The world has been turned upside down since the advent of the Internet. If there is something that apparently hasn't changed overwhelmingly in these two decades of upheaval, to quite an extent, it has been the browser.
Yet, there is one that intends being a game-changer, and has been at it quite silently for the last four months. This browser is called Coast by Opera; one that is nothing like the conventional Internet browsers that people use across devices — it takes a quantum leap from what existing browsers purportedly do. To start with, it doesn't event look like one.
The brains behind and designer of Coast, Huib Klienhout, contextalises the revolution that has happened in the music industry since the time that the first browser Mosaic popularised the Internet. "From listening to music on walkmans, people have moved on to doing so on their phones. And in between we had CDs, MP3s, Napster and iPTunes. What didn't change in the meantime was the browser," says Klienhout.
And so the Eindhoven-born youngster sought to change the game altogether. Klienhout started off by working on it during his spare time, when he was still officially working on a PC browser. When he laid out his seemingly-outlandish idea before the management, "I thought they would say: stick to your job!" But they liked it, and Klienhout was given the go-ahead to work on Coast with a 15-member team of engineers and designers.
At the onset itself, Klienhout realised that they would have to start from scratch to make the user experience much better, knowing perfectly well how the Internet itself has changed and how people now access it across devices. "First, we gave it (the browser) an app look-and-feel; and then, we optimised it for touch," he says.
The reason for working on something radically different was clear in Klienhout's mind. And as he explains, "Websites have changed over the years from being mere text documents to being apps. The Internet is no more for the geeks; it is for the people."
Over one year, the Coast browser was specifically developed for the iPad. The Opera project manager explains why, "Apple successfully made an interface and an operating system that worked really well. It was simple to use and understand, and it was fun to use too. We wanted to create an optimised user experience. A part of the reason we settled for the iPad was because we see that to provide the best user experience, we have to make it tailor-made for the hardware."
For the moment, it seems Coast will be for the iPad only. "We would rather focus on a great user experience rather than do a lot of things and degrade that very experience."
And the user experience Klienhout is alluding to is that websites come across as applications. So, is Coast a browser or an app? "It does not matter what you call it. Technically it is an app, but it is also a browser — what it does is give you access to those half billion sites on the Internet," he says.
Klienhout goes on to speak of the times when the boundaries between a native app (that from an app store) and a website will become blurred. "In the end, you will wonder: did I just download the app? Or did I just go to a website?"
And that is what Coast weeks to do — change the concept of browsing altogether.
The design basics of Coast
- Every design element has been carefully crafted for iPad. It's not just a mobile interface scaled up to fit a touchscreen, nor a desktop browser scaled down.
- Opera threw the back and forward buttons out of the window. Instead, it gave a browser based on swipe gestures, with focus on attractive animations.
- All the stuff that one doesn't see. Opera invented technology that works under the hood, keeping the user safe and secure.
