• Opera One is the new browser from Opera that it hopes will become its flagship browser.
• The early access preview introduces an overhauled design as well a new Tab Island feature.
• Tab Islands arrange tabs contextually to streamline and declutter the browsing experience.

Internet browsers have come a long way since the days where one had to buy a browser to access the internet. Today, Opera announced the launch of an entirely redesigned browser, Opera One.

Opera One is currently in early access but the firm intends to make it the flagship browser in its stable for all desktop platforms. This new version of Opera employs a Modular Design and Multithreaded Compositor.

On the Modular Design, Opera has evaluated every aspect of its browser for relevance. To that end, the browser features a more streamlined UI with AI features including ChatGPT, ChatSonic (A GPT-4 powered AI chatbot) and AI Prompts which are switched on by default. These tools are available through the Opera Sidebar as are the usual apps including Twitter, WhatsApp and music streaming services.

As for the Multithreaded Compositor, this rather technical solution is said to give Opera One smoother animations and transitions, less stuttering while browsing and an overall smoother browsing experience.

Does this impact performance? We’re currently running the preview and we haven’t noted any discernible impact on performance compared to Brave browser, our daily drive.

This overhauled Opera also features a new entry: Tab Islands.

“Tab Islands are a natural way of arranging your tabs into contextual groups without disturbing your flow. They make it easy to keep tabs that relate to each other in groups that you can open and collapse as needed. This makes browsing with many tabs more efficient, allowing for a more pleasant, liquid browsing experience,” product director at Opera, Joanna Czajka said in a statement.

This feature automatically groups tabs together based on the same browsing context. Islands are automatically created when you open links within a page (even links to other domains). Islands can also be manually created by holding Ctrl or Command and clicking, then right clicking to create a Tab Island. Tabs can also be dragged and dropped into Islands.

With these Tab Islands, our usual cluttered browsing window looks more streamlined and truth be told, less anxiety inducing. If you hoard tabs like a techno-Smaug, Opera One may be worth a test drive.

As mentioned, this is an early access preview so there are bound to be bugs and quirks.

If you want to give Opera One a try head to this link to download it and read more about its features.

We are curious to see how long before other Chromium-based browsers like Opera begin implementing features such as Tab Islands. For now though, it’s an Opera exclusive.