Opera stays slim but sings a beefed-up tune

Opera Software is set to release the final version of its rewritten browser for the Windows operating system today, adding features without increasing the browser's size.

Opera revealed in August that it was in the process of rewriting its browser from the ground up. The goal was to provide a browser that was smaller and faster.

Opera 7 is only marginally smaller than its predecessor - a 3.4MB download compared with 3.5MB for Opera 6. But Opera said that in addition to faster page rendering, the new browser is loaded with new features.

"Our effort has been very successful," said Jon von Tetzchner, Opera's chief executive. "Most people will notice that pages will show up a lot faster. We worked very hard on the rendering engine, and this is the feedback we're getting from the beta testers."

Opera is a niche player in the browser market, gearing its business toward cellphones and other small devices whose manufacturers by and large do not want to rely on Microsoft. Opera sells its browser for $39 and gives away a version with an advertising unit built in.

After years of competing with Microsoft's Internet Explorer and AOL Time Warner's Netscape browsers, Opera has maintained its single-digit market share and claims that its audience is growing at about one million new downloads per month.

Changes since Opera 7's latest test release were primarily fixes to stability problems, according to Opera. One exception, which Opera calls "spatial navigation," increases the ways in which a user can navigate a web page using the keyboard, rather than the mouse.