Skip navigation.

bpm's Operations Room

understanding & extending Opera

IcontestMenu.ini: show all icons on menu

Wednesday, 30. July 2008, 22:31:11

Here's a little tool that displays all the icons with their names showing (and thus can serve as an icon chart) - and also shows how they look (and verifies that they work) on menus.
It's a byproduct of my icon chart project: having gotten into search-and-replace operations to transform the icon list, I realized one could reformat it into a menu as well. Here's the result: two extremely long menus that do't do anything. Set up as a separate INI file to be put it the Menu folder and loaded through Preferences when wanted - but the menus could also be added to one's basic menu file for quicker access.



A few remarks, and the ini file to download, inside.

Read more...

2 comments

Panel-ready keyboard chart

Wednesday, 30. July 2008, 03:50:47

(last revised 2009-10-28)

One of the basic help resources just never developed in Opera is a keyboard chart. So here's one, an HTML page intended for use as a panel. To install: store on hard drive, bookmark, and check "show in panel" box. To add info: with focus in panel, View menu / view source; edit; click Apply Changes.

You can, of course, check out the chart without installing; nothing changes when you put a webpage in the panel, except width. And after it is installed, you can get rid of it anytime by just deleting the bookmark. Here it is.

Read more...

2 comments

One-screen live icon chart

Tuesday, 29. July 2008, 06:40:15

,

(last revised 2009-11-15)

A basic tool that didn't exist: a live icon chart (the icons are called up from the installed skin; swap skins and the whole set changes) that gets all 435 standard images on one screen. The trick is that their names are moved into tooltips - you only read one caption at a time, so there's no point devoting most of the screen to them. That increases density by a factor of about five, and puts the whole set in view for browsing skins, deciding which picture to put on your button, or figuring out what's what in toolbar.ini. The chart reflows to fit the screen (horizontal scrolling never needed) and can be toggled to show the icons at various sizes - including the native size, which can be surprising.

Mine is now out of date, so here's a pointless link: Icon chart - multimode. A couple of versions updated to the Opera 10.1 icon list have been posted:
  • Oct 2009 from Strathos: includes a button maker, which makes sense. Here's the forum post, which shows how to use the button maker; here's the chart itself.
  • Nov 2009 from Trollop.

Bookmark one, and you'll be able to put names to faces in the Opera interface.

Inside: some icon-set pictures, and a blow-by-blow account of a dynamic-HTML noob's little adventure of discovery.

Read more...

No comments

Augmented bookmark functions

Thursday, 24. July 2008, 18:50:41

These macros offer four improvements in bookmark functionality:
  • one-gesture creation of bookmarks routed to the top folder in your system
  • addition of source-page URL to bookmarks made from links (information normally lost - enables you to return to source, effectively bookmarking that as well)
  • use of the description field to attach notes, made convenient
  • option of using selected text as bookmark name


Install by pasting into menus or KB/mouse customization dialog (some also provided as buttons; green links are button-installer tags)

Read more...

4 comments

perfected text-URL pagelaunch

Wednesday, 23. July 2008, 12:45:54

(last edited 2009-11-28) (green links are button-installer tags)

If you rightclick in selected rendered text, the context menu that pops up seems to give you only one launch option: Go to web address. In fact, you can add Shift as you select it to ensure that the page launches in a new window; or Shift +Ctrl, to make it launch in the background - but you have to be aware of those rules, and willing to use both hands. And if the link is in editable text, you're out of luck and will have to copy and paste.

It would be desirable to put those launches on the menu, where they are obvious and generable with a simple click, and to cope with editable text. One can write macros - strings of Opera functions - which do this. But they have their own flaws which, though minor, are real: they erase the clipboard, and either mess up tiling, or depend on using, and sticking to, non-standard settings.

Javascript makes flawless functions (which can go on menu, keystroke, gesture or toolbar) possible; here they are. The old macro versions are also included - in case anyone keeps javascript off, and to show how complicated things get when one must allow for preference settings.

Read more...

No comments

Note-friendly, stretchable bookmarks

Tuesday, 22. July 2008, 22:48:33

(last edited 2008-7-29)

On offer, at the cost of a copy-and-paste operation into your profile: bookmarks which
  • give immediate access to all fields (no need for a "details" click)
  • use space efficiently to maximize the size of the Description field
  • are stretchable in two dimensions, without limit.

Why bother? Well - although the conventional use of bookmarks is very limited, the tool is in several ways well-suited to use for serious note-taking (being, for example, naturally source-linked, and in Opera searchable through the use of tags, and even plural tags now, through the address dropdown). Freed from constraints imposed by an unambitious implementation, it can comfortably hold and display large amounts of text you type in, or copy from source documents. Whether its destiny is to grow into a new role remains to be seen; but it could.

To make the point, here's one stretched to full-page size, and holding a 100-KB file:

Of course you don't need to go that far, but there's no benefit to having tools which force you into cramped little boxes. It's bad design - constraining your freedom, limiting you to the designer's narrow conception of possible use. Stretchability is a binary variable; a decision has to be made - freedom, or constraint? Want freedom? Click below.

Read more...

5 comments

A slight brush with tyranny

Sunday, 20. July 2008, 22:27:53

Recently, I have had stange brushes with anonymous authority on two different web boards - which have provoked some thinking about principles (of politics and psychology) relevant on every scale. A web board may seem like a social situation of such triviality that notions such as power and responsibility are hardly relevant - but anywhere that people are engaged with each other, spending their time and effort, eternal dynamics and issues come into play.

Read more...

4 comments

The clear and complete address field dropdown control panel we don't have

Friday, 18. July 2008, 03:48:40

last revised: Aug 20: 9.52 labels bookmark hits


The address field dropdown has become a challenging topic. For example:
  • what exactly is on that list?
  • can one selectively turn off the various types of matches?
  • is there any way to get back to the on-demand list option we had before?
  • can the useful chronological order be restored? (And what order IS it in?)
  • what does it take these days to surf without leaving tracks that will come spilling down next time someone starts to type an address?

It all can be sorted out - with quite a number of surprising discoveries in the process. One ends up understanding the system, what it can and can't do, how much better it could be with the same underlying elements more scrupulously used, what the flaws in the implementation are and what principles they violate. One also gains unexpected insight into how something potentially liberating, complete and simple ends up cramped, incomplete and confusing. This is world class software: and what follows is an analysis - not brilliant, but dogged and unflinching - that if not dismissed in bewilderment will change your concept of world clss.

Read more...

13 comments

Totally simple DOS backup on the File menu

Thursday, 17. July 2008, 08:40:00

(last revised 2009-11-1) (green links are button-installer tags)

You know you should but... well, let there be no excuse: just do it. A little DOS utility for people using Opera on Windows. Put it on your File menu: one click and done - runs in a few seconds. A decent safety net, with three levels of save.

Copies the files that define your Opera (bookmarks, mail, notes, wand, preferences, history, sessions, speed dial and customization files) into a backup folder. Prompts for two further levels of backup - one copies the folder into a stack of five safe from further overwriting (giving you dated snapshots of your system from which you can restore if necessary), the other copies it to the desktop, for you to stash somewhere safe.

Setup is by copy and paste, and requires correcting paths to your Opera, mail and desktop folders.

Read more...

No comments

The Front End

Tuesday, 15. July 2008, 04:00:43

, , , ...

brief notes on some topics of current interest
  • help, help, help! Buttons and menus need documentation too - here's how it can work.
  • one-touch backup: giving up on Opera integration: just put the button on the start menu SOLVED: extensions are now required with executables
  • thanks to Lex1, editing of rendered pages is now a practical reality within Opera. This seems kind of HUGE.
  • link/bookmark grabber/paster: macros to capture both anchor/name and URL, then clone the link with a minimum of effort.
  • quantifying bad taste vs insane greatness: Opera's new & old keyboards

Read more...

No comments

« Prev 1 2 3 4 Next »

Showing posts 11 - 20 of 32.

(Archive blanked, sidebar steps in) charts

functions

miscellaneous

info

critique