Day 2: Wand Preferences (30 Days to becoming an Opera8 Lover)

Day 2: Wand Preferences

Originally posted on Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Opera’s magic “Wand” stores login information (including multiple logins per site) and lets you easily manage them. Also, you decide what personal information gets stored for easy completion of forms.

Today we will examine Opera’s Wand Preferences, where you can store and manage Personal Information and website login information.

Before we begin, it’s worth noting that since Opera’s preference panel now uses tabs to separate preferences, it may help to know that you can change to different tabs by using the keyboard:

Windows/Linux users: Press ctrl + tab will open the next tab to the right and ctrl + shift + tab will open the next tab to the left. Those same commands will work in most apps in Microsoft Windows which use tabs.

Mac users: Press alt + tab to open the next tab to the right, or alt + shift + tab to open the next tab to the left. Those commands will work in most OS X apps which use tabs.

[Screenshot of Opera's wand preferences]

The Wand is where Opera stores username and login information. If you do not wish to use the Wand, be sure to un-check the box next to “Let the Wand remember passwords”

If you would like to see which sites have stored passwords, you can click on the box marked Passwords (note: the passwords are not shown, only the sites which have stored them). From this window you can delete or edit the information stored there.

[screenshot of Opera's password management screen]

MacOpera does not currently interact with the Keychain, so you will have to enter information into the Wand. Hopefully MacOpera will support this functionality in the future.

Select any of the entries to view or delete them. You can also see stored cookies in this window by checking the box next to Cookies

We will discuss using the wand below.

Personal Information

I’d rather have a hot-oil bikini wax than store any personal information in Internet Explorer. I just can’t imagine why anyone would trust a piece of software with such an atrocious security history. “Just say no!”

I have also used the automatic form features in Safari and Firefox, and found they are both nice... when they work. Opera has a different way of handling form information.

Opera provides several form fields for commonly used information (first and last name, address, phone, email, etc). Simply type the information in there, and whenever you start to fill out a field on a web page, Opera will offer to autocomplete the information.

Two things to remember: first, just because Opera suggests that you store certain information (name, address, phone, etc) doesn’t mean that you have to store that information. For example, Opera suggests that I store my state and my country, but almost every time I find a form to fill out, they don’t have input fields, they have lists that want me to choose out of dropdown. So I put other information in those fields (see image above). Secondly, if you don’t want to store any information at all, don’t! (I know how touchy some people are about their personal information.)

One exception: I would suggest putting your first (or “proper”) name and last (or “surname/family”) name in the fields provided, because Opera will offer to autocomplete both your first name and your full name based on those fields. Some forms ask for first and last names separately, and some just give one field for “Name”. (I know that some countries use the format “Surname Proper” rather than “Proper Surname” in which case you may want to reverse the information in the fields as well.)

Using the Wand

Using the saved information is simple: just start typing in a field and Opera will offer to autocomplete any matching items, like this:

[screenshot of Opera autocompletion]

Simply scroll down or click the one you want.

If you enter a login information on a page, Opera will prompt you to ask whether or not you want to save the information for future visits:

[screenshot of Opera's prompt options]

The options are important:

For this page: Tells Opera to save the login information only for that exact URL such as http://www.example.org/path/to/login
For entire server: Tells Opera to save the information for the entire server, such as www.example.org
Never on this page: Tells Opera not to save it for this page, but prompt again for other pages on that server
Never on entire server: Tells Opera to never save login information on any pages on that server

If I am going to save a login, I generally save it for the entire server, because there are often multiple login pages, and this guarantees that the login information is available regardless of what page I am viewing.

[screenshot of wand highlighting] When you return to a page where Opera has stored login information, you will see a gold/yellow highlight around the field. Press ctrl + enter on Windows/Linux, and command + enter on Mac. If there is only one set of matching information, it will automatically be filled in and the login process will begin. If there are multiple logins, Opera will prompt you to select the information you want to use:

[screenshot of wand offering choice of logins]

Opera’s flexibility in letting you choose precisely what information is saved, what information is used, and ability to easily manage/delete saved information earns this feature the name “Wand”.

Comments

On April 20, 2005 at 04:34 AM, Iain wrote:

Very useful explanation, which I stumbled upon purely by chance.

Any ideas on how to import Wand data from a previous Opera installation (which is in a different directory on my computer) into Opera 8?

On April 20, 2005 at 08:22 AM, TjL (tntluoma.com) wrote:

Iain: Sure! It's pretty simple.

1) Start up the old version of Opera (the one with the wand data)

2) press F2 and type opera:about (or click that link) and press enter

3) Notice where it says “Opera directory”

4) Open that folder

5) Close old version of Opera

6) Start new version of Opera

7) press F2 and type opera:about (or click that link) and press enter

8) Notice where it says “Opera directory”

9) Open that folder

10) Close new version of Opera

So at this point you ought to have two open folders, and both versions of Opera should NOT be running.

11) Look for a file called wand.dat in the folder opened in step #4 and copy that to the folder opened in step #9.

12) Start new version of Opera and check wand preferences, and you ought to see the wand data there.

On April 20, 2005 at 12:26 PM, Hendrik Ch wrote:

Hi Tim,

I was wondering if it's possible for Opera to show both the text that I have typed in that text box before (as implemented in IE and Firefox) together whatever is saved in the Wand?

On April 20, 2005 at 05:20 PM, TjL (tntluoma.com) wrote:

Hendrik: No, Opera does not store any additional information beside what is saved in either the Personal Information or Wand.

On April 20, 2005 at 06:29 PM, Jeremy Cook wrote:

Hi Tim,

Somthing I find very useful in Opera is to create a mouse gesture that activates the wand. Is this something you'd consider making a tutorial on to share with others?

Thanks for the great site.

On April 20, 2005 at 06:40 PM, TjL (tntluoma.com) wrote:

Jeremy: Honestly I don't use Mouse Gestures except whenever I'm writing the series :-)

I use a laptop with a touchpad, so mouse gestures are a little awkward. Plus I'm more of a keyboard guy.

I'll look into it though.

Thanks for the kind words.

On April 20, 2005 at 10:21 PM, Hendrik Ch wrote:

Hi Tim, is it possible to set some INI settings or tweak some part of Opera to let it remember whatever I typed in a text box?
Thanks.

On April 20, 2005 at 10:34 PM, Hendrik Ch wrote:

Hi Jeremy, most of the time, to activate the Wand, you can just do the forward mouse gesture (move right), it'll automatically fill it for you.

On April 20, 2005 at 11:49 PM, TjL (tntluoma.com) wrote:

Hendrik: No, there's no way that I know of to do that beyond Personal Information and Wand.

On April 21, 2005 at 02:01 AM, Hendrik Ch wrote:

Okay, thanks a lot Tim.

On April 23, 2005 at 12:50 AM, Richard Grevers wrote:

Hendrik: If the 15 fields in "Personal Information" are not enough to meet all your form-completion needs, you can store extra items in Notes, which Tim will no doubt cover at a later date. Notes items also appear in the list which drops down as you fill in form fields.

Otherwise, I'm just thankful that Opera isn't remembering possibly sensitive information that I'll most likely not need to enter in a form field again in a hurry :-)

On April 27, 2005 at 11:53 AM, Gary Black wrote:

How about a function in Opera that will back up ALL the user data to anywhere specified like My Documents, a floppy, USB drive or whatever. By the way, I just love this browser!!! The email portion, not so much.....

Gary

On April 29, 2005 at 03:27 PM, Alex Wood wrote:

Gary, you can just copy the 'profile' directory in, on XP/2000/etc., C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Opera\ to a disk. It contains stuff you might not care about, though, such as the cache. Bit of a waste of space for backups.

[Note: copying this over is not recommended as some paths are coded into INI files and will not work. -- TjL ]

On May 12, 2005 at 05:31 AM, Flavio Suárez wrote:

Iain and Tim:

if you had set a master password, you will also need to copy the Personal Certificates file (opcert6.dat)

On May 12, 2005 at 05:36 AM, Flavio Suárez wrote:

Gary:

I use ZipGenius to automate the backup of the profile folder.
I just have to remember to clear the cache folder before exit Opera and launch ZipGenius to backup the entire profile folder.

On July 07, 2005 at 02:49 PM, Risto Alanko wrote:

The wand is very useful, and soon you automatically "wand" your way everywhere. I just got a very unpleasant experience when traveling away from home...

YOU FORGET all your personal info, when you have used the Wand a while! I just wanted to check my email using a public machine in a net cafe... all my familiar contacts looked like locked doors. I have to tattoo all my passwords somewhere, or maybe store them in my cell phone.

On July 09, 2005 at 07:57 AM, Andrei Nica wrote:

Is there any way you can activate the wand automatically, as not to appear every time you enter a new site, but be set to let's say "remember password for this page".. is there like an ini file where you can set this ?

On July 10, 2005 at 10:51 PM, TjL (tntluoma.com) wrote:

Andrei and I chatted offline. The question is this: can you tell Opera to always save a password on all future pages (i.e. always set it to "save password for this page" or "save password for this server"

The answer is no, but I think it would be a neat feature, probably something which would best work as a opera6.ini advanced feature tweak.

On August 02, 2005 at 04:45 PM, kirin wrote:

You have a little file (fastforward.ini) to help with the fast forward command, by listing the various ways sites can use to offer that option.

I think it would be nice to have the same for form fields (name, address, etc.). That way, Opera could easily fill entire forms with the stored personal info.

On August 29, 2005 at 11:21 AM, damiracle wrote:

I have entered my password for a certain site into the Wand. Now I have forgotten the password, and that site does not offer any way to change/recover forgotten passwords. 99% of the time I log in from my own computer, and Wand works like a miracle, but sometimes I just have to use another PC, and I cannot, without the forgotten password!

So, is there any way I can recover the passwords from the Wand data file? I hoped Tools -> Wand passwords -> Edit would do the trick, but alas. :(

What can I do?

{{TjL writes: I don't know of any way to crack the wand security. It may be possible, but I've never heard of anyone trying it. My only suggestion is to try logging into the site without using the wand until you remember the password.}}

On September 01, 2005 at 05:39 PM, kirin wrote:

damiracle, here's a workaround:

go to the login page, use the wand, but press stop BEFORE you login. That means you should still be in the login page with all the ***.
Then pass all this text to the address bar (or save it as a bookmark if you plan to use it again):

javascript:(function(){var s,F,j,f,i; s = ""; F = document.forms; for(j=0; j

It should give you the password.

Don't know who wrote the code, but credit to him/her :)

On September 01, 2005 at 05:42 PM, kirin wrote:

damiracle, here's a workaround:

go to the login page, use the wand, but press stop BEFORE you login. That means you should still be in the login page with all the ***.
Then pass all this text to the address bar (or save it as a bookmark if you plan to use it again):

javascript:(function(){var s,F,j,f,i; s = ""; F = document.forms; for(j=0; j (less than sign) F.length; ++j) { f = F[j]; for (i=0; i (less than sign) f.length; ++i) { if (f[i].type.toLowerCase() == "password") s += f[i].value + "\n"; } } if (s) alert("Passwords in forms on this page:\n\n" + s); else alert("There are no passwords in forms on this page.");})();

(Switch the "less than sign" for the real sign. I couldn't write it here. The page would go crazy)

It should give you the password.

Don't know who wrote the code, but credit to him/her :)

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