Tweak

I've been playing around with a new setup, that should be usable, useful, but also 'small' in a visual sense. So without a menu bar! Almost all Opera functions will be easily accesible. But not necessarily all from the main toolbars, which was what the ribbonesque Twelve setup tried to do. For now I've named it Compact, but suggestions are welcome for something more memorable. (No, not Chrome. Scandium maybe? Zircon?)



So starting with the Twelve setup, I removed lots of items (though many are still available from the Appearance dialog), moved the navigation controls back to their proper place below the tab bar, and created two menu buttons for access to various actions on the left end of the tab bar: one general menu with the Opera icon, and one with the page icon with page/text specific functions.

The 'manage' pages are hardly used in this setup, which relies on the panels instead. It should be more usable than the Twelve setup for those (like me) who use Opera's mail and chat clients, but note that the toolbars for the Mail and Chat tabs are still quite compact.

To try it out, install the Compact Toolbar 0.10 and the Compact Menu 0.10 that goes together with it, then hide the main menu bar.

BTW, in the screenshot I'm using the Winvista MSO2007 Blue skin.

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

• Rijk's menu 2.51
  
• Rijk's toolbar 2.50
  
• Rijk's keyboard shortcuts 2.60
  
• Gesture experiments for 7.2 (yeah, this mouse gesture setup is old)
  

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.

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

Opera Beta is out!
Update: Beta 2 is out
I've updated the toolbars below to take advantage of the latest features, I didn't change the menus yet.

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


If you need to convince your coworkers that Opera's UI can be molded in anyway you like, try the Firefox lookalike setup:

Skin: <http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins/skin.cgi?id=2297>
Toolbar: <http://people.opera.com/rijk/opera/ini/tb/munin_toolbar_800.ini>
Menus: http://people.opera.com/rijk/opera/ini/menu/munin_menu_800.ini
Keyboard shortcuts: http://people.opera.com/rijk/opera/ini/kb/munin_keyboard_800.ini

If you prefer a Safari look and feel, try these:


Skin for Windows: <http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins/skin.cgi?id=1354>
Skin for Mac (and only Mac!): <http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins/skin.cgi?id=2009>
Toolbar: <http://my.opera.com/customize/setups/setup.pl?id=1653&show=toolbars>
(best suited for registered version, with ads this one is better: <http://my.opera.com/customize/setups/setup.pl?id=1647&show=toolbars> )

You can even get an Internet Explorer XP look and feel:


Skin: <http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins/skin.cgi?id=747>
Toolbar: <http://people.opera.com/rijk/opera/ini/tb/operaexplorer_toolbar_800.ini>
Menus: http://people.opera.com/rijk/opera/ini/menu/operaexplorer_menu_800.ini
Keyboard shortcuts: http://people.opera.com/rijk/opera/ini/kb/munin_keyboard_800.ini


Notes:
1. These toolbars and menus might contain oddities when not used together and with the recommended skin.
2. Thanks to Ralf Demuth (Safari toolbar and Safari and Firefox skin) and Lars Kleinschmidt (IE XP skin).

Someone in the Customize forum asked about the new 'About this site' Firefox extension [1]. Well, it is easy enough to recreate something like that in Opera. For good measure, I've included the 'Pagerank' button made by Andrew Gregory [2]. Download this menu:
<http://people.opera.com/rijk/opera/ini/menu/about_this_site_menu_750.ini>
... and you have an extra option in the page context menu which looks like this:



Included actions:

• Google Pagerank


• Alexa Traffic Rank


• Alexa Site Info


• Google Related


• Google Linked


• Kinja Readers


• Technorati Cosmos


• Wayback Machine

[1] <http://www.scribbling.net/about-this-site-firefox-extension>
[2] <http://www.scss.com.au/family/andrew/o7/panels/pagerank/>

Edit:
Here's an updated version for Opera 8:
<http://people.opera.com/rijk/opera/ini/menu/about_this_site_menu_800.ini>
It uses the ZDot online service for Pagerank, which gives the same result as Andrew's button, but then on a webpage instead of in a popup.

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

Tricolor invented this nice little standalone Opera profile, and I helped him a bit. ODict gives you a online tool optimized for doing dictionary, encyclopedia and translation searches. The results are optimized for the small window with Opera's SSR. I've now made my own webpage for it.

Read more:

On my webpages:
<http://people.opera.com/rijk/opera/odict.html>
In Tricolor's Journal:
http://my.opera.com/Tricolor/journal/64

I've updated Classic Clutter for 7.50 beta 1. I hope no-one will want to use it... It gives you all the buttons and toolbars from a default 7.50 install, and Panels that look just like the 7.2x Hotlist: selector buttons on top etc.

Download it here:
<http://my.opera.com/customize/skins/skin.cgi?id=1324>

Updates for my other toolbars and menu files will follow.

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

I can't help it: here's another screenshot. Now it is the 'Singleline' toolbar setup, with the Fresh skin.

If you look carefully, you can see I also singlelined the panel toolbars.

Link to full screenshot (66k):
<http://people.opera.com/rijk/opera/img/singleline-750.png>

By installing the MoreMail setup in Opera 7.5 preview 2, you'll get more mail functions directly from the menu. No more need for a 'View' button hidden on the mail window toolbar, just press Alt-A to change the layout and Alt+Q to change the mail selection. To make this work properly, you should not use the MoreMail toolbar setup without the MoreMail menu setup.

And you can also get more mail keyboard shortcuts!

Download from
<http://my.opera.com/community/customize/setups/index.pl?show=toolbars&perscreen=25>

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

For those who liked a simpler (and mailless) browser compared to 7.23, I made Munin. This custom setup has now been updated for Opera 7.5.

Opera 7.5 itself already is streamlined (less toolbars visible, cleaned up menus), but Munin takes another approach: it tries to mimic the setup of Firefox and MSIE.

Preparations:
- Set 'View > Toolbars > Progress bar > Show inside address bar'

Install by clicking these links:

Toolbars:
<http://people.opera.com/rijk/opera/ini/tb/munin_toolbar_750.ini>

Menu:
http://people.opera.com/rijk/opera/ini/menu/munin_menu_750.ini

Keyboard shortcuts:
http://people.opera.com/rijk/opera/ini/kb/munin_keyboard_750.ini


Restore the Opera defaults:
- Tools > Preferences > Toolbars and menus

The cool new panel selector of Opera 7.5 has no equivalent in Firefox, but I still kept it