Opera today announced that it is releasing the second version of Opera One to developer beta with features such as new media controls, split tabs and new artificial intelligence capabilities.
The company is introducing new themes and design elements to give Opera One R2 a new look.
Opera has traditionally placed media controls on the sidebar. But with the new version, the controls can be in their own floating window, just like the picture-in-picture section. Opera said it has made sure that the resizable floating controls will match the browser theme you have set. Depending on the size, the media player will have controls such as play/pause, next, previous, popup, and volume options.
Opera One R2 also brings new tab controls with the ability to frame a split tab window so you can work on two web pages at once. Some newer browsers like Arc and SigmaOS have put this feature to good use in their products.
The redesigned version adds a new underline indicator to highlight a recently closed tab. These indicators, called traces, will be light or dark based on how much time has passed since you closed the tab. It will appear for people who have more than 30 tabs open.
AI features
Opera is experimenting with AI features such as a sidebar with the ‘Aria’ assistant, AI summarization and allowing users to use large language models (LLM) locally.
The company had developed some features with Aria such as e.g image and voice creation and image comprehension skills through the experimental AI feature program. These features will be integrated into Opera One R2.
With the new version, Opera brings a page context feature, which allows users to ask Aria questions about a web page, including finding, translating or summarizing a specific piece of information.
Opera plans to release Opera One R2 to a wider user base later this year.
