Maybe I will upgrade to Opera One
I've been using Opera in its different incarnations, usually as my main browser, since around 2006, and Opera Mini was the browser I used on my Java mobile and Symbian devices.
Not all changes since then have been good. First was the removal of features (e.g. the email client) that made Opera a multi-purpose application. I had an OperaMail address, which, at one point, was my primary one, and I had a site hosted on My Opera, which was something of an online community. Both services had been discontinued.
I still use Opera as the main browser on my personal devices, and there are things I like about the current versions:
- The ability to sync and access any of my Speed Dials from any of my devices.
- VPN, although I understand this is actually a proxy that's probably based on the one used to compress Web pages for Opera Mini, rather than an actual VPN service.
- Opera supports IPFS, though I've only played with IPFS and never made serious use of it.
Trying Opera One
With the developer/beta version of Opera One being released the other day, I decided to try it out. Apparently it uses different base components, has a more 'modular' design and has a couple of new surface features ('tab islands' and some AI-related things).
Opera One runs perfectly fine on my old Lenovo X220, so I know it used the hardware very efficiently, and the UI layout is very much the same as the older version of Opera, but the rendering has evidently been upgraded.
The major feature addition is AI Prompts (early access), which are enabled for various things by default. I disabled these, for the same (largely privacy-related) reasons I disable autocomplete.
The other big feature is 'tab islands', which might prove useful, because I end up with ~30 tabs open during a typical session. This is very much the same as grouping tabs in Edge (which I haven't done before), but in Opera One, a 'tab island' can be saved as a folder in Speed Dial.
To create a 'tab island', hold CTRL while clicking on the tabs, then right-click and select 'Create tab island'. All tabs in an island can be collapsed or expanded by clicking its vertical colour bar.
It is possible to create workspaces, which can help minimise distraction for developers, if all work-related things are kept in a single workspace. We can smoothly switch between workspaces by clicking their icons in the sidebar.
There are quite a few advertising and marketing-related things to disable in the settings. Some of these are for ad personalisation and things that appear in the Speed Dial. The user needs to go through all the settings and disable them accordingly. Opera still does include its own Ad Blocker, which I've found to be quite effective.
The VPN feature is still present, and Opera One can be configured to display the button for this next to the address bar. I rarely use it, but it's handy to have.
I do like what I've seen of Opera One so far, and I'd be pretty happy to use it as my main browser later this year.