Tweak

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.

• Twelve menu 0.33
  
• Twelve toolbar 0.33
  

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

• Hugin menu 2.51
  
• Hugin toolbar 2.50
  
• Hugin keyboard shortcuts 2.51
  

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.

• More Mail menu 2.51
  
• More Mail toolbar 2.50
  
• More Mail keyboard shortcuts 2.50
  

Bigger Menus
Just what it says.

• Bigger Menus 1.15
  

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

• OperaFox menu 0.95
  
• OperaFox toolbar 0.95
  
• OperaFoxIE keyboard shortcuts 0.95
  
• Recommended skin is still wFFTBrad Native by Ralf Demuth
  

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

• Opera Explorer menu 1.13
  
• Opera Explorer toolbar 1.03
  
• OperaFoxIE keyboard shortcuts 0.95
  
• Recommended skin is still IE6XP by Lars Kleinschmidt
  

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

• Opera Seven-Five menu 1.04
  
• Opera Seven-Five toolbar 1.01
  
• Opera Seven-Five keyboard shortcuts 1.20
  

Eight
Return to the keyboard shortcuts of Opera 8.0.

• Opera Eight keyboard shortcuts 1.20
  

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

• KISS menu 1.23
  
• KISS toolbar 1.41
  
• KISS keyboard shortcuts 0.95
  

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

• Classic Clutter toolbar 1.41
  

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

• Single line toolbar 1.3
  

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

• About-this-site menu 1.12
  

This is an interesting read for those who want to enjoy Site Specific Prefs in Opera 9. In short, enjoy what we have now in Opera 9 (Tim explains why not all settings can be SSP right now), and look forward to improvements.

Always remember, the developers are not going home after 9.0 gets released, we are not Microsoft. There will be either a 9.1 or a 10.0.

Users of the latest weekly build might notice that using the Shift and Ctrl+Shift modifiers for the 'Enter' keyboard action don't work anymore to open the address in a new tab/new tab in the background.

For those not yet initiated: these are great keyboard shortcuts, they also work when using the bookmarks menu or the Hotclick menu (that pops up after doubleclicking to select text). For me, these modifiers make it possible to enjoy my tabs without having to uncheck 'Reuse current tab' in the Preferences.

Anyway, some changes in Opera made it necessary to add this behavior more explicitly to the predefined keyboard shortcuts. Those who did already make changes to section 'Browser window' will however lack these additions. So they should reset that section to 'default' in the keyboard shortcuts editor, or manually add these two items:

Enter shift             Go
Enter ctrl shift        Go

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.

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