Opera Coast
Most iPad users are using Safari to
browse the web simply because that’s the browser which comes by
default. If you want to use anything else, you need to download them.
In fact, for many years Apple did not even allow other web browsers
to appear on the App Store. Still to this day, the company applies a
lot of restrictions to what an iPhone or iPad browser can do. It’s
the main reason why Firefox is still not available on iOS. Because
any web browser would have to rely on the rendering libraries that
power Safari, and Firefox uses Gecko to render its web pages, the
open source group wasn’t willing to create an iPad app.
But Google has brought Chrome to the
iPad a while back, and now Opera, the fourth place in the browser
war, has just introduced Coast, a brand new iPad browser. Opera calls
it the best tablet browser, and the browser that should have come
with your device. The company cites three reasons why you would want
to use it as opposed to the default option. First, it has a brand
new, revolutionary interface. It doesn’t simply use desktop icons and
menus that are resized for mobile, Opera created a new interface
based around squares and large buttons. Then it says that Coast is
also great looking and intuitive to use. Finally, there are many
under the hood improvements as well.
Innovation happens very fast in the
mobile space, and certainly that’s where a lot of inventors head to
when they want to create something new. It’s too early to say whether
Coast will succeed in attracting some users. Chrome certainly did,
even on iOS, because it integrates so nicely with Chrome on other
platforms. Coast, being a new browser, doesn’t have that feature to
help bootstrap it. Opera may have a tough time ahead to bring users
to its new browser.
