Norway’s Opera Software Thursday released a revamped Opera 6.0 for Mac Beta 1
browser, hailing the upgrade as the most advanced currently available for
the Mac OS X operating system.
Opera, which is putting the finishing
touches on its “Project Presto” Opera 7 browser, said the new Mac
release includes user interface changes and other tweaks to make it look and
feel like a proper Mac OS X application.
“Opera 6.0 for Mac is the most advanced browser currently available for Mac
OS X in terms of speed, usability, accessibility and language support,” said
Dean Kakridas, vice president of desktop products at Opera Software.
The new browser, which is being
sold to Apple’s Mac users, contains major tweaks to the
address entry and search fields, which have been complemented with a zoom
bar to increase or decrease the size of the viewing area.
A free version is available but users must accept embedded advertising,
Opera said.
New features include ‘OperaShow,’ which allows for desktop presentations in
full-screen mode. Mac users can also access tabbed browsing mode for the
first time. Tabbed browsing mode allows for multiple windows to be opened
within the Opera browser at the same time.
New add-ons for the Mac Beta 1 include:
- Personal bar, an addition to the bookmarks feature for quicker access to
the user’s most accessed links. - Skinning, which allows the user to fully customize the look and feel of
their Opera browser. - Inline searching, which accelerates searching in documents.
- Unicode support for all major non-Latin-derived languages and language
support for Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
Opera, which is privately held with headquarters in Olso, Norway, makes Web
browsers for the desktop and embedded markets.
It is now working on a major overhaul of the Opera 7 browser client, the
first upgrade since November 2001, when Opera 6.0 was released for Windows.
Scheduled for public download as a finished product by the end of the year,
Opera 7 has been going through rigorous internal beta testing and will be
sent out as a beta soon, possibly by the end of next month.
