Opera Tips

Updated 30 July, 2008

Contents

1. Working in Fullscreen Mode
2. Opening Graphics in Irfan View
3. Kestrel Menu
4. Mouse Gesture Popup Menu
5. vBulletin Code Menu
6. Utilities Menu
7. Toolbar Tips and Buttons
8. Mouse Shortcuts and Gestures
9. Keyboard Shortcuts for Typing Pāli
10. Mnemonic Shortcuts
11. Double Click in Bookmarks
12. Copy background page URL
13. A Handy Popup Dictionary/Thesaurus
14. Access to Insight Website Search
15. PTS Dictionary Search
16. Browsing Your Local Drives
17. Removing Mail Access Points

The Internet is a great place to learn about Buddhism, there are some excellent resources, and many forums where one can discuss all aspects of the teachings. However, browsing is a frustrating experience with Internet Explorer. Opera is a much faster browser because of the way it is designed.

Installation is quick and simple. Opera is free to use for as long as you want and contains no Spyware. Register to obtain email support. For a record of developments see the changelogs.

On this page you will find many ways to customise Opera to make browsing more efficient.

1. Working in Fullscreen Mode

If you like to get rid of all of the toolbars in Opera, just press F11. In fullscreen mode you can bring back the panels (F4), the Address Bar (Control F8), or the Scroll Bars (Control F7). You can also bring back any of the toolbars from the View Menu.If you want to customize the fullscreen mode so that the toolbars you want are always shown, you can do this by editing the keyboard from the preferences menu.

• Preferences (Alter P)
• Mouse and Keyboard
• Keyboard Setup, Edit
• Quick Find, F11
• Edit the F11 Action as follows:
  Enter fullscreen & View main bar,6 | Leave fullscreen & View main bar,6

The numbers refer to the position of the toolbar, 1=left, 2=top, 3=right, 4=bottom, 6=default.

2. Opening Graphics in Irfan View

Irfan View is an excellent Freeware Graphic program that can be used to convert, resize, crop, rotate, and perform many other common operations on graphics. While browsing the web it is handy to be able to open an image to take a closer look. Add the following lines to menu.ini to add an option to the popup menu when right-clicking on an image.

[Image Popup Menu]
…  …
Item, 67651= Open image
Item, "Open image in Irfan View" = Copy image & Execute program, "C:\Program Files\IrfanView\i_view32.exe", "/clippaste"

[Image Link Popup Menu]
…  …
Item, 67651= Open image
Item, "Open image in Irfan View" = Copy image & Execute program, "C:\Program Files\IrfanView\i_view32.exe", "/clippaste"

You may need to change the path if you have installed Irfan View in a different directory. This tip will only work perfectly with applications that accept command line parameters. In Photoshop or other programs one will have to manually paste the graphic from the clipboard, as the “/clippaste” function will not work.

3. Kestrel Menu

I have completely revised my simplified, lite menu for Opera 9.50 Kestrel. If I missed something vital I will update the menu later. There is an item on the Help menu, to check this section for updates.

Opera has so many features that it can be overwhelming. Although I am an experienced Opera user, I don’t use half of the menu options. Download my Kestrel menu to try it out. You can easily revert to the standard menus, or create your own custom menu. At least it may give you some ideas for your own simplified menu. Open the above link, or right-click, and “Save target as...” to save it to your hard disk. Browse to your profile folder (see Help, About Opera) and save it in the \profile\menu\ folder. Then select the Opera Kestrel menu from Preferences, Advanced, Toolbars, Menu Setup.

Opera has a System Tray Icon. Right-clicking on this icon pops up up a menu. The default menu is too complex for my liking, so I simplified it. With Opera hidden in the system tray you can use the tray icon menu to go directly to your email, open Opera, or exit Opera. Thanks to MarcFou for help with this tip.

4. Mouse Gesture Popup Menu

By combining two of Opera’s features you can have a popup menu like that on the right, which appears only when executing a mouse gesture. This is different to the regular popup menu that appears on right-clicking the mouse. This gesture now brings up the mouse gesture popup menu, with options to block content on the page, validate the source code, switch to other open pages, or reopen pages closed during the current session.

Add this section or one like it to your customised menu or use my Kestrel Menu.

[Mouse Gesture Menu]
Item, M_BLOCK_CONTENT = Content block mode on | Content block mode off
Item, M_DOCUMENT_POPUP_MENU_VALIDATE= Validate frame source
---Open Windows---
Include, Internal Window List
---Closed Windows---
Include, Internal Closed Window List

Then in Preferences, Shortcuts, Mouse Setup, modified the mouse gesture action:

Gesture Up = Show popup menu, "Mouse Gesture Menu"

GestureUp is one of the easiest Gestures to perform. Its default action is to Stop the loading of the current page. If you still wanted to use that you would assign the [Mouse Gesture Menu] to another gesture that you don’t use so often.

Mouse Gestures can be context-senstive. You could, for example, enter a mouse gesture in the Advanced, Edit Widget section of your customized mouse setup to run the Spell Check. The possibilities are endless — the beauty of Opera is that you can tailor it to your needs. My ideas are just suggestions to feed your imagination.

Every user has different priorities. The default menu setup needs to show all of the options somewhere, but that is too much for most users, let alone for beginners.

5. vBulletin Code Menu

You can use this popup menu in edit boxes to insert vBulletin code.

Many bulletin boards provide buttons and dropdowns for formatting text in messages, but this menu makes it easier and adds some options not found on most forums. The [Button] code is specific to the Opera Forums, and won’t work elsewhere.

Select some text then right-click and choose the vBcode you wish to apply to the selected text. The result will like this:

[Color=Blue]selected text[/color]

or

[opbut=Print options]Text[/opbut]

You may need to edit the code a little.

6. Utilities Menu

You can easily add custom menus to the Browser Menu Bar. In my Kestrel Menu I have defined a menu from which I can run a few utilities, open frequently edited files, and browse to favourite directories in Windows Explorer. The following line is added to the [Browser Menu Bar] section of my customised menu.ini file:

Submenu, "Utilities", Browser Utilities Menu

The [Browser Utilities Menu] section contains a line for each program on the menu. Whatever items you add to this section will be displayed on the menu, which can be on the main menu bar, on a submenu, on a button, on the right-click popup menu, or opened with a mouse gesture or a keyboard shortcut.

Each item needs a title that will appear on the menu. The icons are optional. I have added icons for each item just because I could. On Opera’s default menus, only the most frequently used items have associated icons. Icons make it quicker to find key items.

To open the utilities menu with a keyboard shortcut, edit your keyboard (Preferences, Mouse and Keyboard) to add the following action for a new shortcut, e.g.

u alt  •   Show popup menu, "Browser Utilities Menu"

7. Toolbar Tips

Opera has several different toolbars. You may think that you need at least the browser toolbar, the address bar, the page bar, the scroll bars, and the menus. In fact, you can make do with just the browser toolbar and the page bar. You can download my Kestrel Toolbar to try it out. Save it in your \Opera\Profile\toolbar\ folder, then select it from Preferences, Toolbars and menus. The utilities button requires Kestrel_menu.ini to work. For individual buttons, see my buttons page. You will find many of my custom buttons on the My Buttons palette after you install the Kestrel toolbar.

• »» Use a compact skin. The Windows Standard skin is compact, but it has a dark them. If you prefer a skin with larger icons and brighter colours, the D.T.A. skin (illustrated below) is excellent. Set the options to “images only,” and “show extender menu” to use all available space. My modified standard skin is even more compact and has extra buttons. With this modified standard skin replacing the Opera standard skin, any other skin can make use of the extra icons for external programs and the separator bar.
• Add the address field to the browser toolbar, so you don’t need the address bar.
• The Kestrel Menu adds the full browser menu to the right-click document menu, so you don’t need the menu bar. Click the menu button on the page bar head to view a drop down menu, or click and hold to show the menu bar for ten seconds. You can also toggle the menu with a keyboard shortcut or mouse gesture.
• I don’t do much printing, so having two buttons for Printing was wasteful. I combined all print functions on a single button by adding a [Print Options Menu] to my Kestrel menu. Click the button for print; click and hold for the options menu. For quicker access to print scaling, the print options menu has a [Print Scale Menu] submenu.
• The page bar is very useful so I don’t usually hide it, but it does take some space. The windows menu can substitute for the page bar. Control Tab, or right mouse + scroll wheel, also fulfils this function. Click the Windows/Sessions Button for a list of open windows; click and hold it for a list of your saved sessions.
• You don’t need the Google search field either, just type “G” “Search String” in the address bar, or select text in Opera, then select Search from the right-click menu.
• Below is my latest setup. A drop down menu button is on the page bar Head, the browser toolbar has room for all of the buttons that I need regularly.

• The Fit to Width button by the URL field has a hidden popup menu for show/hide/cached images.
• The Run field lets you run any program: enter “regedit,” “msconfig,” “calc,” etc.
• The Plugins/Volume control and rename tab button sit on the page bar Tail with the Trash Can.

The Status bar is used mostly for External Program buttons. The Status bar can be used to replace the Windows Task bar, so that you can access all of your favourite programs from Opera’s interface.

8. Mouse Shortcuts and Gestures

Another great time saving feature of Opera is mouse shortcuts and gestures. A mouse gesture is a programmable combination of movements with the right mouse button held down. Below are my favourite customisations. From Preferences, Mouse and Keyboard, you can edit the mouse menu to create your own. It is possible to put two commands on one gesture. If the first is not currently possible, then the second command is performed. (Thanks to dude09 for this tip) For example, if GestureDown is performed over a link, the link is opened in a background page, if not the page is reloaded.

New in Opera 9.50 is an option to include a delay in a command string. This is useful, for example, to show a toolbar for five or ten seconds, then hide it again. I use this to show and hide toolbars that I don’t need very often, such as the Document View toolbar, the Status bar, the Personal Bar, and the Menu Bar.

Shortcuts

• FlipBack (Hold down the right button and click the left button) to go back.
• FlipForward (Hold down the left button and click the right button) to go forwards.
• Hold the shift key and drag on a link to open in a new page.
• Double-click on a word to select it. The hotclick menu pops up from which you can look up the word, translate it, search it with Google, or go to a webpage if a URL is selected.

Gestures

Holding the right button …

• GestureDown = Open link in backgound page | Reload
• GestureUp = Show popup menu, "Mouse Gesture Menu"
• GestureLeft, GestureRight = Set alignment, "document view toolbar", 6 & Delay, 10000 & Set alignment, "document view toolbar"
• Gesture Right, GestureLeft = Set alignment, "hotlist", 0 | Set alignment, "hotlist", 6
• GestureRight = Forward | Fast forward
• GestureRight, GestureUp = Enable menu bar & Delay, 10000 & Disable menu bar
• GestureUp, GestureDown = Set alignment, "personalbar", 6& Delay, 5000 & Set alignment, "personalbar"
• GestureDown, GestureUp = View status bar, 6 & Delay, 5000 & View status bar, 0
• GestureDown, GestureLeft = Switch to previous page
• GestureDown, GestureRight = Switch to next page
• GestureDown, GestureRight, GestureUp = Undo

9. Keyboard Shortcuts for Typing Pāli

Opera can be customised to type any text with a single keystroke. I find this useful for typing Pāli vowels in message boxes. In Preferences, Mouse and Keyboard, edit existing keystrokes or add new ones to type the Pāli characters. Since I use Pāli frequently, I prefer the easiest key combinations — aiuj ctrl = āīūñ and aiuj ctrl shift = ĀĪŪÑ. You may prefer to use the more difficult Ctrl Alter combinations, reserving Control A for select all, which is the default. There is an option to restore the default individually for each keystroke.

You can download my Unicode keyboard to try it out. Many shortcuts are different to the default keyboard so you may prefer to edit the original keyboard to suit yourself.

In the keyboard edit dialogue box the left column is called “Input context and shortcuts.” The input context means where the shortcut will work. To use a shortcut globally within Opera, the context is “Application.” To use it only in the Browser, but not in email, you would add the keystroke under the folder “Browser.” By entering my shortcuts under “Edit Widget” they work only in edit boxes, so “Control A” will still select all text on a webpage, but not in an edit box. The right-hand column is the action. In this column, enter the action of the shortcut.

• To type Pāli ā macron the action is Insert, “ā”
• To type Pāli ī macron the action is Insert, “ī”
• To type Pāli ū macron the action is Insert, “ū”
• To type Pāli ñ tilde the action is Insert, “ñ”

10. Mnemonic Shortcuts

Opera used to use single key shortcuts for page navigation, replying to email, etc., for example:

a = next link in page
q = previous link in page

In Opera 9.50 Kestrel these are now off by default, but they can be enabled from Preferences, Shortcuts, Enable single-key shortcuts. If you are a touch typist and get accustomed to using these it can save a lot of time for browsing. However, though I can touch type, and have used Opera for some years, I rarely use any of them. I use them instead for easy to remember shortcuts to launch my favourite programs. Instead of taking your hands off the keyboard to use the mouse for launching programs, you can launch them with a few keystrokes. To get you started, here are a few that I find useful:

*="Execute program, "calc.exe"
T, D = "Execute program, “Notepad”, "C:\My Documents\Text Files\ToDo.txt""
T, E, M, P = Execute program, “C:\TEMP”
I, E = Execute program, "iexplore", "%u"
I, V = Execute program, "C:\Program Files\IrfanView\i_view32.exe", "/clippaste"
F, T, P = Execute program, "C:\Program Files\FTP Commander\ftpcomm.exe"
B, B, C = Go to page, "http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/default.stm"

You can edit the keyboard via Preferences, Advanced, Shortcuts, Keyboard, and enter your own commands in the usual way. Just copy the target from the Windows shortcut, and paste it after the Opera command like this:

Execute program, <Windows Shortcut Target>.

• The mnemonic shortcuts can be one letter, but two or more are much easier to remember. They are not case-senstive, you can enter them in lowercase, uppercase, or mixed case.
• Targets can be program paths to executables, directory paths, file names that have associated applications, or Internet addresses.
• Parameters can be added to some programs, e.g. %u to open the current internet page in Internet Explorer, or “/clippaste” to paste the clipboard contents into Irfan View.

11. Double Click in Bookmarks

To open bookmarks with a double click instead of a single click, clear the check box in the Opera configuration editor for Hotlist Single Click

Single click is now the default in Opera. Some people find difficulty in selecting bookmarks because they immediately open in a new page with a single click. To select a bookmark, or any link, without opening it, click and drag sideways. To copy or move bookmarks, click and drag, releasing the mouse button to drop them into a new folder.

12. Copy Background Page URL

When making replies on forums, you may sometimes wish to copy the address of another page that you have open in the background to provide a link to it.

With my customised menu you can do this without switching from the current page (if the page bar is displayed).

Right-click on the tab of the background page, and select “Copy address” from the context menu. Copy the URL to paste it into your message.

The context menu is different depending on where you click. If you right-click over any toolbar you get the option to change to a different skin or to customise the toolbars.

13. A Handy Popup Dictionary/Thesaurus

Add the following line to the [Hotclick Popup Menu] section of your menu.ini file in \Opera\profile\menu\

Item, WordWeb = Copy & Execute program, "C:\Program Files\WordWeb\wwnotray.exe",,,"Wordweb"

Now, when you select a word and right-click, the Wordweb option will appear on the popup menu and you can check the spelling and meaning of the word at once. Quicker and more convenient than the online dictionary/ thesaurus facility built in to Opera.

If you’re learning English, the latest version of WordWeb can use real (American) English sound files (84 Mbyte). Clicking on the phonetic spelling will play the appropriate WAV file. The loudspeaker icon will pronounce words using computer synthesised speech, which is only approximately correct.

This item is already included on my Kestrel Menu. Just open the link, save the file in \Opera\profile\menu\ then select the Kestrel Menu in Preferences, Advanced, Toolbars, Menus.

To add the same item to the menu that pops up when the cursor is in an edit field needs a different approach because the selected text parameter (%t) won’t work. First, the command needs to copy the selected word to the clipboard, then it must use the clipboard text parameter (%c) to paste the clipboard text into Wordweb’s Lookup field. This command goes in the edit widget section:

[Edit Widget Popup Menu]

Item, WordWeb = Copy & Execute program, "C:\Program Files\WordWeb\wwnotray.exe",,,"Wordweb"

Wordweb is a freeware dictionary/thesaurus. You need to download and install it before this tip will work. The download is 7.43 Mbytes, but it contains a comprehensive dictionary and thesaurus.

14. Access to Insight Website Search

From the Preferences dialogue, select the searches tab, and add a new search engine. Type “Access to Insight” for the name, “i” for the keyobard, and enter the address as follows:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/cgi/search/search.pl?Terms=%s

You can search the site for any search term by entering “i search term” into Opera’s address bar.

If you add this item to the [Hotclick Popup Menu] section of your customised menu:

Item, "Access to Insight" = Hotclick search, 120

Then you can select any word or phrase on a web page, right-click, and select “Access to Insight.”

N.B. You will need to edit search.ini to change the Search Type numbers. Avoid using the same Search Type number for any existing search engines.

15. PTS Dictionary Search

For the PTS dictionary search, the address is as follows:

http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/search3advanced?dbname=pali&query=%s&CHAR&matchtype=exact&display=utf8

Then add this line to the [Hotclick Popup Menu] section of your customized menu.

Item, "Search &PTS Dictionary"=Hotclick search, 121

N.B. You will need to edit search.ini to change the Search Type numbers. Avoid using the same Search Type number for any existing search engines.

Double-click on a word to select it, then right-click to get the hot-click menu, from which you can choose the option to search the online PTS Dictionary. The search will work with both Pāli and English words. The search term will be highlighted in red.

Install one of my Unicode fonts to see the accents required for Pāli.

16. Browsing Your Local Drives

By typing “opera:drives” into the address field you can browse your local drives to view graphic images or to launch files such as documents or multimedia files in their associated programs. Drag the floppy disk icon to your bookmarks panel toolbar, or any other toolbar to get a one-click shortcut to your local drives.

If you install the latest version of my Opera Glasses Skin or my Opera Standard Skin, you can also use this browse folder icon.

This will open a Tab in Opera showing all of the drives on your PC. You can navigate the drives by clicking on the icons or the drive letters.

As you drill down deeper into the directory tree structure, the header on the Folder Listing shows the full path. Each part of this path in the header is an active link, which you can click on to quickly navigate back to the parent folders or back to the root.

By using the mouse gestures or navigation buttons you can browse a directory of images in Opera, zooming in for a closer look if necessary.

17. Removing Mail Access Points

Several users have asked if it is possible to remove unwanted access points in the mail panel such as Labels, Attachments, Active Contacts, etc. Although the latter will disappear if you delete all the entries it will immediately return as soon as you send an email. The former cannot be removed at all.

The drop down menu on the mail toolbar also uses the Internal Access Points. All I need is access to Received, Sent, Outbox, Drafts, and Trash. I don’t use the Unread and Spam access points.

A work around is to remove the Mail Panel and use a custom menu instead, which can be linked to a button. A button can show this menu with: Show hidden popup menu, “Mail Access Points Menu.” Add the following section to your customised menu file.

[Mail Access Points Menu]
Item, "Unread" = Read mail, 1,,,"Mark as read"
Item, "Received" = Read mail, 2,,,"View from"
Item, "Outbox" = Read mail, 3,,,"Send Mail"
Item, "Drafts" = Read mail, 4,,,"Compose Mail"
Item, "Sent" = Read mail, 5,,,"View to"
---Trash---
Item, "Spam" = Read mail, 8,,,"Mark as spam"
Item, "Trash" = Read mail, 6,,,"Show Trash"
---Feeds---
Item, "Mailing Lists" = Read mail, 9,,,"Show Mailing Lists"
Item, "Newsfeeds" = Read mail, 11,,,"Show Newsfeeds"

Add this button to any toolbar to show the Mail Access Points Menu. I always keep my received tab open so I keep it there, but you could also put it on the Contacts Panel toolbar. However, with this button, you don’t need to open the panels at all to access your mail, so another toolbar that is always visible may be a better place.

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