30 Days to becoming an Opera8 Lover

On April 22, 2005 at 08:51 AM, Artem Shpynov wrote:

Whats wrong with some page horizontal sizes? I use 1024x768 screen size and on some pages (e.g. http://backgrounds.ru/) horizontal scroll bar appears looks like opera returns wrong screen size. I dont whant to use fit to window width feature because the screen became some crappy.

On April 22, 2005 at 09:04 AM, Mike Dallos wrote:

Thanks........very helpful!!

I'm lovin' Opera!!

Be well......

Mike

On April 22, 2005 at 01:53 PM, TjL (tntluoma.com) wrote:

Artem: I don't know why the site gives a horizontal scroll, but Fit to Width feature works perfectly on that site.

I didn't look at the HTML, but I assume the site is simply designed too wide.

On April 24, 2005 at 12:35 AM, J. King wrote:

I'd just like to note that you are not alone in disliking smooth scrolling, Tim. I find it especially distracting, and it's even worse on the LCD monitor I have, as smooth scrolling leaves text trails.

On April 25, 2005 at 06:20 PM, leif halvard silli wrote:

Through your description of navigating the preference tabs I learned that on the mac the short cut for sycling through pages is alt + tab.

Btw, does the Opera8 Lover posess a view on in which order pages should close? At least in Mac Opera8 we get completely confused byt its logic there.

Firefox and Safari will close from right to left if you are in the right most tab. Otherwise it will close from left to right. This I quickly got used to.

But Opera7 and 8 closes the pages in a completely random order -- probably related to the order the pages were opened and from which window but I don't get it -- and who would remember such things? I am tempted to not use Opera for that reason alone, even it has so many other good features.

On April 25, 2005 at 06:43 PM, TjL (tntluoma.com) wrote:

leif: Hrm. Opera Lover had not really thought about this before. I tend to work with many many pages open at once, mostly because I am somewhat addicted to shift+ctrl+click (open in new background page).

A quick check seemed to indicate Opera does (by default) close windows in the order that they have been recently used. To me, this makes complete sense, however, as you indicated, you had gotten used to a different behavior. And once we are used to something, it can be difficult to un-learn.

However, I believe I have a compromise solution. If you change the “Cycle Pages” preference (Under “Advanced Preferences” > “Browsing”) then Opera appears the close the pages in a more orderly fashion.

You might try changing that preference and see if it makes closing pages seem more logical to you.

Mouse Users: Remember that shift+clicking a tab will close it, as will clicking on the X (assuming you have the “Show close button on each tab” set under “General” preferences).

On April 25, 2005 at 08:24 PM, leif halvard silli wrote:

I too open pages as background pages, in both Safari, iCab, Firefox and Opera. I close them to consentrate on only a few of them -- but may be the cycling feature of Opera will make you do that exercise less than e.g. Firefox user will. The ability of Opera to open pages beside the current page also works agaist the need for closing windows so often.

That current closing order make «complete sense» is a strong wording, I would say. ;-) Habit is very important. On can become accustomed to not being able to guess what one get once one close a window, may be even to remember the page opening order -- if the closing order is simply a reverse of that order. But how is possible that the closing order can be explained that simply? One will seldomly close and open pages in the same order?!The order e.g. Firefox closes pages is in line with much else in life that follows left to right order. :-)

I agree that a closing order that followed the order of the Cycling order, would seem logical. Unfortuneatly it doesn't seem as if 'Cycle page bare order' did cause a "Close in Page bare order" in Mac Opera8 beta 1 at least.

On April 25, 2005 at 11:05 PM, Rick Bradley wrote:

Either closing order can be said to make sense so being able to pick would be attractive. I'm having a different but related problem.

I do not wish to use the Tabs. I frequently have so many windows open that the tabs are so small as to be completely useless.

I restored the 'Window' option to the Main Menu but now I have only to close the current window. Can you tell me how to restore the close button to the current window?

On April 26, 2005 at 12:47 AM, TjL (tntluoma.com) wrote:

I realized another reason that this doesn't usually come up for me (closing in order).

I have my page bar on the right side, and generally close a bunch of windows by clicking the X, and as it closes one, another one moves up, and then I close that one.

So I'm clicking in the same spot but closing several pages.

On April 28, 2005 at 09:49 PM, Erik wrote:

There is a really good reason to change the default number of search results in Opera instead of changing the preference on Google's site. I have Opera set to clear all cookies on exit (I don't like the privacy risks). By setting the preference in Opera I can keep my privacy and still get 50 results per page.

On April 29, 2005 at 10:23 AM, TjL (tntluoma.com) wrote:

Erik: That is a good point. Although I don’t worry too much about cookies myself, this is a way of increasing your privacy to some extent and still retaining the feature.

On May 03, 2005 at 11:27 AM, piet wrote:

you can also cycle by hitting "1" and "2" on your keyboard, though this seems to follow a fixed order instead of the order of recent use.

@Rick Bradley: de-select "show close-button on each tab" in the general preferences.

On May 13, 2005 at 05:01 AM, Fila wrote:

Hi TjL, thanx for this tutorial.

U have a typo in last line of Loading section.
You can always cahnge it back later. {{Fixed, thanks! }}

Section Show window size is missing information where is the size shown. It took me 2 minutes to find it out. {{Fixed, thanks!!}}

And I still have no idea what is Use inline find in page for. Maybe it's due my bad English, but can u explain it to me, please?

On May 14, 2005 at 06:04 PM, dakira wrote:

I have smooth scrolling disabled, too. On my desktop because it slows down the computer (800Mhz) and on my Notebook because the scrolling text just looks ugly. Not to mention it is distracting as you already pointed out ;)

On May 15, 2005 at 03:37 PM, TjL (tntluoma.com) wrote:

Fila: Use Inline Find In Page just means that you will use the popup rather than a separate window for searching for text on the page.

On June 29, 2005 at 08:14 PM, David wrote:

GOOGLE LINUX Search - Previously I had this sub-searchset as my default - with 8.0.8 this option appears to have disappeared - where?

On July 30, 2005 at 04:33 AM, peter wrote:

hi .... can you give more info on sounds ... i have the latest 8.02 i think paid version of opera ... but don't seem to have any sounds ... despite having this box ticked ..... where do i have to go to get the sounds

(Once you check the boxes, you have to assign sound files to the various sounds. If you are using Windows, check something like c:\windows\media.... I don't have a Windows machine around right now. Check for .wav files.... I don't know if Opera can use MP3 files or not -- TjL)

On August 01, 2005 at 02:21 PM, Śmieszne reklamy telewizyjne wrote:

First of all, when using 3button mouse, one doesn't have to break wirst with ctrl+sh*t and other crazy-type keyboard+mouse combination... just click the link using third/middle button. It's really simple & quick.

(Sometimes when you dont have 3button mouse, you can simulate middleclicking by doing left and righ click at the same time, simple: press left and right mouse button together. Warning: It's sytem depends.)

Moreover, wanna close a tab? Again, use middleclick on it. Tada! :-) No more aiming [x] icon on each tab :-) -- leif, you will be glad using this: you just have to hold mouse in one, the same position and middleclicking all the time in the same place.

The middleclick on tab-toolbar area also opens new, blank tab.

TjL:
Remember, if you have "reuse existing page" disabled you won't be able to use PageRank button or GmailThis button.

They are both javascript scripts showing new popup-window based on current window content :(

-- peter.

{{TjL writes: yes, I have filed a bug report about bookmarklets not working without Reusing Existing Page and look forward to the day when Opera gets smart about that.}}

On August 02, 2005 at 04:40 PM, kirin wrote:

My suggestions:

- As Śmieszne reklamy telewizyjne(if that's the name :P) said, the middle button seems to me to be the best option to close tabs. I add, it's the best option to open links in background pages.

- This is somewhat more advanced. I think it's bad to have to comply with the default number of results for each search engine, but it's also bad to have the same number for all. So, instead of having the number of search results defined by Opera, you can define them for each site (if they have that option), simply by editing the search.ini file or, even better, using a program like Opsed. Example: to search on google you use "http://www.google.com/search?q=%s" (%s is then replaced by the search term). To have 50 results in each page, simply switch that line to "http://www.google.com/search?q=%s&num=50".

Hope it helps ...

On August 12, 2005 at 08:41 AM, jim ballantyne wrote:

Opera continuously reverts the F12 menu option to select proxy servers. Is there way to turn this off permanently. Selecting the option is infuratingly springy, everytime I re-start the PC the option is set to proxy servers and I end up looking at a blank page till the penny drops, and I reset using the F12 menu option?
As you may guess I have no need for a proxy server.

On September 14, 2005 at 03:50 PM, Martin wrote:

Some hints, one on page closing in the order of your tabs, and the other for Rick, who doesn't use the tabs, because he has so much of them they don't display useful information any longer:

Change the keyboard-shortcut for "ctrl+w" from "Close page" to "Close page & Switch to next page". This way, when using "ctrl+w" Opera will close the active tab and switch to the next on the right of this tab.

And for all of you with to many tabs: simply change the "Wrapping"-mode of the "Page bar" to "Wrap to multiple lines". This helps much if you have to Page bar on top (or bottom). It costs some vertical space (if you have enough open pages for more than one line of tabs), but every tab remains readable, width isn't changed any longer.

Martin

On September 17, 2005 at 05:09 AM, Milly wrote:

"Remember, if you have "reuse existing page" disabled you won't be able to use PageRank button or GmailThis button.
They are both javascript scripts showing new popup-window based on current window content :( -- peter.
{{TjL writes: yes, I have filed a bug report about bookmarklets not working without Reusing Existing Page and look forward to the day when Opera gets smart about that.}} "

There are lots of people currently trying out Opera with the free licence: perhaps you might consider putting a note inline with the "reuse existing page" tip, about the bookmarklet issue?

A workaround, btw, is to hold Ctrl while clicking such a bookmarklet.

It's a great guide, thanks. Hurry up with the last few 'days' ... :)

Milly

On September 17, 2005 at 06:45 AM, Milly wrote:

Oops, forgot ... another workaround: drag'n'drop the bookmarklet (from the Bookmarks Panel or the Personal Bar, not the Bookmarks menu).

On September 20, 2005 at 06:01 PM, Eric wrote:

Slashdot got around to making a HUGE article on Opera, so now here I am :-)

Love Opera.

Love that "Middle Click" on a tab in the tab bar closes the tab. In addition to the "close tab" mouse gesture.