Comments on: Opera add-ons

By: rayz

rayz — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 07:26:24 +0000

Help mee…

Im using broadband connection and when i opened firefox browser, there is error message appear saying ‘use ie u dope’..then the firefox is auto close..what should i doo…??

By: FantomX1

FantomX1 — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:08:24 +0000

FF has never stand chance against opera, even in F 3, ff is very slow, unstable, difficult to customize and misses many features opera has as default

By: Dwight Stegall

Dwight Stegall — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 02:40:27 +0000

I’m using the Opera 9.5 Release Candidate and it is a vast improvemnt over previous versions. But no matter what they do to it or how many widgets you add to it. It will never be in the same league with Firefox 3.0.

By: Florent

Florent — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:53:05 +0000

Thank you so much Rarst! :)

By: Rarst

Rarst — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:24:18 +0000

@Florent

Widgets are not equal to firefox extensions, they serve different role and have different (lower) amount of allowed functions.

Opera has built-in content filtering system. Right-click some empty space on page and choose “Block content”. Some people put together lists of filters for this functions, just google it.

Basically opera is just bit too careful to risk messing with ads in core functionality (firefox doesn’t dare it either but can depend on extensions and pretend to know nothing).

By: Florent

Florent — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:46:13 +0000

Thank you Martin for these advices!

But, I’m looking for an Opera Widget equivalent to Firefox Adblock Plus. Nothing found yet. Please help :s

By: Manoj

Manoj — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 03:05:00 +0000

Opera rocks!

By: Rarst

Rarst — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:02:59 +0000

operawiki.info mentioned above is great wiki about Opera. :) Tons of info. There are actually quite a few ways to customize Opera, it’s jsut that developers strive to make it work out of the box so customization features are mostly for power users.

1. Widgets http://widgets.opera.com/

very simple and user friendly, developers are playing safe (unlike firefox) so functions are somewhat limited.

2. User specified Javascript http://operawiki.info/UserJS

Pretty high level stuff, most people don’t need it… ever. :)

3. Custom buttons http://operawiki.info/

CustomButtons allows you to download or create yourself (there are links to online creators) buttons with pretty much any opera function that looks and works the way you want and stick it anywhere in interface.

For example there is “system menu” button that gives you access to all system menu stuff while it takes only as much space as one button in interface unlike standard system menu (which can be disabled and forgotten after getting such button).

4. Panels http://my.opera.com/community/customize/panel/ and “display as panel” (or something like that) option in bookmarks

great feature that most people totally don’t know about. Basically it allows to take any page (specially designed or even regular page, doesn’t matter) and make sidebar (were mail, history, bookmarks, etc live) panel out of it. You can also easily enable small-screen rendering mode for it that makes it fit sidebar area properly. Uses are endless – fast access for online tools, dictionaries, sites that you need to access often and fast but don’t want tab constantly open.

By: Tobey

Tobey — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:59:10 +0000

You’re most welcome.
I don’t have the skills/time myself to mess with JS too much but if you’re into JavaScript, you can even make Opera launch your own scripts, even on every page you view. This could at least partly compensate for some other additional functions provided by standard plug-ins. Of course, this requires some additional knowledge compared to FF plugins. Again, see the link above.

Happy surfing.

By: Kavin

Kavin — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:33:24 +0000

Martin, thank you for your great insight. Didn’t know the add-ons were called widgets. :D

Thanks to Tobey too for his explaination.

My main purpose is to evaluate Opera for use in my workplace other than IE or FF. Currently i’m quite happy with FF but it does gives errors in secure web environments.

By: Tobey

Tobey — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:58:21 +0000

Martin, you can get to widgets.opera.com by following one of the links associating all Opera related websites at the bottom of the page @opera.com or using a top panel displaying all associated websites (not on all the sites however). Though, the links are kinda cramped in there.

Opera’s widgets are meant to be run outside of the browser itself, therefore I doubt there’s any way of integrating them anywhere directly into the browser’s window. You can still add various functions and buttons to the main Opera window using either JS or Opera’s specific mini-language that can be only used within the browser. For more on this, check out this great website providing lotsa stuff anyhow related to Opera:

http://operawiki.info/AllActions

As I said, due to the structure of widgets themselves being actually a miniature of a website consisting of htm/css/js/xml/img, I don’t think it’s possible to treat them as full-featured plugins, although I don’t actually even know what Fox’s plugins are based on. Nevertheless, despite some drawbacks, they can still provide valuable services/info separately from solid websites.