Opera Config Help Links are Broken Again

Opera Config Help Links are Broken Again

Is this a My Opera issue? Or a bug in Opera 11.51?

None of the ? links in opera:config work for me now — they were working fine not long ago after years of working only occasionally.

Moderator Note: Typo fixed

All links seem to be working OK for me in Opera Next, but none of them in Opera 11.51.

So what's up? If the data is available, why isn't Opera 11.51 able to find it?

The links are also working in the Opera Labs build, so what is the setting in Opera 11.51 that breaks this?

All I ever get is "No information could be found for this item."

On examining the source code in Opera 11.51 and Opera 12.00 there is a difference;

In Opera 11.51 the onclick references beginning with the first section "Author Display Mode"

<a href="#" onclick="return hlp(this,0)">?</a>

and end with the "Widgets" section

<a href="#" onclick="return hlp(this,44)">?</a>

However, in Opera 12.0, the source code begins with

<a href="#" onclick="return hlp(this,1)">?</a>

and end with the "Widgets" section

<a href="#" onclick="return hlp(this,45)">?</a>

Thus, all of the href's are wrong in Opera 11.51, which is why no information is found.

Any response to this? If this feature is broken in the final version of Opera, but not in beta builds, there must be something wrong with the server, or browser.js or something.

Thanks for link in DT blog's comment. This issue is quite annoying, I can't understand why they can't fix it.

It would be really nice to get a reply whenever we report an issue. I read in the blogs that this is a server side issue, but why is it not working yet months after 11.51 final was released? It does work for Opera Next.

No change after updating to Opera 10.52.

The links are still broken after resetting my Opera profile, so this looks like a server-side problem. The links are still working fine in Opera Next build 1116.

Works for me with 11.52 in Vista Basic SP2, but doesn't in a fresh install of ... Ubuntu Lucid Lynx.

Still no response after seven weeks, but the help links started working again in Opera 11.52.
I wonder how long that will last?

Until 11.53?

Originally posted by Pesala:

It would be really nice to get a reply whenever we report an issue.

Yes, would be nice indeed, but this is a user-to-user forum. While Opera devs read some of the posts they seldom provide a direct reply - I don't think that this will change anytime soon.

I tried to reproduce the error you described with all 11.x versions, both for Linux and Windows, but the links work OK here. The only issue I noticed is the speed: Although my internet connection is very fast, the first help message takes several seconds to load.

As annoying as it may be, this is only a minor and occasional issue while there are still many other more important bugs waiting for a fix. The buttons are a mere convenience (when they work) and are not essential at all: At the top of the opera:config page you find a "Help" link, which leads to a comprehensive page with all help texts and additional information. One of the advantages of the page is that you can search the help texts, not only the sometimes misleading item descriptions of the opera:config page.

IMHO the way to fix the occasional problems with the help buttons once and for all would be to include the help texts in the language packs, i.e to store them off-line. I can't understand why these few text snippets have to be pulled from the net.

Originally posted by mochikun:

Yes, would be nice indeed, but this is a user-to-user forum.

This forum is about My Opera, not Opera Browser. Users cannot help with server related issues.
All questions in this forum should be replied to if they do indeed belong here.

Originally posted by mochikun:

At the top of the opera:config page you find a "Help" link, which leads to a comprehensive page with all help texts and additional information.

The page is out of date:

This document was last updated for Opera 11.00.

Its also much more convenient to have the help right by the config setting to explain what it does. Otherwise, each time we refer a user to change a config setting, we have to explain what the different values do.

Originally posted by mochikun:

I can't understand why these few text snippets have to be pulled from the net.

I guess there is a reason for it, but it would seem to make more sense to provide help offline. What if you're unable to connect for some reason and want to know what the setting do? I provide a link to an offline help file for Opera 11.50 in my sig, but now tooltips stopped working for links

Originally posted by Pesala:

This forum is about My Opera, not Opera Browser. Users cannot help with server related issues.

The browser forums contain a lot of issues that could only be solved by people knowing the source code or have other internal information, but still Opera devs seldom join the discussion. It's no difference here.

All questions in this forum should be replied to if they do indeed belong here.

Should..but by users, not necessarily by Opera employees.

Originally posted by mochikun:

At the top of the opera:config page you find a "Help" link, which leads to a comprehensive page with all help texts and additional information.

The page is out of date:

This document was last updated for Opera 11.00.

And what makes you believe that the help buttons are up-to-date? The contents of the (outdated) page is exactly the same as the help buttons, in fact the page is the direct source for the help buttons. Sounds weird, but you can test it yourself (obviously with an installation where the buttons work, so in your case use Opera Next):
1) Empty your cache
2) Go to opera:config and click on the first "?" button. You see "Use author CSS..."? Fine.
3) Now go to the 7th item (Auto Update Responded) and click "?" . I see "No information could be found for this item."
4) If you look into your cache you find one file containing the page "Opera's Settings File Explained". Sounds familiar? Though you didn't request this outdated page, it's in your cache. And - surprise - the page doesn't contain yet an explanation for "Auto Update Responded".
5) Let's change the first help description: Open the cached file with an editor and in line 13 change "Use author CSS (document's CSS)" to whatever you like. Save and...
6) Reload opera:config and click on the first "?" button. Nice, right?
7) Let's add the missing help text. With your editor go to line 27 and change
<a href="opera:config#AutoUpdate|AutoUpdateState">Auto Update State</a>
to
<a href="opera:config#AutoUpdate|AutoUpdateState">Auto Update Responded</a>
Save the page
8) "Auto Update Responded" now has help text, the next item has not.

Bottomline: Opera loads "Opera's Settings File Explained" and with a bit of voodoo parsing pulls the individual help texts from that page. So if you can load that page, then there is nothing wrong with the servers.

[Correction]
I remembered that the cached file I saw was a pretty simple HTML file with only one table, so I tested again: The "big" help file and the cached file are not the same, though they share the same page title. The cached file is a valid HTML file, loaded via javascript by opera:config and OS and version dependent (in my case for 11.52 the file http://help.opera.com/operaconfig/versions/Linux/11.50/en/index.html) .Mainly it's the table part of the big help file, but still there are small differences, e.g. the cached file contains help text for "Plugin Auto Install Enabled", which is missing in the outdated file. So back to square one. Sorry for the confusion.
Maybe one last shot: If the buttons work for you in 11.52, but not in 11.51, try the Windows version of above file (http://help.opera.com/operaconfig/versions/Windows/11.50/en/index.html) , click on an "Entry" item and see, if the help buttons work...

Originally posted by Pesala:

Serious stuff.

The links are broken again in Opera 11.64 and 12.02.

Please fix this — the help information is often very userful.