EvilSeph
Administrator
Since we seem to have a few Opera adopters, or at least people willing to try something new, I figure we should have a thread that shows them some cool things Opera can do (and, really, some of the innovations that Opera have come up with that other browsers have copied).
[FIELDSET=Disable Torrent Support]I can't remember when Opera decided to bundle a torrent client in their browser, but I have personally never found a use for it. uTorrent serves me better.
That being said, it's not exactly obvious how to go about disabling this functionality, so:
OR
Though I prefer the first method as the second one might not always work. Opera sometimes becomes the default .torrent client again somehow.
Update:
One of our own, birdman, has informed me that performing both of these methods to disable .torrent support for Opera is reported to result in better performance from Opera. Whether or not this is the case remains to be tested - feel free to let us know! Thanks birdman![/fieldset]
[FIELDSET=Address Bar Shortcuts]This is one of my favourite features in Opera. By default Opera includes a few address bar shortcuts like "g" for Google, "w" for WikiPedia etc.
To search Google, for example, you would simply type g, followed by a space and then your search term and then press enter and Opera will submit a google search using the terms you specified.
To search WikiPedia, you would do the same thing except use a w instead of a g. It is for this reason that I prefer to remove the Search Bar altogether on Opera. It really has no use now. However, this is not all that the address bar shortcuts can be used for.
Say for example we wanted to easily access http://mformature.net. Usually we would just add a bookmark and click on the bookmark whenever we want to access http://mformature.net but we're using Opera now. Which means we can create shortcuts that can be typed in the address bar to visit the bookmark we associate the shortcut with.
First we'll create a bookmark to http://mformature.net:
But wait, there's more
!
Along with bookmarking, Opera provides the ability to organize your bookmarks through the use of bookmark folders. Now, if you apply the trick I told you about above to a bookmark folder, you get a cool effect: every site in that bookmark folder will open up when you type the folder's shortcut into the address bar and press enter. I'll show you an example:
Since we should already have a bookmark to http://mformature.net, we can go ahead and create a bookmark folder:
[FIELDSET=Make Opera Faster]todo[/fieldset]
[FIELDSET=Change Browser Identity]Some sites like to include code that detects Opera and then either serves broken code or Opera specific code. In order to test if this is the case, you can change Opera's identity by:
[FIELDSET=Tab Previews]Whenever you mouse over any of the tabs in Opera, you get to see a live thumbnail of the site in the tab. If, for whatever reason, you do not like this feature, you may turn it off by:
[FIELDSET=Speed Dial]Yet another innovation by Opera, although not something I use myself, Speed Dial is basically like the speed dial feature found on a phone. You program your speed dial and then press a button to dial the appropriate number.
With Opera, by default you are given 9 Speed Dials to which you can associate your favourite sites and then access them by pressing ctrl + # (the speed dial number).
Each time you open a blank tab your speed dial is shown and you can click on the site you want to view or watch all 9 speed dial sites and refresh each of them individually by right clicking on the speed dial you wish to refresh and choosing "Reload". Or have them refresh automatically at certain intervals by choosing "Reload Every" and then picking an interval.[/FIELDSET]
[FIELDSET=Closed Tabs and Blocked Popups History]Opera keeps a history of all your closed tabs by default. In the default skin you can access this history by clicking on the trash can icon on the right of the tabbar.
If you want to clear the tab history, just click on the trash can icon and then click on "Empty Trash".
Whenever Opera's popup blocker successfully blocks a popup it will display a little notification that you can click on to open the popup. If you choose not to open the popup, it will be stored in the "Blocked Popups" section of the trash can icon menu.[/FIELDSET]
[FIELDSET=Viewing Opera's Cache]todo[/FIELDSET]
[FIELDSET=Fully MDI]Opera is a full-fledged MDI application. This means that all tabs can be resized, juxtaposed, tiled, cascaded or easily made into their own window.
What I mean by their own window is the same as Firefox's new "tab tearing" functionality - except Opera has always had this. Simply take a tab and drag it either to Opera's titlebar or outside of Opera and it will create a new instance of Opera with that sole tab in it.[/FIELDSET]
[Fieldset=Tab Features]Opera was one of the first browsers to incorporate MDI and tabbing - I believe the first was Netscape. As a result, Opera's tabbing features are second to none.
Locking tabs:
When I use Opera I tend to have a set of tabs I always have open, like Gmail and MfM, however I sometimes accidentally close them when trying to do something else. Thankfully, Opera has thought of this and given us the option of locking tabs which prevents that tab from being closed.
To take advantage of this feature, simply find a tab you wish to lock, right click on it and choose "Lock Tab". Now you can't close the tab until you unlock it.
Duplicating tabs:
Another useful feature that Opera provides is the ability to completely duplicate a tab - history and all. So, if you've ever found yourself in the position where you would like to browse part of a site but not lose your back history (like I have, many times) you just right click on the tab and choose Duplicate Tab.
Follower Tabs:
If you have ever found yourself browsing a site and then clicking on a link, only to find that it doesn't have a target attribute (which usually means it opens in the same tab you are browsing), then Opera's Follower Tabs feature might be what you're looking for.
Once you have created a follower tab from another tab, any link you click in the main tab will be opened in the follower tab.
To create a follower tab, simply right click on the main tab you want to create a follower tab for and choose "Create Follower Tab". If you want to stop using a follower tab, simply close the follower tab you created.[/FIELDSET]
[Fieldset=Control Opera With Your Voice]Ever wanted to tell your browser what to do? Well you can with Opera. Literally.
To enable Opera's voice control functionality, do the following:
If you have any tips and tricks of your own, please feel free to post them or if you have a question, we'll accept having them in this thread for now until the volume of questions becomes enough to warrant having a thread per request.
Note: This post is a work in progress.
[FIELDSET=Disable Torrent Support]I can't remember when Opera decided to bundle a torrent client in their browser, but I have personally never found a use for it. uTorrent serves me better.
That being said, it's not exactly obvious how to go about disabling this functionality, so:
- Type opera:config#BitTorrent|Enable in your address bar.
- Untick the "Enable" checkbox.
- Click Save.
OR
- Click on Tools -> Preferences…
- Navigate to Advanced -> Downloads.
- Type "torrent" in the Quick Find textbox.
- Edit the result that comes up.
- Click on "Show download dialog" and click OK.
Though I prefer the first method as the second one might not always work. Opera sometimes becomes the default .torrent client again somehow.
Update:
One of our own, birdman, has informed me that performing both of these methods to disable .torrent support for Opera is reported to result in better performance from Opera. Whether or not this is the case remains to be tested - feel free to let us know! Thanks birdman![/fieldset]
[FIELDSET=Address Bar Shortcuts]This is one of my favourite features in Opera. By default Opera includes a few address bar shortcuts like "g" for Google, "w" for WikiPedia etc.
To search Google, for example, you would simply type g, followed by a space and then your search term and then press enter and Opera will submit a google search using the terms you specified.
To search WikiPedia, you would do the same thing except use a w instead of a g. It is for this reason that I prefer to remove the Search Bar altogether on Opera. It really has no use now. However, this is not all that the address bar shortcuts can be used for.
Say for example we wanted to easily access http://mformature.net. Usually we would just add a bookmark and click on the bookmark whenever we want to access http://mformature.net but we're using Opera now. Which means we can create shortcuts that can be typed in the address bar to visit the bookmark we associate the shortcut with.
First we'll create a bookmark to http://mformature.net:
- There are multiple ways you can create a bookmark, but we're going to navigate to http://mformature.net and right click on the page, then click on "Bookmark Page…".
- Give your new bookmark an appropriate name in the dialog that pops up and click on the "Details >>" button.
- In the "Nickname" field, we'll enter "mfm" (without the quotes). Optionally you may choose to have your new bookmark be placed in the bookmark panel or your personal bar but we'll probably cover those later.
- Click OK, open a new tab, type mfm and press enter.
- Go to M for Mature Forums and right click in the "Search by Keyword" textbox and click on "Create Search…".
- In the "Keyword" textbox, enter in a shortcut…like "m".
- Click OK and test it out by typing m, followed by a space, and your search query. If all went well, you should see the results page like you would when you usually search the forums.
But wait, there's more
!Along with bookmarking, Opera provides the ability to organize your bookmarks through the use of bookmark folders. Now, if you apply the trick I told you about above to a bookmark folder, you get a cool effect: every site in that bookmark folder will open up when you type the folder's shortcut into the address bar and press enter. I'll show you an example:
Since we should already have a bookmark to http://mformature.net, we can go ahead and create a bookmark folder:
- Press ctrl +b to open up the bookmarks panel.
- Right click in an empty area in the bookmarks panel and choose New Folder to create a new Bookmark Folder. We'll call it "MfM".
- Find the bookmark we created previously for http://mformature.net and click and drag it to the MfM folder you just created.
- Re-open the Bookmarks panel by pressing Ctrl + B if it closes.
- Go to http://forums.mformature.net/ and press Ctrl +D to create a bookmark for our forums.
- In the dialog that pops up, click on "Details >>".
- Under "Create in" make sure that the MfM folder we created is selected.
- Under "Nickname" let's give our forums the nickname "mf" (without quotes) so that we may easily go to our forums by typing mf into the address bar.
- Click OK.
- Right click on the "MfM" bookmark folder and click on Properties.
- In the dialog that pops up, let's give this folder the nickname "mfm" (withouit quotes) and press OK.
- That's it, we're done. Let's test our new bookmark folder shortcut by typing mfm into the address bar and seeing what happens.
[FIELDSET=Make Opera Faster]todo[/fieldset]
[FIELDSET=Change Browser Identity]Some sites like to include code that detects Opera and then either serves broken code or Opera specific code. In order to test if this is the case, you can change Opera's identity by:
- Right click on the site you wish to change Opera's identity on.
- Choose "Edit Site Preferences…".
- Go to the Network tab and choose what identity you would like Opera to use.
[FIELDSET=Tab Previews]Whenever you mouse over any of the tabs in Opera, you get to see a live thumbnail of the site in the tab. If, for whatever reason, you do not like this feature, you may turn it off by:
- Clicking on Tools -> Preferences…
- Navigate to Advanced -> Tabs.
- Uncheck "Show thumbnails when hovering tabs"
[FIELDSET=Speed Dial]Yet another innovation by Opera, although not something I use myself, Speed Dial is basically like the speed dial feature found on a phone. You program your speed dial and then press a button to dial the appropriate number.
With Opera, by default you are given 9 Speed Dials to which you can associate your favourite sites and then access them by pressing ctrl + # (the speed dial number).
Each time you open a blank tab your speed dial is shown and you can click on the site you want to view or watch all 9 speed dial sites and refresh each of them individually by right clicking on the speed dial you wish to refresh and choosing "Reload". Or have them refresh automatically at certain intervals by choosing "Reload Every" and then picking an interval.[/FIELDSET]
[FIELDSET=Closed Tabs and Blocked Popups History]Opera keeps a history of all your closed tabs by default. In the default skin you can access this history by clicking on the trash can icon on the right of the tabbar.
If you want to clear the tab history, just click on the trash can icon and then click on "Empty Trash".
Whenever Opera's popup blocker successfully blocks a popup it will display a little notification that you can click on to open the popup. If you choose not to open the popup, it will be stored in the "Blocked Popups" section of the trash can icon menu.[/FIELDSET]
[FIELDSET=Viewing Opera's Cache]todo[/FIELDSET]
[FIELDSET=Fully MDI]Opera is a full-fledged MDI application. This means that all tabs can be resized, juxtaposed, tiled, cascaded or easily made into their own window.
What I mean by their own window is the same as Firefox's new "tab tearing" functionality - except Opera has always had this. Simply take a tab and drag it either to Opera's titlebar or outside of Opera and it will create a new instance of Opera with that sole tab in it.[/FIELDSET]
[Fieldset=Tab Features]Opera was one of the first browsers to incorporate MDI and tabbing - I believe the first was Netscape. As a result, Opera's tabbing features are second to none.
Locking tabs:
When I use Opera I tend to have a set of tabs I always have open, like Gmail and MfM, however I sometimes accidentally close them when trying to do something else. Thankfully, Opera has thought of this and given us the option of locking tabs which prevents that tab from being closed.
To take advantage of this feature, simply find a tab you wish to lock, right click on it and choose "Lock Tab". Now you can't close the tab until you unlock it.
Duplicating tabs:
Another useful feature that Opera provides is the ability to completely duplicate a tab - history and all. So, if you've ever found yourself in the position where you would like to browse part of a site but not lose your back history (like I have, many times) you just right click on the tab and choose Duplicate Tab.
Follower Tabs:
If you have ever found yourself browsing a site and then clicking on a link, only to find that it doesn't have a target attribute (which usually means it opens in the same tab you are browsing), then Opera's Follower Tabs feature might be what you're looking for.
Once you have created a follower tab from another tab, any link you click in the main tab will be opened in the follower tab.
To create a follower tab, simply right click on the main tab you want to create a follower tab for and choose "Create Follower Tab". If you want to stop using a follower tab, simply close the follower tab you created.[/FIELDSET]
[Fieldset=Control Opera With Your Voice]Ever wanted to tell your browser what to do? Well you can with Opera. Literally.
To enable Opera's voice control functionality, do the following:
- Click on Tools -> Preferences.
- Go to the Advanced tab and then to the Voice section.
- Tick "Enable voice-controlled browsing" which will make Opera prompt you to download and install the voice modules for Opera. Allow this to happen and Opera will handle the rest.
- Now that you have Opera with Voice enabled and installed, go to this site to learn more about using it.
- Have fun commanding your browser !
If you have any tips and tricks of your own, please feel free to post them or if you have a question, we'll accept having them in this thread for now until the volume of questions becomes enough to warrant having a thread per request.
Note: This post is a work in progress.
