Opera tweaks

Customizing Opera
Update: 30.05.01 About Opera 5.11
Last Update: 05.07.01 Wingdings and other symbol fonts
Three months have passed since I updated this page last time, and a lot has happened in the meantime. First of all, Opera 5.11 is out, and it's a huge improvement. And what's more, I got the chance to contribute to it: I was invited to come to Oslo and worked there three weeks at the beginning of March during my university semester break! It was simply terrific being a part of Opera Software, I still recall the fascinating spirit there with pleasure.
The patches which I published on this page are now obsolete, instead there are some new configuration tweaks and hints below.
For those still interested in older versions of Opera, see the 4.02/5.0 version, the 5.01 version or the 5.02 version of this page.
If you have any suggestions concerning this site, email me.

Opera rules!
IIXII

Byte patches
Wingdings and other symbol fonts not displayed
Several web sites use fonts like Wingdings or Webdings for decoration. For example <font face="wingdings" size=7>J</font> is used to display a smiley. But Opera is right in displaying a "J" instead, because the font tag doesn't mean "take that font and display whatever is where the J should be", but "display a J using the specified font if possible, otherwise use the standard font". Nevertheless, you might want Opera to treat fonts like M$IE and display a smiley.
If you tell Windows that you want to use a certain font, you have to specify the character set you want. Opera always specifies ANSI_CHARSET, but symbol fonts only have SYMBOL_CHARSET. The problem can be solved by requesting DEFAULT_CHARSET and letting Windows decide which charset to use. The following byte patch makes Opera do that:

OPERA.EXE (version 5.12)
OFFSET 73B11    83 -> 8D
OFFSET 73B17    00 8D BE 20 01 00 00 74 3D -> 83 3F 00 74 41 C6 47 D7 01

Preference tweaks
All Opera preferences are stored in the OPERA.INI file. It is located in the directory you installed Opera in, and can be edited with any text editor. Opera must be closed before editing, or the changes will be overwritten. The file is divided into sections, like [User Prefs] or [Cache], and if a section mentioned below doesn't exist yet, simply insert it.

Transfer window logging
All entries in the transfer window are deleted after 7 days.
Add the following entry to the preferences file to customize this:

[TransferWindow]
LogEntryDaysToLive=xxx

Saving a page as text
The line width in the resulting text file is 80 characters per line.
Add the following entry to the preferences file to customize this:

[User Prefs]
SaveTxtCharsPerLine=xxx

Removing mail envelope icon from list
The read/unread state of a mail is additionally shown by a small opened/closed envelope icon in the From/To field. To remove that icon, add the following entry to the mail account preferences. They are stored in the ACCOUNT.INI file in the MAIL\<account name> subdirectory of Opera.

[INCOMING]
DisplayEnvelopeIcon=0

Word wrap problems in mail composer
In the email account properties, you can choose to wrap lines on a certain column. But the mail input field is a RichEdit control, which, as it is a Windows component, is programmed by Micro$oft and thus doesn't support anything convenient like characters per line. Programming a new control which does would bloat Opera disproportionately. The only way to specify a RichEdit line width is the EM_SETTARGETDEVICE message, which needs the line width in twips, as it is intended for printer WYSIWYG (1 twip=1/20 printer point=1/1440 inch). Of course that only works with a fixed width font, and even then the conversion of characters per line to twips is far from being trivial.
So the conversion has been coded to work best with Courier New 9.
If you absolutely have to use any other font and/or font size, the line width you specify will have to be proportionally larger or smaller than the one you actually get.

Finally, some excellent sources of information for everything you ever wanted to know about Opera. The *very* comprehensive FAQs should cover about every question you might have and are extremely helpful to learn about OPERAting ;) our beloved tool most efficiently:

Hallvord Steen's Opera-Users FAQ (also available in German)
Brett Tabke's Opera reviews, tools, FAQ...
Samuli Lintula's finnish Opera site

Made with Norton Editor 2.0 for DOS [und vieeel Zeit]