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| Opera Tutorial Part 2 |
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| Contributed by Crockett | |||
Email... Opera is not only a browser, but has its own email client, called M2. You will have this option that can be added during the installation process. This page allows one to choose between using M2, the default e-mail on your computer or a specific client. If using Opera's M2 client, a great tutorial can be found here: http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/opera/m2/  Default Application... Here you can choose to make Opera your default browser and/or allow Opera to be the default handler of certain file types and protocols. Personally, I only check off "http" and "https" so that if I click on a link in a web page or email, Opera will handle it and another browser will not open. As for file types, I prefer other programs already installed, handle these. Experiment with these.  Network... Opera has a feature to spoof its browser. Basically, many web masters script their web pages using only Internet Explorer as their preview to their work. Browser identification allows one to choose to hide their browser and make it look like their using Internet Explorer to get the optimal content on that page. You can also set up proxy servers here.  History and cache... You can control the history of addresses, the size of your cache (temporary files) and whether or not you want to erase these on exit. You can also control these on the Main Toolbar, as some setups allow you to drag buttons like these on the toolbar.  Privacy... This is where you can control your cookies. I recommend at the very least, that you allow First-party (Normal) cookies and refuse third-party cookies.  If you want to have a little more control in this area, what I like to do is temporarily set Normal cookies to "Let me decide every time I receive one". Then I go to the sites I am a member of, as these are the only sites that need a cookie. When I sign in, I will be presented with a cookie permission pop-up. I will use the dropdown list to choose "Accept cookies from this server", then press OK.  Once each site I'm a member of has a cookie stored on my machine, then I'll go back into Preferences | Privacy, and change Normal cookies to Treat as specified in server manager. This way I can stay signed in to sites I'm a member at and never get a cookie prompt again.  Security... Opera uses "The Wand" to manage your user name and passwords. By enabling this feature, you only have to sign into a site once, and then each visit afterwards, use the wand to do it for you. You can also set up a password so no one else can change these without your knowledge. Security protocols are set and warnings can be seen.  Once your Preferences are looked after, you might want to Customize the look of the toolbars. By going to View | Toolbars | Customize Toolbars you'll find that items can be taken off or put on the toolbars by a simple drag and drop method. If you downloaded and installed any "Setups", this is where they come into play. Once the Customize box is open, click on any of the toolbars (Main, Personal, page or Address bar). You will notice how that toolbar is enclosed in a different color. Now go through each of the 3 tabs in the Customize box (properties, defaults, buttons and fields) and see what actions or objects can be moved around. When finished, move on to the next toolbar. Don't forget to click on ?Categories? inside the Buttons and fields tab for even more button options. Take advantage of the Personal toolbar to put any sites that you frequent, on there. Go to View | Toolbars and put a check beside "Personal bar". Just open up your Favorites on the side panel and drag any links up there. Oh ya, if you don't want to see those ads and you don't want to buy Opera, then you can get something like Noopads: http://www.danish-shareware.dk/soft/noopads/ to cover them up. It is also ideal for placing program shortcuts on it. Using Noopads: Right click on an empty spot (you can fit 12 spots) and a little window will pop up. Click on the icon to the right of the Program Path window to browse for the path of the app you want to put in there. Skip a window and go to Icon File and again click on the icon to the right of that window and browse to find the icon file. (It's usually the same path) Click on "Save" and voila! Repeat 11 more times. RSS Newsfeeds Beginning with 7.50 beta, Opera began using a built-in feature called RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Newsfeeds, which is supported in their mail client. RSS is a great way to be notified of web site updates and news outlets and web sites are offering this to their users. To learn more about this feature, click on this link, http://www.opera.com/products/user/m2/rss/ " Tips: *You can press F11 to put Opera in fullscreen mode and neither banner ads nor Adwords will be shown. *There are no ActiveX controls in Opera. You won?t have to worry about some unscrupulous website running something like this to hijack your homepage. You'll probably want to install a few plug-ins like Macromedia Flash Player and Macromedia Shockwave Player. http://www.macromedia.com/downloads/ Go to the site, click on the "Download Now" button. When the Download File box pops up, do not press open. Press "Save"  You can save it anywhere you wish. I make a folder inside My Documents called "Downloads" and put all files I download in there for easy access. You might try that or even save it temporarily to your desktop. Once it?s downloaded, double click on the file to start the installation. When prompted, highlight the Opera browser and it will install it automatically in the correct place for you. You also might want to install a Spell Checker plug-in. Make sure that plug-ins are enabled in the Multimedia tab of Preferences. Opera supports Aspell which you can get from this page: http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/opera/spellcheck/ Presently, this will not work on the Mac platform just yet. In order for it to work, you also need to install a dictionary in the language of your choice. Choose more than one if you like. Click on "GNU Aspell for Windows" to get the executable (.exe) file rather than the .zip file, which I found to be easier. On the next page under "Binaries", get the Full Installer. Then, below that, get the Dictionary of your choice. Save these files somewhere convenient for you. To install, close Opera, and double click on the "Aspell-0-50-3-3-Setup.exe" file. Direct the install "outside" the Opera Directory folder (where Opera is installed.default is C:\Program Files\Opera75). I installed mine in C:\Program Files\Aspell. Now double click on the dictionary installer file. This one will install automatically for you. Open up the browser, type out a message on any forum, and then right click on any word to open Aspell. While on any web page, click the period button on your keyboard. This will produce a little search thing in the lower left hand corner, where it says "Finding Text": Just type in a word and it will find that word on the webpage and highlight it, like the Google Toolbar does for I.E.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Enable scrollbar colors With Opera closed, add the following line to the "opera6.ini" file in your profile folder: This file contains your user preferences. Open it up in a text editor like Notepad. Go to this section and add: Enable Scrollbar Colors=1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Have a right-click "Delete entire cache" menu item With Opera closed, find and open the file "standard_menu.ini" (found in C:\Program Files\Opera75\defaults) and add Item, 54493 = Delete private data to the section right under Submenu, 162000, Quick Preferences Menu = Show popup menu, "Quick Preferences Menu" Item, 50394 = Show preferences, -1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- These and other tips can be found at http://my.opera.com/tips |
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