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Opera Neon is a funky new approach to a web browser, downloadable for Mac today [Video]

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Some companies settle for a video render when they come up with product concepts, but Opera has created a fully-fledged working app to illustrate what it describes as an ‘alternate reality’ for the browser, Opera Neon.

To bring our vision to life, we put together a team of talented developers and designers to work on a unique prototype browser. We created thousands of concepts, drawings, iterations, versions and interface designs.

Today, we can finally show you Opera Neon. It is a concept browser – an experimental browser that envisions the future of web browsers similar to the way concept cars predict the future of automobiles.

The approach looks radically different to a conventional browser, starting as a semi-transparent overlay of your speed-dial sites floating above your Mac desktop. Opera Neon also takes a kind of virtual reality approach to tabs …


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Developer version of Opera for Mac now has a free, integrated VPN for privacy and region-hopping [Video]

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Virtual Private Networks are becoming increasingly handy things to have, offering greater security on public Wi-Fi networks, making it harder for websites to track you and accessing content only available in particular countries. Usually you have to pay for these, but the latest developer version of the Opera for Mac has one built right into the browser, and it’s completely free to use.

Until now, most VPN services and proxy servers have been limited and based on a paid subscription. With a free, unlimited, native VPN that just works out-of-the-box and doesn’t require any subscription, Opera wants to make VPNs available to everyone.

If accessing content from other regions is your primary interest, the browser currently allows you to virtually travel to the USA, Canada and Germany, but more regions will follow once the feature makes it into the stable version.

Opera’s developer browser is a free download. Once installed, follow the instructions below to activate the feature.

Mac users just need to click the Opera menu, select “Preferences” and toggle the feature VPN on. A button will appear in the browser address field, from which the user can see and change location (more locations will appear later), check whether their IP is exposed and review statistics for their data used.

‘The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs’ opera to debut in 2017

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Joining the increasingly growing lineup of Steve Jobs biographies, the Santa Fe Opera announced today that it will debut a new opera centered around the life of the late Apple CEO. The show is entitled “The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs” and is composed by Mason Bates with librettist Mark Campbell. The opera is currently scheduled to debut in 2017 (via LATimes).


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Opera’s Coast browser adds iPhone support, adds iCloud syncing of bookmark tiles

Opera first launched Coast back in September 2013, on the iPad. Although it didn’t make a huge impression on the App Store first time around, Opera is probably hoping its new version will be more popular.

The app has been fully reworked for the iPhone size. There are hardly any buttons onscreen; the app relies almost exclusively on gesture-based navigation.


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Long lines forming at Apple Stores around the globe for iPhone 5s/5c retail launch

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As online sales for the iPhone 5s begin to go live in Australia, Asia, and now the UK, lines outside of Apple stores around the world are starting to grow in anticipation the September 20th, 8AM retail launch of the iPhone 5s and 5c. Shipping times for the 5c have been slipping since preorders went live last week, but Apple seems to be in even shorter supply of the iPhone 5s as shipping times are starting at 7-10 days in most countries where online orders have already kicked off.

If you’re expecting to queue up to get your hands on an iPhone 5s like the many customers pictured below, you might want to get in line soon. We learned earlier today that retailers, including Apple stores, are getting little to no Gold and white iPhone 5s units, and will mainly have just the new Space Grey model available in store. However, as we’ve seen following launches in other countries today, the 5s in all colors seems to be in shorty supply even for online orders.

The September 20 iPhone 5s and 5c retail launch will take place in the US, Australia, China, Canada, Germany, France, Singapore, UK, and Japan.

Head below for a look at the long lines starting to form outside Apple Stores around the globe:
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Opera launches Coast for iPad, a tablet-first web browser

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Opera has just launched Coast for iPad, a full-screen web browser for tablets. When looking at a web page, there is no onscreen chrome except for a single, thin bar that runs along the bottom of the screen. One button opens tabs (which are metaphorically represented in the UI as pages, similar to Safari on the iPhone) and the other button takes you “home”. Gestures control page navigation, with edge swipes standing in for a traditional back button.

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A screenshot of Coast in action, viewing a 9to5mac article.

In fact, as shown in the above screenshot, Coast opts not to show the URL bar at all. All focus is given to the current web page. The home screen of Coast is similarly barebones, with a discreet URL bar at the top of the screen and app-like buttons below representing the users’ bookmarks.

Coast employs some very nice animations throughout, making the app feel very playful. In particular, the tab closing animation (where the page is ‘eaten’ by the top lip of the app’s background) is stunning to see in motion. In fact, in contrast to the minimalist UI, Coast’s animations are flamboyant, arguably to an unnecessary extreme.

Interestingly, unlike Opera’s other attempts at mobile browsers, Coast relies on iOS’ native WebKit engine to display pages. This is purely an experiment for Opera to improve upon current mobile browsing UI with a chrome-less approach, not the underlying rendering technologies.

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Chromium-based Opera browser officially released for OS X

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Back in May, Opera released a ‘sneak peak’ of its latest browser, Opera 15. The big selling point behind it was the engine under the hood. For the first time ever, the browser was powered by Chromium rather than Opera’s classic Presto engine. Today, the company has officially released the browser for both Mac and Windows in its final state to the public.

The new Opera for Windows and Mac runs on a Chromium engine, so you can access all your websites in a blink of an eye and have a smoother experience when you get there, thanks to improved site compatibility.


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Opera joins Apple and Google in its move to WebKit browser rendering engine

Big news from Oslo:

To provide a leading browser on Android and iOS, this year Opera will make a gradual transition to the WebKit engine, as well as Chromium, for most of its upcoming versions of browsers for smartphones and computers.

“The WebKit engine is already very good, and we aim to take part in making it even better. It supports the standards we care about, and it has the performance we need,” says CTO of Opera Software, Håkon Wium Lie. “It makes more sense to have our experts working with the open source communities to further improve WebKit and Chromium, rather than developing our own rendering engine further. Opera will contribute to the WebKit and Chromium projects, and we have already submitted our first set of patches: to improve multi-column layout.”

That means there are now three major browser engines: Mozilla’s, Microsoft’s, and now the WebKit engine that Apple adopted from KHTML/Konqueror. With Apple and Google (with its WebKit adaptation Chrome) dominating mobile and now tablets, it is no secret which engine is poised to dominate in the coming years. Good call, Opera.

Opera is already contributing code to WebKit and expects to start rolling out products at MWC this month.
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Apple submits ‘invalid’ patents to W3C to delay Touch Events standard

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International web standards organization W3C last year created the Web Events Working Group to create a standard for the way touchscreen enabled devices interact with web content. The standard is known as the W3C Touch Events Specification. Now, according to Opera browser developer Haavard, Apple is delaying the process by using “invalid or irrelevant patents” to buy time, something the company has apparently done in the past.


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