Have to type .com ???

Have to type .com ???

OK, no doubt someone will tell me I'm stupid, or this is the wrong place, blah blah blah, but I have been unable to find an answer, and it relates to the beta version, so here I am. Bear with me - I am not a "geek" so I need a plain English response! Thanks.

In previous versions of Opera, I have been able to type in a URL without adding .com or .org or whatever at the end. Opera will search for the most appropriate site and take me to it, adding the suffix (is that the correct term?) automatically. As do other browsers like Safari, Firefox etc.

But in Opera 10.52 beta for Mac, I am now getting a Google search page if I leave off the .com or .org - very annoying. Anyone know how to get around this?

Thanks.

As it has always been:

CTRL + ENTER

Originally posted by friguron:

As it has always been:

CTRL + ENTER

Thanks for replying, but I'm afraid you don't answer my question.

In previous versions of Opera, I could simply type a URL without the .com or .org suffix, and it would go straight to the website - I certainly have never pressed ctrl + enter to achieve that! I'm just wondering why it no longer does this in Opera 10.52 beta? Do I need to change something in the settings to put it back? Cheers.

Hey, ants Yes the server completion behavior has been changed, and not everyone is happy about it. There are some threads about it. I haven't come across an explanation directly from Opera.

Friguron's advice works for Windows. The Mac equivalent is "command+enter". That will invoke the server name completion routine and sidestep the ridiculous "Did you mean..." dialog. But, there's another and better way! After typing the main part of your hostname, type "/" and press "enter". This will invoke the name completion routine and will store this permanently so next time you type it, you don't need to type the "/" and it will autocomplete in the address bar as you type, so you won't even have to type the whole name.

Here's an example:

If you wanted to go to versiontracker.com, you would type "versiontracker/" and press "enter". The next time you want to go there, after you've typed a few letters it will finish typing it for you and you can hit enter as soon as you see "versiontracker/" in the field.

Originally posted by cellist:

[Ctrl+Enter] will invoke the server name completion routine

No. It only adds www. and .com. It doesn't use SNC settings!

Originally posted by natural-kutkaa:

Originally posted by cellist:

[Ctrl+Enter] will invoke the server name completion routine

No. It only adds www. and .com. It doesn't use SNC settings!

For most users, that would be what we expect, and it's what my settings instruct the browser to do. So, when I tried it and it worked as I expected, I assumed it was simply working. If it only provides this basic subset of the name completion routine, that wasn't revealed by my simple testing. It's not something that had ever been an issue before the [stupid!] change to the address bar behavior in 10.5x. I'm sorry if this was not exactly correct information. FWIW, the shortcuts editor says it's "Go".

You can leave off the rest as long as you type a "/" at the end, as in "opera/" completes to "http://www.opera.com/"

OK, thanks for the replies. It appears as though the short answer is that there is no way to set Opera 10.52 beta so that it will auto-complete the URL, despite the fact that earlier versions of Opera have done this, as does every major competing browser........hmmmmmm.

Maybe it's not a HUGE issue, but it is something that one should take for granted on a modern web browser.

I strongly suspect it's a product-placement deal to get more hits on Google...

But thanks to Steve for the tip about adding "/" at the end to get the old behaviour - I hadn't heard about that one!

Add a new search with http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%s&btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky as the address and set it as default search engine.

Avola, and if you do that, your searches in the Google area would then not return a page of results, right? That's worse than the original problem.

Every once in a while, Opera changes longstanding behavior that one might think is sacrosanct, but never explains why. This may be one such time.

Originally posted by sgunhouse:

You can leave off the rest as long as you type a "/" at the end

Good tip, though with my keyboard, that forward slash is under Shift+7, so it's totally unusable, unfortunately.

This is just insane, why can't somebody from the Opera dev team speak up? A simple "we won't / can't / coming" fix comment would do and stop this f nonsense in here forums, in many many topics. I've to say that this, the Opera team absence (well almost completely), is driving me away from this forum (and certainly it leaves a big dent in my love of Opera). Similar topics multiply and the same user comments go on and on and on, and nobody knows nothing. And the closed bugtracker doesn't help either. I've started to realize that coming here is futile. I'm sorry but that's how I feel.

dude, you gotta understand that this is a minor issue and lots of users have offered their help to you
I'd rather have devs coding rather than answering minor queries like this

how bad could it be to change habits? just google it, it even saves you time when you mistype the address
the problem with this feature is that it takes several extra seconds to check the .com (and then the .net/.org or whatever) before giving you an error so it's really annoying because you end up staring at your screen not know whether the website is down, whether you made a typo, etc.

I always used to turn it off in the past for this reason, and I think Opera devs made the correct choice here
So just evaluate whether you should get angry at the Opera devs for not giving you attention or whether you can accept some of the user suggestions and make a minor change in how you browse

Originally posted by iopg:

dude, you gotta understand that this is a minor issue and lots of users have offered their help to you
I'd rather have devs coding rather than answering minor queries like this

how bad could it be to change habits? just google it, it even saves you time when you mistype the address
the problem with this feature is that it takes several extra seconds to check the .com (and then the .net/.org or whatever) before giving you an error so it's really annoying because you end up staring at your screen not know whether the website is down, whether you made a typo, etc.

I always used to turn it off in the past for this reason, and I think Opera devs made the correct choice here
So just evaluate whether you should get angry at the Opera devs for not giving you attention or whether you can accept some of the user suggestions and make a minor change in how you browse

Finally, someone had to say it clearly and sharply.
A big +1 for you, and you've earned the QFT of the month...

Originally posted by iopg:

dude, you gotta understand that this is a minor issue ... make a minor change in how you browse

With all due respect, this is not, for many users who have incorporated the server name completion into their browsing routine, necessarily a small issue. You have said you don't use it, and that's your prerogative, but it has become a fairly standard capability in browsers that many people have come to expect. I doubt that Opera is surprised this change has caused the uproar it has.

This is exactly what I meant, the BS goes on and on and on, Opera apologists Vs. those who voice their concerns/opinions. If "bite it" is all you can say, don't post at all. A good example of futility. This is not a minor issue to me.. and to several others. And I was talking in general with the "Opera absence", not just in this topic. I already adjusted with 10.10, and basically with every other major update (from about the Opera "ad" versions 5.0 from year 2000, can't remember exactly), but this 10.5x version is a big flop, and it has so many problems and poor feature changes, IMHO of course, that that.. like I've said earlier here, I'm definitely looking for new options, former dedicated Opera user.

It's funny how everyone agrees that Opera rushed this 10.5 version because of the MS ballot thing, but how rushed it was? On Tuesday, 22. December 2009 Desktop Team said the following: "The desktop and core team have been working on 10.5, codename Evenes, for more than 18 months now." ~22 months now. What went wrong Opera? I'm really sorry but that doesn't look good.

EDIT: I guess it speaks volumes that only after I saw 10.5x, I (basically) started posting here in the forums (only 2 posts from 2008 & 2009).

I just noticed a horrible consequence of the change OP is talking about. It used to be that you could double-click a word on a site, let's say the word "Opera," and then click "Go to Web address." It would then automatically take you to whatever that word was, plus .com, so opera.com in this example. Now it searches on the word. Sigh. And also wrong, because in no way can the phrase "Go to Web address" mean "Search." Heck, there's already a Search on that same menu!

Based on this additional evidence, I have to conclude that this new behavior is a bug, not a feature. Corollary: Anytime a thread has to develop to determine if something is a bug or a feature, it's a bug. Or should be.

Originally posted by iopg:

the problem with this feature is that it takes several extra seconds to check the .com (and then the .net/.org or whatever) before giving you an error so it's really annoying because you end up staring at your screen not know whether the website is down, whether you made a typo, etc.

That's only because of a historically poor default in Opera. Inexplicably, for years, Opera has had "Look for local network machine" checked in the Server Name Completion preference. If you uncheck it, your pause disappears.

In the last build, Opera has fixed almost everything that prevented me to switch to Opera 10.5x. The auto-completion bug is the last one.
This is not a minor issue, and I bet a lot of new users, people who come from Firefox or any other browsers, are disturbed with this behaviour. They may think "Opera wants to force me to use Google" (ridiculous supposition, isn't it ? It's not like Opera could make money out of it).
And the new users will not try to find an answer here, they'll just stop using Opera.

According to gs.statcounter.com, the marketshare of Opera is falling. It should have increased, with the release of the very fast Opera 10.50, but it's the contrary, it's falling.

Yes, I feel your frustration on this one as well. I wish the feature would return as well. At least have the option to turn it on or off, if you don't like it you don't have to use it. For me, it is one of the most missed features of Opera.

Originally posted by rseiler:

Avola, and if you do that, your searches in the Google area would then not return a page of results, right? That's worse than the original problem.

Right, but you can still just type "g 'searchterm'" (if you change your google search keyword) like you would have to if you had server name completion on, and you can always set your search bar to normal google search. So it's basically the same as how it used to be, and in some ways better. Now you don't even have to type the whole address, or you could just type some keywords about the site you want to visit. It's not a perfect replacement for server name completion, but I actually like it better like this. It's also handy for quick searches where you know the first site that will show up on google is the one you want.