Looking to stay viable in the face of increasing competition from Apple’s Safari browser, Norway-based Opera on Wednesday introduced a new version of its power-browser for Mac OS X 10.3.
Mac OS X 10.3, codenamed Panther, is expected to debut by year-end with significant revisions to the Unix-based OS. Ahead of that release, Opera said the Opera 6.03 version of Mac release would comply with the new OS.
“Mac users who prefer a better Internet experience will need to download version 6.03 to make Opera compatible with the debuting operating system. The release of Opera 6.03 for Mac allows for continued use on Panther while development continues on Opera 7 for Mac to be released later this year,” Opera said in a statement.
Version 6.03 also features several modifications to an earlier version, including bug fixes and the removal of the start-up dialog for unregistered browsers.
The move to make the alternative browser compliant with the
yet-to-be-released OS is seen as Opera’s effort to stay alive on the Mac platform. Apple’s new Safari browser, which is based on the KDE Project’s KHTML code, has already taken a page from Opera’s book with the addition of power-browsing features like tabbed page-switching and AutoFill.
While Microsoft’s Internet Explorer continues to dominate the overall Web browser market, Opera is reporting increased interest in its products. The company, which offer a free browser alongside an ad-free $39 option, has counted a record 10 million downloads from its home page.
The company said the major interest was coming from users in the U.S., Europe and Japan.
