Opera Releases Opera 8 for Mac

O pera Software released Thursday Opera 8 for Macintosh, playing up its improved speed and security.

Opera touts its latest Mac release as "the most Macintosh-like version ever." The browser has improved its support for Appleis Human Interface Guidelines and added full keyboard access functionality.

Opera 8 for Macintosh includes the same functionality as Opera 8 for Windows and Linux, which was released April 19, 2005. Opera 8 has improved security solutions, such as the new security field that indicates the level of security and the certificate-owner of a secure site. Native Scalable Vector Graphic support (SVG 1.1 Tiny), introduced in Opera 8, is also included in the Mac version. Other features offered in Opera 8 include a "delete private data" option, a "trash can" that saves closed pages and blocked pop-ups during a session, and Operais Extensible Rendering Architecture (ERA) which automatically re-adjusts page content to fit the window width.

"With Opera, Mac users can surf fast, comfortably and efficiently using a full-featured browser that is not tied to the operating system (OS)," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. "Rather than incurring costly upgrades to your OS to get the newest features, Opera allows Mac users to browse, e-mail, download and chat using one program, requiring minimal system resources due to Operais small size."

The browser is available for download in Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, as well as simplified and traditional Chinese. Opera will automatically provide a user interface in the language the computer is configured to use.