Turning images, video, and sound on/off

Select Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Content to customize multimedia in Opera. Images, video, and sound can be enabled or disabled separately. Turning multimedia sound on/off will not affect system or event sounds.

Sounds

Enable event sounds

If you would like to associate sounds to different events while using Opera, you can do so using Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Notifications. From the list of events, select the one for which you would like Opera to play a sound. Click the Choose... button and browse until you find the desired sound file. Repeat this for each event, and click OK.

Turning event sounds on/off will not affect system or multimedia sounds.

Personal Information

Filling out forms

It is often necessary to fill out forms on the Web, and most forms ask for the same information. Save this information once in Opera and it can easily be pasted into any Web form. Opera will even offer to automatically complete it.

Step by step

1. Open Tools > Preferences > Wand

2. Fill in the information you would like to have easy access to and click OK

3. When entering information into a form, right-click any text field and select Insert personal

4. Select from the menu to paste information into a form

Start and Exit

Exit

Certain tasks can be performed automatically when you end your session:

  • Opera can ask for confirmation before exiting: Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Browsing > Confirm exit
  • Opera can save windows to start your next session exactly where you left off: Tools > Preferences > General > Startup > Continue from last time
  • Opera can delete stored cookies: Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Cookies > Delete new cookies when exiting Opera
  • Opera can delete stored documents: Tools > Preferences > Advanced > History > Empty on exit

Start

There are numerous start-up options for Opera, including Continue from last time, Continue saved sessions, Start with home page, and Start with blank page.

Select Tools > Preferences > General > Startup to customize Opera's behavior.

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Posted by Jenny on Thursday, February 28, 2008
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User interface

Opera is available in many languages. Depending on the version of Opera you are using, you may have multiple languages pre-installed, or you may have only a single language. In either case, additional languages may be installed by downloading the appropriate language files.

To activate your language, select it from the menu under Tools > Preferences > General > Language. Once you press OK, the user interface should immediately change to the language of your choice, if the appropriate language file is included on your system.

If the language file of your choice is not pre-installed, you can install it manually. To see if Opera is available in your language, see the language files list, read the instructions, and download the appropriate file. Note that some localized versions have English help files.

Step by step

1. Download a new language file

2. Open Tools > Preferences > General > Details

3. Click the Choose button and select the language file you want Opera to use.

Web pages

A Web page is sometimes offered in more than one language. Opera can ask the server for a version in the language you prefer. Simply open Opera's Tools > Preferences > General and select a language.

For more control over preferred languages, press the Details button. Then press the Add... button and choose your language from the list. Use the Move up and Move down buttons to indicate your order of preference.

Multimedia

Turning images, video, and sound on/off

Select Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Content to customize multimedia in Opera. Images, video, and sound can be enabled or disabled separately. Turning multimedia sound on/off will not affect system or event sounds.

Sounds

Enable event sounds

If you would like to associate sounds to different events while using Opera, you can do so using Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Notifications. From the list of events, select the one for which you would like Opera to play a sound. Click the Choose... button and browse until you find the desired sound file. Repeat this for each event, and click OK.

Turning event sounds on/off will not affect system or multimedia sounds.

Personal Information

Filling out forms

It is often necessary to fill out forms on the Web, and most forms ask for the same information. Save this information once in Opera and it can easily be pasted into any Web form. Opera will even offer to automatically complete it.

Step by step

1. Open Tools > Preferences > Wand

2. Fill in the information you would like to have easy access to and click OK

3. When entering information into a form, right-click any text field and select Insert personal

4. Select from the menu to paste information into a form

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Posted by Jenny on Tuesday, February 26, 2008
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Click the scroll wheel once and see change to a large "dot" with arrows. Now, you can move the mouse up, down, left and right, and the page will automatically scroll. The speed depends on how far up or down you move the cursor.

This way, you can for example leave the mouse and let the lines scroll slowly by while you sit back, relax, and read the text.


Searching with Opera

You can use the search field to do a web search from within the browser. You no longer have to visit the search-engine's Web site prior to placing a search. This saves time, thus making your browsing more effective.For instance, if you need information on a Lamborghini, type Lamborghini in the search field and press return. If you want to switch to another search engine, you can select one from the drop-down.

It is also possible to start the search from the address field. For instance, to search with Google, you can type g Lamborghini in the address bar.
You can also add new search engines to Opera's list. The easiest way is to browse to the search engine's web site, right click in its search field, and select "Create search". If you want to be able to search with keywords from the address bar, such as g for Google in the example above, you need to enter something in the "Keyword" field.

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Posted by Jenny on Monday, February 25, 2008
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Opera Mail is different from most other e-mail clients. It organizes your messages for you, and it has an indexing engine which allows for lightning-fast searches, making it easy to retrieve old messages. When you get used to working with Opera Mail, you will ideally find yourself with more time to read and reply to your messages, because you spend less of your time organizing them.

Setting Up an Account and Importing Messages

To begin, you will need to set up a new account or import account settings from another application. Go to Tools > Mail and chat accounts. If you have not yet created any accounts, you will be prompted to create an account now. If you have already created an account, click the Add button. Select which kind of account. Ask your ISP for the specific server names or IP addresses to enter into the incoming and outgoing mail servers. If your ISP uses a non-standard server port (default ports are 143 for IMAP, 110 for POP, and 119 for NNTP), you can enter it after the server name in the form "servername:port", i.e. "pop.example.com:111". you would like to create.

The "Leave messages on server" setting is enabled by default for POP users. This setting tells Opera Mail to leave all received e-mail on the mail server, so it's accessible from other computers. Most POP(Post office protocol) users will want this setting disabled if they'll only be accessing their e-mail via Opera Mail.

Once you have created an e-mail or newsgroup account, the Mail menu and Mail panel should appear. You can use these to access your accounts.

Useful Account Settings

From the Tools > Mail and chat accounts dialog, you can create, delete, and edit your mail and news accounts. To edit account details, select an account and click "Edit". Important account settings are described below.

Account category

On the "General" tab, you can add a custom account category to be used with the account selector. Type a new category name or choose an existing category from the drop-down. You can then restrict visible messages to specific categories using the context menu in the Mail panel or from Mail > Show account.

Security password

You can set a security password to control access to your mailboxes. Go to Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Security, set a master password with at least one numeric and one alphabetic character. Tick "Use as master password for e-mail and Wand". You can set the frequency of a system password prompt using the "Ask for password" setting.

Important: Be sure to remember your master password, because you cannot retrieve it.

Opera Web Mail Premium

Users of the fee-based Opera Web Mail Premium service can access their Opera Web Mail account using POP. Opera Mail will automatically fill out much of your account information when you choose to setup an Opera Web Mail account. Your "Login name" should appear as follows: "username:operamail.com#operamail.com", where "username" is your Opera Web Mail account ID. For your reference, the incoming server is "pop3.operamail.com" and the outgoing server is "smtpx.operamail.com".

Message import

It is possible to import e-mail from earlier versions (before 7.x) of Opera, Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape Mail (only version 6 and 7, and related email clients such as the Mozilla suite), Thunderbird, or any mailbox stored in the generic mbox format (usually *.mbx or *.mbs files), including older versions of Netscape. You can import different accounts settings, folders, and contacts. Your imported account's folder structure will be displayed under "Filters", and the imported messages will be available in "Received". Filters cannot be imported.

Select File > Import and export > Import mail to import. If your previous mailer is not listed above, see if it includes the capability to export to the mbox format.

bx or *.mbs files), including older versions of Netscape. You can import different accounts settings, folders, and contacts. Your imported account's folder structure will be displayed under "Filters", and the imported messages will be available in "Received". Filters cannot be imported.

Select File > Import and export > Import mail to import. If your previous mailer is not listed above, see if it includes the capability to export to the mbox format.

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Posted by Jenny on Friday, February 22, 2008
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Use Opera without a Mouse

Essential shortcuts

  • Shift+Left, Shift+Right, Shift+Up, and Shift+Down select the next link or form input in that direction.
  • Enter activates links or form inputs. Shift+Enter opens a link in a new tab.
  • Z and Alt+Left go back in history. X and Alt+Right go forward.
  • F5 and Ctrl+R reload the current page.
  • F8 focuses the address field. F9 focuses the page.
  • Ctrl+T opens a new tab.
  • Ctrl+Tab cycles through the list of open tabs.
  • Ctrl+W closes the current tab.

Getting Started

At any time while using Opera, you can press Help > Opera Help > Keyboard to open the keyboard shortcuts page from the built-in help files for a comprehensive reference.

F1 opens the Opera Help files.

Esc closes any dialog box. When the keyboard focus is on a document, Esc will stop the loading of that document.

Basic Interface Functions

When navigating without a mouse pointer, it is necessary to understand how the keyboard focus works. The Opera interface consists of several major parts; the application window, pages containing documents, e-mail or chat sessions, the top menu, the context menus, the toolbars, the address field, and the panels.

  • To get keyboard focus on the active page, press F9
  • To focus on the page's address field, use F8
  • To load and focus the panels, press F7
  • Toggle the last active panel with Shift+F4, and the panel selector with F4
  • Press Z to go back and X to go forward
  • You can also use Alt+Left or Backspace to go back and Alt+Right to go forward

There is a keypress substitute for each of the functions of each button on the toolbars, and there is no need for the toolbars to be visible if you know these keyboard shortcuts. You can turn off the toolbars completely to gain more screen space. Choose from the menu: View > Toolbars and disable any toolbar you are not using. This operation can also be performed using just the keyboard. Alt activates focus on the menu, which is common Windows application behavior.

Learning to live without the toolbars

This is a little easier if you are already familiar with some common system and Multiple Document Interface shortcuts, although more than half of Opera's shortcuts are unique to the browser. Working without the address bar is is also possible-- Ctrl+F8 toggles this bar on and off.

Wherever you are in the Opera interface, you should find a local context menu, or "right-click menu". Using the keyboard, the command Ctrl+M will display a context menu practically wherever your keyboard focus may be. The context menus are navigable using the directional arrow keys, and offer additional options and shortcuts for many functions.

Opera's full-screen mode, otherwise known as Opera Show, can be activated using F11, and deactivated using the same key. Navigate in full-screen mode by using PgUp/PgDn and the arrow keys.

Loading and Managing a Document

The primary function of a browser is to load and show documents. With Opera you can choose to browse with one open tab, or multitudes.

To load a document from a local drive, use Ctrl+O. To directly load an external Web address or type in a nickname from your bookmarks, press F2. If you prefer using the address field, focus it by tapping F8 and enter the Web address directly. Ctrl+T will open a new tab and focus its address field.

Toggle image loading in the page at any time using the three-way toggle key Shift+I (show all/cached only/hide all). Equally useful is the document/user mode toggle Shift+G.

To go into print view, simply press Shift+P, to print the document, use Ctrl+P. View the document source by pressing Ctrl+F3.

F5 or Ctrl+R will reload the document. This function is, as well as other functions that are useful for loading and managing documents, also available from the document context menu. Press Ctrl+M while the focus is on the document.

To save the current document locally, press Ctrl+S. If you wish to close the page, use Ctrl+W or Ctrl+F4. To close the application window, press Ctrl+Shift+W or Alt+F4. To close all Opera windows and exit Opera, press Ctrl+Q.

You can also hide the application by pressing Ctrl+H, which minimizes Opera to the system tray icon.

Document Navigation

Navigating within a document is fairly straightforward. Toggle the scrollbar off and on with Ctrl+F7 and learn to use PageUp, PageDown, Home, and End to hop around the page, and use the four arrow keys to navigate through the text.

Structural elements within a document are also navigable. The previous and next header on the page can be found using W and S. The keys E and D do the same for text elements.

The keys Q and A allow you to jump to the previous or next link in the document. (Ctrl+Down and Ctrl+Up do the same.) Once you have selected a link, Enter or Space will load the document under the active link. Alternatively, Ctrl+M will bring up the link menu.

To save the linked document without loading it, use Ctrl+Shift+S. Copy the link address to the clipboard using Ctrl+Alt+C.

If you need to get a form into keyboard focus, use Tab and Shift+Tab. Use F9 to restore focus on the main body of the document.

Spatial navigation allows you to move in any direction to the next link or form input. To use spatial navigation, press Shift+Down, Shift+Up, Shift+Left, and Shift+Right, and Opera will select the most appropriate item in that direction.

Documents in frames can be confusing, but are easily handled with the keyboard. To switch between frames, simply press 3, and navigate each framed document as you would a single one. To reload the active frame, press Alt+F5. View the frame source with Alt+F3.

Most of the keyboard shortcuts for selecting, copying, pasting, deleting, or cutting text to or from the Opera interface, and the shortcuts for searching for text within a document are standard to the Windows platform, and are listed in the appendix under Editing and searching.

A feature particular to Opera is the option of copying selected text directly into an Opera note by pressing Ctrl+Shift+C.

Access Keys

Some pages offer access key shortcuts. Pressing the designated key will activate the associated link or form input. Many sites that offer this feature will have an accessibility statement documenting the keys they use.

Access keys used by pages may conflict with Opera's own shortcuts, so to activate access keys in Opera, you will need to switch into access-key mode first. Press Shift+Esc to enter access-key mode, and a list of the available access keys will be displayed. You can then press the appropriate access key to activate the link or form input. To exit access-key mode, press Shift+Esc again. Access-key mode will automatically exit as soon as you press an access key, or load another page.

For example; if a page offers the access key S to search the site, you could activate the search by pressing Shift+Esc then S.

Tabs and Multiple Document Management

Opera is very efficient with Tabbed browsing. There are keyboard shortcuts for just about everything you need to do to manage multiple open tabs.

  • Open a new page with Ctrl+T
  • Duplicate your current page with Ctrl+Alt+Shift+N
  • Reload all pages using Ctrl+F5
  • Cascade pages by pressing Shift+F5
  • Tile all pages horizontally to fill the workspace with Alt+F6
  • Tile all pages vertically to fill the workspace with Shift+F6
  • Restore focus on current page by pressing F9
  • Switch view between open pages using 2 or Ctrl+Tab (next) and 1 or Ctrl+Shift+Tab (previous)
  • Minimize current page with 4
  • Maximize current page with 5
  • Close all open pages by pressing Ctrl+Alt+W
  • Undo closing of page with Ctrl+Z
  • Open a new application window with Ctrl+N
  • Close application window by pressing Ctrl+Shift+W or Ctrl+F4

Load the document under the active link into a new tab using Shift+Enter. If you would prefer that document to pop up in the background, so that it does not cover the window you are currently using, press Ctrl+Shift+Enter. You can always close the new page with Ctrl+W.

Zooming

Opera's zoom feature is visually accessible on the progress bar as a list of increments from 20% to 1000%. Zooming with the keyboard offers the same range, but also includes all the stepped increments in between. You can see this impressive range if you hold down a zoom key to scan from one extreme to the other.

With the keyboard, there are 5 keys for quickly zooming a document. They are: 6, 7, 8, 9, and 0.

  • zoom using 10% increments: zoom in 0, zoom out 9 (or use + and - on your number pad)
  • zoom using 100% increments: zoom in 8, zoom out 7
  • snap page back to 100% (normal) 6, (or use * on your number pad)

Panels and Direct Access

Opera comes with a default set of panels that can be set as docked, maximized, floating or off. More panels can be added and unused panels can be removed or hidden to your liking.

  • To load and focus the panels for keyboard navigation, click F7.
  • To toggle them off and on, use Shift+F4.
  • To toggle the panel selector off and on, use F4.
  • Ctrl+1 opens (and activates) the "Search" panel
  • Ctrl+2 opens the "Bookmarks" panel
  • Ctrl+3 opens the "Mail" panel
  • Ctrl+4 opens the "Contacts" panel
  • Ctrl+5 opens the "Chat" panel
  • Ctrl+6 opens the "Notes" panel
  • Ctrl+7 opens the "Transfers" panel
  • Ctrl+8 opens the "History" panel
  • Ctrl+9 opens the "Links" panel
  • Ctrl+0 opens the "Windows" panel

The context menu can be activated with Ctrl+M when the keyboard focus is on one of the panels. The menu gives a relevant menu for each component. If an element such as a folder, sub-folder, or account folder is highlighted, the context menu will pop up with a specific menu for that element.

Jump between panels and their elements using Tab. Scroll up and down the list with the up arrow and down arrow keys. To expand a folder and reveal its sub-folders and items, use the right arrow key, close the folder with the left arrow key. To open the item or folder properties dialog box, press Alt+Enter.

You can add the current document to a highlighted bookmark folder or sub-folder with Ctrl+T.

To delete an entry in the panels, simply highlight it and press Delete.

To select all panel entries, try Ctrl+A. You can cut, copy, paste, delete, and select items using the standard Windows editing shortcuts for these functions.

There are more ways of directly accessing your favorite documents:

  • Activate the nickname dialog for quick access to a bookmark, Shift+F2. (Give your bookmarks nicknames in the properties dialog for each bookmark, accessed by highlighting it and pressing Alt+Enter.)
  • The bookmarks can also be accessed as a list from the menu bar by using Alt+B.
  • The shortcut Ctrl+Space takes you directly to your home page.

E-mail and News Client

The essential keyboard shortcuts for Opera's e-mail and news client are:

  • Check for new e-mail: Ctrl+K
  • Compose new message: Ctrl+E
  • Send message: Ctrl+Shift+S
  • Send queued messages: Ctrl+Shift+K
  • Reply to selected message: R
  • Reply to all: Shift+R
  • Forward selected message: F
  • Add sender to contacts: A
  • Go to next message in list: J
  • Go to previous message in list: U
  • Go to next unread message in list: H
  • Go to previous unread message in list: Y
  • Mark selected message as read: K

The complete overview is in the Opera help files, accessed by pressing Help > Opera Help > Keyboard. Note that displaying the context menu (Ctrl+M) while composing a message allows you to insert stored personal information and the contents of Opera notes.

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Posted by Jenny on Monday, February 18, 2008
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NEW TO OPERA

All the information you need to start using Opera in one place.

Download and Install

Download

  1. Go to the download page
  2. Make sure that the automatically suggested version is correct for your system, or click the "Change" button to select operating system and version number (we recommend the latest)
  3. Click the "Download Now" button
  4. "Save to disk" (OK)

Install

  1. Double click on the Opera installation file you downloaded
  2. The welcome screen tells you that: "You are about to install Opera". Press "Next >"
  3. Accept the software license agreement. Press "I Accept"
  4. Install Opera in the suggested directory. Press "Next >"
  5. Create icons and shortcuts. Press "Next >"
  6. The information is complete and the installation will begin. Press "Install"
    (Files are copied to your hard drive.)
  7. Opera can start automatically after installation. Press "Finish"

Browse the Internet with Opera


Using a Web browser for the first time, or switching from one browser to another, is usually fairly intuitive and painless. Still, there are a few tricks to be learned.

Fly the Web at the speed of Opera

Mouse gestures in Opera

Opera now supports mouse gestures for most basic operations. For example, holding your right mouse button down while sliding your mouse downward will open a new window. This speeds up mouse navigation quite a bit.

Open "Preferences" from the "File" menu, or press Alt+P. Then select "Accessibility" to turn mouse gestures on or off.

Keyboard navigation and shortcuts

Long time use of the mouse may cause pain, and some people may have disabilities that make surfing with a mouse difficult. Normal mouse navigation can also be a bit slow. But

there are better ways!

With Opera, you can navigate the Internet without a mouse, using only the keyboard. Indeed, every feature and function in Opera can be operated without a mouse. When you open menus, note that a keyboard shortcut is almost always suggested for every function.

Work your way through our excellent tutorial, Using Opera without a mouse, and become a certified Opera pilot!

OPERA FEATURES

Tabbed Browsing

There's no need to open up a lot of windows to view different sites. Opera's tabbe

d browsing helps you surf the Web easier and faster by opening multiple Web pages all within one window.


Save Sessions

Do you have a lot of sites you browse every day?

Save a collection of open pages as a session and open them at a later time or in the middle of another session with just one click.



Mouse Gestures

Navigate faster by letting your mouse movements control the navigation. Browse

between pages, open and close windows, and navigate links with quick mouse movements.


Zoom

Tired of squinting to view Web pages?
Use the zoom function to magnify pages up to 1000% and to shrink pages down to 2

0%.


Skins

The entire Opera user interface can be changed by a couple of clicks of the mouse.

In addition to the default skins provided, more skins can be downloaded from My Opera.



Security Bar

The small, yellow security bar, appears on

secure sites and displays the

name of the

organization that owns the certificate. It also indicates the level of security present on a site.



The Wand

Opera's password manager, the Wand, remembers your usernames and passwords so you will not have to. Log in manually once and use the Wand for later visits to a password-protected Web site.



Fit-to-Window

The "Fit-to-Window" function adapts Web pages to fit to the width of your screen or browser window, eliminating the need to scroll
horizontally.





Pop-up Blocking

No more annoying pop-up advertisements. Opera lets you control the pop-ups you receive. Select to block them all or let the browser open only pop-ups that you have requested.


Voice Integration

The voice feature allows you to control the interface by talking and to have documents read aloud. The voice feature is customizable and adaptive according to your needs.

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Posted by Jenny on Friday, February 15, 2008
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