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Opera Neon Turns Your Web Browser Into a Mini Desktop (engadget.com)

Posted by msmash on from the browsers-world dept.

Opera today announced it's launching a new browser called Opera Neon. From a report on Engadget:It's a separate "concept" browser that shows where software could go. It's much more visual, with an uncluttered look, tabs and shortcuts as bubbles and a side control bar that largely gets out of your way. However, the real fun starts when you want to juggle multiple sites -- this is more of an intelligent desktop than your usual web client. If you want to have two pages running side by side, it's relatively easy: you drag one of your open tabs to the top of the window, creating a split view much like what you see in Windows or the multi-window modes on mobile devices. Also, Neon acknowledges that your browser can frequently double as a media player. You can listen to tunes in the background, or pop out a video in order to switch websites while you watch. These aren't completely novel concepts all by themselves, but it's rare to see all of them in a browser at the same time.

3 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Flat, unintuitive UI? No thanks! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The article starts with a screenshot, followed by:

    As much as modern desktop web browsers can do, their basic concept is stuck in a rut.

    Well the screenshot shows that this browser appears to be stuck in the same rut that has plagued browsers, and UI design in general, for a few years now: these goddamn flat, unintuitive UIs forced on the world by Chrome, Firefox, iOS, Android and Windows 8/10.

    With these awful flat UIs, it becomes much more difficult to determine how to interact with them. It's unclear what's a button, and what's a label, and what's an icon, and what happens if you click/press in a given area of the screen. That was the whole point of using borders and effects to try to give a three-dimensional appearance to UI elements: it makes it more obvious what they do and how they should be used.

    I have no interest in these browsers that keep screwing around with inefficient UI paradigms thought up by web designers, rather than real UI experts. We should really return to UI design techniques that made for usable UIs, instead of the shitty techniques used today that only lead to painful UI experiences.

    1. Re:Flat, unintuitive UI? No thanks! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      THANK YOU. Unfortunately, I bet the UIs ARE thought up by experts. This seems to me like a classic disconnect between pie in the sky designers and everyday users. They do look good. I totally admit that. They are also completely unfunctional. It reminds me of house that are pretty, but you can't touch anything. It's nice to look good, but now we have to live somewhere.

  2. Re: Will Servo support this, too? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Dunno, rusted servos are usually a death trap