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Maybe browsers can do much more than show everything.

Google Chrome has dominated the browser market for nearly 14 years since its official launch in September 2008.

What has happened to the entire technology market in the past 14 years?

Apple has evolved from the release of the first bulky, 3G-capable iPhone 3GS to iPhone14; social media with A16 chips and various functions. It has experienced changes from Facebook to Instagram to Snapchat and then to TikTok. A number of shared economic models such as Uber and Airbnb have entered and changed people's daily lives. People's working environment has been greatly optimized and improved by productivity tools such as Zoom, Slack, Notion, etc. New energy vehicles and self-driving have set off a travel revolution, and technology companies have begun to fight for the space economy.

However, when technology is changing with each passing day, and all software tools are moving towards a more collaborative, flexible, and powerful direction, the browser that we all use every day seems to be standing still, maintaining the same state as it was more than a decade ago-the "URL bar + menu key" interface, and stacking more and more extended features.

So why can't browsers make a revolution, too?

It's not your problem, it's the browser's problem. Everyone may have had this experience when using the browser: there are countless tags huddled together in the browser, and when you want to find useful tags, you can't find them. The mouse flies around on the screen and switches back and forth between different pages and functions.

In the past, when there were only mainstream browsers such as Chrome, users could only find reasons from themselves, such as urging themselves to develop good browsing habits to close unwanted tags in time, and often better sorting bookmarks, and so on.

But have you ever thought that this may not be the user's problem, but that the browser itself may be able to do better?

Recently, a brand new browser product called Arc has entered everyone's attention.

Although the product is only open to a small-scale trial, it has received a lot of praise in the whole network. From the feedback, almost everyone has a common understanding: "this is an imaginative and revolutionary product that is likely to subvert the way people use browsers in the future."

The picture is from The Verge.

The picture is from Youtube, which is launched by a company called The Browser Company that specializes in innovative browsers. "We believe browsers can do more," they wrote on The browser company's website. "We are imagining a browser that can think as quickly as we do, share the work for us, and push our creativity forward."

"Arc is a browser for the way we use the Internet in 2022, and we hope it will be the basis for people to use the Internet in the future."

Unlike some browser products in the past, unlike some browser products in the past, Arc is not only trying to improve the browser in some functions such as extensibility and privacy, but also trying to reinvent the browser. Among them, whether from the aesthetic design, or from the functional logic point of view, we can see some "iPhone thinking".

The picture is from the official website of The browser company, so how to transform it? Let's start with the most intuitive user interface.

Unlike our current vertical browsers, one of the most important changes in Arc is the use of sidebars in windows to manage what we see in browsers in a completely different way than in the past.

Arc essentially belongs to the Chrome kernel, and users can seamlessly import data and plug-ins from Chrome Safari, Firefox, Edge and other browsers into Arc, but the presentation of information is no longer the simple stack it used to be.

The entire sidebar is divided into four areas, and at the top of the left side of the sidebar is the "Favorite" area, which can store some of the websites you use most frequently. At present, you can store up to 8.

Arc Browser user interface, Silicon editing drawing Favorite below is the nail selection area (Pinned tabs), you can create different custom folders, commonly used tags for classification management. It also makes it very convenient and intuitive to find the pages you need to use in different scenarios.

At the bottom of the nail selection is the Explore Tab area, also known as the temporary label area, which is mainly used to store tags that are opened and used that day. But unlike previous browsers with more and more tags, Arc has a requirement that each tab will automatically close after it has been idle for a certain period of time. The default is 12 hours, and you can also change the time manually, but not more than a week.

It's not that tags that are automatically closed can no longer be found, but are automatically archived by Arc to a place similar to the Recycle Bin, called Archive. Similar to deleted albums on iPhone, you find these closed tags by date, name, etc., and you can choose to preview, restore or permanently delete them.

At the end of Arc's Archive page, at the bottom of the sidebar is personal space and tool management. Library is used to store files such as browsing screenshots, documents, desktop files, etc., and supports the use of a series of built-in tools (which will be highlighted later).

In addition to the design of the sidebar, in terms of the entire page setup, the browser theme color can be freely chosen by the user, and the classification management of all tags can be added directly by dragging and dropping.

Introduce Space function

It is worth mentioning that Arc also introduces the concept of space (workspace) into browsers to help users better divide and manage their lives and work.

For example, users can set up two space for work and personal matters, and different space have their own pin tags and daily tags, but they can also share common favorite tags and personal space.

Space switches in a similar way to background applications on iPhone, with each Space setting its own name, icon, and color matching, making it easy for users to distinguish and call.

Arc's workspace, pictures from Arc users can enter the workspace to create, select and switch freely by clicking the Space name in the personal space section at the bottom of the sidebar.

After talking about the functional area of the flexible split-screen system, let's take a look at another major part of the browser-windows.

In Arc, because the upper tab bar is integrated into the left side of the screen, and users can choose to hide the sidebar, so that the entire window space is released, users can pay more attention to the display content.

The whole screen can be customized by the user into one, two or even more screens according to the display screen size, which is convenient for the user to compare and view. Windows can display tags from different space, and closing a window will not cause any tags to be closed.

Arc split screen system, pictures from Twitter in addition, when the user switches to another desktop, Arc will automatically float the video being played into picture-in-picture mode to the current desktop, the whole window management is very flexible and user-friendly.

In addition to the changes in the user interface mentioned above, let's focus on the browser capabilities of Arc. To put it simply, there are basically all the Arc that browsers can achieve in the past, and more productivity enhancement functions have been expanded on this basis.

At present, Arc embeds several material collection and management tools, including Note, Easel and Capture. Silicon people feel that these features integrate the built-in functions of iPhone and iPad in recent years and the concepts of productivity tools such as Miro and Notion.

For example, its Notes function is to help you quickly open a blank page and write down the content. The blank page also has its own URL, so after recording, the user can save it directly in the selected file or send it to others.

Easel is similar to the very popular whiteboard tools in recent years, and its hiding function is very powerful. Users can not only write, draw or add pictures or videos on it, but also combine the screen capture function to replace screenshots and videos with real-time versions of any web page. click on that picture or video module to automatically jump to the page.

All modules can be dragged and combined freely, and a single artboard can present real-time views of multiple websites. Each artboard can also be shared and collaborated with others.

Arc Sketchpad function, truncated from YouTube blogger JimmyLV in addition, Arc also has many built-in shortcut keys. For example, when opening a tag, users can use the Command+T command to open a dialog box, which not only supports searching browsing history and pinning the URL, but also supports calling various functions and commands in the browser.

Overall, from the current design of Arc, we may be able to see its ambition for browsers, which is more concise, beautiful, user-friendly, functional and extensible. Its goal is to build the browser into a lightweight online operating system, using a variety of web pages as applications, and gradually build a full-platform ecology.

There is still a long way to go to change users, and of course, Arc's current feedback is not all an advantage.

First of all, due to the large number of functions built into the browser, the large size of Arc will also take up a lot more resources than ordinary browsers.

In addition, plug-ins are the most important part of browsers in recent years, but there is no centralized place on Arc. In addition, many people think that functions such as Note and whiteboard could have been better done by third-party plug-ins, but they don't need browsers to do this.

Finally, there is the design of the sidebar, so that users who are used to operating in a vertical field of vision need a certain amount of time to adapt. At the same time, some operations on the sidebar, such as hiding and calling the search bar, can only be performed with shortcut keys, which puts forward higher requirements for users and is not suitable for the positioning of all ordinary users in the browser.

In addition to the browser itself, Arc's business model is not very clear from the company's point of view.

In fact, the first prototype of Arc was launched in 2019, but it is still under slow update and internal testing in recent years. As a browser product for everyone, it is a curious question whether there is a charging plan in the future, if so, where it will be charged and how it will be priced.

According to public information, the core members of Arc include former design directors of companies such as Tesla and Medium, which have only conducted two small-scale financing. The whole company is still in a mysterious state, and the trial quota for Arc is released from time to time, giving people the impression that they still hold the pipa and half cover their shy face.

The picture is taken from Crunchbase on the whole, no matter whether Arc can be successful in the future or not, it at least brings browser reform into the attention of more people and provides some creative solutions.

It also makes more people realize that when all the software functions are desperately changing, browsers that show us everything should not stand still.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Silicon Man (ID:guixingren123), article: Juny, Editor: VickyXiao

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