While not dominant in the world of web browsing, Opera hasn't given up hope just yet. It is still around and it looks like they are trying to step up their game with their newest Neon browser. And one thing is for certain. This is indeed a beautiful looking browser. Opera is marketing it as the future of web surfing. It features a very minimalistic look and feel and it essentially acts like its own self-sustained desktop. Desktop "icons" litter your home screen with your favorite websites. A screenshot of the site itself becomes the icon if no other icon is found, making for a clean searching experience.
"Life like"
One of the main features of Neon, is its representation of real-world physics, to some extent. Icons move with you, as if you were touching them. Everything is very bouncy if you will. It's an interesting feature, but for sure not what makes the browser stand out.
Music/Video Player
Neon offers you the ability to continue watching your videos and or playing your audio from different sites on a mini player that's fixed to the left nav.
This is by far my favorite feature of the browser. It's small enough that it doesn't get in the way yet big enough that you won't lose out too much on the content. The widget has functional buttons that allow you to control your media from any tab that you may have open, and features a link back to the original site.
The only downside is that this widget is treated as its own separate application on your desktop, and such, if you open any other application, it will overlap with said application. That's probably a bug that will be addressed at some future point.
It's a snap
Taking a screenshot on a browser has never been easier I feel. The crop tool is one of the primary features and is a single click away. Images are viewable directly in the left nav and in the browser as well.
Chrome does offer this ability, but it isn't as user friendly as it is on Neon. You have to either find a plugin or extension in order to accomplish normally and in Neon it's built right into the ecosystem.
Developer features
This one is huge for any web developer. We need a solid set developer tools at our disposal. And Neon does the job just fine. It doesn't bring with it anything new, but instead looks to use the same developer toolkit that Chrome uses.
Performance
Performance is something that most people will never notice or pay much attention to, especially when browsing the interwebs. But if you're like me, it matters. I normally have from 10-100 tabs open at any one time, so performance doesn't take a backseat. And so far, Neon has been doing a decent job. CPU is normal however, it might be falling behind a little from Chrome. Playing a YouTube video for example seems to use up more CPU power than on Chrome and having it run in the widget tool takes up the load just a bit more. Pages however load in decent time and little to no lag is detectable. Time will tell whether this either improves or increases depending on new features getting added.
Do I recommend it...
That depends really. If you're tied to the Chrome/Google ecosystem, then you're never going to give up your browser. If however you're looking for a fresh experience, looking to start anew in the browsing world, then I would highly recommend you give Neon a try. It's a very clean browsing experience and it doesn't detract from what a browser should be. And that's, a tool used to browse the web. I was not expecting too much from Neon going into it, but after a few hours of using it, it has definitely grown on me.
Walter Guevara is a software engineer, startup founder and currently teaches programming for a coding bootcamp. He is currently building things that don't yet exist.
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