Wandering electrons... but not too far

This tips and tricks was written for the 9.2x versions; may need updating for 9.5!

Opera: really imposing tooltips

Most browsers show only what's in the title tag (<title>) of an element (usually a link) in a tooltip. This means that for a tooltip to even appear the author of the webpage had to put a title tag in, which is often neglected. Opera on the other hand shows by default not only the contents of the title tag, but also that of the anchor tag (). This means that every link you hover over is going to show a tooltip. That's already pretty invasive, but when the webpage author did as one is supposed to do, that's to say (s)he attached a title tag to the link, you get not only a lot of tooltips, but big imposing tooltips as well.

Now, this is not neccessarily a bad thing: you might want all of this information, some of it or none of it according to your preferences. What I'm going to show you here is how to selectively cut down on the tooltips that Opera shows you.

KILL 'EM ALL!!! Or, the problem with the choice on the "Preferences" menu

If you go to Tools>Preferences>Advanced>Browsing you can simply uncheck "Show tooltips". Opera will no longer show any tooltips. However, you might find this a bit to drastic because not only are all webpage tooltips inactivated, but the tooltips on your Opera toolbars are as well. So if you've forgotten what the little button with the dohickey on it does, there will be no tooltip to remind you. This will also make all your tab thumbnails stop working as well.

So, unchecking "show tooltips" should really be reserved for these who hate passionately all things that suddenly appear when hovering. You probably want something a bit less drastic.

Make Opera behave like other browsers

If Opera shows the contents of the anchor tag, it's because the status bar is inactivated by default. If you activate it (Tools>Appearance>Toolbars - check "Status bar" then "OK"), Opera will behave exactly like its competitors. That's to say that the anchor tag contents (the hyperlink address) will be displayed in the status bar, and not in the tooltips. Now the only thing that shows in tooltips is what's supposed to appear: the title tag contents. All your toolbar tooltips will work as well.

Get back the space you just lost

Now the problem with the status bar being activated is that you just lost a bit of screen space. If you don't need to see the hyperlink address (and you don't really) you can remedy this as well.

Make a right click where the hyperlink address appears and then click on "remove from toolbar" You've just removed the "tool" that displays the hyperlink address (it's not gone forever; you can reinstall from the Appearance>buttons>status menu). Then, right click again on the status bar and click "customize". The Appearance menu appears with the toolbars tab activated. You should have a yellow box around the status bar in the browser. Put a check in the "show only when needed" box and click "OK".

Et voilà! You now have all your screen space back. It doesn't matter if it's visible or not, as long as the status bar is activated, Opera will not show anchor tag contents in the tooltips (A big thanks to Sgunhouse for having taught me this a few months back).

And if you don't want any tooltips in your webpages?

At the level we've attained now, your Opera browser will still show you tooltips. When the webpage designer adds title tags to webpage elements, these will show up as tooltips. This is globally considered to be normal behavior and is one of the "raisons d'être" of the title tag.

However it's quite possible that you might not want these either and you can tell Opera to not show title tag content tooltips.

Type in your address bar opera:config. Click on "User prefs" and find "Display link title". Uncheck its box, scroll down, and click "save" and then click "OK" in the confirmation dialog.

Opera will now show no tooltips in webpages, but you still have all your tooltips in your toolbars and your tab previews.

Remove toolbar tooltips

What I've talked about up to know is how to control tooltips in webpages, that's to say what is displayed in the browser window.

You're toolbars show tooltips as well. Controlling them however is much more limited.

There is an option to turn off the "popup button help":

Type opera:config in the address bar. Click on "User Prefs" and find "Popup button help" and uncheck its box. Scroll down and click "Save" then "OK" in the confirmation dialog.

However, this has the same effect as unchecking "Show tooltips" in the preferences menu, as I spoke of earlier; it "kills 'em all": no tooltips anywhere and no tab preview thumbnails.

So:
Tooltips in the toolbar + No tooltips (or partial tooltips) in the webpages = Can do
No tooltips in the toolbar + No tooltips in the webpages = Can do
No tooltips in the toolbar + tooltips in the webpages = Cannot do

If you find tab preview thumbnails to be too imposing you can replace then with simple text tooltips:

Type opera:config in the address bar. Click on "User Prefs" and find "Use Thumbnails in Tab Tooltips" and uncheck its box. Scroll down and click "Save" then "OK" in the confirmation dialog.

This will have no effect on the other tooltip preferences that you have set.

Mix and match as you please

It's your turn now to set up your Opera tooltips as you'd please

For me, the right dose of tooltips is to make Opera behave like the other browsers, but with the status bar hidden.

Opera has assured a good amount of control over these little yellowish boxes, which can be more or less useful according to the users need. I give it a B, borderline B+ for the moment.

There is room for improvement in the choices that Opera gives you for controlling tooltips. It would be neat in the future to be able to control toolbar tooltips, without it affecting the in-page tooltips. Also, it would be nice to have a choice of completely inactivating tab thumbnails without having to turn off all tooltips. The thumbnails are neat if you use them, but cycling through the open tabs with the Ctrl+Tab keyboard shortcut is arguably a faster way of seeing what's in each tab.

Opera 9.5 is coming. I'll let you know if this new version gets an even better grade for tooltip control!