Upstart Web browser company Opera Software ASA released a new beta version of its Web browser for the Mac OS Thursday, along with a new beta of its Mac OS X-native browser, the company said.
The browser, also called Opera, is currently in the beta-testing phase which precedes the release of the finished 5.0 edition of the browser. Thursday's releases marked the fifth beta for the Classic Mac OS version and the third for the Mac OS X edition.
Along with a host of bug fixes, the new browsers add a handful of new features including new ways to manage cookies, drag and drop downloads, a 30-day banner-ad-free mode, interface enhancements and more, according to information posted on the company's Web site.
Opera is a small, standards-compliant Web browser which supports HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) 4.01, Cascading Style Sheets, XML (Extensible Markup Language), Javascript and WAP (Wireless Access Protocol), among other standards. The company also offers Windows, Linux, BeOS and OS/2 versions of its browser.
Opera's browsers hold just under 1 percent of the worldwide Web browser market, according to a study conducted by WebSideStory Inc. earlier in the month. In some European countries, however, the company controls as much as almost 6 percent of the market, the study found.
The new betas can be downloaded for free from Opera's Web site at http://www.opera.com/mac/.