Opera

The Opera browser delivers excellent performance on the web, while adding new functionality for gamers in several of their apps. You’ll see articles and guides related to its services here, while we’ll also update you on the latest features and news.

Re-discovering filters in Opera's M2

To grow accustomed to the way M2 sorts e-mails, one has to first get rid of prejudice created by most other e-mail clients about how this kind of application is meant to […]

Mouse Cursor Disappearing Frequently In Firefox, Internet Explorer And Opera

Roman send me an email yesterday about a problem that he researched the other day. He noticed that the mouse cursor in every Firefox tab was disappearing and appearing again with no […]

Web Browser Memory Usage Benchmark Gets It All Wrong

Web browser memory usage might not be that much of an issue in these days with Gigabytes of computer memory being build into modern computer systems. There is however the low end […]

Opera Unite

Opera Unite is modularized and comes with so called services that can be installed to extend the functionality. This may remind many users of Firefox add-ons but it is actually a completely […]

Opera Will Reinvent The Internet On June 16

At least that's what they claim. If you visit the Opera Freedom teaser page you are greeted with an image of a cloud that is split in half by a lightning bolt […]

How To Change The Speed Dial Size In Opera

The development team of the Opera Internet browser introduced speed dial a while ago in the web browser. Speed Dial displays up to nine websites that are added by the user as […]

Opera Internet Browser Search Edit

The Opera Internet browser comes with several search engines pre-installed that you can access from one of the toolbars. It offers a quick option to search using the default search engine or […]

Web Browser: Opera Face Gestures

The Opera team is never shy when it comes to introducing new features in the company's Opera web browser that are then copied by other browser companies and developers, and added to […]

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oGET integrates Download Managers Into Opera

oGet is an extension for the Opera 9 web browser that integrates 27 different download managers into the browser. It works similar to Flashgot, the popular download manager extension for Firefox, by […]

Change Opera's Speed Dial Thumbnails

Opera displays a set of up to nine thumbnails of websites on every blank tab that is opened in the browser. The Speed Dial feature provides the means to open nine custom […]

Changing Opera Themes

One of the many things that Opera is doing really well is providing an easy way to changing themes in the web browser. Everything from choosing a theme to downloading and installing […]

opera master password

Reset The Master Password In Opera

The Master Password of the Opera web browser is an optional security feature that protects the saved user credentials -- site usernames and passwords -- from being accessed by anyone locally without […]

Opera 9.5 Mobile Beta 2

The Opera development team seems to be doing their thing opposed to other browser developers who are more focused on the competition. The team released the second beta of the upcoming Opera […]

Opera, Totally Screwed?

I’ve got a feeling that the biggest loser from Google releasing Chrome is going to be Opera. I saw a lot of reviews comparing Chrome to Firefox, Safari and IE, but almost […]

Opera Knew Best All Along

This report by Mashables’ Paul Glazowski caught my attention whilst reading my feeds the other day. It’s called, ’Opera Mini’s Continued Success Rests on Smart Product Placement’ and describes the current success […]

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Greasemonkey in Opera

Did you know that you can easily load Greasemonkey scripts into Opera? While Firefox users need an extension for that Opera users can simply import them into Opera. Well, some manual work […]

Use The Opera Mini Browser On A PC

The Opera Mini browser was designed with mobile devices in mind. It compresses the contents before they are send to the device of the user who is running Opera Mini which results […]

reduce opera bandwidth usage

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 […]

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Useful Opera Features

Since here at gHacks we seem to be on a bit of a Firefox and Opera theme I thought I’d share a couple of things I have discovered to be useful when […]

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Synchronize Data with Opera Link

Opera Link provides a similar option to synchronize data from Opera than Mozilla Weave does for Firefox. I don't want to start a discussion on who was first with that idea because […]

opera address bar

Move the Opera Address Bar to the Top

The default way of displaying the toolbars in Opera might be confusing to users who are used to working with Firefox or Internet Explorer. The bookmarks toolbar and tab bar are located […]

Access Gmail 2 with Opera 9.5

A new version of Gmail was introduced a while ago by Google which added several new features, like color labels, to Gmail. So called Gmail 2 is accessible through a link in […]

Keyboard only navigation in Opera

A commenter on my recent article about a Firefox add-on that made it possible to open search results using the keyboard let me know that he would like to see a similar […]

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Make full use of Opera's presentation modes

Making any website temporarily appear the way you want instead of the way its designer meant it to is rather easy if you use Opera and (not quite necessarily) have at least […]

opera dragonfly

Opera Dragonfly Alpha released

Opera Dragonfly Alpha has been released by the Opera developer team, rather silently so to speak. The Dragonfly feature is already build in Opera 9.5 beta 2 which can be downloaded from […]

Opera Dragonfly announced

The Opera team has finally revealed the missing pieces of the puzzle and explained in an email what Opera Dragonfly is. In short, Opera Dragonfly is a web developers tool that gives […]

opera

Improve your fullscreen browsing experience in Opera

Opera uses the entire screen to show contents of a page and doesn't waste a single pixel on the screen for displaying anything else. This is definitely great for stretching the space […]

Fine-tuning Opera's Transfers

I had been overlooking some minor inconveniences related to file transfers in Opera which were from time to time sort of negatively interfering with the efficiency of my work in this marvelous […]

Opera add-ons

Kavin send me an email recently asking me if there was a site for Opera add-ons similar to the highly popular Firefox add-ons website. Yes there is such a website for Opera. […]

Opera and Webkit pass Acid3 test. Does anyone care?

Big news all around the Internet that a nightly build of Webkit and an internal build of Opera have passed the Acid 3 test. Users who favor one of the browsers now […]

opera dragonfly

Opera Dragonfly page is live

Many rumors have emerged when it became public that the Opera team created a website that announced something called Opera Dragonfly without revealing what it really was at that time. The page […]

opera history search

Opera History Search

The Opera team is constantly adding exciting new features to the beta version of the upcoming version of Opera which other web browsers do not support right now. This could give the […]

Opera's progress bar in detail

After installation Opera's default settings show the progress bar which displays information about how the current page is loading in its simplest form - as a small rectangular bar that only appears when a loading process is active. This bar however is not revealing enough information for advanced users who are interested in what exactly is going on when a website refuses to load.

user-agent switcher

Make use of Opera's chameleonic features

As a proud Opera user, you probably let your browser identify itself as Opera browser by default. Although most websites do work and display more or less properly in Opera, there are still many of them which don't comply with the standards and contain many non-standardized code segments (usually working in IE only) thus confusing the standards-based browsers which leads to improper appearance of the site in the end.

Automatically download files with Opera

If you do use Opera you might have noticed that Opera seems to always bring up the save to dialog and you have to browse to the download location even if you downloaded a file of the same type just a minute ago. The line "Remember choice and do not show dialog again" is grayed out and can't be checked as well.

Remove notifications for blocked popups in Opera

The build in Opera popup blocker notifies the user every time that it blocked a popup successfully resulting in a small notification overlay in the top right corner of the screen. While this might be useful under certain circumstances it becomes quickly annoying especially for web savvy users who know their way around the web.

Speed up web browsing by using Nicknames in Opera

A great feature called SpeedDial has been recently added to Opera. It's a solution providing quick access to your "Top 9" websites and it's faster than using Bookmarks. However the limited number of sites that you can add does not make it a universal feature to speed up surfing in general.

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Opera, Tor and Privoxy combined

OperaTor is a combination of Opera, the anonymization service Tor and Privoxy similar to Foxtor which offers the same functionality for Firefox. I don't want to bore you with a lengthy technical description of how Tor is providing anonymity, just that much: Tor uses a layered approach sending your request through a series of servers that only know the server before and after them. This means that the destination server does not know that you requested the package, it only knows the IP of the server before that made the request.

Let Opera speak to you

Even many experienced Opera users do not know that it is possible to activate the so called "Voice" mode in Opera to use voice commands in Opera and also let Opera read text in websites for you. Before you can use any of the voice features in Opera you need to install the voice add-on package which can be downloaded right from withing Opera. Go to Tools > Preferences and select Voice from the left pane. Click on the button "Enable voice-controlled browsing" and follow the few steps that are self explanatory.

10 Tips to speed up Opera 9

Opera is already a very fast browser, but if you would have the choice between fast and faster than fast, what would you choose ? I took the liberty to compile a list of 10 great tips that speed up Opera in several unique ways. Many of the settings can be changed by simply going to Tools > Preferences in Opera but some can only be used by accessing not so obvious ways like ini files.

Please note that everything that I'm describing here worked fine on my computer. It speed up Opera and increased my browsing experience with it tremendously. While most tips will work for any users no matter their connection to the Internet some tips might only increase performance for broadband users.


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