On getting started with Opera 8

First of all you should download Opera and install it. If you are on a single-user system I recommend unchecking the option to keep different profile for each user during installation. Now go ahead and start Opera. I will guide you through the modifications I do to get the Opera I love. After you get used to Opera you'll definitely do you own customizations... or just stick with my setup ;-)

Opera after first start

Now the first thing that bothers me is the page bar (where the tabs are displayed). I don't want the New page button. You don't need it because things like this can be controlled through Opera's inbuild mouse gestures (see Opera's help on this). So just right-click and remove it. While we are at it: You can remove all the navigtion buttons (to the left of the address bar. Although you don't need them you might want to keep the two green forward/back buttons (you are going to remove them later for sure). I also think Opera looks alot better with the tabs placed at the bottom. Just right-click a tab and select Customize.

click the images for details

The next thing I will customize is the panel bar (which you have not seen, yet). Press F4 (or click the left edge of the window) to open the panel bar. What I want to do here is reducing the panel bar's size so it won't bother you having it on screen all the time, remove some panels and add some panels. Some panels are still invisible (Mail, Contacts, Chat) since they are linked to features not used yet. Right-click on the panel bar and select Customize Deselect the Links-panel and the option to show the panel toggle (since we want the panel all the time). Now go to Toolbars -> Style, select Images only and confirm with OK. We'll get back to the panels later, but this is all for now. What I do at this point is registering Opera to get rid of the ads. To do this you have several options. The most obvious is to buy Opera for EUR 34,- (the student rate is just EUR 23,-). I understand that - as a first-time user - you don't want to buy a pig in a poke. Bad people get a key generator and try ad-free Opera for free. The 8/2005 issue of the German c't magazine contained a code allowing you to get a free license of Opera 7. This same code allows you to buy Opera for EUR 8,- and is the same in every issue of the magazine. So if you know a German he might just give you the code so that you can get your own cheap Opera license (is this ethically right, I don't know).

In Tools -> Mail and chat accounts you can create you pop3/imap and IRC accounts. I strongly recommend using Opera for your mail because it has a great way of organizing your mail (partly adopted by Google's GMail). If you don't want to use it now, just create dummy acounts to make these parts of Opera visible (since they stay hidden to users who don't want them). After doing all that my Opera looks like this:

almost done

Just a few more visual tweaks and I'm done. When a page loads I like to have some more progress information. I also like a status bar but we don't want to use up any more space, do we? To keep the interface minimal and still get more information on screen, do this: Right-click the address bar and select Customize (once again). Activate the status bar and drag it from the bottom of the window to the place between the address bar and the Google search field. When it's there you can deactivate the status bar again. In the same dialog you can change the setting for the progress bar (see screenshot). That's it, now you have a nice and clean Opera, ready to rock the internet.

last mod and the final result

Using Opera

Mouse gestures

Opera - which invented the mouse gestures a long time ago - still has the best implementation. If you get used to mouse gestures you well never want to miss them again. They allow you to control your browser and surf the web incredibly fast. You will also notice that the plugin for Firefox is merely a shadow of the original. To find out how to use mouse gestures see the great Opera Help (F1).

Preferences

A very cool thing about Opera are the Quick Preferences. To access them just press F12. They allow quick settings for pop-up blocking, security and browser identification. I recommend setting Opera to identify itself as Opera (instead of IE).
To get the full prefernces dialog press ALT + P. If you have some more time have a look at all the setting you can do there. As you might already have noticed, Opera is very configurable. The first thing I like to do here is deactivating Show close button on each tab (in General) and Opera's password manager (it's called Wand).

Sessions

If you do alot of research and investigation you will love this! When I'm browsing the web on a specific topic I sometimes have 20+ tabs open. If you want to stop and continue later there is no need to create bookmarks. You can just save your session. All open pages (including forward/backward history) can be opened at any time later on.

View

New in Opera 8 is the View button. Clicking it gives you access to some of Opera's unique features. The Zoom function not only changes the text-size but the whole page (with images) while keeping the layout intact. As far as I know Opera is the only browser doing this. Sometimes I think Opera's developers are the only to think about the needs of disabled people.
Fit to width (CTRL + F11) helps you view pages with a messed up layout. No need to scroll horizontally any more. From here you can also access the user CSS and Opera's voice control. I haven't used the latter, yet. If you're interested in using it I'm sure Opera's help will tell you what you need to know.

Find as you type

Just press the . key (period) and type the word(s) you're looking for. As you type Opera will jump to the occurences of your search string on the current page. With F3 you can jump to the next search result.

To find out more about all those great features have a look at Operas product and features sites. Opera's online community also has a nice link list to fan sites. In my opinion the most noteworthy is NonTroppos Opera Wiki.

I hope you like this great piece of software,
Matthias