Better iPad browsing with updated Coast by Opera
Coast 2.0 introduces a handful of improvements that make browsing the Web on the iPad faster and easier.
Opera introduced Coast for the iPad earlier this year, and yesterday it rolled out version 2.0 of its tablet browser. The update introduces a handful of new features, while the design remains largely unchanged from when we saw Coast last September, though two familiar buttons go missing. Coast 2.0 jettisons the forward and back buttons, and lets you swipe left and right to move forward and backward. Opera also states that moving backward is faster -- instant in some cases.
In addition to swiping more and tapping less while browsing, you'll find other notable improvements in Coast 2.0.
Coast's tiled home screen is now easier to customize. You only need to long press to choose from Opera's small collection of wallpapers or an image of your own from your photo library.
It's now easier to open PDFs in another app. When viewing a PDF file in Coast, tap on it and a menu appears that lets you open the document in another app such as iBooks, Evernote, Dropbox, or Google Drive.
Similar to how Chrome's latest beta treats noisy tabs, Coast shows you which tile is playing audio or video. If you have a video or audio files playing in the background, the tile playing the file will show a small sound wave graphic along its bottom edge, making it easy to go from the home screen to the source of whatever is playing.
