Opera by default uses an automatic mode for the history navigation. Automatic means that the browser will decide if the website should be loaded from cache or the web server it is hosted on.

Pulling the information from cache is obviously the faster option, especially for users with slow Internet connections. So, how does Opera determine if the website should be loaded from cache or server?

Opera attempts to detect if the page relies on script to display information. The browser switches to compatible mode if that is the case, which will load all page contents from the web server.

If Opera detects no scripts the page relies on it will load the data from cache.

Some Opera users may prefer to always load pages from the cache when navigating in the browser’s history. This speeds up the display of web pages, and was actually the default setting in Opera 8 and earlier.

To change the setting, enter opera:config in the address bar of the browser and enter the term history in the search form on top. Locate History Navigation Mode under User Prefs on the screen and change the value from 1 to 3.

• 1: Automatic Mode: Opera decides whether to load the page from cache or retrieve it from the server anew.
• 2: Compatible Mode: Pages will always be loaded from the web server, and not from cache
• 3: Fast Mode: Pages will always be loaded from cache

history navigation mode

Setting the value to 3 can cause display problems on pages that rely heavily on scripts. This is easily fixed by reloading those pages in the browser. It should not happen that often though, and the benefits of setting history navigation to fast mode outweigh the disadvantages.

We suggest you give it a try, and see for yourself if it makes a difference. Let us know in the comments.

Historian is a free portable software program that can process the browsing history of several popular web browsers and export the information into csv or text format. Supported browsers are Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox 2 and 3, Google Chrome and Opera. This includes information about bookmarks, the browsing history, downloads, cookies and cache information.

The usability of the software program is not optimal. One has to drag and drop the files that are storing the information from the web browser’s directories into the interface to process them. This can obviously only be done if the user knows the location and names of those files. It is likely that only a minority knows that Firefox is storing its bookmarks in a file called places.sqlite or that Opera is storing information about file downloads in download.dat.

The only other limitation is that the only files of the same type can be analyzed at the same time. There is practically no way of adding all browsing history files of various installed web browsers in one go to the application because of their different formats. The workaround would be to create the csv files (or text) for each source file and copy paste the information into one big csv file in the end.

It would be a great improvement if the software developer would add an automatic scan of the system to the software program. It would also be nice if different files could be queued in the application so that they could be processed together.

Historian on the other hand is a versatile portable program that can identify the browsing history of all popular web browsers with the exception of Safari.

Widgets

When I first began using Opera, only a short time ago with version 9.0 my first reaction to the widget options was that they where useless, and a poor alternative to Firefox extensions.

Since then however I’ve discovered what kind of uses they can actually be very handy for, and although I don’t use them a huge amount, I have a few which I really like.

These include the Screen Ruler, CSS help, Notes and Video Downloader.

Web Panels

No official Del.icio.us integration for Opera? Well that’s fine because thanks to the awesome web panel feature you can easily get a Del.icio.us sidebar with all your recent bookmarks.

Web Panels are a great way to get quick access to regularly used services such as twitter and Facebook. You can access this feature by going to Tools > Appearance > Panels and creating a new web panel.

Custom Buttons

Opera also lets you create custom buttons which gives you the ability to integrate some of the previously mentioned services even more. Fore example StumbleUpon, or Del.icio.us tagging.

This website provides an easy way to create buttons in this way: Opera Custom Button & Command Creator.

History

A lot has been said about the new Firefox ‘Awesome Bar’, but Opera and Flock both already have similar features, although admittedly Firefox’s wider spacing looks a lot better.

The address bar in Opera can be used to search through your bookmarks and history as Opera will index all the pages you’ve visited. Sometimes I find it not as intuitive as Firefox, but it’s pretty handy nonetheless.

Let me know some of the things you like about Opera.