Opera Browser For Mac Released As Technology Preview

by , 1:10 PM EST, February 26th, 2001

Opera Software has released a Technology Preview (TP) version of its browser for the Macintosh. Opera promises a better Internet experience to Macintosh users through better speed and performance in a compact, non-bloated program. According to Opera Software:

Technology Preview is a term for a publicly released alpha version. Although an Opera alpha will probably not harm a users computer, frequent bugs and crashes are to be expected. Opera's release of Technology Previews follows in the company's tradition of openness towards the Internet community, inviting them to provide feedback to Opera's developers, while watching the browser's development unfold. "The look and feel - as well as capabilities of Opera 5 for Macintosh, will certainly change dramatically before a final release, but Macintosh fans can already now see in what direction our browser is heading," says Hakon Lie, Chief Technology Officer of Opera Software. "What's important now is that as many people as possible test it, and submit bug reports to us. The more users who help us, the better a browser we are able to provide the Macintosh community," he ends.

Opera 5.0 for Macintosh will work on Power PC Mac's running MacOS 7.5 or later. Systems prior to 8.0 will require installation of Appearance Manager. A version for 68K processors, as well as OS X will follow at a later stage. Opera 5.0 for Macintosh TP 1 supports the following features:

• Fast rendering of pages
• 128-bit encryption
• TLS 1.0
• SSL 2/3
• CSS1 & CSS2
• XML
• HTML 4.0
• HTTP 1.1
• WAP-WML
• ECMAScript
• JavaScript 1.3
• Standards compliance

Opera TP1 is available for free and you can download it as well as find more information at Opera Software's site.

The Mac Observer Spin:

Microsoft killed the commercial browser market when it made Internet Explorer free in order to win market share from the market dominating Netscape. Most folks wouldn't consider paying for a browser because of this, but companies like Opera and the OmniGroup still manage to put out the highest performing browsers on the planet. Take the time to check out Opera and give it a twirl.

Opera Software