Opera Browser

In 2006, I started using Opera. I quickly found I enjoy using it much more than Internet Explorer, Fire Fox, and Mozilla. I was impressed by its many the built-in time saving features.

In addition, Opera has many customization features. Such as seeing how fast your Internet connection is while browsing. This speed button can be added to one of the many tool bars available. I prefer to include it on the status bar at the bottom of the browser.


If this bar is not displayed you need to enable it. Click on View>Tool bars. Put a check mark to the left of Status Bar. Now to add the Button. Click Tools> Appearance > Buttons Tab. Click Status. Now left click on Speed, keep  the left click pressed, drag it to the status bar on the browser, then release the left click. Now you know the speed each web paged is retrieved. To see the total time, add the time button to it. Refresh your web page in the browser to see it work.

Opera's mouse gestures are used to switch between tabs and history. Trying to find out their values can be challenging. To find out visit this this web page.






Favorite features:

  • Opera starts with the web pages that where open when it was last closed
  • Mouse gestures provide 16 commands through the mouse. They range from opening a link in another tab or panning around a large web page.
  • Using the Wand to automiticaly log in to web site accounts.
  • Double click a word on a web page. Up pops 10 options. These options include dictionary, encyclopedia, translate, search, speak, copy, send, and some other similar options. Now when you need to look up a word's meaning, just double click on it and select dictionary.
  • Speed Dial displays nine predefined links to new tab page. Each link is assigned a hot key Ctrl + # making compatible to having nine additional home pages.
  • Sessions are used to save a collection of open tabs that can be used to open them all with one click. You use this feature to create a collection of web pages that you would like have opened at the same time. For example, you have six websites you always visit for investment information. Saving them as a session will allow them to all be open them all at once by selecting the session.
  • Add other search engines to the browsers search field. Right click on site's search field and select "Create search" from the menu.
  • Entering searches on the address bar.
    Each search site identified in the search drop down has a quick key value that can be used in the address bar followed by the search value.
    example "g Opera browser search sites"
    To get a list of search site keyword values press Ctrl+F12 > Search tab
  • Use Opera speak to read text. Highlight the text right-click and select speak.  Cancel by pressing ESC. To enable the shortcut key see here.
  • Opera's power buttons allow you to open the current web page in another browser (Firefox, IE,Safari). There are many custom buttons available that enable many different features. You can find these buttons on a variety of sites 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 
Dislikes:
  • There are sites that do not support this browser but support is growing.  Examples
    • American Chartered Bank - home page keeps forwarding you to bank hours page
    • Characters get squished together  when moving cursor over characters with double text(content link). Refresh page to fix.
    • AOL Radio does not support Opera
    • Free Public Domain Images to View, Copy or Download - clicking on an images does not return the image. It does not work for Firefox either.
    • Comcast's  new mail client only supports IE and Firefox. They do not support any other browser. It is surprising since a vary popular support page on hosted on home Comcast.net likes it very much.
  • The bookmark tool can be challenging to use when you have a lot of bookmark folders.
  • Print selection does not work most of the time. I get a bogus error about printer not available.

Tips

  • Add more SpeedDials (link)
    1. Note the path to Opera directory (Help → About Opera)
    2. Close Opera
    3. Open speeddial.ini file in any text editor from Opera directory.
    4. Add the following lines and adjust number of rows & columns to your requirement. If you use wide screen monitor, increase number of columns.
      [Size]
      Rows=3
      Columns=4
    5. Start Opera.
  • Enable single-key shortcuts
    1. Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Shortcuts
    2. Check Enable single-key shortcuts
  • Add spell checker to Opera. You can use Aspell, Ospell, or both. 
  • Add custom button and power buttons. For example: "Open Page in Internet Explorer", "Open Page in Firefox" and "Search site with Google".
  • Many of Opera's "Hotkeys" shortcut keys are list here.  For a list of single-key shortcuts see here.

Additional Resources

Log


<< Top >>

Last Updated:Saturday, 04-Apr-2009 21:58:29 CEST