Opera today announced that it is releasing the second version of Opera One into developer beta, with new multimedia controls, split tabs, new AI capabilities and more.
The company is introducing new themes and design elements to give Opera One R2 a fresh look.
The company has traditionally placed multimedia controls in the sidebar, but the new version lets you put the controls in their own floating window, similar to a picture-in-picture video module. Opera says it's made the resizable floating control match your preferred browser theme. Depending on the size, the multimedia player displays controls such as play/pause, next, previous, pop out and volume options.
Opera One R2 also introduces new tab control with a marquee feature for split-tab windows, letting you work on two web pages at the same time. Newer browsers like Arc and SigmaOS have this feature built into their products.
Image credit: Opera
The redesigned version adds new underline-style indicators to highlight recently closed tabs. These indicators, called traces, brighten or dim based on the time since you closed a tab. They are visible to users who have more than 30 tabs open.
AI Features
Opera has been experimenting with AI features such as its “Aria” assistant sidebar, AI-powered summarization, and local use of large language models (LLMs).
The company has been rolling out some features of Aria through its experimental AI features program, including image and voice generation and image understanding capabilities, and these will be rolled out in Opera One R2.
The new version of Opera introduces a page context mode, which allows users to ask Aria questions about a web page, such as searching for specific information, translating it or summarizing it.
Image credit: Opera
Opera plans to release Opera One R2 to a wider audience later this year.