Hicksdesign has been working as a consultant for Opera Software for many years, helping to design the desktop version of the Opera browser, but particularly in the period between 2015–16 where I lead the design and UX team and oversaw many changes.
The browser was redesigned for both Windows 10 and macOS 10.11, harmonising further with each platform’s style. This included little touches such as enabling the system theme colour in the top chrome on Windows 10. Built-in Ad Block, VPN and Personal News were also key features designed during my tenure.
Built in VPN on Windows 10
Built in Ad Blocking on macOS
The work created for Opera was extremely varied - Invision and HTML prototypes, cross platform UX design and illustration. We also created a Webview framework, where the internal UI of the browser was written in HTML, CSS and JS rather than traditional C or C. Views such as Bookmarks uses this:
As internal pages use a webview, modern technologies such as CSS Flex box and SVG could be used, without worrying about providing fallbacks