Opera Add-ons

Extensions and themes for the Opera desktop browser

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Posts tagged with "extensions"

Right-Click Menu Addons: Doing It Right!

By Michael Clellandmichaeljclelland. Friday, November 30, 2012 1:47:00 PM

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Add some neat functionality to your right-click menu with these great extensions from the Opera Addons catalog.

The recent release of Opera 12.10 introduced the Context Menu API to a stable release for the first time. This API allows developers to extend the context menu (if you're like me, you know it as the right-click menu) and add new options and functionality to it through extensions. Choosing which options are available in your right-click menu makes it that little bit quicker and easier to do what you want on the web. Here are 5 great extensions that use this excellent new feature:

Social Share
Some people just love to share - and this extension lets you do just that! It uses the new context menu API to add social network links to the right-click menu. The best thing is, it reacts to the type of item you want to share: depending on whether you right-click on an image, a link, some selected text or the web page itself, the sharing options will change appropriately. You can change the settings in the preferences panel to include options for as few, or as many social sites as you'd like! Includes Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Orkut, VK.com, Digg, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Reddit and StumbleUpon.


Privatize
This is a great example of a straightforward, simple extension that makes life a little easier for you. When you're browsing the web, sometimes you see a link you'd like to visit anonymously. With the Privatize extension, you can open that link in a new private tab through the right-click menu. No fuss, no opening blank tabs, no copying or pasting. Just click and go!The Privatize extension in action

Pinterest Speed Dial
Although it's a primarily a speed dial extension, the Pinterest addon also includes a sweet little context menu option. Right-click on an interesting image anywhere on the web, and you'll find an option to pin it to one of your Pinterest boards!


TinEye Context Search
This may look basic, but it works a treat - it's an unofficial extension for TinEye, and it is simply perfect for the context menu. Right-click on an image to choose the 'Search on TinEye' option, which takes you straight to TinEye.com - where all the image's information is displayed for you. In just two clicks, you can find out where an image comes from, view similar images and more!


Right Click Cache
You know that 'Cached' option you see in Google search results? With this extension, you have the option to view the cached page by right-clicking on any link, anywhere on the web. A cached page is a stored snapshot of a web page. There are several reasons you might want to see a cached page: if a page is currently down because of too much traffic, if it's a slow website, or if the owner has removed the page but you still want to see it. Since Google's servers are very fast, it can be quicker to view the cached version than the page itself. And with this extension, now you don't have to navigate through Google's search results for the page you want - just find the option in your right-click menu.


Do you have any favorites? Or is there something you'd love to see added to the right-click menu? Let us know!

4 comments

Outstanding Extensions!

By Michael Clellandmichaeljclelland. Friday, November 9, 2012 4:01:54 PM

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Whether you use Opera for work, play, development, socializing or shopping - there's an addon for everyone. Following the release of Opera 12.10, there are some new amazing extensions to be discovered in our catalog!

Everybody uses the web in a different way. One size does not fit all - but with addons, you can tailor the Opera browser to fit the way you want to experience the web.

A unique feature of the Opera browser is Speed Dial extensions. Opera was the first browser to introduce the Speed Dial - a 'start page' that shows each time you open a new tab - and continued to innovate by introducing extensions to this page. These extensions are more than just links: they offer the user a unique browsing experience, by adding live content dynamically to the Speed Dial panel. They are available only on Opera through our addons catalog.

Take a look below at some of the outstanding extensions Opera offers!

Speed Dial for Facebook
With 850 million users worldwide, it's more than likely that Facebook is one of your regular stopping points on the web. If you're the kind of person who just has to check your Facebook feed one last time before starting work, you'll love Speed Dial for Facebook.

This extension will display your notifications in the speed dial panel, as well as a classy slideshow of recent photos posting by your friends and favorite pages. So you'll never miss out on what's happening - and you'll know when it's time to take a break from work and check your notifications!

Follow this link to add Facebook to your speed dial now - and while you're there, why not become one of the 2 million+ people to like our Facebook page?


Readability
We all love browsing the web - but does it ever get too much? Too many banner ads, strange fonts or clashing colors? The Readability extension will save you from the very worst that web designers can throw at you - and offer you a calm, comfortable and clean way to experience content on the web.

Not only does the Readability extension turn any web page into a a beautiful reading experience but it also lets you save, share and send content any way you like. Over 35,000 users have installed this addon - check out some of the features they are enjoying:

  • "Read Now" to turn off webpage noise and clutter
  • "Read Later" (with subscription) to save content to your personal reading list
  • "Send to Kindle" to send any web page to your Kindle in a comfortable reading view
  • "Kindle Digest" (with subscription) automatically syncs your reading list to your Kindle every day
  • Stitch together multi-page articles into a single page
  • Share through email, Facebook, and Twitter
  • Configurable content appearance: font color and size, width, convert links to footnotes, hide images
  • Favorites and archiving
  • Offline usage


Get it here to enjoy a great way to read on the web.


AdBlock
One of the most popular extensions in our addon catalog, AdBlock for Opera automatically blocks all ads on web pages for you, with no configuration necessary. As soon as you install it, you can open a tab to any site, and there will be no ads on the page. This extension even blocks those annoying video and popup ads!

After installation, AdBlock will take care of the rest for you - and if you're a more advanced user, you can easily customize the way it behaves. Just click on the AdBlock icon in your toolbar to configure it - you can pause it, stop it from running on a chosen site, create filters and more.

You can become one of the 260,000+ users who enjoy using AdBlock by getting it here.


Twitter Notifications
Social sites have changed the web forever, and no social site is as dynamic and fluid as Twitter. The ultimate up-to-the minute micro blogging site, people use Twitter in many different ways - keeping in touch with friends, keeping up to date with current affairs, celebrity gossip, or as a way for businesses to reach out and engage with customers. Whichever way you use Twitter, the Twitter Notifications extension will alert you to what's happening on your Twitter feed.

First, follow the steps to authorize the extension to fetch your Tweets. Once you've authorized it, the extension does all the rest!
  • The 'home' icon alerts you to new Tweets by users you follow on your timeline
  • The 'connect' icon tells you when you have new followers, @mentions or if somebody has retweeted you
  • And the 'message' icon notifies you when you have a new Direct Message


If you're a social animal, you may have several Twitter accounts - personal, business, an account for your blog, or even an account to tell people what's for lunch at work. No problem - you can install the extension several times, and sign in each with a different username!

Around 50,000 users have added it to their speed dial panel - why don't you join them? Download it here, and don't forget to follow us at @Opera too!


Do you have a favorite extension you'd like to tell us about? Or do you have an idea for an extension that you'd love to see in our addons catalog? Then let us know! Or if you're a developer and feel inspired, you can also create your own extensions using our APIs.

12 comments

Extensions icons vs high resolution displays

By Remigiusz Bondarowicz2beR. Wednesday, October 24, 2012 12:30:00 PM

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For many years, manufacturers around the world have been working on improving the resolution of the screens they produce, so as to make the content look sharp and crispy. This is of course a continuous process of improvement, and there are a couple of interesting examples on the market recently that leave the competition behind with their new high resolution screens.

If you had a chance to play with Apple's new Retina Display for example, you can easily see the difference between a regular display and a display with a high pixel density. The fonts are super sharp and graphics have much more details.


Left image: high density display, Right image: regular density display

The secret behind the scene is that pixels on these screens are quadrupled.
In other words, we get four times more pixels on screen for each point, than is the case for regular screens.
More pixels means more details, and means a better experience for the end user.
That's the good news ... but it comes at a cost.

Read more...

11 comments

Catalog update!

By Torgeir Lorange Østbytorgeilo. Wednesday, April 18, 2012 2:57:59 PM

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You might have noticed a slight change on addons.opera.com p

Half a year of changes were released yesterday! Here are a few highlights apart from the completely obvious, and a bit more technical than what you can find elsewhere:

  • URLs no longer contain extension version numbers. This should eliminate a lot of dead links pointing to older versions of extensions.
  • Extensions are no longer filtered based on which browser you use. Everything is listed anyway, but you might see a message telling you that you need a certain version of Opera for an extension to work properly (for example Opera Next for upcoming features). This should also eliminate more dead links.
  • The ratings are now weighted against an average (Bayesian rating), providing a more sane ranking of the top rated extensions.
  • A few languages now receive special treatment in the search engine, for improved matching. The languages are Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, and German. In order to benefit from this, you need to change the filter language (the drop-down with the globe button) to one of the mentioned ones. (We are still working on improving things, here.)
For extension developers:

  • You can now attach any license to your extensions!
  • You can edit the name of your extensions as long as they are not public yet.
More good stuff and smaller improvements are to come soonish wink

Enjoy!

10 comments

Catalog update!

By Torgeir Lorange Østbytorgeilo. Thursday, March 31, 2011 2:36:37 PM

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New changes to the extensions catalog were released today! Here are some highlights:

  • You can now update your rating of an extension. Just go to the details page of an extension and log in, and your rating will pop up just below the descriptions.
  • The release also introduces the possibility to report and discuss problems with extensions. You can find the reports together with the reviews.
  • All the languages an extension is available in are now listed in the top right information box on the details pages.
  • The developer guidelines have been moved to dev.opera.com. Make sure to update your links!

Enjoy!

20 comments

Recommended extension awards

By SC.sagar. Thursday, March 24, 2011 1:09:51 PM

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The Opera Add-ons catalog features many recommended extensions. This is a great way for new Opera users to easily find a great extension to use. We want to grow our repository quality even further, and we need your help.

If you can create or update en extension and get it recommended on our site, we will grant 10 of you a gift card equal the value of a Samsung Galaxy Tab!

Sweet! I'm in! How do I get started?

Upload a new or update an extension and make sure you follow the tips below:

  • The extension must be useful for its intended audience.
  • It should not have any obvious bugs.
  • Icon and screenshots should be clean and crisp.
  • The screenshot should clearly depict how the extension will appear to the user and how it can be used.
  • Add a concise description to cover what the extension does, and how it can be used.
  • A high rating from your extension users.

If you have never made an extension before, we've got you covered. Follow the development instructions in Opera extensions developer's guide. Good luck!

Examples of previously recommended extensions

Good luck everybody!

Update! [May 25 2011]: We have decided that out of the total 10 extension authors that will receive an award, at least 3 of those will be dedicated for Speed Dial extensions. :-)

17 comments

Developers: enjoy our new URL Filter API

By Arnstein Teigenespirobind. Friday, March 11, 2011 10:09:46 AM

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Opera launched a new snapshot of Opera (experimental build) for the more courageous of you to play with.

It includes a small gem for extension developers: a brand new API that makes the world of content blocking a whole lot easier. Here's how it works (non-developers, look away):

First, add this to you config.xml:
<feature name="opera:urlfilter"/>

Then knock yourself out in the background script:
var sites = ['*://twitter.com/*',  '*://*.twitter.com'];  
var filter = opera.extension.urlfilter;

for (var i = 0; len = sites.length; i < len; i++) {
    filter.block.add(sites[i]);
}

On dev.opera.com you can find more developer information on how to use the URL Filter API. For general information on how to develop Opera extensions take a look at this overview.

Not a developer? Here's a photo of a cat.

8 comments

Another catalog update!

By Torgeir Lorange Østbytorgeilo. Monday, February 28, 2011 4:13:54 PM

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Earlier today we pushed a new version of the extensions catalog! I am sure you will appreciate some of the fixes.

Highlights for our users

  • Localized extensions are now listed only once. But note that if you search, you will still get hits in several languages (unless you filter on a specific language, of course).
  • The "New" list is no longer showing recently updated extensions. Only completely new extensions are listed.

Highlights for the extension developers

  • You can now edit the descriptions, upload new screenshots etc of your public extensions. Just go to the details from your list of extensions and click the edit button.
  • The input field for the extension summary is now slightly bigger.
  • Various excess files and directories are now automatically removed from your extensions when you upload them. These include .svn directories, __MACOSX directories, Thumbs.db, and the like. No harm should be done to the extensions themselves.

Enjoy! (While we, yet again, go back to working on the next release smile)

12 comments

State of Opera extensions

By SC.sagar. Friday, February 25, 2011 12:24:36 PM

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Since launch, Opera extensions have been downloaded over 7 million times! Lets take a quick look at some more inspiring numbers and statistics. up party

Part 1: Incredible growth

  • 7+ million total downloads.
  • Over 421 extensions now available!
  • Extensions available in 18 different languages.
  • 24 developer articles teaching you best ways to make an extension

Part 2: Top extensions

Here we take a quick look at the top most downloaded extensions by our users. Not a lot has changed since the last report. A quick snapshot reveals users preference for privacy, faster downloads and access to content, and interest in web pages other than just in their native language.

Part 3: Top countries

The countries that loved downloading the most of Opera extensions are listed below. United Kingdom is the only new entrant. In total, the users from just these top 10 countries spend about 1.74 years on the website each week! yikes

  1. Russia
  2. Ukraine
  3. Germany
  4. United States
  5. Poland
  6. China
  7. Japan
  8. France
  9. United Kingdom
  10. Czech Republic

16 comments

Extensions catalog update!

By Torgeir Lorange Østbytorgeilo. Monday, February 14, 2011 4:23:52 PM

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Last week we released a new version of the extensions catalog! While many of the changes are under the hood and not immediately visible to the public, we do hope that you will like what you can see.

Highlights for our users

  • A whole bunch of styling fixes. For example, the extension names are finally displayed in full!
  • The front page has changed into a list of recommended extensions, maintained by Opera
  • The graphics on the error pages have been compressed further. You will hopefully not notice p

Highlights for the extension developers

  • All descriptions from the config.xml can now be edited when uploading extensions
  • A bug was fixed regarding unsupported characters in the screenshot filenames
  • Screenshots can now be deleted if you accidentally upload duplicates or just too many
  • It is now possible to navigate from your extensions to their respective details pages. Just click the details button associated with each extension and follow the links at the top
Enjoy! (While we keep on working on the next release)

14 comments

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