an insiders view from the outside

New vs old preferences dialog
Opera 8 introduces a new preferences dialog. But some options are missing in that dialog, so it might be usefull to have the old one too. You can get back the old preferences dialog easily by editing your "standard_menu.ini". Search for the line

; Item, "Old preferences"= Show preferences, 100

and remove the ";". This will create an additional entry in "Tools" menu to access the old preferences dialog.


Mail attachments
In previous version attachments were shown at the bottom of a mail. If you want Opera to continue showing them like that, add the following line in [User Prefs] section of Opera6.ini:

Show Attachments Inline = 1


IDNA white/blacklist
Opera has a list of tlds which are allowed to use IDNA domains. If a tld isn't listed here, domain names containing non-standard characters will be shown as punycode.
You can turn also the IDNA whitelist into a blacklist by adding a "~" in front of the list.

Whitelist: :se:no:jp:

^^ This will allow mixed domain names for .se, .no and .jp but not for any other tld.

Blacklist: ~:com:net:info:

^^ This will disallow mixed domain names for .com, .net and .info and allow it for any other tld.

Note that this list is automatically updated and if you edited it it'll be overwritten after some hours/days.


ua.ini
Some websites use scripts trying to detect which browser you're using and some of them block you if you're using Opera. To work around this there had always been the "Identify as.." option in Quick preferences.
Now you're able to set this id in a ini-file and you won't have to change manually everytime you visit a website blocking Opera.
Opera Software will put a ua.ini online and Opera will check whether there are new entries in it once a week. If there are new entries they'll be added to your ua.ini automatically.

The list is stored in "profile/ua.ini" and it's syntax is "www.url.tld=id".

IDs are as follows:
1= Opera/8.0 (Windows NT 5.0; U; en)
2= Mozilla/4.78 (Windows NT 5.0; U; en) Opera 8.0
3= Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; en) Opera 8.0
4= Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.0; U; en; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041110
5= Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; en)

Note that id 4 and 5 don't contain "Opera", so you should use them only when you have to.


Title customization
Before it was just possible to add the build number (%s) at some position of the title.
Now you can also add the page title (%t) and the version number (%v).

Just add the following line in "Opera6.ini" in "[User Prefs]":

Title=Opera %v build %s - Page: %t

This will look like this when Opera is running: "Opera 8.0 build 7561 - Page: Opera Community Journals"


changing the language file
You don't have to download language files manually anymore. Opera will do that job for you. Just choose a language in "Preferences > General > Language" and Opera will check the servers whether a language file is available and, if there's one, download it.


MyOpera affiliate campaign
MyOpera is having a affiliate campaign. Everyone putting a link on his site and getting 50 hits will get a free Opera license. Help me getting more hits and click this link