SillyDog701 Message Centre

[Ramona]

The following are a few nice tips that were passed to me by Opera aficionados. I hope you will try some of them, if you haven't already:

Backup
Zip the entire: C:\Program Files\Opera Folder
OR

Backup these individual files:
Opera.ini
buttons.ini (button settings)
cookies4.dat (cookies)
opera6.adr (bookmarks)
contacts.adr (addresses)
*.adr (if you have renamed your bookmark file.)
styles directory (if you have customized any of the style sheets
there. (mail, news, history, etc. layout settings)
button.dat (location of buttons.ini files)
opera.win (your saved windows file, along with window size settings)
download.dat (downloaded files history - last 14 days)
global.dat (history)
vlink4.dat (visited links)
cache4 (folder) (cache)
OUsr600.dat (registration, if registered)
opera.dir (addresses typed into "f2")

Forget the Back Button
Use "reload every..." (right click/reload every...) on forum windows so you don't have to constantly reload the page. It sounds complicated, but is not. Once you become accustomed to it, this method is very powerful. Forget about that back button. (Mouse gestures for back and forward are also quite nice, and what I use.)

Cool Search Page
Just load THIS HTML PAGE into Opera
Click View | Hotlist | Add Panel.
You can add any page to the hotlist that way...
I also use this page in Netscape and Mozilla, by adding it to my Tabs
After you download the page, be sure to scan for virus, altho it is clean, still a good practice. I zipped the file to avoid any corruption...

Empty Cache on Exit
It is possible to set Opera to empty cache on exit. To do that, go to:
Preferences | Cache | Disk cache
Place a tick in the box "Empty on exit"
To select manually what you want to delete, close Opera and go to your Opera directory. In the "cache4" folder you can select what files you would like to remove.

Printer Settings - From Edward:
If you are printing a web page in Opera and find that the printer will not print the footers at the bottom (URL on left side, timestamp on right), go to File/Print Options, and gradually INCREASE the Right Margin setting. I had to change it to 2.80 (in centimeters (cm)), in order for my Epson Stylus Color 640 to print the footers.

Disable the Splash Screen
To disable the "Welcome to Opera" splash screen you will need to edit the "Opera.ini" file, which is located in your Opera folder:
[USER PREFS]
SHOW SPLASH SCREEN=0

Link Windows
If you encounter a page with a lot of links on it, like a forum where you post frequently: load the Opera forum and try this: ctrl-m,l (or right click, create linked window). Click on one messsage, it opens in the linked window. Respond. Click on another message, it too opens in the linked window, etc. Those two windows are linked until you close one of them. Very nice feature.

Before upgrading opera
1. empty the cache.
2. use winzip to zip up the whole opera directory.
3. install the new version.
4. if there is a problem (you dont like the new version, a bug you cannot tolerate, etc.), delete the Opera directory, and unzip the old version. Double click on the shortcut, and you are back up and running again.

EDIT: 06/15/03

Opera Keyboard Shortcuts
CTRL+B Brings up all keyboard shortcuts
F4 Toggles the Hotlist on and off
F5 Reloads page

With version 7, you will find a list of the default keyboard shortcuts in the input.ini file. The keyboard/toolbars/menus can all be customized through the gui (some) and the .ini files (most).

input.ini
toolbar.ini
menu.ini
fastfoward.ini
mouse.ini
search.ini


Mouse Gestures
Back:
Press right button, click left button
Press right button, move mouse left

Forward:
Press left button, click right button
Press right button, move mouse right

Go to parent directory
Up, then left

Create new, empty browser window
Double-click in workspace

Go to pre-set home page
Double-click in empty window

Bookmarks
Using multiple browsers, you should make a new folder for all any bookmarks you make in Opera. Then you can save that folder/subfolders as an Opera bookmark file, which can be converted back to Netscape's format. Then Bookmarks in both browsers remain reasonably synchronized. Of course you can always opt to use a third party Bookmark Manager.

Browsing
With Opera, remember that CTRL-SHIFT-CLICK (open link in background) is your friend. That is what really makes it faster with real-world use, along with user mode, keyboard shortcuts and the ability to turn off plugins, animation, and background sounds... Especially with a slower DUN connection, loading pages in the background will be advantageous.

I have opened as many as 40 windows at one time, using Opera. There was no ill effect experienced. This is not a practice you would want to carry out in your alternate or even your default browser.

Newsgroups
news.opera.no

UserAgent: Opera/7.11 (Windows 98; U) [en]

[Edward]

In Opera 7.11 (Windows), the bookmarks file has a different filename.

It's operadef6.adr, for Windows 98 it is in C:\Program Files\Opera7\

The Contacts file is still contacts.adr, and is in C:\Program Files\Opera7\Profile\

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98) Opera 7.11 [en]

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SillyDog701 Moderator
User of ubuntu.

[Edward]

I am running SuSE Linux Personal 8.2

At this point, I do not know if this is an issue with Opera or if it's a Linux printing/CUPS issue, but initially, a print queue could not be saved as a default in Opera 7.11 (Linux), as it would always default to the first listed print queue, which are listed in alphabetical order.

Select the Print button, or FIle/Print.
In the Print window, click the Printer program tab.
In the Printer progrram field, type: lpr
In the Parameter field, type: -P<name of printer queue> (without brackets, no spaces)
Click Apply, then Close.

On my system, the Parameter is: -Pnormal1 (no spaces), the printers are the Epson Stylus Color 640 and 400 models.

With that lpr entry in the queue listing, any of them can now be set as the default queue when selected/highlighted and Apply is clicked.

WARNING: On my systems, if the lpr queue is selected, it will print. However, if one of the other queues (in this instance: draft1 or normal1) are selected after using the lpr entry to print, even if another queue is saved as the default afterwards, the other queues will NOT print.

The lpr entry however, will print, if its selected afterwards:

Print job 1: draft1 prints
Print job 2: lpr prints
Print job 3: draft1 does not print
Print job 4: lpr prints

In order to fix this and use the other queues (i.e. draft1 and normal1) afterwards, I had to exit Opera completely, then relaunch it.

Disclaimer: Although the above is a workaround for my systems, I do not guarantee that the above will work on other systems.

UserAgent: Opera/7.11 (Linux 2.4.20-4GB i586; U) [en]

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SillyDog701 Moderator
User of ubuntu.

[Edward]

At the time of this writing, Opera 8 Beta 1 for Linux (Static QT build) would not print footers when used with an Epson Stylus Color 400 printer. It was discovered that if the Linux PPD printer file is changed to one that is used for the Epson Stylus Color 440 printer instead, the footers will successfully print with the Stylus Color 400.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041217

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SillyDog701 Moderator
User of ubuntu.

[Edward]

Opera Tip:

Increasing the cache size appears to make Opera run faster on older, slower PC's (discovered this with both Windows XP and Linux). I changed the cache size to 100 Mb from the default and Opera appears to be running faster now.

UserAgent: Opera/8.0 (X11; Linux i586; U; en)

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SillyDog701 Moderator
User of ubuntu.

[sisuus]

I can't find cookies in my Opera 7.23. Have you got any suggestions?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; pl; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0

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milf

[Edward]

[gwenstefni]

Opera is already a very fast browser, but if you would have the choice between fast and faster than fast, what would you choose ? I took the liberty to compile a list of 10 great tips that speed up Opera in several unique ways. Many of the settings can be changed by simply going to Tools Preferences in Opera but some can only be used by accessing not so obvious ways like ini files.Please note that everything that I’m describing here worked fine on my computer. It speed up Opera and increased my browsing experience with it tremendously. While most tips will work for any users no matter their connection to the Internet some tips might only increase performance for ,Disable Name Completion and local network lookupIncrease the time cached images are used before checking for new versionsRemove unneeded and duplicate pluginsRebuild your profile if you have upgraded Opera a lotDisable Turbo modeIncrease the number of total connectionsReduce the amount of visited pages in historyChange Expiry SettingsSave Images FasterDelay mail and rss connections at startup
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Gwenstefni

Edit by moderator: SPAM URL removed.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092417 Firefox/3.0.3

[James]