Opera Software tells us that the Mac OS X version of its browser, which was last updated seven long months ago, is still under development.

It is not a Norwegian Blue, has not expired and gone to meet its maker, is not pushing up daisies, has not shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible. It is not an ex-Browser.

Really? A spokesman for the Norwegian company told us that the OS X version will be updated soon - he couldn't say when, exactly - or whether it will be derived from the 6.0 code base.

"We are working to get all of Opera's major desktop browsers up to the same version level," he said.

We asked if this was an in-house project, or like some of the less successful ports, had been contracted out to a third party? (We had this horror in mind.)

Opera's Live Leer told us it was:

"It's more important than ever - and we are working very hard on a version for Mac OS X and of course also Mac OS 10.2," he added.

Reviewing Jagwyre last week, we found that browsing experience marred what has been a very happy time with 10.2. Since then we've tried Mozilla 1.1 - which has proved the most reliable renderer of the three major browsers, and is well worth a look - although a bug in the text fields makes it unsuitable for filing stories using The Register's web based production system. We're back to OmniWeb for filing, which hasn't failed us.

Our problems with Internet Explorer on Mac OS X preceded Jagwyre, however. A couple of weeks ago I filed the same story seven times, as the browser insisted that it couldn't complete the form submission, when in fact, it had.

"Knock it off," said a voicemail from my editor. "You can consider your work on this story done." ®

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