Opera’s One Browser Is Modular, Multithreaded, AI-Friendly

Opera released an early access developer build of its new, modular Opera One web browser today.

Opera One(Opens in a new window) will replace the flagship Opera desktop browser at some point later this year on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It follows a “Modular Design philosophy(Opens in a new window)” and uses a new multithreaded compositor(Opens in a new window) for handling how the different elements of content on a web page are displayed. Opera claims to be “the first major Chromium-based browser” to do this.

By implementing a multithreaded solution for the compositor while also switching to layer-based animations, Opera says it has eliminated the stuttering and hitching that can impact the user experience and stop animations playing smoothly. It effectively “enables high performance graphics operations without interruption from other processes” and promises a “liquid smooth” navigation experience.

As well as the promise of better performance, Opera One uses “Tab Islands” to allow users to easily organize groups of tabs into their own groups (islands). The islands are automatically created “to keep tabs together within the same browsing context,” but they can also be created manually and moving tabs between islands is simply a case of dragging and dropping them.

Back in February, Opera announced it was integrating ChatGPT into its browser and adding a “Shorten” button for content summaries. Generative AI features will continue to be a feature of Opera One, but Opera is also planning to ship its own AI engine within the next few months.

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