Opera Buttons

Updated 30 July, 2008

1. Main Toolbar
2. Preferences
3. Navigation
4. Panel Toolbars
5. Mail Toolbar
6. Windows Control Panel
7. Edit Fields
8. External Programs
9. New Icons for Opera 9.5
10. Understanding Buttons
11. Creating Buttons
12. Quick Buttons
13. Adding Icons to Skins

Opera Wiki Buttons

Main Toolbar

You can add any of these buttons to any tool bar except the Personal Bar or Navigation bar simply by dragging them into place. Click OK on the dialogue that pops up to add the buttons. Clicking on the buttons or links without dragging will add the buttons to your “My Buttons” palette where there will be saved for customising toolbars later.

Tool tips indicates each button function. Most buttons have a dual function — click for the first action, click and hold for the alternate action (the one after the + sign).

Home Page + Drop down Main Menu

Home page + Hidden Main Menu

Sessions menu + Drop down Window menu

Sessions menu + Hidden Window  menu

 Tile Vertically + Tile Horizontally

Tile Horizontally + Tile Vertically

Tile Vertically + Maximise All

Tile Horizontally + Maximise All

Print + Print Options

Separator: Skin menu + Customise Toolbars

Print + Drop Down Print Options Menu
Requires Customised Kestrel Menu

Print + Hidden Print Options Menu
Requires Customised Kestrel Menu

Hide Opera + Exit Close + Hide Opera

Lock/Unlock Tab + Block Content

Minimise + Minimise All Restore + Maximise

Close page + Close All

IrfanView + Drop down Utilities Menu
Requires Customised Kestrel Menu

IrfanView + Hidden Utilities menu
Requires Customised Kestrel Menu

Open + Drop down closed tabs list

Open + Hidden closed tabs list

Toggle Fullscreen + Toggle menu

Fullscreen Main bar + Hide Opera

Fullscreen Main & Scroll bars + Hide Opera

Fullscreen: Main & Page & Scroll + Hide Opera

Fullscreen Address & Scroll bars + Hide Opera

Fullscreen Address & Page & Scroll + Hide

Fullscreen Status & Scroll bars + Hide Opera

Fullscreen Status & Page & Scroll bars + Hide

Preferences

Preferences TabsDownloads

ToolbarsPrefs + QuickIdentify as

History Cache  Cache

Volume Speak + Gender

Navigation

ScrollGo to page + Go to Nickname

Home Home Tiny URL Browse

Panel Toolbars

Open your bookmarks panel and drag one of these buttons onto the bookmarks panel toolbar

Open your contacts panel and drag one of these buttons onto the contacts panel toolbar

Export Bookmarks + Bookmarks Menu

Export Bookmarks + Hidden Bookmarks Menu

Export Contacts + Contacts Menu

Export Contacts + Hidden Contacts Menu

Mail Toolbar

ViewAttach Smileys Menu

Mail Accounts

Windows Control Panel

These buttons give quick access to Control Panel functions. I keep them on my Status Bar at the bottom of the screen, and toggle the bar on/off with the following mouse gesture: Useful in fullscreen mode when the Windows taskbar is hidden.

GestureDown, GestureUp = View status bar, 4 | View status bar, 0

Accessibility controls

Windows Display Properties Dialog

Windows System Properties Dialog

Mouse Properties

Time/Date

Volume Controls

Edit Fields

This edit field  allows you to run any program with its command line. Useful for running regedit, command.com, or Windows utilities. Tip by Shoust

This edit field allows you to type or paste any text for Opera to speak. Additional files may need to be downloaded for voice support. Tip by Shoust

External Programs

My modified standard skin increases the size of the external program icons, and adds icons for my utilities menu. It also reduces the padding between buttons by a few pixels, and reduces the width of Page Bar tabs. Backup your standard skin before installing this one and make sure that Opera is not currently using the standard skin. My Kestrel Toolbar works best in conjunction with this modified skin, otherwise some of the buttons will have no icons.

Once this modified standard skin is installed, you can switch to other skins, but still have access to the extra icons contained in this skin. If an icon is not defined in your current skin, but is defined in my modified standard skin, Opera will find it and use it. This means that button icon names don’t need to be changed when switching skins.

If you like to work in fullscreen mode, the taskbar and start menu are only accessible by pressing the Windows key, so it is handy to have your favourite programs on the Opera toolbar.

All buttons assume a default installation on Drive C: for external programs. The external program icons are 32x32 pixels, which is the same size as the large icons in the D.T.A. skin.

New Icons for Opera 9.5

Some new buttons to launch Windows utilities. Modify the code to launch your own programs. Several icons are not yet defined as buttons. Buttons for Opera 9.5 (Customising Opera Forum)

Understanding Buttons

When you drag one of these buttons to the Opera toolbar or add one using customize toolbars in Opera, Opera adds a line of code to the appropriate section of the toolbar configuration file. When you customize the default toolbar, a new file named standard_toolbar (1).ini is created in your \profile\toolbar\ folder. This file contains only altered sections of the default standard_toolbar.ini file. If you drag the above Internet Explorer button to your main toolbar, Opera will add a line like the following line to the [Browser Toolbar.content] section.

Button23, "Open in IE"="Execute program, "iexplore.exe", "%u", "Open in IE", "IE""

Button23 is the unique identifier given to the button. In this case, it is the 24th button on the toolbar (Button0 is the first).

“Open in IE” is the title of the button

“Execute Program,” the first item to the right of the = sign is the action performed by the button.

“iexplore.exe” is the first parameter of the button’s action; in this case, the program to execute. For most programs the full path will need to be given, e.g. "C:\Program Files\IrfanView\i_view32.exe"

“%u” is the second parameter of the button’s action; in this case, an environment variable containing the URL of the current page.

“Open in IE” is the text to show in the tooltip when the mouse is hovered over the button and the text to use on the button if the option to show text is enabled or if no icon is defined.

“IE” is the name of the icon to use as defined in skin.ini for the current skin.

Not all parameters are required for all buttons. The following button has two simple actions: one on the button, and one on the dropdown.

Button6, "Print + Options"=Print document + Show print options

Opera knows which icon to use for the action “Print document,” and it knows the tooltip text to show. The action after the plus sign is performed if the user clicks and holds the button. In this case, no menu is defined so there is no dropdown menu icon. Click and hold shows the print options.

Button0, "Home/Menu"="Go to homepage, , , "Home/Menu" + Show hidden popup menu, "Browser Menu Bar""

For this button, no icon needs to be defined either, but the fourth parameter “Home/Menu” shows different text to indicate the dual function of this button. Clicking the button will go to the home page, but click and hold the icon will show the menu that is normally displayed at the top of the browser. If you use this button, you can turn off the browser menu bar (Control F11) to save vertical space.

Button11, "IrfanView/Utilities"="Execute program, "C:\Program Files\IrfanView\ i_view32.exe", "/clippaste", , "Panda" + Show hidden popup menu, "Browser Utilities Menu""

This button runs an external program, and the hidden dropdown shows a custom menu. The “Browser Utilities Menu” is not found in the default Opera menus. You have to define the section in your customised menu. If the menu is undefined, but Irfan View is installed in the above path, the button will work, but the dropdown menu will not.

This is an edit field, which is added in much the same way. It is identified as:
Edit17="Speak, "%s""

Creating Buttons

If you cannot find the button you want here, nor on the Opera Wiki site, you can make your own. The easiest way is to use the vBulletin code on the Opera Forum as explained in this thread. If any buttons on this page don’t work as you want or expect, copy the link address of the button, and post it in a message on that thread.

[Opbut=Button Action]Tooltip Text[/opbut]

For example, to create the Print Button explained above, you would post the following code on the Opera forum:

[Opbut=Print document + Show print options]Print/Options[/opbut]

This will create a button in your forum post, which anyone can drag to their toolbar and use.

This method still works, but the forum code is now changed so that the title always shows as Button. To get the correct title to show in the forum you must now use different code like this to create a link:

[url=opera:/button/Print document + Show print options]Print/Options[/url]

Quick Buttons

Quick Buttons are new to Opera 9. They cannot be added by dragging links like other custom buttons, but must be added to the toolbar.ini file by editing the file in a text editor like notepad. What I suggest is to add any other custom button on the toolbar wherever you want the quick button, then close opera and edit the button code. The following code is included in my Kestrel Toolbar.

QuickButton11, "Zoom"="Zoom to, 150, , , "Zoom" | Zoom to, 120, , , "Zoom""

As long as the button is held down, the first command is executed — in this case, zoom to 150%

When the button is released, the second command is executed — zoom to 120% (my default zoom)

You can find some more quick buttons on Tomu’s Button pages.

Adding Icons to Skins

To get a custom icon for external programs to use for buttons you need to add a PNG file to the skin. My Opera Glasses skin contains several 32 pixel icons extracted from the relevant programs.

Open the program executable in an Icon Editor such as Icon Sushi and save the icon as a 32 pixel transparent PNG. Unzip the entire skin from the skin directory to create subdirctories. The external program icons from my Opera Glasses skin can be found in \Skin\Opera Glasses\buttons2\ — copy your new PNG icon e.g. maintype.png to this directory.

Open \Skin\Opera Glasses\skin.ini and search for the [images] section. Add a line here to define your new icon. On the left is the name of the icon to be used in button commands, on the right is the relative path to the PNG image. You would add a line like this:

[Images]
MT = buttons2/maintype.png

The button command would be something like this:

Execute Program, "C:\Program Files\High-Logic\MainType\maintype.exe",,"MainType", "MT"

The fourth parameter “MainType” is the tool tip for the button, the fifth paramater “MT” is the icon name. Close Opera, zip up the skin again, copy it over the previous version, restart Opera, and make a button to test it.

You may use any of these buttons on your own web page, with or without a link to this page.
The code for these buttons is in the Public Domain.

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