Opera Software has released the first version of its Opera Web browser for the Macintosh based on the 7.x codebase. The company has released the new browser as a preview version.
Major improvements in Opera 7.50 Preview 3 for Mac include the integration of Opera’s Presto rendering engine, which it says sports major speed improvements, improved standards support, and bidirectional text display. Opera Mail is also included, along with Opera Chat, which provides messaging using the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) protocol. Opera 7 also integrates with the Mac OS X Keychain for password support.
Opera 7.50 Preview 3 for Mac is being offered with the caveat that its developer considers it “unfinished and unsupported beta-quality software.” There’s still some work to do, including synchronization with Mac OS X Address Book, support for Liveconnect and support for Unicode-based keyboard layouts.
Opera 7.50 Preview 3 for Mac requires Mac OS X v10.1 or later.