Nerd Corner: Opera 9.20 revisited

Speed Dial
i've been using it for a few days now (4) and for all its redundancy, it has started to grow on me. every time i open a new, blank tab, my eyes are met with convenient links i can either click on or swiftly ignore. occasionally, it will remind me to update myself on something that i haven't read yet.

Fig. 1 - My current Speed Dial links
my current set up only has 6 links: Google Reader, Gmail, Hotmail, Blogger, Notebook Review Forums, and Metagame. Reader is my RSS aggregator of choice, so all my news bits and blog updates are funneled through that. Email is obvious. the other three are really just filler. NBR forums and Metagame do not come with RSS feeds so i dropped them into Speed Dial as a visual reminder to waste my time. i set it up as a triangle because a) i didn't have enough to fill all 9 spots; b) my eyes follow left to right, top to bottom, so the triangle tracks better. note how the interfaces of most applications have next to nothing going on along the bottom-right corner.

the Ctrl+# shortcut really is a time-saver (so i can waste time more efficiently) when i remember to use it. it will open up a new tab and load the page without my having to manually open one.

Tab Thumbnail Previews
i've only used Opera v9.x, so i can't speak for its previous versions, but Opera 9 (and i suspect 7+) have thumbnail previews for the tabs. i think this is available in Firefox through the Tab Mix extension. in 9.10, they looked like this:


Fig. 2 - Tab Previews in Opera 9.10
Opera 9.20 improved on this neat feature by removing the extraneous information and boiling the thumbnail preview down to its essentials.


Fig. 3 - Improved Tab Previews in Opera 9.20
as you can see, the preview is now url independent so the preview box is no longer stretched to wizzle-wazzle when you preview hotmail or something. Encoding, MIME Type and Security have been completely excised because no one really cares what that information when previewing a site you are already visiting. page title and url are moved to the top and bottom respectively to remove the extraneous whitespace. all these changes make the preview a whole lot more attractive than before.

Tab Cycle Preview
this is not a new feature in 9.20, but it's something i found recently and thought i'd share/proselytize. Ctrl+Tab will cycle through your browser's tabs the same way Alt+Tab (or Win+Tab in Vista) will cycle through windows in your taskbar.


Fig. 4 - Default Tab Cycling Interface
a slightly hidden preference allows you to preview the tabs as you cycle through them,


Fig. 5 - Tab Cycling with Thumbnail Previews
making it a whole lot easier to see which site you're scrolling to. with the text only interface, it is easy to select a similarly titled tab, especially if you are cycling through them quickly.

to enable this preview, go to the address bar (or Ctrl+L) and type opera:config to access hidden browser preferences (yes, this was inspired by Firefox's slick about:config, which makes the average user feel like a hacker. opera:config is categorized and slightly less imposing at first glance). in the search field, type 'tab' to quickly find the right toggle. under User Prefs > Use Thumbnails in Tab Tooltips, check the box and click Save.

on a slightly related note, you can cycle through tabs in Opera with a mouse gesture: Right-Click + Scroll Wheel.

Note from me:
moyee thinks this is shaping up to be an epic battle between me/Opera and carl/Firefox on account of our recent posts, but i don't think so. my last summer job asked me to write some instruction manuals for the employees on how to use new software (screenshots, step-by-steps, etc). it was quite fun, so i've continued this here (starting with keyword bookmarking in Firefox, which, by the way, exists in Opera too). i think i prefer teaching by writing, rather than speaking -- not that i am certain anyone is trying out Opera now on account of this. in any case, it's worth a shot if you have time or simply want to learn something new. there are lots of reasons why i (and some others) prefer Opera to other browsers, but i won't get into that tonight.