Day 5: Advanced Preferences 2

April 23, 2005

This page has been revised to be part of the meta Opera Advanced Preferences page. Apologies for any inconvenience may cause you, but I believe it will better in the long run.

  • http://www.hendrikch.info Hendrik Ch

    way to go tim … it’s really educating to read your super-comprehensive review. thanks.

  • Richard Grevers

    Of course if you believe that excessive contrast such as black on white reduces readability, you can always tweak the black-on-white stylesheet to use a less glary bcakground colour.

  • http://duesing-net.de/ Martin

    I liked Opera for a long time… now I’m becoming an Opera8 Lover. Thank you very much for this nice project.

  • al

    What makes these 30 days ultra useful are the personal insights and recommendations of an expert Opera user explaining benefits and options rather than merely illustrating the features.

    I’ve noted several complimentary posts - I’m sure they’ll be many more. But I’d like to read an explantion as to why the poster appreciates this tutorial. Just what has it enabled him to do or see that wasn’t present before.

  • http://per.hedbor.org Per Hedbor

    About the ‘author mode/user mode’ toggle: (it’s a little small, so be careful)

    A tip: Click and move your mouse downwards and the menu will appear automatically.

    Generally speaking this works with all ‘menu-or-click’ buttons in Opera.

  • http://tntluoma.com TjL (tntluoma.com)

    Per: Hey, look at that, I learned something from my own series :-)

    Thanks for the tip!

  • http://nontroppo.org/ Ian

    An important note on Java: Opera supports a Flash technology called LiveConnect, which loads the whole Java virtual machine into Opera just so it can communicate via javascript (IE uses ActiveX and Mozilla doesn’t support it anymore). This significantly inflate’s Opera’s memory use, when most Flash adverts do not use LiveConnect for any valid reason. This has forced me to always browse with Java off, and if you want to make sure you are conserving memory, I suggest you do the same (Opera doesn’t unload Java until it is closed down).

  • http://www.altmann.at/~mischa Mischa

    Yo Opera8 Lover,

    even if i sometimes don’t learn anything new I enjoy your good explanations and (rational?) reasoning with regards to the usefulnes of certain options.

    There’s a wobbly sentence in the “My Style Sheet” section which should probably read:
    “All this makes it a little easier for me to override them if I choose.”
    or
    “All this does is to make it a little easier for me to override them if I choose.”

    thanks you for your thoughtful comments, Mischa

  • http://tntluoma.com TjL (tntluoma.com)

    Mischa: Thanks for the comment. I ended up rewriting that entire sentence, for it displeased me. Thanks for pointing it out!

  • Danny Swälas

    Per, the click-and-drag-down technique doesn’t seem to work for me. Is it new in Opera 8? I’m still using Opera 7.

  • Phil

    Little spelling mistake: “The simple part is where you can define a default downlod directory. ” - download. {{fixed, thanks. I can’t believe two of you found this on the same day — TjL}}

    Personally I don’t like the toolbar that appears with the eyeglass icon, I just use the drop-down that appears on the address bar for “show images”

    Fan of the previous serious {{series?}} now devouring this one. {{thanks!}}

  • http://rafaeln.blogspot.com Rafa

    Hi Tim!

    Thanks for the great tutorial. Just a nit-picky FYI: doing an inline search on this page for the text “downlod” will quickly let you find that typo. :-D {{fixed, see above}}

    Also, I don’t see the “Default Browser” section in the “Programs” tab between “Protocols” and “Source Viewer” like you describe (I am using Version 8.0 Final, Build 1095 for Linux). Am I missing something?

    {{Ah, that appears to be Windows only. I will update the description to reflect that. Thanks — TjL}}

    Kind regards,

    Rafa

  • Jeff

    Hi. Tim. I got some problem, which i am afraid related to this day’s topic. Some buttons on my personal bar that run java script (I think so. I am not an IT guy, so don’t understand java stuffs), such as TinyURL, Spurl! and del.icio.us. do not work. Since recently I begin tunning my Opera according to your love-opera tutorials. (I still love opera now thought face problem )

    I installed all these three buttons on my personal bar. Normally, it should work in this way: (del.icio.us for instance)

    at any page that I want to bookmark in my del.icio.us, I just need to click the button “post to del.icio.us”, and a popup window appeared with useful infos. but now only a blank window pop ups. ( But those buttons work when I drag the button to the website. )

    I ‘ve enable all java script options except the one “open console for errror”.

    please help

    many many many many THANKS!

    jeff

  • http://tntluoma.com TjL (tntluoma.com)

    Jeff - Ah, I love it when folks ask questions I actually know the answers to!

    In this case what you need to do is be sure to turn ON “reuse existing windows” (see Day 4: Advanced Preferences, part 1)

    That setting is one of the first things I turn OFF (I prefer to not reuse existing windows.

    Unfortunately Opera is not yet smart enough to tell the difference between a regular link and a JavaScript link on the Personal Bar. I have registered this as a bug and hope that it will be fixed before Opera9!

  • Tony

    Thank you for an informative yet refreshingly entertaining read.

    I plan to savour the entire series of tutorials you have created for this powerful and indespensible browser that is Opera 8+.

  • http://www.monroeworld.com Shane R. Monroe

    I hate to bring it up … but …

    I notice your bias toward disabling inline frames (I totally agree they can be used for good or evil) but I couldn’t help but notice your own site here uses them (Day 20 for one) :)

    I’m just playing devil’s advocate here - but its important to realize that iframes have very real, valuable uses and to immediately discredit them as a sheer means of advertisement push isn’t totally fair - just as frames (as mentioned) can be used incorrectly.

    I’d also like to add that if you’re going to use inline frames inside of other content, it really should have a border or visual indicator around it to make it easier on the eyes :)

  • kirin

    As you said, the great thing about these options are that each one can tune them the way they want.


    Anyway, I have to say I disagree with you about disabling iFrames and plugins (that leaves a lot of things to agree :))


    For beginners, they may encounter problems because of that (sites don’t work, important info doesn’t show, …), and probably they won’t realize the problem resides there.


    For advanced users, I think userJS and userCSS can deal with those issues more efficiently and intelligently.



    So that you won’t get the wrong impression: your site is great. Keep up the good work.

  • http://godsgeek.kkjackson.net kpjackson

    I have just been working my way through your excellent series (having gotten my free copy of Opera today) and wanted to throw in my 2 pennies regarding inline frames. I disabled them per your suggestion and promptly noticed two odd things — 1) a blank box to the right of the text at the top of your page and 2) my Gmail account, which had been working fine suddenly would not display anything. Evidently Google makes heavy use of iFrames both in Gmail and their ads (the blank space on your page).

    Great series — I have learned a lot already!

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