Hasta La Ideas

For almost two decades, Opera has designed and distributed alternative desktop, mobile, and tablet-optimized web browsers, amassing arguably the world’s most extensive bank of knowledge on the subject while they worked—and on their latest effort, Coast by Opera, they’ve put it all to good use. Designed specifically for the iPad, Coast isn’t just an improvement on existing tablet browsers (not even their own), or a condensed version of a desktop browser. Instead, it’s a complete re-imagination of what a tablet browser should look like, act like and feel like, for the way we use tablets most. The app launched yesterday at Tech Crunch Disrupt and suffice it to say we’re impressed.

Coast replaces the space-invading visual elements we find in traditional browsers with a clean, unobtrusive interface—except for your favorite websites, which are arranged as thumbnails in a 3×3 grid on your homepage. When a site is open, it occupies the entire iPad screen, with the browser taking a backseat until it’s needed again. Familiar touch movements like swiping, tapping, holding, and pinching to zoom, in addition to integrated security features, an easy-to-use bookmarking system, and playful takes on accessing hyperlinks, saving images, and other frequent actions, offer a fresh, elegantly simple and completely intuitive user experience.

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