Tell Apple how many attempts have been made to change the general interface of a browser, failed attempt. Many companies have tried and failed, with the general user being too used to what they have been using for decades.
Now there’s another browser that wants to try what seems impossible: give (literally) a new coat of paint to the web. It’s called Arc, and the functions that power its private beta can already claim to have created a community of devotees under macOS.
Seeking to succeed where no one else has succeeded
Arc’s own interface is already surprising due to the differences it has compared to other browsers. The tabs are distributed in a sidebar, leaving the title function for the header of the website itself. This gives the impression that the web elements themselves become interface elements of the system window.
Pinned tabs become buttons spread across the top of that sidebar, and you can even categorize those tabs into “spaces” to separate professional from personal.
“Web applications are changing rapidly but browsers are not adapting to these new Internet demands”
“Web applications are changing rapidly, but browsers aren’t adapting to these new demands of the Internet,” says Adena Bauer, membership manager at Arc. From there, the development team at The Browser Company set out to try to create a browser that breaks from the established.
It’s not exactly easy. Safari tried several times, without success. Users stick to the “traditional” concept of web tabs. Adena herself admits that having tabs in a sidebar takes some getting used to, but she also says that many users get it. To those who don’t, he offers to receive their reviews from Twitter:
Arc also offers a feature to edit the web pages you visit the most, removing things you don’t like like sections you don’t need or ads. Is not a ad blocker
Users can even share changes they’ve made to top sites, to share their usage:
These are small steps in an initiative that wants the web to change to give more advantages to the user, giving them more freedom in the face of a web whose concept and structure have not taken major steps since a long time. Adena is open to the rest of the browsers adopting some of these functions, because in this way more users would take this step see web pages with different eyes
How many people are currently using the closed test version of Arc? Arc officials do not give this information, although they provide us with a hint: they send out 10,000 invites every week. That doesn’t mean it translates to 10,000 new active users every week (invites have yet to be accepted and users stay with Arc, dropping the rest of the browsers), but we’re not talking a bad number either.
For me, any advancement that is made with the conventional web page is interesting. Applications have changed, operating systems have changed, and new formulas have even arrived, such as Apple Vision Pro’s “spatial computing”. But even in visionOS, the web remains the same as what we open on our computers. Every once in a while, Arc might be a step in another direction.
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