Brief Hands-On Report--Opera 8.0.1 Released Yesterday

Opera Software released Opera 8.0.1 for Macintosh, available for Mac OS X versions 10.2 and higher. Opera 8.0 has been out for several months as a public beta. Faster than ever before, this comprehensive Web surfing package gives Macintosh users Opera's extensive functionality and an optional 15 languages standard upon download.

Opera touts its latest Mac release as the most Macintosh-like version ever. The browser has improved its support for Apple's 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 introduced innovative 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 Macintosh 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 Opera's Extensible Rendering Architecture (ERA) which automatically re-adjusts page content to fit the window width.

Opera 8.0.1 for Macintosh is available for download from this Opera Web page. We use the free version and have found that Opera 8 is indeed very fast. It is especially good with the many forms of Java found on the Web. The little ad in the free version is not very intrusive so we can recommend it. [Bill Fox]