Opera has won the Red Dot Design Award for the work it has done with its Opera Touch browser which features a revolutionary new user interface. The browser was first deployed on the Android platform in April and finally arrived on iOS earlier this month. Opera says it designed the new UI in response to phones getting bigger and browser interfaces thus becoming more cumbersome to use with their URL bars being located at the top of the screen.
On the browser’s Red Dot project page, it explains the benefits of the new interface:
This mobile Internet browser features an innovative user interface that can be operated with the thumb. In most web browsers, users must reach for the top of the screen to get to the most important control elements. This is the main reason why they accidentally drop their smartphones.
With the new UI, Opera introduced the Fast Action Button which is located at the bottom of the screen and gives users access to the browser controls and the ability to perform web searches. On bigger phones, the placement of this button makes the browser less troublesome to use as users don’t have to reach for the top of their screens. The browser also uses the mobile-friendly Flow feature that gets you connected quickly to a desktop browser and lets you share images, links, videos and other content across devices.
The Red Dot Award has been running for more than 60 years and has a jury that demands very high standards from entrants. Opera succeeded in winning over the 24-member jury which evaluated more than 8,600 designs from around the world, Opera was awarded the Red Dot “for the high design quality and creative achievement” of the browser’s interface. If you’re intrigued and want to give the browser a go, you’ll find it on both Android and iOS in their respective app stores.
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