fragments of a User's Guide
Friday, 8. August 2008, 20:10:09
topics:
This is an attempt to state everything worth knowing, that a person may not know, on various Opera-relevant topics. (Related to FAQ, but includes facts you didn't know you were lacking.) Goal is to get topics laid out, cold. (I'm often surprised to become aware late in the day of something others thought was obvious.)
- controlling sort order in Notes and Bookmarks
- bookmark file location surprise
- blog organization dodges
- taking & posting screenshots
This is an attempt to state everything worth knowing, that a person may not know, on various Opera-relevant topics. (Related to FAQ, but includes facts you didn't know you were lacking.) Goal is to get topics laid out, cold. (I'm often surprised to become aware late in the day of something others thought was obvious.)
sometimes-unrealized pertinent facts about: managing sort order in Notes and bookmarks
- items can't be re-arranged unless order is set to "My Order" - the only one which is arbitrary, and lets you drag & drop.
- if there's a View button (looks like glasses) on the toolbar, clicking it drops down a sort-order menu. (The tree remains in effect: items are only re-ordered within folders, so the many options are not as useful as one might think if imagining resorted global lists.)
- if there isn't a View button in your Bookmark or Notes panel, you can get one by opening the panel and Manage Bookmarks at the same time, and using Shift+drag to copy the one from Manage bookmarks (but it's not the best solution - see next line).
- here's a button which toggles between My Order and alphabetic: SortToggle. Drag it to toolbar in bookmarks panel and notes panel if you want to be able to arrange there. (Must go on the lower of the two panel toolbars.) Useful in manage pane too - can replace View dropdown - it provides probably the only options you'll ever want, toggles with a click instead of click / highlight / click, and provides a visual indicator of current state (the icon changes), even with toolbar captions turned off.
- on list header in Manage Bookmarks you'll see a chevron beside the word Name if in alphabetic order - clicking that bar is another toggle, cycles through alphabetic / reverse alphabetic / My order. Same for the Nickname and Address header bars - and header bars in Manage-Notes, and (Notes panel when not in Full View).
sometimes-unrealized pertinent facts about: bookmark location
If a file called Opera6.adr (as of Opera 10, bookmarks.adr) starts showing up in strange places, what's happened is that you've inadvertently changed your bookmark path. You can verify that by checking About Opera (click here, or - better, for orientation - find it on the help menu), where your paths are listed. It's very easy to do, and just as easy to fix. The basic surprising fact: anytime you save your bookmarks, the new instance becomes your active bookmark file.
The fix:
- decide where you would like to store your bookmarks (can be profile folder, but doesn't have to be - they can be anywhere, and Opera is just as happy; I use a C:\Opera folder - same for Notes).
- go to Manage Bookmarks (right at top of bookmarks menu), click the file icon on the toolbar, then click "save as.." This opens a shell dialog through which you can navigate to any destination on your system.
- navigate to your desired location, and save. As you can verify by checking About Opera again, the newly-saved instance is now your registered stash, the one which will update as you make changes.
- it's a good idea to give your bookmarks file a lucid name like "Opera bookmarks.adr" - that will give you a pretty good hint next time, if you forget about this tip. You can use any name you like for the file. Default became "bookmarks.adr" in Operaq 10.
- you can switch to a different bookmark file through the Manage Bookmarks file menu (Open command), or through this preference setting: Opera:config#Hot List File Ver2
- noted in passing: if OperaCorp thought about files names being part of the interface, they would use lucid ones - and the system would be significantly easier to understand. Every confused user is proof of some set of flaws in design. In this case, we have both a counterintuitive function, and cryptic filenames (not only does "Opera6.adr" neglect to mention bookmarks - it identifies itself as associated with Opera 6, when we're using Opera 9.5 - the name is a confusing relic; and "hot list file ver2" does not pack quite the informational wallop of, say, "active bookmark file").Taken to heart in Opera 10: bookmarks, history adn preference filenames all got lucidized.
- a bad effect of the current system: if you use "save as..." as a way of backing up bookmarks, you are likely to end up registered somewhwere you don't want to be - perhaps to removable media which you have removed. Here are some threads generated by users confused and inconvenienced by exactly this: Opera bookmark path, Jan 2008 . . Bookmarks sourcing from removable drive Dec 2007
sometimes-unrealized pertinent facts about: organizing blogs and blog views using tags, Archive and date manipulation
- tags are a powerful way to get different views of your blog. Click a tag on the sidebar, and you get a page showing only posts to which you've added that tag. So you can add a tag such as "draft" for your own benefit - or invite blog readers to use a particular tag, since they likely won't think of it otherwise.
- another way to shuffle and re-organize posts is by use of the date field: you can specify dates here, and they determine where a post is displayed. For example, if you have private items you will never publish, or draft items you are working on, you can get them out of your basic listing (to make what you see similar to what visitors see), and keep them all together for your own viewing, by assigning each category to a month in the past, before you started your blog - say May 2007 for drafts, and June 2007 for private items. Those months on your archive list then become de facto folders for unpublished items - with neat lists.
- the date field is hidden in simple-options mode; between input window and tags field, when advanced options are showing. The mode toggle is on the "Title:" line. (It's flawed - should say "show simple options" when in advanced mode, but it always says "show advanced options", which can be confusing.)(Bloggers accessing their MyOpera blogs with non-Opera browsers reportedly don't get date control.)
- items can be given future dates; then they don't appear at all in your basic blog page - you have to use Archive to even see them. (This is an intended feature: future-dated-posts-publish-themselves.)
- tags, by the way, take a while to show up on your sidebar after you start assigning them, or to disappear after you delete them - seems to be something like a once-a-day system-wide refresh - so be patient.
sometimes-unrealized pertinent facts about: taking and posting screenshots
- in Windows, pressing PrtSc (Print Screen) key puts a screen capture on clipboard
- Alt+PrtSc captures only active window
- raw capture is a huge CLP file, several MB; need to use an image program to crop, resize & compress into Web-ready form
- most popular freeware: Irfanview (download)
-
/clippaste parameter added to "target" line in properties dialog of Irfanview shortcut,
causes it to open with clipboard file already loaded
- shortcut can be put on Start menu: two taps away in any application
- image will be clearer if sized to fit where it will be posted, so hosting system doesn't scale it. Usable space in Opera forum is about 720 pixels wide, blogs 600 pixels. Irfanview shows size of selection on title bar, changing as you drag.
- when I upload carefully-sized, 600-pixel-wide images via the blog upload button, they get resized during the upload, and end up smaller and blurred. To get them to show up properly, I upload using the Files page, then paste links into blog.
- be warned that although Opera and Firefox resize large images to fit into rendered blog pages, Explorer does not - it clips them. (I had scanned text pages at scan resolution - Explorer only showed the left quarter of the page, magnified.) So stick within 600 to accommodate non-Opera visitors.
- save as PNG or JPG (compressed formats). PNG seems best: just as clear, smaller file
- to upload: "Post reply" > upload button, or upload dialog at your Files page (MyPage menu > account item; click Files button)
- image goes into your Files folder (my.opera.com.files/yourname). Files-page upload lets you choose a subfolder, or make a new one.
- to insert image in post, need to get URL into IMG tag. Can use Attach to get the URL; copy it, delete Attach tag, click Image button & paste URL in
- can be used in any post or blog item. Don't need to go through dialog if you know URL; e.g. can paste from note
- caution: URLs are case sensitive: will fail if case does not match
- files are not private, can be used by anyone - they can see & copy your URL
- using Opera-hosted images on other sites works, but violates Opera's terms of service
WIDGETIZE
dapxin # 11. August 2008, 22:20