The popular Opera browser has received a major update called Opera One R2. The Chromium-powered browser has received many new features that were previously released only to developers. The publisher calls the new version the best Opera browser ever created.
Image source: opera.com
Opera has its own artificial intelligence chatbot, Aria AI, and in Opera One R2 it received integration with Google’s Imagen 2 image generator. You can ask the AI assistant to create an image based on a sample or text query, but Aria can also describe what is shown in the picture submitted by the user.
An interesting innovation is animated themes with background music – moving pictures are generated using the resources of a discrete or built-in video card. Themes Classic, Aurora and Midsommar are available: in the first case, you can choose your preferred color for the visual design of the browser; The second theme is inspired by the Northern Lights and features shades of neon green; the third was named after the Scandinavian holiday, which is celebrated annually on the day of the winter solstice – it has a pastel design with shades of pink, blue and lilac, and is also accompanied by background music.
Experienced users will appreciate the split-screen feature – you can open two pages next to each other in one window, and this is much more convenient than opening two browser windows. The new Tab Traces feature helps you see which five tabs a user last viewed, but it only kicks in if you have more than 30 tabs open, which isn’t all that uncommon by today’s standards. And “tab islands” allow you to conveniently group them, reducing the amount of visual clutter on the screen.
Opera One R2 introduces a built-in pop-up media player that can play music and videos – it can run in the background or remain visible while you work or study. Finally, Opera, unlike Google Chrome, is not going to start a war with ad blockers – the browser has a built-in one, but it will also retain support for the V2 manifest, which allows you to install classic versions of popular extensions, including uBlock Origin and AdBlock.