Opera premiere: First peek at the new browser

9-06-2.000

 

 

With first clash of the War of the Browsers ended, and Microsoft's engineers enjoying victory while Netscape's scramble against the clock, all the signs are that the second battle will not be a matter of two.

Here at Macuarium we have the pleasure of being able to introduce you to one of the upcoming contenders for Explorer's throne. This is a first, and as such the software is in an "alpha" development stage for the Macintosh environment. Pal Hvistendahl from Opera Soft. was kind enough to provide us with a copy once we agreed not to reveal too many trade secrets; that's the reason we'll only be showing a single screen capture for you to appreciate the state of the works. We'll go into deeper detail on following versions.

Opera originated in Norway as a project within the local telecoms company in 1.992. Two years later, its originators left the company in order to develop the idea to its full potential and established Opera Software to improve and market the browser.

Since then, Opera has grown to version 3.x on the Windows platform, where over a million copies were downloaded just in 1.999. Now they're preparing to launch in different platforms (Mac OS, Mac OS X, Linux, EPOC, BeOS) with their 4.0 version.

According to Opera software, its strenghts are speed, standard compliance, security, a small footprint and stability even in slow machines. We have been able to verify two of them: it is indeed fast (very fast) and weights only 3'3 MB.

The finished version will ship with 128 bit encryption (it's legal, since it is not made in the US) and special features for the handicapped such as full control from the keyboard, sounds for actions, color change and zoom for text and graphics.

Due to the limitations of the software we tested, we cannot tell you more about it. The finished browser should arrive on the last third of the year, and there's a high probability of a Spanish version being developed after the first, English one.

And finally, here's the screen grab. Keep in mind that the software it was taken from is still in development, not even a beta, and therefore can't show as much polish as it will when finally released.

 

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