Opera-Users FAQ

The information in this document is based on contributions on the opera-users mailing list. Subscription information here.

The index colour coding:

• Green links for tips
• Blue links for questions
• This box shows you what version of Opera the information is relevant for.
• Newly added or edited entries are marked with the date of change - if the date is followed by (u) it's merely an update.

All questions are sorted in categories, as the table of contents shows.

E-mail
 4+Can I import address books from other programs?  03.June.01
 4+Can I export my Opera address book to a printable format?  21.Sept.01
 AllWhy so tiny writing box at Hotmail?  01.Jan.01
 AllPegasus Mail with Opera 


Window settings

 AllHow to create new windows
 AllAuto-open history
 AllAuto-save on exit
 AllDuplicating window
 AllHow do I set startup windows?
 AllOpening *.win files
 AllHow do I maximise windows?  05.Jul.01 (U)
 AllDefault window size
 AllMy maximised windows are restored by popups 02.Jan.01 (u)

Hotlist / Bookmarks

 AllAuto-open in new window
 AllHotlist hotkeys
 AllEditing bookmarks
 AllImporting bookmarks
 AllExporting bookmarks 03.June.01
 AllWhere is bookmarks file?
 AllCan I have multiple lists?
 AllHow can I sort bookmarks?


Editing opera.ini

 AllWhere is the file?
 AllOBS: CLOSE OPERA!
 Allnewwinsize


Button bar
 AllHiding buttons
 AllEditing buttons.ini
 AllChange button images
 AllWhy are Back/Next disabled?
 AllWhy are my buttons crosshatched?


Keyboard shortcuts

 AllCtrl+B
 4.+Alt-P
 AllZ,X
 AllF2
 AllF8
 AllF9
 All5
 AllShift+Ctrl+click
 AllG
 AllCtrl-G


Document / CSS settings

 AllWhat do document settings mean? 17.Jan.01
 AllHow do presentation modes work? 17.Jan.01
 AllWhy would I use CSS? 03.Jan.01(u)
 AllDownloading style sheets


Plugins

 3,4Why does the plugin-list go empty?


Misc

 501Dead help-links workaround 01.Jan.01
 AllBrowse valid drives
 AllFile list-> HTML
 511Why is file upload not working? 03.June.01
 AllWhy does website say I followed external link?
 AllWhy can't Opera find any host names?
 4 +How can I resume download?
 AllCan I see directory listings?
 AllHow do I set home page?
 AllWhat are those opera: - pages about?
 AllWhat's difference of GlobalHistory and vlink?
 AllWhy is a site only a blank screen?
 AllHow can I setup for multiple NT users?
 AllWhy does download display instead of save?
 AllCan I keep other browsers and run Opera as well? 4.Mar.01

LINKS

 AllOther programs
 AllUseful links
 AllOpera-Users mailing list
 AllWhere to find this page

Yes! Opera can import Eudora address books directly, for other formats please try this online address book conversion.

Yes! Go here to convert your address book into TAB-separated format. (Only includes name and E-mail address).

Set preferences > connections > browser identification to Opera or any version of Mozilla. If you identify as Opera, you will get a "we don't support your browser" message on login, but Opera works just fine if you click the "Continue"-link. If enough people identify themselves as Opera, maybe Hotmail will stop discriminating Opera users.

5.11 In Preferences > E-mail > Use external client enter the following line into the window for external mail programs:
C:\Pmail\wsendto.exe mailto:%t?Subject=%s
Of course you need to change the path according to where Pegasus is installed on your system.
pre-5Another possibility is to use the command described in Opera help: C:\PMAIL\winpm-32.exe -T %t -S %s
[thanks to Dr. Werner Furlan, Thorsten Ruffle-Brandt and Jan Muszynski ]

The windows Opera opens on startup are those stored in the "opera.win" setup file. This is how you choose what windows should appear:

1. Running Opera, make sure only windows you want to open at startup are open. If you don't want Opera to open any windows automatically, close all windows.
   
2. On the window menu, choose "Save window settings" and click OK.

If you have chosen what windows to open at startup, you have used a "window setup file" already. These files store information about which windows are open in Opera, and what state they are in. The default one (usually opera.win) stores information about what Opera opens on startup.

A window setup file can be stored to be opened with Opera's File > Open command.

1. Open the links you want to store in the setup file in separate Opera windows. If you don't know how, look at the tip opening links in new windows.
2. A good tip is to use the "1" and "2" keys (NOT on the numeric keypad) to cycle through all the open windows and make sure you want all of them stored.
3. Select Window > Save Windows from the menu.
4. Change the file name that Opera suggests (if you want). Opera will suggest something like C:\Program Files\Opera\opera.win. Just change the "opera.win" part to something suitable like "PickleRecipes.win". Pay attention to which directory the file is stored in, so you can be sure to find it when you want. If you just use Opera's default directory that's probably most convenient.
5. If you want Opera to use this file name as its default name for saved windows files, check the "Set as Opera default" box. If you want Opera to automatically open this set of windows the next time you start Opera check the "Use at startup" box. When you've got it all set the way you want it, select the OK button.
6. When you are ready to resume your search for the perfect pickle recipe (or whatever it was that you were working with), load that window file by selecting File > Open from the menu. Near the bottom of the File Open dialog is a drop-down list labelled "Files of type:". Select the option "Window Setup Files" from that list. You may have to use the "Look in:" list to navigate to the directory where you saved your PickleRecipe.win file. When you find the file you saved, select it and then the Open button. Voila! Opera will load all those pages again just as you saved them (almost -- if you had scrolled part way down the page, Opera doesn't seem to remember that).

Though I've been using Opera regularly for some time now, I just in the past month learned to use this feature, and I love it. I don't use it all the time, but it has been wonderful for the times when I do need it. It also makes it easy for me to start a project at work and continue it at home by sending the Opera.win file to myself as an e-mail attachment (or take it on a floppy disk). When I get to the other computer I can resume right where I was. I don't know of any simple way to approximate this functionality in the other browsers.
[Thanks to James Card]

If you want Opera to maximize new document windows by default, you may have noticed that the task is not as simple as it seems. Whether a document window is maximised or not seems to depend on both Opera Preferences settings, stored settings in window setup files, and finally the method you use to open Opera.

Solutions:

1. Make sure Preferences > Windows > Maximize new windows when workspace is empty is checked.
2. Try saving window settings with maximised document windows. (If you don't know how, look at this topic.)

If you want to start with Opera's main program window maximised, make sure it is maximised when you do the save window settings procedure.

See NewWinSize in the section on editing Opera.ini.

pre-5 Maximised document window can't co-exist with windows in normal state, which is a general rule for all programs using Windows's "Multiple Document Interface" or MDI. This means that if a user is browsing using maximised windows and a site opens a document in a mini-window, all windows will un-maximise to normal mode.

Solution: re-maximize windows with keyboard shortcuts: 5 maximises windows. If popups get too annoying, they can be disabled either by turning off support for scripting (leaving Preferences > Plugins > Enable scripting languages un-checked) or by unchecking Preferences > Windows > Allow documents to create windows.

Finally: Joseph Segur's tiny program OpWiC offers some help - it's written for 3.x but works with 5.x as well. It offers a range of options to control Opera's windows. http://www.westelcom.com/users/jsegur/

Press F4 to bring up the Hotlist window. From its bookmarks tab, you can reorganise or delete bookmarks.

Press F4 to show the Hotlist window. Click the menu-button (rightmost button above list), then click "File". To import Netscape bookmarks, select "Insert file" and browse to your bookmarks.htm file (make sure the file type in the open file box shows *.htm not *.adr.). To import Explorer favourites, click "Insert Internet Explorer favourites".

Some shareware and freeware bookmark managers available for download support Opera's ADR-format and can export to other formats. You can also use the online Opera bookmark conversion page

Opera's bookmarks are by default stored in the file operax.adr, where x is the version number. The contact list on 4+ is stored in contacts.adr. These files are probably located in the same folder as your opera.exe - file, for instance c:\program files\Opera\opera5.adr on most windows systems. You can use any name for a hotlist file, but the .adr extension is what Opera expects.

(To display the Hotlist, press F4.)

You can instantly save the current Hotlist (this normally does not occur until you exit Opera), create & save separate Hotlists, etc., via the "File"-submenu. To access this menu, you can right-click anywhere in the bookmarks list, or use the "Menu" button (rightmost button above folder list), then choose "File".

E.g., suppose you want to create a special bookmarks file just for the URLs listed under the "Computer" folder of the normal list. Select the items, then click on the "File" button, then "Save selected items as..." Pick a name (say, "C:\OPERA\COMPUTER.ADR"), and it's been created. Now, click on the "File" button again, select "Open Existing Hotlist", browse for "COMPUTER.ADR", then select and open it. This also works for the contacts list.

BTW, when you exit the program, Opera records the name of the current Hotlist in OPERA.INI, under the "HOT LIST FILE VER2=" entry. Hence, if you exit Opera with COMPUTER.ADR as the hotlist, the entry

  HOT LIST FILE VER2=C:\OPERA\COMPUTER.ADR

will be written to the OPERA.INI file and, when you next open Opera, COMPUTER.ADR will be the Hotlist displayed.

Click the 'Title' at the top of the lower bookmarks pane in the hotlist. There are three states; ascending, descending, and unsorted. If you have the 'Created' or 'Last Visited' columns showing, you can also sort using those. In "unsorted" mode you can sort the bookmarks manually by holding the Alt-key down while clicking and dragging.

3+By default, opera.ini can be found in the windows folder, but it can safely be moved to the opera program folder.
5+From version 5 (possibly 4) the ini-file is kept in the Opera program folder by default.

The reason may be that you left the program running while editing the file. On exit, Opera will overwrite opera.ini with the old version, and your changes will be lost. Remember to exit Opera FIRST if you want to edit opera.ini.

This is a page on Opera.com explaining all of Opera's ini-file settings:

• http://www.opera.com/support/mastering/operaini

Adding the item newwinsize in the [USER PREFS] section will change Opera's default size for new windows. The setting is newwinsize = x-pixels,y-pixels

Use -1 to specify windows default (defaults to -1, -1 if unspecified). Examples: NewWinSize = 640,480 NewWinSize = 800,-1 (800 pixels wide, default windows height)

OBS: If you set newwinsize too large, i.e., 700x600 on a 1024 screen, cascaded new windows may end up half-way outside the Opera program window towards bottom right and obscure status bar.

4.xOpera 401 provides 16 buttons, each in two sizes.
 5.xOpera 5 does need a few more buttons, but the rest of the information below applies to 5 as well.

The choice of whether all 16 buttons or a smaller selection is displayed, is determined by checking "Full" or "Simple" in the check box against the Button Bar in the View drop down menu.

Whether you display full sized or small buttons is determined in the Preferences > Toolbars category. In the Images Set drop-down box select the buttons.ini file in either the Default or DefSmall folders under the Buttons folder in the main Opera folder.

Which buttons are displayed, and their order, is determined by the entries in the [Main Button Bar] section of the buttons.ini file.

Each button is identified with a number comprising four elements: show when full; show when simple; id; spacing after button (in pixels); for example: the Open button is assigned an id value "10001", and the full syntax of 1;1;10001;10. This tells Opera to show the Open button in both full and simple mode, and leave out 10 pixels of space between this and the next button.

The order of the buttons is determined by their place in the list, starting with Button 0 at the left hand end of the button bar.

for example:

 Button 0	= 1;1;10000;3       # New

 Button 1	= 1;0;10001;0       # Open*

 Button 2   	= 1;0;10002;3       # Save*

 Button 3	= 1;1;10004;3       # Print

 Button 4   	= 1;0;10009;0       # Copy*

 Button 5   	= 1;1;13010;0       # Hotlist Toggle

 Button 6   	= 1;0;13011;3       # FullScreen*

 Button 7   	= 1;1;10032;0       # Prev

 Button 8   	= 1;1;10056;0       # Reload

 Button 9   	= 1;1;10031;3       # Next

 Button 10	= 1;1;10227;3       # Search

 Button 11	= 1;0;10072;0       # Home*

 Button 12	= 1;0;10059;0       # Open diradr*

 Button 13	= 1;0;10052;3       # Hotlist*

 Button 14	= 1;0;10019;0       # Tile*

 Button 15	= 1;0;10018;0       # Cascade*

In this example the buttons marked with an asterisk will not be displayed in "Show simple toolbar" mode.

All the other characteristics of the button bar, such as buttons with or without text and/or colour are controlled by radio buttons or check boxes in the File/Preferences/Toolbars category window.
[Thanks to Lindsay Rollo]

Each buttons.ini file in the Buttons folders identifies which .gif files is associated with each button label. For example, Search=search.gif.

If you prefer the images from the Opera 3.6 version, substitute the appropriate 3.6 .gif file for the associated 4+ .gif file.

upgrades to 5.01 and above NOTE: If you want to change button graphics or ini-file, please note that the installation program will overwrite any changes made to the \buttons - subdirectories when you upgrade Opera. If you want to change anything, you should store your changes in a different directory, and customize a buttons.ini - file to point to the graphics in that directory.

The "Back" button takes you back to the last web page you visited. "Next" only works after you have pressed "Back"; it takes you back to the page displayed before "Back" was pressed. In Opera, these buttons only work in context of the current window. Opera maintains a list of web pages displayed in each window, the so called "window history". If there is no entry before the open page in the list, the "Back" button is disabled, if there is no entry after, the "Next" button is.

If you make a new window, (File > New), its history list is empty. This is also the case when a link is opened in a new window by javascript or the HTML-code TARGET="_blank". Because the list is empty, the buttons will be disabled. (You can click this link to observe this.)

If your Back/Next buttons are permanently disabled, no matter how many pages you've surfed through in that window, you've probably disabled the window history. Adjust Preferences > History and Cache > History. "Window history" should be checked and have a value of more than 1 (200 is the default). It controls how many links to previously viewed pages are stored in the window history lists.

Because some image files are missing or the buttons.ini doesn't point to enough graphics. Try this:

• In Preferences > Toolbar, make sure that the buttons.ini file given really exists, by clicking the "..." button top right and selecting a file.
• If you tried editing buttons.ini, make sure it contains all necessary entries, and that all the graphics are available.
• If this doesn't work and you really want the images back, you need to un/reinstall Opera, which will re-construct the folder structure and restore necessary graphics files and buttons.ini-files.

Alt-P - brings up the Preferences dialog.

Z and X - Go back / forwards, same as using Previous and Next buttons. Other keys for this include Ctrl or Alt + right and left arrow keys.

F2 - open location (Same as Netscape Ctrl+O)

F8 - change focus to location field. Great if you prefer using keyboard to using mouse.

F9 - change focus to document. The key to hit if you're stuck in the zoom box, or are typing in a form but want to use arrow keys to scroll the page.

5 - maximizes windows. Shift+5 restores them.

Shift+Ctrl+click - to open link in a new window behind the one you are reading, hold Ctrl and Shift down when clicking the link.

G - toggles loading of graphics.

Opera has three settings for loading of graphics:
1) Load all
2) Don't display any graphics
3) Don't load new, but display those already loaded

Pressing the G-key "runs through" these modes 2-3-1-2-3 and so on.

Ctrl-G - toggles "User mode" and "Document mode" for displaying documents. In Preferences > Documents you can set what rules Opera should follow in each mode. See the topic "Document / CSS settings" for more information.

Preferences > Documents determines how a web page is displayed. Those who know how to tweak these settings think they are one of Opera's greatest features.

In the early days of the World Wide Web, web pages were not meant to be colourful presentation tools, so it was not so important how they were displayed in the browser. Today, web page designers can make all kinds of colour-, background- and font-choices for your viewing pleasure - and, inevitably: quite often you'll be displeased or terrified by their taste in colours or simply have problems reading text displayed in a colour too close to the background-colour.

The clue to the document settings is that Opera gives you the freedom to control how the document is displayed. For instance, what about this document? Maybe the combination of background and text colour is hard to read on your display? Simply press Ctrl+G or click the "Document mode"-button which is #3 of the four icons to the left of your location bar. Voila, you'll see an entirely different version of this document! Repeat the operation if you miss my colour scheme...

The settings themselves are explained in the following sections of this document: Presentation modes | User CSS

Here are the default settings: Every line with "Document" in the caption only has a tick in the "Document"-column, every line containing "User" should only be ticked off in the "User" column. "Tables" is ticked under both and "Document mode as default" is checked.
In other words

		Document	User
Document CSS 	[x]		[ ]
D. fonts &colors[x]		[ ]
User CSS	[ ]		[x]
U. fonts &colors[ ]		[x]
User links	[ ]		[x]
Tables		[x]		[x]
[x] Document mode as default

This means: in Document display mode, Opera will use the document's style sheet, font- and colour choices. In User-defined display mode, it will ignore them and favour your settings. Still confused? Maybe this table can help:

Description	In document mode (HTML)	In user mode (Opera settings)
Font and colour settings: determine font face, font size and background-, link- and text colour.	Face/size/colour from <FONT>-tag, colour information in <BODY>-tag.	Browser default settings changed in Preferences > Document settings
Style sheets: another way of controlling all of the above and many other layout details like margins and exact positioning.	Formatting based on <STYLE>-tag or linked style sheet	Style sheet on your hard disk, User style sheet set in Preferences > Document settings. If no user style sheet is specified, Opera uses its default font and colour settings (as above).

Now, if the default is the BEST setup for you and your needs, is up to you. For instance, if you sometimes find it hard to find the links on a web page, tick both boxes right of "User links". Now Opera respects your settings for link colours (changed under Link presentation) no matter what colour choices the designer made for the document.

CSS means "Cascading Style Sheet" and is instructions to the browser about what the web page should look like.

So why do you need this? Pages can be hard to read because of too dark backgrounds, bad choice of colour for the text and so on. You can use Opera's "User CSS" to solve such problems:

1) Using Notepad, create a textfile containing

* {background: white; color: black;background-picture: URL(none) !important}

Save the file with extension .css. You can also right-click this link and choose "Save link document as". This is a style sheet saying that all elements should have a white background and black text.

2) In Opera's Preferences > Documents > User CSS setting box, insert the file name of the file you saved from Notepad
3) Whenever you get a document that's hard to read, press Ctrl+G to apply the styles.

That's normal behavior. The list on the Plugins preferences is transitory. Use Window | Special window | Plugins to see what's in place.
(Using Opera? Just click here: opera:plugins)

5.11 There is a known bug in Opera 5.11. Opera has changed the format of upload-headers slightly. Some server-side script engines do not understand the new style headers, and the upload fails. Will be fixed for the next release.

You need to enable "Referrer logging" in Preferences > Privacy.

Try checking 'Synchronous DNS' on Preferences > Connections. Win95 with winsock 2 often needs that.

4+ Yes! Opera can resume downloads - just open the transfer window (Window menu > Special windows > Transfer window), right-click the download in the list and select "Resume transfer".

Yes, just enter the path (for instance c:\) in the address field and press enter. Paths can be bookmarked (Ctrl+T) or set as homepage like any web page.

The way Opera handles "Home pages" is slightly different from the other major browsers. In most browsers, the "home page" is the website that appears when the browser is started. This is not necessarily the case in Opera - go here to learn how to set what pages Opera opens on startup.

In Opera, the "Global home page" is the page that opens when you click the "Home page" button, or choose "Home page" on the Navigate menu. To set the home page, select Navigate > Set home page, where you get the option to type an URL or choose the currently open web page.

Many Opera features can be accessed by opening "files" in the format "opera:...." For example:

Functions from Window > Special windows menu 

Special Windows | Cache		= "opera:cache"
Special Windows | Transfer	= "opera:download"
Special Windows | Global History = "opera:history"
Special Windows | Plugins	= "opera:plugins"

Others:
"Help | About Opera"		= "opera:about"
file browser [local drives]	= "opera:drives"

The keyword "about" -- which seems to have similar effect in other browsers -- will also work in place of "opera". E.g., to open "about" data: "about:about".)

The format "opera:..." is a variation on the standard Internet resource syntax. Every URL or URI begins with the name of the protocol, then a colon. "http:" is the default protocol, others include https, ftp, news, mailto, gopher, telnet, and file (locally stored HTML or text). And then there are funky ones for programs like RealPlayer. For what seems still to be the latest definition of a Uniform Resource Identifier (RFC 2396, Aug. 1998), see http://www.hut.fi/~jkorpela/rfc/2396/full.html.

Global History is a list of visited pages solely for the user's convenience via the Window > Special Window > Global History menu item (or "opera:history"). Opera maintains the list at however many lines the user specifies, but doesn't use the list for anything itself.

Visited Links, in combination with the cache, provides the information needed to show links in the VLINK color rather than the LINK color (or what the user sets on the Link Presentation dialog) if you've fetched something within the time you've specified for marking links visited. Also, vlink.dat contains not only page URLs, but also all the other elements (images, etc.)

In many cases, simply because the link doesn't directly load the page with content. There's a redirect involved, so you need to check 'Enable automatic redirection' on the Privacy preferences.
The reason the page is blank is because the author didn't have the courtesy to add a manual link for those who have redirection disabled. [Thanks to Josef W. Segur]

1. As Administrator, install Opera normally.
2. Run Opera once and set up the desired preferences and bookmarks.
3. Create the directory %homedrive%\users\default\opera and copy Opera.ini and Opera3.adr to it (assuming "\users\..." is the homes path).
4. In the Opera installation directory, create a UsersOpera.cmd containing these lines:

   @echo off
   If exist %homedrive%%homepath%\opera\opera.ini goto go
   mkdir %homedrive%%homepath%\opera
   copy %homedrive%\users\default\opera\*.*  %homedrive%%homepath%\opera\
   rem The above "copy" statement is all one line of course!
   :go
   Start c:\opera\opera.exe %homedrive%%homepath%\opera\opera.ini
   

5. "Click right" on the Start button, open the Explorer and find the Opera shortcut. Move it to %windir%\Profiles\All Users\Startmenu, then Alt+dbl-click on it and make the link point your new CMD file instead of Opera.exe.
6. Make sure the shortcut, the CMD file and the Opera directory are executable for all users (or at least all who are supposed to use Opera).

Probably because the server has given the wrong information (MIME type) about the file it is sending. If this happens, you have two options: either

1. Wait till Opera is finished downloading and displaying the file, then do a File > Save as to store the download where you want it
   or
   
2. Go back to the link you clicked to start the download, right-click it and select Save link document as.... Now you can select where to store the file.

Yes, this is no problem. Opera will not interfere with IE, Netscape or other browsers.
If you install more than one browser on your system, you may want to think about which browser you want to be system default. In Opera you go to Preferences > Default browser to choose what kind of connections (protocols) and file types you want Opera to handle.

There are a number of sites out there dedicated to this program.

Opera home page - www.opera.com

IIXII's page about Opera's E-mail client - really good bugfixes and patches for Opera - members.fortunecity.com/iixii/

Another Opera FAQ - and a good one! Some overlap with this FAQ, but still some Q/As are unique to each of them www.searchengineworld.com/opera/

To subscribe, please go to http://elektra.opera.no/mailman/listinfo/opera-users.
Once you are a member, you can post your questions to opera-users@opera.com (but please check if this page can help you before posting!)

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1. Go to http://elektra.opera.no/mailman/listinfo/opera-users
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Most recent version of this document is available on

• http://www.hallvord.com/opera/

A German translation of this document is on

• http://wielandbelka.hypermart.net/opera/