Tweak

Opera offers several search options and related resources like translations and dictionary lookups. Some of the searches will provide Opera ASA with a little money. As URLs can change, and contracts can expire, Opera needs to be able update the searches and search URLs. It is of no use if you have an Ebay search on your Personal bar, and Ebay changes it's URL or contract with Opera so the search doesn't work anymore.

Opera uses a separate file to store the necessary information: search.ini. This file is copied to Profile directories, because different profile users can choose different searches to show on the personal bar. This file has a version number, so when you install a new version of Opera the installer can see if you are using a version that is up to date. Opera 8 will have some updates, and the version number of search.ini will incremented to 5. Existing search.ini files will be backed up (renamed search.bak) and replaced with the newer version.

Tweakers have of course found out that you can manually edit search.ini and so add searches. Nontroppo's wiki has a whole section dedicated to it. Everyone who tweaked search.ini and installs new versions should consider these options:

• manually compare the new search.ini and their old search.bak, and edit the new search.ini to incorparate the tweaks again
  
• change the version number of their search.ini before upgrading, thereby preventing the replacement with the newer search.ini, and manually check to see whether the URLs in their tweaked search.ini that came from the official search.ini still work
  

To help with this, here are the changes since version 4:

• new entry 'Opera web search'
  
• new URL for Ebay search
  
• redirector URLs are now used for encyclopedia and dictionary and many translations, to prevent the URLs from going stale