Wandering electrons... but not too far

This is a tips and trick for Opera versions 9.2x. To be updated soon for 9.5 (I hope)!
Bookmarks and temporary bookmarks

Let's make the difference right away between bookmarks and temporary bookmarks.

We create bookmarks for those websites that we go to all the time; our favorite search engines, news websites, banking websites, etc. You can bookmark webpages in many ways, but I bet most of us just right-click the page and select "Bookmark page..." from the context menu. One of my favorite ways to bookmark a page is to drag it's tab to the pertinent folder in the bookmarks panel. Anyhoo, whatever your way of creating it a "bookmark" is for those webpages that you want to keep coming back to. Bookmarks are managed either in the bookmark panel (press F4 and then select the bookmarks panel) or the full blown bookmark tool (Click "Bookmarks" on the menu bar then "Manage bookmarks..."), which will open in its own tab.

It's important to remember that the "Personal bar" is an extension of the bookmark functionality: For a bookmark to appear on the Personal bar, it must be in the bookmarks. If you drag a link or a website to your personal bar, Opera will create a bookmark in your bookmark folder.

A temporary bookmark is a bookmark that you need, well, temporarily This usually happens because you're working on a particular project for which certain websites are useful, but when you've completed the project, you won't be needing these websites anymore.

In other browsers, you're obliged to create a "Temporary" folder in your normal bookmarks, and you can of course do this as well in Opera. But that isn't ideal because you're obliged to plunge into the permanent to manage something temporary. This is where the power of Opera's "holder" toolbar technology comes into play: You can drag a website to any Opera toolbar; this will create a shortcut button to that website, without creating an entry in the bookmark folder! When you're done with the website, you right-click the button, select "Remove from toolbar" and POOF! it's gone for good. You never touched your normal bookmarks.

Let's take this idea and run with it.

Creating a "temporary bookmarks" toolbar

1) Find an unused bar

Now, if you've got just one or two pages that you need to temporarily bookmark, you can really just put them on any open toolbar; that's surely the easiest thing to do. But over a certain number, the temporary links will start to crowd out the normal tools, and the bar may become difficult to use. That's when a 'specialized' bar may become really handy.

Opera has a ton of toolbars, and it's very unlikely that your using all of them. So let's take one of these unused bars and make a special "temporary bookmarks" bar.

Click "Tools" then "Appearance" then the "Toolbars" tab. In the top part of the box, you have check-boxes for all the principal toolbars (some of which won't be checked). In the bottom part, You'll see "Show hidden toolbars while customizing". Just for kicks, check its box. You'll get something close to this:


Whoa! Everything you see that's not "window" (you're reading this in the window part of your browser) is a toolbar. You didn't know there were so many, did you?

Anyway, uncheck "Show hidden toolbars while customizing" to get you back to something a little less overwhelming, and let's concentrate on the check-boxes for the principal bars (top of the dialog).

You can, in theory, use any of the unchecked bars for this, but I suggest the "Main bar" (that's anything but "main") because it's native "Top" position is really at the top of the browser. Check its box; it appears in your browser.

2. Delete (or move) all the tools that are on it

This bar was in all probability inactivated up to now. That pretty much proves that you don't need any of the tools (icons) that are on this bar. Let's go ahead and delete them (you can return the bar to its defaults later very easily).

With the Appearance dialog still open, right-click an icon and select "Remove from toolbar":


If you think you absolutely must have one of the buttons that are there, drag it to another bar; this will create a copy on the target bar, you can then delete the original (for example, in the above picture, you can see that I've moved the "Panels" button (looks like three playing cards) to my normal navigation bar).

Do this for all the buttons, but for the moment leave one, let's say the "Home" button.

3) Create your "Temporary bookmark" bar

Click "OK" in the Appearance dialog. You get something like this:


Now, there's a reason why I wanted you to keep one icon on the toolbar: It was to show you that a toolbar is big and easy to see if something is on it, like in the above picture. When we remove the "home" button the bar is going to become really thin, but it's still there.

Let's remove this last button. No need to open the Appearance menu, just right-click the Home icon and choose "Remove from toolbar". You get something like this:


The bar is still there it's just REEAALLY skinny. But that's what we want. Remember, this bar is only going to be used for temporary storage, which means that most of the time we won't be using it and thus we don't want it to take up much space.

4) put it into use!

Drag and drop a tab or a link to your new currently-very-skinny bar. For the first bookmark that your going to put there the target is small, but you'll know that you can drop the tab or link when you see a little page icon with a plus sign appear under your pointer (unfortunately my print screen function doesn't show the pointer, so I can't give you a picture).

And voilà! you now have the page "temporarily" bookmarked:


It's up to you if you want to keep the words; they clearly indicate what the link is, but they take up a lot of space. Wanna change it? OK.

Right click your new bar and choose "Customize..." The Appearance dialog opens to the Toolbars tab and you have a yellow box around your new bar.

In the "Style" box, choose your flavor. I prefer "Images only".

While your here, you might want to think about another thing: As you saw in the first image, my personal bar is on the bottom of my browser. But if you have your Personal bar at the top of your browser, you might find it confusing to have these two bars, both with links to websites on them, pretty close together. So I'd suggest putting one of them on the bottom and one on the top. It's up to you: if you want to move the new "Temporary bookmarks" bar to the bottom, just choose "Bottom" in the "Placement" box, and then click OK. If you want to move your Personal bar to the bottom like me, that's easy too: Without closing the Appearance dialog, click the Personal bar in your browser: the yellow box will now be around it, which indicates that it's the bar currently active for modification. Now choose "Bottom" in the "Placement drop-down box and your Personal bar will jump to the bottom. Click "OK".

And there it is, our new "Temporary bookmarks" bar in action!


All the links are there while you need them, but they are not written to the 'real' bookmarks folder.

When you're done with them, right click on the icon and choose "Remove from toolbar":


And it's gone for good, no residue left behind.

And when you remove all the temporarily stored links, your bar will return to it's "I'm there if you need me" state:


5) Image other possibilities

What I've given here is just one possibility for a 'Temporary bookmarks' bar. The sky's the limit! why not use a toolbar in the Bookmarks panel for example? In any case, with Opera, "thinking outside the box" can greatly enhance your personal browsing and working experience.

Enjoy!