Reduce Opera Bandwidth Usage

I covered an article earlier this month that described changes that could be made to the Firefox configuration in order to save bandwidth. This is extremely useful if you are connected to a volume based internet connection where you pay per Megabyte or Gigabyte. Flatrates are not that common in many parts of the world and it is always a good idea to save bandwidth if you use a volume based connection.

The situation however is a bit different if you compare Firefox and Opera. Firefox users can install several extensions that help them save bandwidth while Opera users have to rely on the build in features and options offered in the preferences of the browser.

We make use of two methods to change configuration settings in Opera. The first is the Preferences menu which can be accessed from Tools > Preferences.

Check that images are only loaded if they are already in the cache by clicking on the Web Pages tab in Opera. It should display Cached Images next to the Images setting.

Now head over to the advanced tab and click on the Content entry in the left menu. Now disable animated images, sound in Web-pages, Javascript, Java and Plugins in that menu and add exceptions for the websites that you visit and require some of these. Most likely it will be Javascript that will be required.

You can add exceptions by clicking on Manage Site Preferences and adding websites that you want to configure individually.

Now click on History and change the interval that Opera uses to check if a new version of a document or image is available on a server. I suggest to change at least the image setting to 24 hours and the document setting to every hour. You can still force the check by hitting F5.

You can also disable favicons under browsing. Now download the Flashblocker file from Opera to replace flash content with a button that only loads that content if the button is pressed.

Make sure you read the instructions. You have to copy two files into different Opera directories and activate the Flashblocker in Opera.

Now head over to another userscript that blocks Javascript popups and make sure you read the instructions carefully.