Opera users FAQ

A completely clean update is possible without deinstallation, because Opera is so well behaved and moderate in what it installs. It never creates any files whatsoever outside the Opera directory except the profiles in the windows folder, and if you disable the profile mode at installation (uncheck "Use separate settings for each user") not even those.
Neither are any registry keys created, except those necessary for the file and protocol associations (see Preferences/Default Browser), the Windows uninstall entry, and the path of the most recent installation for following updates in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Opera Software.
So for a simple and clean update it's sufficient to rename your current Opera installation directory into something else, and install the new version into the exact original path. Thus the few registry entries are still valid, and the installation-directory-oriented user profiles in the Windows folder will be reused as well. Only if you had *disabled* the profile mode in the old installation, you must do so as well in the new version, and copy over some files from the old version if you want to keep certain settings:

Opera6.adr - Your Bookmarks
cookies4.dat - Your Cookies
download.dat - The items in the transfer window
global.dat - The browsing history
opcacrt6.dat, oprand.dat, opssl6.dat, opcert6.dat - Certificates and SSL data
wand.dat (if you use a master password, opcert6.dat as well!) - Saved passwords and logins
opera.dir - Directly entered URLs for autocompletion
ousr600.dat - Your registration information if you bought Opera
toolbar.ini - Placing of toolbars and buttons
vlink4.dat - Visited links (for marking them, usually violet)
opera6.ini - All other configuration data
The complete "mail" subdirectory and the contacts.adr (Adress Book) only if you're using the Mail/News Client (M2)
The complete "java" subdirectory if you installed the old version with Java and the new one is without.
The "sessions" subdirectory only if you have saved sessions there
The "skin" subdirectory and the button.dat only if you have installed additional skins.
If applicable, additional language modules with extension ".lng"

If you have customized your search engines, keyboard shortcuts, menus or dialogues, you should reconcile search.ini, input.ini, menu.ini and dialog.ini. Never just copy these files over!! They are constantly changing contents or even format, and using obsolote versions can cause bad crashing.
As soon as you have verified that the new version is completely set up, you can delete the old version in the renamed directory.

What font does Opera use for outgoing mail, and how can I change it?

The font is the one selected in File > Preferences > Fonts and colors > Forms text field multiline, and can be changed to any font on your system by selecting that field, then "Edit".

What font does Opera use for incoming mail, and how can I change it?

The default font for incoming mail is Courier New, with a default size of 9pt, and can be changed by editing the file mime.css. Find the section which reads:

p
{
 display        : block;
 font-family    : "Courier New", monospace;
 font-size      : 9pt;
 margin         : 0;
 padding        : 0;
 white-space    : -o-pre-wrap;
 }

and change it to whatever font and font size you would like to use.

My capitalone account is not working in Opera

UN-check or verify that: Use cookies to trace password protected pages is not selected. Un-checking this opened the Capital One web site.

You can't currently revert to the old way, but if you first select some small bit of text, then use one of the Shift+arrow key combinations to navigate to the nearest link, then using 'A' or 'Q' will proceed from that position. That's extremely unhandy, but AFAIK the best available option for now.

How do I make a crash log in Opera, and what do I do with it once I have it?

Please make a crashlog as described in the KB article. Upload the compressed log to my ftp server (that's FTP host iixii.kicks-ass.net, user: write, password: somestuff) If you don't know how to do FTP uploads or don't have an FTP client installed, please follow these steps to use the command line utility that comes identically with all windows versions (never include the quotes when entering something):

Open a command prompt
Enter "ftp" followed by the host name, for my server that would be "ftp iixii.kicks-ass.net"
It asks for the user name, enter "write"
It asks for the password, enter "somestuff"
Enter "binary"
Enter "put" followed by the full path to the file you want to upload, example: "put c:\crashlog.rar"
BTW the command to download a file is, who would have guessed, "get".
To verify that the upload worked, enter "dir" to get a directory listing or browse the ftp server with your favourite browser
If you're done, enter "quit"

If it doesn't work because I'm offline at night due to timezone differences, try again later. Best time is beetween 9:00 and 22:00 GMT. If nothing works, you can send it by email as a last resort, but I'd like you to consider that it would burden the internet with approximately *four* times more bandwidth.

Is there a way to edit Opera's wand list of remembered passwords?

There isn't any user interface for this yet. (But I hope one is coming). In the meantime, you can do the following:

Go to the login page
Enter a different username and nonsense password
Tell Wand to remember it, close page
go back to login page and press control-Enter. Wand now thinks you have two possible users and presents a popup offering the choice of username. Sungle-click each one in turn and delete it.
Fill in the form with the correct username and password and let wand remember it.

(I think you can go straight from 4 to 5 without closing and reopening the page but am not 100% sure - it might be worth refreshing the login page)

How to get Scrolling working with IBM Thinkpads

In the "Pass 0 rules" section of (either) %SYSTEM_ROOT%\System32\tp4table.dat or %SYSTEM_ROOT%\System32\tp4scrol.dat, add:

*,*,opera.exe,*,*,*,WheelStd,0,9

then reboot.

How to get scrolling working with Synaptics TouchPads?

Open the SynTPEnh.ini file and add this:

[Opera7] 
WT = "*Opera*" 
SF = 0x10000000 
SF |= 0x00004000

above the section that says:

[Opera Browser] 
WT = "*Opera 5*" 
SF = 0x10000000 
SF |= 0x00000002 
SF |= 0x00000004 
SF |= 0x00000008 
SF |= 0x00000400 
SF |= 0x00000120 
SF |= 0x00001000

Save the changes and reboot.

Additional information from Andy: Andy@nospam.co.uk wrote: I found the problem, obvious I guess but when I added the below to Pass 0 in tp4table.dat it worked fine

*,*,opera.exe,*,*,*,WheelStd,0,9

Can I delete the previous installs of Opera 7.0 and 6.x.? Will using Windows' Add/remove programs do the trick or should I use the Opera uninstall programs in each folder?

Use the Unwise.exe in each folder. Starting with 6.04 or 6.05 the uninstall string was changed to just 'Opera', so that will remove the most recent install.

Been trying to get Opera 7.02 to open inside itself like in 6 but can't seem to get it done.

File > Preferences > Windows > Open pages in new windows -> uncheck and enjoy.

I'm trying to get Opera to work with BBC Radio at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/.

There are several ways to get to the audio, for example:

At the bottom of the page, click "Launch our BBC radio player"
At the page that now appears, select the station you want to listen to.
At the page that now appears, select "LISTEN LIVE".
Sometimes you have to repeat (3) one more time, I don't know why...

Now a new Opera window pops up with the audio player in it. Loading the audio stream can take some time, but after that you can listen to the radio station. I just got to BBC 1 and BBC 3 this way. They play fine in Opera.
Essential is of course, that (as they clearly tell you at several places) you do need to have the RealAudio plugin installed. Did you take a look at their help page http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/audiohelp.shtml ? If you don't have the plugin, this will help you to download/install it.
One other possible problem is that you did install the player, but Opera does not know (or use) it yet... In Opera, go to the menu File, choose Preferences, choose Multimedia, and make sure that "Enable plug-ins" is ticked here. Also in the same screen, if you installed RealPlayer but Opera seems to ignore it, click the "Find plug-ins..." button. The Real plugin should now appear in the list.

Is Prefs > History > Visited, Clear supposed to clear the visited URLs history?

That's just poor labelling. The duration of visited link marking is set from the 'My link style' button on the Fonts and colors preferences, the data used is what's in disk cache plus the vlink4.dat file, which can be cleared with the 'Clear history of visited links' checkbox on the Delete private data dialog.
� The Prefs > History > Visited, Clear function empties global.dat, the history shown on the History panel of the Hotlist, the Window > Special > History, and used for autocompletion in the Address field. It can also be cleared with the 'Clear history of visited pages' checkbox on the Delete private data dialog.

As it is, Opera is the only browser I know of that lets you disable plugins so easily, although a visual indicator of a suppressed plugin would be nice.

In toolbar.ini, under [Browser Toolbar], I have:

 Button5, "Plugins"="Enable plugins, , "", , "Wand""

If it's pressed, I know plugins are enabled. If, as usual, it's not, I know they're disabled.

How does one create a desktop shortcut? When I right-click on any website, there is nothing allowing such an action.

You can drag the link to the desktop. If you want to make a shortcut to the current address, drag the small icon on the left side in the address-bar.

If I want to run 2 seperate copies of Opera 7.01 using the same exe, what files do I need to put in a seperate directory?

- select single-user install
- make two shortcuts with command lines like these:
�
C:\path-to-exe\opera.exe /settings C:\path-to-settings1\opera6.ini
�
C:\path-to-exe\opera.exe /settings C:\path-to-settings2\opera6.ini

Opera will create the necessary files in the separate directories. You can, after running each instance once, look in 'Help > About Opera' and/or edit Opera6.ini while Opera is closed to make further adjustmends. You should not share user files (cache, bookmarks, etc..) between the two instances when you run them at the same time! See the KB article.

How can Aussie NAB customers use the site?

For Aussie NAB customers desperate to do their banking with Opera I've put up a page on my website with instructions on getting Opera to work with the National's internet banking service. It's at http://www.scsoftware.com.au/family/andrew/o7/nabib.shtml A warning: you'll need the Proxomitron program. Full details on the page.

Hi all, anyone could post the original search.ini of opera 7?

Thanks to Jud, it is located here

"Waiting for DNS confirmation of cookie domains" - I get this error message on www.amazon.ca (with all versions of Opera 7. Is there anything I can do?

In File>Preferences>Privacy>Edit Server Filters, add amazon.ca under Accept From Server.

There is a bug in Opera's handling of this when Opera is using a proxy. It's been fixed in 7.20.

This bring up an interesting thing that's missing from the UI: underlining of letters in the drop down lists to signify their shortcut. Ok, so it's cleaner without, but where did you find Alt+F, F and is there a list of the others? \

If you mouse click a menu, accelerator keys are assumed to be not needed and do not display. If you use the keyboard ALT+F they are displayed. Slick perhaps, but I much prefer a global "On/Off indicate keyb-accelerator keys" in preferences for consistent global behavior. After all, if one is mousing, but would like to learn the keyboard hotkeys, they should be available to see.

It looks that hotclick's search menu cannot be customized?!

It actually can. I've customized my menu.ini for my search.ini . Search for '; Hotclick menu' in my file if you want to know how.
For some reason the search engine with ID 'n' in search.ini must be referenced as 'Hotclick search, n-1' in menu.ini -- meaning Search.ini entry 6 is 'Hotclick search, 5'.

How can I quickly search Opera's Knowledge Base articles?

Type o searchterm in the address bar.

Sometimes the status bar does not work properly on main manu View.

You propably have deleted the status field from status bar. Fix:

Make sure that from view menu that statusbar is visible (it has that mark) and in bottom
Open customize toolbars dialog from view menu
Drag status field to bottom of window, and drop it when you see the copypaste drag pointer.

What kind of encryption is used for the Wand? (OK, what I really want to know is: how secure is the encryption method?)

If you use a master password or not, all strings in the wand file are encrypted as follows:

From a password, the string to be encrypted, and a hardcoded plaintext seed, a hash is genererated, called Salt.
This Salt and the password is digested into a key
Using that key, the string is encrypted with the 3DES algorithm, and saved together with the Salt in wand.dat

The password is hardcoded if you don't use a master password, which means that it is possible to decrypt the wand.dat, however quite some Opera hacking and cryptography expertise would be necessary.

However, if you do use a master password, the used password is a combination of the master password and a 128-byte random portion created at the same time. This random portion is stored outside wand.dat, also encrypted with the master password.

So, without the master passowrd *and* the encrypted random portion, it's impossible to decrypt wand.dat with all the computing power available in the near future. All operations involved nullify all used memory areas before releasing them.

I'd like to know whether a wand.dat is transferrable to another machine, either on its own or in conjunction with some .ini file or registry setting.

Without a master password, copying wand.dat alone is sufficient. Otherwise you also need opcert6.dat, where the random portion is saved.

Why won't my bank (President's Choice) work with Opera?

Some servers do not handle Opera's "Accept Charset" HTTP header. This is a bug in their server. Please try to alter Opera6.ini and change or include the following line under [Adv User Prefs]

HTTP Accept Charset=*

Exit Opera
Open Opera6.ini in Notepad
Search for [Adv User Prefs]
Insert the line below [Adv User Prefs] or change the line if it already exists in this section of the ini - file.

Does someone know how to enable the addres type magnet/irc/mms in Opera?

If you have a program on your system that knows how to handle 'magnet:' links (and is registered as such in Windows), it can be done.

Add this line to opera6.ini, in the [User prefs] section:

TrustedExternalURLProtocols=magnet
This way you can also add other schemes, so Opera will pass the link to
the relevant program:
TrustedExternalURLProtocols=irc,mms

How can I add a 'top-level' folder to the bookmarks?

In the Hotlist, set the Bookmarks View to full
If anything is highlighted, Ctrl+Click it to remove the highlight
Use the New folder button

Selecting trash first also allows a top-level folder to be created

Where can I find the Created and/or Modified dates for a page?

This can be gotten through a bookmarklet like:

javascript:if(document.lastModified==0
) {alert('Date not available!');} else {alert('This document has been modified on: ' + 
document.lastModified);}

I want alt tooltips. What can I do?

You need to create a Bookmarklet that contains some simple javascript and put it on the Personal bar and click on it when needed.

Copy and paste the javascript below into the URL field of a new bookmark making sure it stays all in one line (you may have to copy & paste several times including the space after the 'var').

javascript:(function(){function altToTitle(d){for
(var=0;i<d.images.length;++i)if(d.images[i].title=="")
d.images[i].title=d.images[i].alt;}altToTitle(document);for(var f=0;f<parent.frames.length;
++f)altToTitle(parent.frames[f].document);})();

validate

Copyright (c) 2003 by Sue Sims, all rights reserved.
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