Opera just releases a new web browser called Neon for Macs and Windows PCs. The Neon, concept browser according to Opera has been designed to allow users to focus more on the most important part of the internet – the content.
The Neon browser’s homepage looks far different than any other browser. It still includes shortcuts to bookmarks and top websites, though they are displayed as floating bubbles that are overlaid on your desktop wallpaper.
Forget the traditional tabs, Neon has replaced them with a series of circular icons that appear on the right-hand side of the browser, with one appearing on every page you open.
Opera says Neon isn’t designed to replace its current browser, although some of the new features being tested in Neon could show up in the next version of the Opera browser later this year.
Neon also features a video player, image gallery, and download manager feature that appear in a sidebar to the left. One of the most interesting things about the video player is that it lets users pop out videos that can be played on a small screen while they are still browsing on other web pages. Users can also crop any part of a web page with another browser tool on the browser that can be saved to the browser’s gallery for later viewing and sharing while another tool contains a collection of all your downloads.
The split screen-mode on Neon also allows viewing of two separate tabs side by side at the same time.
At the top, we have a “completely new omnibox” that supports both open search and top search engines.
With Neon, users can also add any new websites to their tab bard by dragging and dropping the sites’ ‘‘bubbles’’ to the right-hand bar. Users can also add any new Web sites to their tab bars by dragging and dropping the sites’ “bubbles” to the right-hand bar.
Another interesting button on Neon is one that puts an overlay that Opera calls Player. The Player button collects all the songs and videos available to play throughout all your tabs. You can click to pause or play any media without opening the tab back up.
Neon is available on macOS and Windows, so you actually try it out if you’re interested. For now, Neon remains experimental though Opera product manager Joanna Czajka says they plan to incorporate some of its best new features into Opera for computers as early as spring 2017
