Scanners may not be as popular a product as they were ten or fifteen years ago. Maybe there is commodified to some extent and Almost all of us accept the choice we made some time ago as a good one, without considering that there may be a life beyond it.It’s like we’re only interested in applications now.

Some of us break this unwritten rule by paying attention to what the browser market continues to offer. Be it the privacy provided by Brave, the co-pilot of Edge, the always interesting list of Chrome extensions, or the productive versatility of Opera.

And out of these, Arc emerged.

The address bar is displayed like this mainstream…

Arc Scanner (current value) one touch browser innovatorglasses. By the way, their offices are in Manhattan. He is almost two years old, but in addition to the maturity that time has given him, the new features he has recently acquired have brought him into the spotlight again.

and good nerd of browsers revisit it as many times as necessary.

My perception of Arc is that the browser feel innovator Evergreen: like when I use Notion for notes, or Readwise for ‘read later’, or Amie for everything that app does: they are created with the idea of ​​being different. It’s not something everyone will like, but that profession exists.

Arrow abandons many dogmas of the traditional browser. For starters, there is no steering rod. To find the exact URL of the website you’re viewing, you need to click somewhere very specific. It has no top bar, just a sidebar where both favorites and tabs are stacked. It also offers ‘gaps’ to temporarily collect links.

Lashes are something that has its own learning curve. In this sense, the options you have are different from the options other browsers usually have (open, close, pin, and group if possible). There’s more flexibility in Arc: pinned tab folders, tabs that automatically close unless we protect them somehow… Arc automates certain processes and forces you to learn others. I’m not sure this is an improvement for everyone.

Starting to use the Arc is like living after renovating our house: we’ll eventually get used to the new position of the buttons, but for a while we’ll be wobbling into the bathroom and the cat will occasionally stomp its foot.

Of course, it should be particularly emphasized that ‘cmd + T’ does not open a new tab directly, but instead shows a small search box into which you can type and select the website to open, making it less distracting for your eyes. We remember that there is no address bar in Arc.

What do I take into consideration? A big improvement is several functions, peep and split view. peep This consists of previewing a link via a floating window, just like when we preview a photo for a few seconds in the smartphone interface and it disappears when we release it. It’s a great function to take a quick look at a page before deciding whether it’s the one we want to open.

Split view is something some supranational regulators should make mandatory for any browser: displaying two tabs simultaneously in a single window. Without having to open two full windows. Some browsers do this through third-party extensions, and I haven’t found any browsers that do this well. Arc does this wonderfully. And not just two, but three, four… You can even customize the percentage of the screen that each one covers.

The split view in all its glory. Image: Xataka.

Another collapsing dogma is personalization. A browser usually provides this for the framework surrounding the web, but Arc even lets you customize the website itself. One by one. Don’t like the typography we use? Xataka? Change. Does it seem too small to you? Make it bigger. Do you love uppercase text? Yes, everything in capital letters. Hate the color of the top bar? Paint it orange and use it as a hat. You can even write your own CSS.

From where. Image: Xataka.

Arc stores these preferences web by web, so you see it how you want to see it. Your target audience will likely be professional web designers who really know how to improve the appearance of a website. It’s not me and I could only do harm.

Something I find very useful Integration of artificial intelligence into the search engine of each page. I can “only” find the terms when I search by pressing ‘cmd + F’ in my regular browser (Safari) (I’m using macOS). You can also ask questions about the page you’re viewing in Arc.

For example, in this great interview my colleague Enrique did with the boss of Android, we can ask questions about the interview itself.

Image: Xataka.

This isn’t the best example, but it’s the one that stays at home. The problem is that if we need to find specific information on a page that contains a lot, we have well-integrated help here.

Arc has many interesting aspects, but Sometimes I can’t help but feel like I’m being decorated.. Like football players who often miss the last dribble, or to take a more technological analogy, like the digital magazines that appeared in the early years of the iPad: they focused more on demonstrating power by taking advantage of the format (click here, rotate iPad, swipe there, shake) from the content itself more. The hero was no longer on the side of technical and interface capabilities.

I feel that way about Arc sometimes. It has some features that deserve a subscription, but you can’t help but brag about some of the tasks. And not even one nerd The rate of browsers can ignore the fact that someone wants to make them lose productivity just to show off, albeit indirectly.

Moreover, Your mobile browser moved the house to the roof– It has an interface as gorgeous as the desktop version, along with some pretty promising AI functions. However, it doesn’t have a feature as simple as synchronization with that computer version, so we can’t even import our favorites.

The Arc has a lot of good points, but I think it suffers from a certain inexperience, from some edges to polishing, before it can measure itself face to face with the greats, without us having to miss out on things. Especially for those of us who spend long hours of the day in the browser.

We’ll see each other again in a few months, Arc.

in Xataka | When you dominate the Mosaic (browser) world

Featured image | Xataka, Mockuuups Studio