Coast by Opera is a web browser for iPad that is designed with the touchscreen in mind. It offers a fluid, gesture-based user experience like no other mobile browser.
What's so special about Coast by Opera?
The interesting thing about Coast is that it doesn't really have any features. There's no bookmarks feature (not in the traditional sense anyway), no browser history, no plug-ins, no address bar, no find in page, no private browsing - not even a settings menu.
Coast also lacks the high-speed 'Turbo' browsing feature that you'll find in
So all in all, Coast by Opera sounds like a useless piece of crap, right? Well actually, it isn't.
More iPad-friendly than Safari
By stripping away features you'd traditionally expect from a mobile web browser, Opera has been able to build Coast around an interface that looks and feels more like the iPad operating system itself. In fact, it's behavior is more adapted to the device than Apple's own Safari browser, which comes with the iPad.
The attractive looking start screen in Coast consists of a series of icons which represent web sites and you can swipe through screens of icons just as you do with apps on your iPad. Icons can be picked up and dragged around to place them in the position on the screen that you prefer.
Web pages can be pinned to the start screen while you're browsing them by clicking on the 'Add to Home' button. So, although you don't get a bookmarks folder, you can arrange favorites onto your start screen. There are no options for sorting them into folders, though. This means that if you like to have a lot of bookmarks, you'll probably end up scrolling through page after page of icons.
Recently-visited sites appear as logos in a bar on the bottom of the start screen and they can be dragged up to fix them or deleted. This is similar to the 'history' list of a standard browser, though with less clutter (but also less capacity).
Browsing pages with Coast by Opera is such a seamless, natural experience you'll wonder why it's taken so long for mobile browsers to work this way. To navigate to a web page you simply search or type the address in the large text box on the start screen. Suggestions will appear as you type (including site logos), and you tap to enter the site once you've found it.
Once you're up and running, you can sail through web sites by using the intuitive touch gestures employed by Coast. To move back and forward through a site, you simply swipe left or right (there are zero navigation buttons on the Coast interface). To reload a page you drag the screen downwards.
Hit the icon in the bottom right of the screen and you'll minimize the page. This will reduce the size of the page, allowing you to thumb through all open pages by swiping the screen. It's the same kind of behavior as Safari - but more beautiful! When in this minimized preview view you can close a page by dragging it up or open security information by dragging it down. A small icon for sharing, printing, or pinning a page to the start screen appears in the bottom-right of the preview.
The verdict
Coast by Opera is a beautiful web browser that neatly fits the look and feel of an iPad. It uses touch gestures to offer a seamless way of navigating. However, it can take a while to get used to the idea of having no browsing features of options to speak of.
Download Coast by Opera 1.02 in Softonic
