Opera Software has announced the beta release of its upgraded Opera
Web browser for Microsoft's Windows operating system.
Opera 7 for Windows is both smaller and faster than earlier Opera
releases and constitutes a wholesale rebuilding of the browser, the
company said.
The heart of the browser is a redesigned rendering engine that
provides improved support for established and emerging Web
standards like Document Object Model Level 2 (DOM2), extended
Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 (CSS2), and HyperText Markup
Language (HTML) 4.01.
"We wanted to make things faster and be able to handle more live
content. Opera 7 is much faster in rendering and it also starts to
render things at a much earlier stage," said chief executive
officer Jon von Tetzchner.
Other Opera 7 features include revamped e-mail and news clients,
Small Screen Rendering (SSR) technology that will allow Web site
developers to see how a particular page would appear on a
small-screen device such as a personal digital assistant (PDA) or
mobile phone.
Opera's focus on portable devices may be a way to keep the company
and its products relevant.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer is used by almost 95% of all Web
surfers, according to data from Web researchers OneStat.com.
Surfers using the Opera browser account for just 0.9% of the
total.
"There is an inherent challenge to companies that are operating
system independent to sell a product that comes packaged with an
operating system," said Dan Kusnetzky, vice-president of systems
software research at IDC.
"They've got to overcome the idea that 'this product came at no
additional cost, so why pay for something to replace it?'"
As more and more Web-based services such as online banking
standardise on Microsoft's products, the hurdles facing those who
use Opera or other browsers can only multiply, said Kusnetzky.
However, with mobile devices the next frontier for purveyors of
online content, Opera sees a window of opportunity that is not open
in the market for desktop applications.
"On the desktop, I don't think we can topple Microsoft in the near
future because they control the distribution," von Tetzchner said.
"In the mobile market, however - phones, PDAs, even TV - Microsoft
doesn't control distribution."
In that market, the leaner Opera 7 has an advantage over Internet
Explorer, according to Tetzchner.
Most mobile devices have comparable computing power to desktop
computers of the early 1990s. In addition, the desktop and mobile
versions of Opera 7 are identical, making content development for
mobile devices using Opera much easier than for Microsoft's mobile
Web browser, which is different from the Internet Explorer,
Tetzchner said.
Opera has made it known that it is looking to develop deals with
mobile device hardware vendors to ship a copy of the Opera browser
with their devices.
Opera is also hoping to capitalise on the growing popularity of the
Linux operating system. Opera already has a loyal following among
users of Linux and Unix and the company is making efforts to
increase its support for different Unix and Linux distributions.