Wandering electrons... but not too far

(I recently posted this subject in the Wish-list forum and my thanks to sgunhouse for telling me how to do this)

One of Opera's keyboard functionalities is the ability to cycle through open tabs using Ctrl+Tab. You can choose how Opera cycles the tabs in the Preferences dialog:

Tools > Preferences... > Advanced > Tabs -- Choose from the drop-down box under, "When cycling through tabs with Ctrl+Tab".

Your choices are:
Cycle without showing list
Cycle in recently used order
Cycle in tab bar order

If you choose "Cycle in recently used order" or "Cycle in tab bar order", by default, Opera will show a list of open tabs while you're cycling. You can furthermore indicate if you want Opera to show thumbnails in the list by checking or unchecking the box, "Show thumbnails in tab cycle".

If you choose "Cycle without showing list", Opera will cycle in tab bar order, but not show the list.

What's missing from these options is the ability to cycle in recently-used order, without showing the list. Indeed, displaying the list is not strictly necessary because when it's not shown, Opera simply jumps to the concerned tab with each Ctrl+Tab.

As it turns out, cycling in recently-used order was apparently default behavior under Windows in the past. You can thus "re-tell" Opera to do this via the Opera Settings File, a.k.a. "opera:config".

Here's how:

First, make sure that "Cycle without showing list" is chosen in the Preferences dialog (Tools > Preferences... > Advanced > Tabs -- Choose "Cycle without showing list" from the drop-down box under, "When cycling through tabs with Ctrl+Tab").

Then:

1. Open a new tab and type "opera:config" in the address bar (no quotation marks)
   
2. Click "User Prefs"
   
3. Find "Alternative Page Cycle Mode"
   
4. Set it to "0"
   
5. Scrrrroooooooooolllll down and click "Save"
   

Enjoy!

See the Wish-list Forum post that I put up on December 11th, for a few more points concerning tab cycling in Opera:

Add (bring back?) "Cycle in recently used order without showing list"

Although they're delivered with default setups, Opera's toolbars are designed to be just "holders" within which you have almost total liberty to do as you please.

Why not use this liberty to better organize temporary bookmarks? Here's how...

Read more...

Favicons are the little itty-bitty images that appear on the tab, in the address bar and in your bookmarks to visually identify a website. Sometimes however, a website won't have a favicon. Generally, "on s'en fout un peu" as the French would say (we'll translate with "yeah, so?"), but if, for example, you use only images on your personal bar, the lack of a favicon can be aggravating because in this case Opera's generic bookmark icon will be used, and, well, that just doesn't help much to tell you where you're going to go if you click on it.

If you got a little time on your hands, here's how you can fix that.

Read more...

What's the deal with those huge buttons in the default panel configuration? Coyote ugly and 'ya don't need 'em. Here's how to get rid of them...

Read more...

Tooltips are the little yellow boxes that appear when you hover on certain elements. You might have noticed that Opera seems to have more of them than other browsers. It's not your imagination.

Read more...