HOWTO: Get voice working in Opera v10.1 (tested in WinXP and Win7)

HOWTO: Get voice working in Opera v10.1 (tested in WinXP and Win7)

First, a few notes about the voice feature in Opera:

- Since the 9.2x versions, voice has been semi-broken, whereby voice would stop working every time you hit a new page, and you'd either have to go click through to the voice preferences (CTRL+F12) or refresh the page to get it working again.
- The automatic downloading of the voice files hasn't really worked since version 9.63. This means that starting with v9.64 and higher, it is necessary to install the voice files manually. Starting with v9.64, Opera will ask if you want to download the voice files, but won't be able to do so.
- It appears that voice has been broken completely in version 10.5, or at least I haven't heard of anybody who has gotten it to work yet, including myself. As far as I can tell, you can neither install the voice files manually, nor have Opera do it automatically.

So, this leaves version 10.1 as the last known version that voice actually worked in. Thus, I will explain how to get voice working in Opera 10.1. Note that the following instructions were tested with the USB version of Opera 10.1; I assume it works in the regular version as well.

* First, you need to get a hold of Opera 10.1 (the Windows version). I have a copy of OperaUSB 10.1; if anybody has any web space to donate, I will upload it and link it from here.

* Download a copy of the Opera voice files:
http://help.opera.com/servicefiles/voicepackages/8.00/Windows/20050506.1.vxm_xv_1.2_win_full_8501+.zip

* Install your copy of Opera 10.1 (or unzip the USB version)

* Go into your Opera Profile directory and create a directory inside called 'voice' (without quotes)

* Copy all of the voice files into the voice folder you just created

* Start up Opera, highligh some text, right click, and select 'Speak'. At this point, Opera should either ask you if you want to enable voice, or just start speaking.

As stated above, this method does not work in Opera 10.5, so I'd be curious if anybody is able to get voice working in 10.5, and how they did so.

Note that it may be possible to run the 10.5 version while using the voice feature from 10.1 at the same time. Se here for more information:
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=285583&t=1265082899&page=1#comment4067471

PS: A big F**K YOU goes out to Opera for shipping this feature broken for so long, and ignoring all of us who have been begging for a fix, or at least SOME kind of response from you.

Thanks for the howto. I am stil using opera 10.0 as speak is not working on latest versions. Just now downloaded TextAloud tts, that have tool bar for firefox. I switched from firefox to opera after seeing the speak feature. May be i need to go back or keep using older version of opera.

Really hope opera will fix this bug.