command+shift+w, but the behavior feels inconsistent to me (that the window closes with just command+w when a page is loaded, but otherwise you need shift).

dgrealy 10y ago
One thing that bites me occasionally with the current browsers is when I'm closing a lot of tabs with cmd-w but go too far and accidentally close the last one and loose the window. Windows close with cmd shift w so this behavior makes sense to me. I like your attention to those shortcuts though I think we have similar standards:)
- makecheck 10y ago
  In a few apps on the Mac I have made good use of the Keyboard Shortcuts part of System Preferences to prevent this. If destructive behavior is a bit too "easy" in an app, I remap the command to something complex. I think my Quit in Firefox for instance is now command-shift-control-Q or something.
- ek750 10y ago
  The three browsers I use have command shortcuts that undo the accidental window closures. Though I have to wonder how much resources are taken by the undo feature.
  - sleepychu 10y ago
    > accidental window closures Really? Not just tabs. The danger is you have 5 tabs open, you only want one of them but you accidentally close all of them, now you've lost the window with the tab you wanted.

agounaris 10y ago

Very nice ideas on this!! I love it!

V-2 10y ago

Very basic (no extensions and thusly no adblocker, no LastPass, no mouse gestures etc.), but it's a concept version, I get it. Certainly worth considering as a light-weight browser number 2 for me. I like it as a fresh take at browser UX design that's been more or less settled for a while now.

tatoalo 10y ago

If you want to download it while using another OS you can actually use their download link and just edit the last part of the URL string with the destination OS name.[1] I've actually tried from windows using the 'mac' parameter and it actually downloads .dmg extension, I don't think there's a linux version at the moment. [1]: http://www.opera.com/computer/thanks?ni=stable_neon&os=mac http://www.opera.com/computer/thanks?ni=stable_neon&os=mac

poshus1984 10y ago
Yes I read their blog about it they do not release linux version.

zerr 10y ago

I see a lot of C++ books in the background :)

mtgx 10y ago

I was beginning to like Opera (again) right before it got acquired by a Chinese company. But then I saw how they ruined the Opera Max [1] app, and so I expect the same to happen to the Opera browser in the near future. [1] http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/10/31/opera-max-turns-nagware-now-prompts-users-re-enable-every-12-hours/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/10/31/opera-max-turns-nagw... If you want to experiment with a new browser that also uses Chromium and has native ad-blocking, try Brave: https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/

thewhitetulip 10y ago
I don't understand why everyone hates add so much, I understand that excessive adverts are bad, ads are the reason that the Internet is what it is now, if we hadn't had ads to monetize content, then everything would cost money + be inside paywalls.

roryisok 10y ago

I use Opera as my main browser right now because I want a webkit browser without google using it to spy on me. Glad to see they're still innovating

hackuser 10y ago
Does Opera collect data on users? Also, what about Brave?
- roryisok 10y ago
  Maybe Opera collects data on users, I don't know. Probably. Maybe I'm naive but I trust them more than Google. I'd forgotten all about brave since the launch, must try it out. Both brave and opera have built in ad blockers. I admire the effort but in practice the opera one is not as good as ublock. Ublock blocks ads but also blocks trash like taboola, which is not technically advertising, but is far more insidious. And ublock is available for opera, not sure about brave. Must try it today

xenostar 10y ago

Tried it out, app stopped responding within two minutes of use. Had to force quit. I think I'll wait for it to mature a bit before trying again.

pknight 10y ago

Try clicking on the lock icon in the address bar, very neat!

vflagr 10y ago
That's default Chromium behaviour :)
- pknight 10y ago
  I don't have site specific permissions showing in the other chromium based browsers I use, like this: http://imgur.com/a/ApCfK http://imgur.com/a/ApCfK That's new to me
  - yathern 10y ago
    That's been in chrome for a quite a long time now I believe.
  - mishac 10y ago
    On Google Chrome i get the exact same thing.

kevinSuttle 10y ago

That logo is BRUTAL.

rch 10y ago

Before leaping to vehement criticism (as I almost did), recall that Opera's market includes televisions and video games. A physics engine for browser chrome and a name-recognizable designer actually make some sense here. Still missing the old Opera though - I use neither televisions nor game consoles. -- http://www.operasoftware.com/press/releases/devices/giving-gamers-two-windows-to-the-web-the-opera-browser-for-nintendo-dsa http://www.operasoftware.com/press/releases/devices/giving-g...

stonogo 10y ago
Opera's embedded browsers still use Presto. I wonder if this is an attempt to replace that.

andrepd 10y ago

Why for Mac? It seems to be available for Windows too, at least?

vflagr 10y ago
When on the download page for Mac it doesn't mention Windows download anywhere. I assume OP doesn't realise it's available for Windows, I didn't realise at first either.

Advaith 10y ago

They didn't use the Macbook pro with the touchpad in the video :P

cpmsmith 10y ago

The caption to https://www.xkcd.com/934/ https://www.xkcd.com/934/ is finally coming true.

fullofit 10y ago

This doesn't make sense until the browser and the OS shell are combined into one thing.

Yhippa 10y ago

Split screen mode is such a good idea and I wonder why other browsers haven't implemented that yet. Would make devices like Chromebooks a lot more productive to me.

nashashmi 10y ago
Chromebooks can do split screen mode. But over the years, the extent and capability has gone up and down from feature-rich and complicated to simple-and-uninnovative. I forget what it is like now.
redka 10y ago
Would be even better if you could have incognito tabs in there as well
notatoad 10y ago
window management is the operating system's job, not the browser's. you can do split screen in any browser by putting two windows beside each other.
- globuous 10y ago
  That's true but there are counter examples: For instance, I'm very thankful that my text editor and terminal allow me to split panes within their window rather than through multiple instances handled by the OS. I seem to prefer having panes/tabs vs window instances when alt-tabbing. Especially if I have two browsers splitting my viewport and a couple full sized browsers. This makes it very annoying to alt-tab only between the two half screened browser windows. On OS X anyway. I actually tried using OS X's full split screen, but that creates a new virtual desktop. And even with reduced motion (which helps a lot avoiding headaches when working on multiple windows), it's still too slow/animated for me to switch between my virtual desktop with split screen browsers and other virtual desktops with editors/terminals etc. Finally, what's nice about split panes vs window instances is resizing. Resizing one pane resizes the others. Whereas resizing one window does not resize the others (at least not on OS X's default floating windows. But even something like Spectacle. Someone knows of a tiled window manager that resizes all windows when resizing one btw ? Looking for something like dwm for os x)

rahilb 10y ago

I thought it was interesting that they specify the Desktop Wallpaper is free. I wondered if anyone had ever paid for desktop wallpaper: apparently people do http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=desktop+wallpaper&LH_Complete=1&LH_Sold=1&rt=nc http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=desktop+wallpaper&LH_Com... I wonder if I could write a script to sell royalty free wallpaper on ebay, if all the sellers have the rights to the images they are selling, and what kind of person pays for wallpaper.

dchest 10y ago
A user once asked me if subscribing to our newsletter — with announcements about our software releases — was free. Since then I added "free" ("Subscribe to our free newsletter") to every subscribe form I designed.
flukus 10y ago
> I wondered if anyone had ever paid for desktop wallpaper For a while Windows 10 was basically a free OS supported by wallpaper micro transactions.
JadeNB 10y ago
> what kind of person pays for wallpaper. Non-technical users. I think that technical users often forget how lucky we are that we can make the assumption that often good, and sometimes even the best, tools are free.

febed 10y ago

So should one be concerned about private data ex-filtration since Opera is now owned by a Chinese consortium [0]? This is a major reason why I gravitate towards Vivaldi inspite of being an Opera power user back in it's heyday. [0] http://tech.eu/brief/group-chinese-firms-acquire-opera-software-1-2-billion/ http://tech.eu/brief/group-chinese-firms-acquire-opera-softw...

toyg 10y ago
Probably in the same way you should be if you're keeping your files on Dropbox.

tadelle 10y ago

If they integrate built-in VPN to neon, I can switch from Opera Developer to Neon without looking back...

cwyers 10y ago

Mods, can we get the title changed? It's for Windows too (and maybe Linux, I can't verify that). I downloaded it. It's... interesting. It may be a few days before I have a real opinion of it, though.

dperfect 10y ago

I really like the concept, and I want to use it in full-screen mode (to make it feel more like a first-level OS experience even if it isn't), but sadly once you open a website in full-screen, the rest of the browser chrome goes away. Of course there are times when I'd want it that way, but there should probably be a separate option for full-screen with the browser chrome. I know this is basically just an early prototype, so I can't really be critical. If anything, it's just such an effective and impressive prototype that I already want to adopt it for daily use :)

batuhanicoz 10y ago
So this is my problem too but somehow I've managed to do it. I've went into the Mission Control state and dragged the Neon app into a new screen. It was a pleasant full-screen experience with only the app full-screen and not an individual tab, which is what I expect from the full-screen mode. Problem is when I tried it again, it didn't work. Not sure what's wrong but this is a newly released software so I'm sure they'll fix it. Apart from that, it's really amazing. I especially LOVED the media control features. edit: Got it now. Go into the full-screen mode when there no active tabs. Works perfectly after that.

glomph 10y ago

So many of these new features seem like really they should be window manager features. I am a user of tabs but I occasionally think they also should really be a feature of the window manager and not the browser.

Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago

No source, no deal (let alone no Linux support). With projects like Vivaldi and now this, are we really heading back to the dark ages of non-portable closed source browsers?

agumonkey 10y ago

The in-browser split is good. The tab -> home too. The presentation is sub par to me, wasteful and cut for no reason. Good ideas, pretty sure all browsers could copy that quickly but still, good ideas from Opera.

MarcScott 10y ago

I just want a browser that I can use without taking my fingers away from the home row, but I guess I'm in the minority of users.

hackuser 10y ago
This Firefox add-on helps with one such issue, navigating tabs: * Single Key Tab Switch https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/single-key-tab-switch/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/single-key-ta... I configured mine to use Vim navigation keys (h for left, l for right). As long as the focus isn't in an input field, it works great.

isaac_is_goat 10y ago

A closed source browser owned by the Chinese? No chance.

aphextron 10y ago
Completely agree even if it's downvoted

SloppyStone 10y ago

I don't understand vertical tab bars at all. Why not give an option to change it to horizontal? Also, seems quite resource heavy.

wongarsu 10y ago
The line length of readable text is quite limited, yet our monitors are wider than they are high. Since websites still contain a lot of text they profit more from getting the full screen height than from getting the full screen width. Hence vertical tab bars. I'm not a fan of the giant pictures they use as representations of tabs when my tab bar fits ~40 tabs in one screen height. But I guess that heavily depends on user preference.