Interesting browser updates

I was checking on Statcounter to see how popular different browsers were. I wasn’t surprised to see that Google’s Chrome was the most popular with nearly two-thirds (65.68%) of the market share. Safari came second with 17.96%, which probably gives an indication of the percentage of Macs, iPhones, and iPads in use out there. In third place is Edge. Everyone who has bought PC will have Edge as the default browser. To be honest, the first thing I do when I get a new laptop is download a different browser – and, judging by the figures, so do lots of other people. Firefox is fourth with 2.75%. I always used to use Firefox, and I liked using it. I just didn’t install it on my newest laptops. C’est la vie! I was surprised to see Samsung Internet in fifth place. I’d never considered using it, and I have a Samsung phone. It scored 2.58% of market share. Sixth was Opera with 2.26%.

Looking at figures for just North America, it came as no surprise to see Apple’s browser had nearly a third of the market share at 31.74%. Chrome had over half at 52.55%. In Europe, the figures were still in the same order, but Chrome had 61.89% of the market and Safari had 18.55%.

Still, whatever browser you choose, it’s still just a browser – and you only use it to access your webmail, or get to Amazon to do your shopping, or check your bank balance, book holiday, or go to a million other websites, don’t you?

Once you’ve personalized your browser, and got it to remember the user-id and password you use for the websites you visit frequently, and, especially, the ones you only visit once a year, you don’t really want to change it. After all, what extra could a different browser do?

I’ve just started using Opera, or Opera GX as it calls itself. Opera, the browser, has been around for 25 years and is available on laptops and mobile phones, and has recently had some new updates to its built-in artificial intelligence (AI) called Aria, which adds some interesting new features.

Firstly, it has the ability to turn text prompts and descriptions into unique images using the image generation model Imagen2 by Google. Aria identifies the user’s intention to generate an image based on conversational prompts. Users can also use the ‘regenerate’ option to have Aria come up with a new image. Aria allows each user to generate 30 images per day.

Secondly, Aria can now read answers out loud by using Google’s WaveNet model. It benefits those who normally use screen readers, like to multitask, or need to hear information instead of reading it. To get this to work, I was using the command line, I had to click on the speaker icon in the bottom right corner to have Aria read the text response. It was easy to pause the speaking by clicking the pause button that replaced the speaker icon. Clicking the speaker icon again restarted the dialogue.

Thirdly, it’s gaining contextual image understanding. They say that Internet users find themselves searching for information about something they saw just as often as for something they read or heard about. So, Aria is also gaining image understanding capabilities. This means that users can now upload an image to Aria. As part of the chat conversation, users can then ask the AI tool about it. For example, if the image is an unknown headset, Aria will identify its brand and model as well as provide some context about it. Or a user can take a picture of a maths problem and ask Aria how to solve it.

To get this to work I had to download the developer version of the browser and create an account, and sign in. Once I’d done that, I clicked on the ‘+’ button on the right of the chat input box, and then selected the ‘upload image’ option. The explanation of the context of the image was quite good.

As part of the update, the text-based chat experience with Aria has also been improved with the addition of two new functionalities: ‘Chat Summary’ and ‘Links to Sources’. The former provides users with a concise summary of an entire conversation with Aria, allowing them to recap the most important information. In the latter feature, Aria supplies the user with links to sources about the topic of the conversation, enabling them to get more context regarding their enquiry. In addition, the Aria command line in the browser can now be easily activated by pressing the ‘ctrl + /’ or ‘cmd + /’ button combination. This enables the user to open the additional floating window instead of using Aria from the extension page. There’s also a small icon on the left-hand side of the browser that opens up Aria.

Features that were already part of Opera GX that you might be interested in include: RAM, CPU, and network limiters, a built-in free VPN (virtual private network), Twitch and Discord integration (chat facilities used by gamers), and a built-in ad blocker

I’m quite enjoying using the browser. You might want to give it a try.