Tried Opera Last Night - Love it, But...

On a whim last night I installed and set up Opera for Mac OSX. I love it, and it would easily be my default browser, except for three relatively minor issues which affect my browsing experience, and which Safari happens to do better. I'm posting here to find out if there are workarounds, or if updates in the future might address these two issues.

ISSUE ONE: SOLVED
Speed Dial - Great feature. I use the equivalent in Safari extensively, and it's the biggest reason that Safari is currently my primary browser. Opera's Speed Dial is better actually, except for one small problem. I need a way to direct my active tab back to the speed dial page. On Safari I do have this; to the left of my bookmarks bar there is a small grid button that takes you back to top sites. On Opera I have not found this button, so to do this I need to open a new tab and close the current one. I know it's a small issue, but it means it takes me a couple seconds to perform an action that currently takes me about half a second.

ISSUE TWO:
The scrolling system is a bit of a problem for me. I don't know the most precise way to describe the problem I have, but I will try. I started out using the Opera smooth scrolling, but I wasn't a bit fan of that because of the way it accelerates and 'glides', for lack of a better word, depending on how fast I'm scrolling. Then when I turned off smooth scrolling it felt very clunky; I couldn't scroll with fine movements. Comparing to Safari again, the scrolling is extremely precise. I can scroll pixel by pixel if I want to. I read a lot of long essays and blog posts on the internet, so accurate scrolling, while something I could live with, is still an issue that affects my usability.

ISSUE THREE: WORKAROUND PRESENTED, SOLUTION WELCOMED
This one is the most minor of the three. The highlighting-copying system is not quite optimized for the way I use it. With what I'm used to, a single click and draw highlights character by character, a double click and drag will highlight word by word, and a triple click and drag highlights paragraph by paragraph. In the Opera system, the single click works the same, but with the double click, while the single word is highlighted, I'm not able to drag to highlight further. With the triple click a sentence, rather than paragraph, is highlighted, and again, I'm unable to drag to highlight further.


THEREFORE, if anyone knows how to work around these issues and customize the functionality myself, Opera will absolutely become my primary browser. However, if not I'm going to have to wait until those features are available, because as it is my Safari system does exactly what I need, and Opera is very close, but not quite there.
Great system though. I love it, and I'll use it somehow as a secondary browser. Maybe for video streaming; it seems from my initial use that the browser is a little more robust than Safari. I'm anticipating that my occasional Safari crashes with multiple tabs wouldn't happen on Opera.

Moderator Note: Moved from My Opera: Feedback, questions and discussions

Originally posted by Tamil:

Originally posted by irenaeusgsaintonge:

I need a way to direct my active tab back to the speed dial page.

Drag & drop Speed Dial button to any toolbar.

Originally posted by irenaeusgsaintonge:

With the triple click a sentence, rather than paragraph, is highlighted

Quadruple click to highlight paragraph.

After the quad-click, is there a way to drag and highlight further selections? That's the more important part to me.

Thanks for the Speed Dial advice though; that's one problem solved perfectly, and the biggest one at that.

Originally posted by irenaeusgsaintonge:

After the quad-click, is there a way to drag and highlight further selections? That's the more important part to me.

Just double-click at the start and shift click at the end.

Originally posted by Pesala:

Originally posted by irenaeusgsaintonge:

After the quad-click, is there a way to drag and highlight further selections? That's the more important part to me.

Just double-click at the start and shift click at the end.

Hm... might be able to get used to that. Habit changing is all. Any ideas about my scrolling issue? How to make it more precise?

Middle-click and drag? Its a bit jerky, but control is good. Just drag further to scroll faster.

Originally posted by Pesala:

Middle-click and drag? Its a bit jerky, but control is good. Just drag further to scroll faster.

On a Mac and I don't use a mouse, so no middle click.

Originally posted by ugly95:

Originally posted by irenaeusgsaintonge:

ISSUE ONE:
Speed Dial - Great feature. I use the equivalent in Safari extensively, and it's the biggest reason that Safari is currently my primary browser. Opera's Speed Dial is better actually, except for one small problem. I need a way to direct my active tab back to the speed dial page. On Safari I do have this; to the left of my bookmarks bar there is a small grid button that takes you back to top sites. On Opera I have not found this button, so to do this I need to open a new tab and close the current one. I know it's a small issue, but it means it takes me a couple seconds to perform an action that currently takes me about half a second.

Another option is to assign opening the speed dial to your mouse gestures.

What is the process for that? Unfortunately I'm not enormously technologically inclined, so mostly I have to Google issues and follow instructions.

Preferences, Shortcuts, Mouse Setup, Edit.

GestureUp (or whatever you want to use) = New page

I have just upgraded from openSUSE 11.4 to 12.1 and am suddenly having the problem described under issue 2 of the op. The distance the page scrolls for each click of the mouse wheel is too far. Much farther than other browsers. I was not having this problem before, under 11.4. I do recall this problem caused complaints a long time ago, probably in the beta forum, and there was a way to alter the scroll distance. I seem to recall having done this successfully, myself. Sadly, I haven't been able to turn up useful information using the forum search. Does anyone know if this setting is still changeable and where/how might one do it?

edit - I notice the scroll distance is quite a bit less when scrolling over the scrollbar as opposed to over the page content. Is this expected? Does it happen on other platforms?

(Opera 11.52, Linux openSUSE 12.1)

Originally posted by irenaeusgsaintonge:

Originally posted by Pesala:

Middle-click and drag? Its a bit jerky, but control is good. Just drag further to scroll faster.

On a Mac and I don't use a mouse, so no middle click.

any pc usb mouse will work with the mac. i'd highly recommend you get one.
opera scrolling is better than chrome, firefox and IE. i've never really used safari even when i had a mac lol. i always used opera.

Originally posted by irenaeusgsaintonge:

ISSUE ONE:
Speed Dial - Great feature. I use the equivalent in Safari extensively, and it's the biggest reason that Safari is currently my primary browser. Opera's Speed Dial is better actually, except for one small problem. I need a way to direct my active tab back to the speed dial page. On Safari I do have this; to the left of my bookmarks bar there is a small grid button that takes you back to top sites. On Opera I have not found this button, so to do this I need to open a new tab and close the current one. I know it's a small issue, but it means it takes me a couple seconds to perform an action that currently takes me about half a second.

Another option is to assign opening the speed dial to your mouse gestures.