Tips For a Recent Opera Convert?

default settings to be changed, features not to be missed...

[sean orourke]

Alrighty, I love IE5+ when it works, but it has been implicated in one system error too many. Heard bad buzz about Netscape. Heard good buzz from Opera zealots. Long story short, I took the plunge w/Opera.

First impresson:

"This is the freakiest thing I have ever seen!"

Second Impression (one minute later):

"Hey, this is kinda cool..."

Like the bookmark manager and the Google search, as I am a bookmark fiend and Google hippie. Now I'm curious to know:

* Are there any settings you recommend changing right from the get-go?
* Are there any tips & tricks that are likely to go unnoticed (and shouldn't)?

[Brett_Tabke]

Put the progress bar at the bottom, status bar at the top.
Turn on the "window bar" (View-Window bar).
Get real friendly with "shift click" and shift-control-click. That is where the real speed is at - especially when searching search engine results pages (serps).
The other big kb keys are "z" (backward) and control-tab (next window).
It helps to keep your left hand over there on the keyboard for easy access to those keys. Most of the better kb commands are on the left hand.
Ignore full screen mode - it sucks.
ID as IE most of the time for compatability.
Fill out the "personal information" fields and then right click in a web page form field where you can "spit" it out. Opera's auto form fill isn't to intuitive.
Cookies: don't accept 3rd party cookies (cuts out all the tracking from banner ads).

If you have a "resource challenged" system (less than 64meg ram, and less than 400mhz cpu):
Disable "automatic ram cache" (prefs-history-cache).
Disable "avoid flicker".
Enable "progressive jpg downloads" (default).

If you have a broadband or dsl setup:
Increase the max total connections to 16-20 and set max connections to server to 4 or 5.

For tips on custom button setups, try the Opera user faq:
[searchengineworld.com...]

For real live support, try the opera newsgroups on Opera server:
news://opera.no

[EX_S]

An attractive buttonset improves the feel and user-friendliness a lot. Example [geocities.com]

[Brett_Tabke]

Thanks for the screen shot. The old blues button set.

I see the line of text in the top menu is wrapping under on you. What is your res?

[webmasterworld.com]

[David]

O.K. I'm bummed. I can rearange the buttons change the spacing but I can't get the special buttons to show up. I have tried three times using the directions here. Any Ideas.

[nicebloke]

Just to add, I had to define cgi files in the file handling options somwhere so they were handled like html.

Before I did this opera wasn't displaying .cgi pages. HTH.