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Posts tagged with "customization"

Updates

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[edit 2008-06-15]Updates updated: made the setups offered here compatible with 9.5 Final. Same URLs, a few new versions.

I'm going from light blogging to no blogging apparently... a bad trend. I'm a little bit active on Twitter now, but not in a way that compares to my past blogging here. When 9.5 Final and Firefox 3 get released, I'll probably make an update for the Top 150 Extensions list.

But my customized setups can already use some updates, the 9.2 versions will have some broken functionality when used with Kestrel builds. So here are provisional 9.5-compatible setups, suitable for Kestrel Beta 2. Copying some description text from a blog post in April 2007 BTW :smile:

Below you can find the auto-install links, with links to old blog posts for some background info. Remember: use Ctrl+F12 > Advanced > Toolbars to get back to your previous menus, shortcuts and toolbars.

Twelve
Ribbon-inspired radical setup. Use the menu and toolbar together. Hide the main menu with Alt+F11 after tweaking the shortcuts.


Hugin
Mail-only setup. Use at least the menu and toolbar together.


More Mail
Sort of a Hugin-lite that adds more mail-specific menus, shortcuts and buttons, but doesn't remove the browsing functionality. Use at least the menu and toolbar together.


Bigger Menus
Just what it says.


Classic Clutter
Return to the toolbar-bonanza of Opera 7.23. With an additional Startbar even...


My Personal Setup
Use at least the menu and toolbar together.

New toys for tweakers

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Mitchman, Opera developer, explains some of the new toys for tweakers in Kestrel. It will be interesting see what new shortcuts and buttons will be made with the 'delay' action.

My setup for 9.2

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You are all wondering what setup I use myself of course. Not so easy to answer, because I use several installations of Opera at different machines!

  • Hugin on the latest Merlin installation for POP (work mail) and IMAP (private mail) and newsgroups and newsfeeds on machine A
  • My own custom setup in a Merlin installation for browsing and webwork on machine A
  • My own custom setup in a Peregrine installation for browsing, webwork and IRC on machine A
  • More Mail in a Merlin installation for IMAP (work mail) and browsing on machine B
  • Twelve in a Peregrine installation for browsing, webwork, newsgroups, newsfeeds and IRC on machine B
  • And of course usually several versions or Merlin and Peregrine installed at both machines, all kept as default as possible
Machine A is a decent desktop machine with plenty of diskspace, and is the machine I make my backups from. Machine B is a laptop I use for working in whatever room at home I fancy. Total Commander and WLAN make it easy to access my work documents on both. Using both POP and IMAP for accessing the same work mail server isn't perfect, but it works for me.

My custom setup
.. is just one of the setups I use then :smile:
The menu and toolbar isn't all that spectacular, not anymore. Just some developer and convenience additions to the menu, a few changes here and there, and extra buttons to the Status bar and the View bar. There's Twelve if I really want different.

The mouse gestures have these two special items:
GestureLeft=Open in background page | Stop | Back | Delete mail | Close page | View Hotlist, 0
GestureRight=Open link in new page | FastForward | Forward | Reload | Mark mail as read | View Hotlist, 7 | Reopen page
The keyboard shortcuts contain all the extra's for More Mail, plus some additions and removals to the other sections. After stripping out the shortcuts that didn't change, this is left of the file: delta-rijk_keyboard_900.txt Note: it is not a complete setup file after this stripping.


Updated setups for 9.2

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We've been rather busy with getting 9.2 out of the door, its been over a month since I last posted! To commemorate that release, I've updated all my custom setups.

Here you can find all the auto-install links, with links to old blog posts for some background info. Remember: use Ctrl+F12 > Advanced > Toolbars to get back to your previous menus and toolbars.

Twelve
Ribbon-inspired radical setup. Use the menu and toolbar together. Hide the main menu with Alt+F11 after tweaking the shortcuts.


Hugin
Mail-only setup. Very minor update. Use at least the menu and toolbar together.


More Mail
Sort of a Hugin-lite that adds more mail-specific menus, shortcuts and buttons, but doesn't remove the browsing functionality. Use at least the menu and toolbar together.


Bigger Menus
Just what it says.


OperaFox
Firefox lookalike. Menu and toolbar updated to be more like FF 2.0. Use at least the menu and toolbar together.


Opera Explorer
IE6-lookalike, minor update. Not really recommended - an IE7 lookalike would be better :smile: Use at least the menu and toolbar together.


Seven-Five
Return to the looks and shortcuts of Opera 7.5.


Eight
Return to the keyboard shortcuts of Opera 8.0.


KISS
Opera setup for partners and parents. The updated KISS below is even simpler than the one described at the link above.


Classic Clutter
Return to the toolbar-bonanza of Opera 7.23. Now with Startbar as well..


Single line
One toolbar for menu, navigation and status field. Hide the menu with Alt+F11 after tweaking the shortcuts.


About-this-site
Extension for the document page context menu.

OperaFox 0.9, the new Munin

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After Hugin, here's the 9.x update for Munin. But it's now called OperaFox. Munin was originally designed as a simplified Opera, inspired by Firefox. But since Opera 8, the default Opera setup is already simplified and hides the mail stuff etc. So while I still use Hugin myself, I don't use Munin anymore.

OperaFox 0.9
For those who like the Firefox experience, here's a setup that tries to mimic the Firefox look and feel. You can even download a keyboard shortcuts setup that makes Opera behave just like Firefox/MSIE (at the cost of making some Opera-specific shortcuts more complex). The toolbar and menu should both the installed for this setup to work correctly. The shortcuts are optional. The nice skin using Firefox and Thunderbird icons was made by Ralf Demuth.

Edit 2007-04-17: the links point to 9.2-compatible setups now



9.10 is final - and so is Hugin 2.5

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Yippee, 9.10 is final. High time to update the downloadable custom setups I've made. I'll try to get this working with my.opera.com's system later, but for now I'll use my own webspace. First one:

Hugin 2.5
Hugin is a custom setup for a dedicated Mail & Chat client. It makes the power of M2 visible in menus and shortcuts and button - and makes it possible to keep mail and browsing separate processes, which has pros and cons. Normal browser functionality is mostly removed, so create a separate Opera installation for this one. You can open weblinks in a simple web tab. But you can also open them in your normal browser installation, with the link context menu. The toolbar and menu should both the installed for this setup to work!

Edit 2007-04-17: the links point to 9.2-compatible setups now





My favorite userscripts

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These are the userscripts I currently have running in my 'normal' browser installation:

  • Autosizer activates when you use Opera to view an image file, and adds five different viewing modes for images: original, shrink to fit, maximize, fit to width, fit to height. Prime candidate to turn into a built-in feature, if you ask me.
  • Google Suggest will add the autocomplete feature from Google Suggest to regular Google search pages. Sometimes helpful, sometimes interferes with entering text.
  • Google Thumbnails adds web site thumbnail images to google search results. A bit of harmless fluff (unless you're on dialup), but the thumbs are not always relevant because they depict only the server homepage. This is offered as a Greasemonkey script for Firefox, but it works out-of-the box in Opera as well.
  • Linkify text files improves display of text files by making URLs in text documents clickable. Also adds line numbers when you want. To make lines wrap, press Ctrl+F11 (Fit-to-width).
  • MyOpera Community Forum Enhancements is a suite of toys that improve various tasks at the MyOpera forums, such as showing attachments inline and adding page numbers.
  • Operapedia shows you a relevant Wikipedia article along with your search results. Adds links in the article which will trigger new Google searches. This script needs updates frequently, when either Google or Wikipedia make a little change to their site.
  • PageRank userscript gives proper formatting for Andrew's PageRank popup button.
  • XML tree displays the XML tree for XML documents without style, making it a useful tool for analysing XML files. Also something we could use built-in IMHO.


Inactive scripts, used to be active in my Opera installation:

  • Operafy Asa's blog mangles Asa's blog in a funny way, but makes it harder to read.
  • No Click to Activate works around the new 'Click to activate' plugin handling. It caused problems reading PDFs for me.
  • Link Alert displays icons beside links to specific file types or actions. Nifty. But I rarely need the info, while the icons always show.
  • Enhance blockquotes adds clickable links when a blockquote uses the cite attribute, and the blockquote doesn't already contain a clickable link to the cited work. Alas, I don't see many properly marked-up blockquotes on the web. The script recently seemed to mess up an important website, and I saw no reason to keep it.

Top 150 Popular Firefox Extensions and Opera

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Updated again: the extensions list, and the summary below, was last updated 2007-06-08, taking into account the new Addons site. Lots of sleazy spyware toolbars were finally removed. Added a few corrections based on comments here at 2007-06-17. Added a few more correction at 2007-07-29. Thanks!

Updated: the extensions list, and the summary below, was last updated 2006-12-09, taking into account the Firefox 2 release that made some extensions obsolete. Firefox out-of-the-box is catching up to Opera :smile:

Based on initial research :sherlock: from Dodd in the my.opera.com forums, I've compiled a list of the Top 150 most popular Firefox extensions, and classified the availability of the functionality they offer in Opera.

extensions.html

Some extensions are Firefox-specific (only relevant for managing Firefox itself), and there is considerable overlap in functionality for several extensions. That leaves the following summary:

  • 41 extensions offer out of the box functionality in Opera 9, with roughly equivalent capability,
  • 13 extensions are available by installing a UserScript or a Widget or dragging a button,
  • 17 extensions require advanced customization or are only partially available,
  • 45 extensions are not available at all in Opera.

[updated]After the December 3, 2006 update, out of 96 sets of extensions:
  • 32 (sets of) extensions offer out of the box functionality in Opera 9, with roughly equivalent capability,
  • 11 (sets of) extensions are available by installing a UserScript or a Widget or dragging a button,
  • 13 (sets of) extensions require advanced customization or are only partially available,
  • 40 (sets of) extensions are not available at all in Opera,
  • 3 extensions are are Firefox specific (like dictionaries).

[updated again]After the July 29, 2007 update, out of 113 sets of extensions:
  • 38 (sets of) extensions offer out of the box functionality in Opera 9, with roughly equivalent capability,
  • 14 (sets of) extensions are available by installing a UserScript or a Widget or dragging a button,
  • 21 (sets of) extensions require advanced customization or are only partially available,
  • 38 (sets of) extensions are not available at all in Opera,
  • 4 extensions are Firefox specific.


Corrections are welcome, but only from people who have actually studied both the extension and Opera's behavior. 'why would I need it' is a valid reaction to some extensions, but will probably not lead to changes in the table :wink:

Tweaking widgets

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The image shows the analog clock you can get from the Widgets download page for Opera 9. The clock comes with three skins, which can be consecutively activated by left-clicking the clock. The one on the right has two little tweaks, done by editing the contents of the widget zip file.

Removing the text is very easy, this is directly taken out of the html file. Activating the fourth (hidden) skin for the clock requires a little bit more, but should also be easy enough for the tweakers among us to figure out. This transparent skin makes is much nicer to keep the clock 'pinned' without really obscuring your normal windows.

Note: I had some trouble taking a screenshot, so this is actually two (parts of) screenshots pasted clumsely together.

Preview 2

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Lots of Opera folk writing about preview 2. Moose has a list of them. Especially nice (because he's a desktop developer!) is the new blog of Petter Nilsen (aka Mitchman), explaining how the new 'block content' feature works, among else.

Update:
Peter K about the changes in preferences settings: overrides.ini and override_downloaded.ini.

A Ribbon for Opera

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Inspired by the new Ribbon interface design that is being developed for MS Office 12 [1], I wanted to see what you get in Opera, when doing away with the normal top-menu, panels and toolbars. Without sacrificing access to all the functionality Opera has to offer, of course. In this new setup, each function is available in one, easy to find, place.

Here's a screenshot of the result of this exercise, 'Twelve':

2006-06-29: updated screenshot

To try this setup yourself, install both the menu and toolbar from here:

Edit 2007-04-17: the links point to 9.2-compatible setups now

I did this by making the Alt+F11 shortcut work under Windows as well as Linux:

  • Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Shortcuts
  • Doubleclick the active keyboard setup, and enter 'F11' in the Quick Find field
  • Remove 'Platform Unix, ' from 'Platform Unix, F11 alt', then click OK a lot
  • Now toggle the menu bar away with Alt+F11

Use 'Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Toolbars' to return to your previous setup.

For more info, explanation, and screenshots, visit the page 'Twelve' on my website.

[1] You can read some background information on the Ribbon

Battling Feature Anaemia

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One of the core goals of Opera has always been to provide you, to our best approximation, with the browser that makes the web available to everyone, and to give anyone the most comfortable way to surf the web. The way we handle features and configuration follows the following approximate formula:

  • Normal browsing features: included, on by default
  • Comfort features: included, can be disabled from the UI
  • Features to make the web more accessible: feature included, UI to make use of feature might be second tier if it gets in the way for the majority that doesn't need it
  • Finetuning features: configurable via Advanced prefs (if a significant minority might find it useful) or by editing text-based ini files
  • Features to keep old users happy: feature included, disabled by default, configurable via UI or by editing text-based ini files


Note that "features to make the web more accessible" are not "bloat" or a "distraction for developers". Such features are very much needed for our mobile browsers, and it makes little sense to not make them available or try them out in the desktop version of Opera. Hence things like "Fit to window width" and "Voice". And from old times: disable image loading, plugins, javascript etc. In Opera 9 you will get site-specific preferences, to make it easier to use the accessiblity options when necessary, and use the web as the authors intended by default. Or the other way around! To keep a sane and understandable interface, not all preferences can be made site-specific in 9.0. Experience and feedback will tell how the UI will need to improve or make more or less prefs available in this context.

"Editing text-based ini files" can be somewhat hard to explain to potential power users. Opera 9 will include a built-in editor for opera6.ini to make this easier. Of course we can have long discussions about what the default settings should be, and which settings should be delegated to opera.ini. The built-in editor is not meant as a alternative interface for the Preferences, so the latter should contain all the things a 'normal' user might want to change once in a while.

This posting is inspired by Firefox developer Ben's latest post Battling Firefox Bloat. The problem I have with the Firefox philosophy: almost everyone is a member of a minority, and usually member of a few minorities. So with Firefox, everyone has to manage a set of extensions for necessary (for them) features or nice-to-have comfort features like "Mouse gestures" and "Paste and Go".

And it has become clear that you can not trust the extension developers to stay passionately involved over many years, so it can be days or months after installing a new Firefox version before it is working again as it used to do. Opera's text-based ini files can be a bit more clunky to work with, and less powerful, but the advantage is that anyone with a text editor can find out how to do it. To write an Firefox extension, you need to know a fair bit of JavaScript at least, if not XUL.

Update: also read David Baron's concerns about Firefox maybe relying too much on extensions.

Merlin: shortcuts and buttons for all settings

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In Merlin, you can use opera:config to directly change all available settings. But it is still a chore if you want to do this regularly, for example to toggle User JavaScript on and off. So Merlin also introduces an action for shortcuts and buttons, that makes a direct change in your settings. This means you don't have to wait for Opera's developers to add specific actions.
Moose gives a nice example of this new feature in Opera 9 (Merlin):
Set preference, "User Prefs|User JavaScript=1" | Set preference, "User Prefs|User JavaScript=0"

  • Action name: Set Preference
  • First parameter: "Section|Prefs parameter" (as they appear in opera6.ini)
  • Second parameter: not used

This can be used in custom keyboard shortcuts, mouse gestures, voice commands, buttons, and in custom menu setups.

Note: this is a new action that has not been thoroughly tested yet (apart from the one example here :smile: ). So your feedback is welcome

T stands for Tab

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There have been a lot of new people in the Forums lately, talking enthusiastically about their switch to Opera. These are people not easily sold on Opera - it took the removal of the ad banner before they even wanted to consider it. So, this is very good news! But some of their comments make it clear, that people switching from tabbed browsers (Firefox, Safari, and in the future IE7) have expectations about how a browser should behave - and Opera is sometimes failing in ways that should be easy to fix.

This is a long introduction to announce a change we want to try out in the upcoming (RSN!) Merlin preview: making Opera's terminology and shortcuts compatabible with 'the other browsers'. So, the word 'Page' is replaced by 'Tab' to describe child windows, for example in 'Tab bar', 'New tab', 'Open in new tab'. At the same time, Merlin introduces the shortcut Ctrl+T (Cmd+T on Mac) to get a new one. Using T for Tab makes it possible for switchers coming from Firefox, Safari, Camino, iCab, Konqueror, and IE 7 to feel right at home from the start. Ctrl+N will now always open a new application window (for the same instance of Opera, such a new window doesn't mean that Opera is started again).

Now, Ctrl+T was already used in Opera to open the 'Bookmark this page' dialog, so that has to change as well. But this is easily solved by using Ctrl+D for bookmarking - another shortcut many switchers were missing. This leads to the last change: the function 'Paste and go' will now take over the Ctrl+Shift+V shortcut (a variant of the Ctrl+V 'paste' shortcut) Ctrl+B shortcut.

There are currently no changes planned in the actual operation of Opera - so removing the close button from the tabs will still give you the pure MDI, beloved by many, etc. To get back to the pre-Opera 8 MDI behavior of 'tabs', there are now several settings available in Preferences > Advanced > Tabs and Preferences > Advanced > Browsing. And Opera is of course doing a lot more in Merlin, apart from changing a word and a few shortcuts! Support for new standards, some interesting new goodies for advanced users, lots of fixes to make us more compatible with websites and standards, etc.


The tweakers among us might go back to the old shortcuts, if they like:
  1. Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Shortcuts
  2. Doubleclick the 'Opera Standard' keyboard setup
  3. Type 'n ctrl' in the quick find field
  4. Doubleclick 'New browser window' and type 'New page'
  5. Type 't ctrl' in the quick find field
  6. Delete the 'new page,1' entry
  7. Type 'd ctrl' in the quick find field
  8. Change the 'd' in 'd ctrl' and 'd ctrl shift' entries to 't'
  9. Type 'b ctrl' in the quick find field
  10. Change the 'b' in 'b ctrl' and 'b ctrl shift' entries to 'd'
  11. Click OK, click OK


Those that do not want to tweak can also download these automatically installing keyboard shortcut files to get the previous defaults back:
  • Eight (includes only the changes as detailed above)
  • Seven Five (includes golden oldies like 'Ctrl+G' for User mode and 'P' for print preview)


Edit 2007-04-17: get updated versions for Opera 9.2

Try the 'Opera Tools' apps

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MyOpera regular Diplo today released his Opera Tools. These tools, combined with a tweaked menu setup, give a proper GUI to two features of Opera 8, that normally require editing of ini files: URL filtering and server-specific UA spoofing.

The readme file in the package tells all you need to know. For those that want to incorporate the tool in their already customized setup, it is accessed using this menu item:

Item, "Add to Block List" = Copy image address & Execute program,"C:\Program Files\OperaTools\OperaAdBlock.exe", "C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Opera\Opera8\profile\filter.ini"

and
Item, "Identify As..." = Copy document address & Execute program, "C:\Program Files\OperaTools\OperaUAEditor.exe", "C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Opera\Opera8\profile\ua.ini"


This obviously needs editing to get the paths right.

Swapping columns

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About changing the column order in Opera's 'tree' views. It is a rather hidden feature, that you can choose which columns to show in views like the mail messages list and the download manager. Right-click on any column header, and you can select the columns. You can also change the width of columns by dragging the divider between the columns. All this requires the mouse BTW. Note that, as opposed to the standard Windows list control, it is not possible to make the columns occupy more (or less) than 100% of the available horizontal width. After adjusting the column widths with the mouse and closing Opera, the Preferences file (see 'Help > About Opera' for it's location) will contain a line that defines which columns are shown, with which width, and in which order. The line in the Preferences file looks like this:
[Columns]
Mail View=0, 25600, 1, 1, 28091, 1, 2, 93822, 1, 3, 22216, 1, 4, 13770, 1, 5, 51200, 1, 6, 21298, 1
You see 7 triplets of numbers here. First is the column id, second the width and third the on/off bit. You can change the order of these triplets to move the columns around. Column numbers: 0: Status, 1: From, 2: Subject, 3: Sent, 4: Size, 5: Attachment, 6: Label So by changing the line to, for example, this:
Mail View=0, 25600, 1, 5, 51200, 1, 1, 33773, 1, 2, 88400, 1, 3, 22146, 1, 4, 13656, 1, 6, 21223, 1
... the Attachment column will be shown after the Status column. Don't worry about the column sizes when editing, Opera will make it fit.

Mime.css enhancements for feeds

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http://people.opera.com/rijk/opera/img/hugin8-tantekfeed-small.jpgHere are a few lines I've added to my mime.css, to make newsfeeds look a little nicer:
/* for feed content in general */

div.feedContent {font-family: serif;}

/* 'tags' in Tantek's feed as a small inline list
http://tantek.com/log/posts.atom
*/

h4.tags {display: run-in; font: bold smaller sans-serif;
 margin: 0; padding: 0 .5em 0 0;}
ul.tags {display: block; font: smaller sans-serif;
 margin: 0; padding: 0;}
ul.tags li {display: inline; margin: 0; padding: 0;}
ul.tags li a {text-decoration: none;}

/* permalink links bold red small */

div.feedContent + p > a {text-decoration: none; 
color: red; font: bold smaller sans-serif;}
This should work well with the default mime.css stylesheet. I've also got a completely restyled mime.css which tries to use the system colors more, and is a bit 'classier'. That's the one you see in the screenshot. Get the stylesheet here. Edit: For Opera 9 beta, add this to the 'browser.css' file instead.

UserJS.org online

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Now we've got a great place to share User JavaScripts for Opera 8:

UserJS.org

I'll update my own userscript docs this week, and make sure to submit the most interesting stuff I have to UserJS.org.

Windows themes

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Some people have been asking me about the skin they see in my screenshots, like here:
<http://my.opera.com/forums/attachment.php?s=&postid=929573>
In the past, some people even thought I was using Linux, which I don't for normal work. Since I found out last year there are actually free, nice looking and usable themes for Windows XP, I've been using first 'Royale' (the Windows Media Center theme) and then b0se's 'Codename: Opus' theme.

You'll need to run a patcher before Windows XP accepts non-signed themes BTW, which is a hassle.

The seven-five experience

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There is, as always, a lot of discussion about the perfect setup for Opera. People have a hard time adjusting to changes. Which is of course perfectly normal, just as it is normal for Opera Software to try to get more users on the desktop. Luckily, as subtitles remarks, it is always possible to change Opera's setup to be (almost) exactly like it was in a previous version.

A long time ago I made the 'Classic clutter' toolbar setup for 7.5 users who yearned for 7.2's 'buttons galore' look. It is still available in a Opera 8 version.

For those who don't dig the changes in Opera 8, here's a setup called "Seven-Five". Some might only be interested in the shortcuts (an easy way to get 'p' and 'g' back). Other might want the whole setup. Enjoy.


Edit 2007-04-17: get an updated version for Opera 9.2

Note that these are not exact replicas of the Opera 7.5 setup; the new features are not hidden. For example, the security icon is not shown on the Address bar (as it is shown in the address field anyway), but the View bar toggle button is.
July 2008
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