The Preference Menus

List of preferences

The different preferences' menus are accessed through the "File" menu, "Preferences", or by using the keyboard shortcut ALT + P. The categories are listed alphabetically here:

• Accessibility
  Accessibility is a key issue for making sure that everyone can use a program. Opera's accessibility features are handled here.
• Advertisement
  Opera 5 is an ad-sponsored Web browser. Set up a profile here to receive ad-banners in the fields you want!
• Connections
  Connection preferences menu; proxy servers, error handling and automatic name completion are located in this menu.
• Default browser
  Select which protocols and file types to set Opera as the default for in this menu.
• Documents
  This menu has configurable fonts for a host of text types, as well as the CSS settings in Opera.
• E-mail
  Settings for the internal e-mail client in Opera are located here, as well as the option to use external e-mail clients with Opera!
• File types
  Opera's file association and MIME types are manipulated in this menu.
• History and cache
  Contains user-selectable settings for the sizes of Opera's cache as well as generalized handling of the cache.
• Hotlist
  Standard settings for the Hotlist pane and the Bookmark drop-down list.
• Instant messaging
  The instant messaging client in Opera is based on Mirabilis' ICQ instant messenger.
• Languages
  The Internet is filled with all kinds of languages. Set your preferences in Opera!
• Multimedia
  Toggle background sound and music, plug-ins and how images are to be handled in this menu.
• News
  Various news reader settings can be changed here.
• Paths
  This category has the paths that are set for the Opera user directory, amongst others.
• Personal information
  Your personal information entries are detailed here.
• Plug-ins
  Opera's plug-in handling is controlled from here.
• Privacy
  Privacy issues on the Internet are handled in this menu, such as cookie filtering, for example.
• Search
  Options relating to Opera's Web search from the progress bar are located here.
• Security
  Security protocols are configured in this menu, and personal certificates and server certificates are easily watched.
• Sounds
  Set sounds to specific events and happenings in Opera through this menu!
• Start and exit
  Settings for startup and exit of Opera are detailed in this menu.
• Toolbars
  Contains settings for the installed button sets, the Button bar and the Status bar, as well as most other visible bars in Opera.
• Windows
  Change what's displayed in the document windows in the Opera workspace.

At the bottom of the "Preferences" dialog four buttons are located:

OK

This button saves the changes you have made to the settings and options in the different preference menus and exits the "Preferences" dialog.

Cancel

This button will exit the "Preferences" dialog without saving any changes you may or may not have made to the options and settings here.

Apply

If pressed, this button will save and make use of any changes you have made to the settings and options in the different preference menus, but will not exit the "Preferences" dialog.

Help

The Help button opens the Opera Help and brings up the appropriate topic for the menu in which you are currently located.

Accessibility

Everyone should be able to access the Internet and the Internet should be accessible to everyone. Opera is a highly user-friendly browser, allowing for customization of almost microscopic detail, a myriad of features and technologies all combined into one small, easy to use package, and these are just some of Opera's accessibility options.

Accessibility

There are more than one ways of using the Hotlist pane in the left hand side of the Opera workspace. This menu section contains two important options to set here:

Menu style item selection in Hotlist window
The first letter of the name field of the Hotlist entry, i.e. the bookmark, will become the hotkey with this menu enabled. An item with the first key "W", for example "World News", will be highlighted through pressing the key "W" on the keyboard. Press "Enter" to open the link in a window in the Opera workspace. If there are several bookmarks that start with "W", pressing the key "W" on the keyboard will cycle through them.

Screen reader compatible menus
This option is meant for people with visual disabilities or others that make use of screen-reader software to read out the pure text. Enabling this option will make the Hotlist pane and Bookmarks menu work with this kind of software.

Underline mouse hovered list items
If this option is checked, entries and bookmarks in the Hotlists pane, as well as e-mail in your e-mail account(s) will be underlined when the mouse cursor hovers above them.

Tip! See our Accessibility Page for more information on how to best make use of Opera's accessibility options!

Advertisement

This entry appears only in the preferences if you are using the free, ad-sponsored version of Opera, and applies only to this version. Herein are settings for your profile with our sponsors, and it is well worth it taking the time to fill in the information needed. This way, you're sure not to miss out on the offers of our sponsors.

Set your Location, Year of Birth, Gender, Marital status and Education level in the left hand side of the menu, and pick your interests from the selection to the right to give a more accurate description of yourself, so that you'll only receive ad-banners within your sphere of interests.

Tip! If you purchase a license for your copy of Opera and use the registration code that is sent to you in the purchasing e-mail you'll then receive from us to register your copy of Opera, you will not be targeted with ads.

Connections

While most of the other menus deal with beginners to intermediate levels of settings, this menu deals with a lot of the things that take place under the hood, so to speak, of Opera. You will find that most of the options and settings in this menu are hidden from the eye of the user in other Internet browsers, but are openly available for user interaction in Opera.

Browser identification

Identifying the Internet browser that's attempting to access the Web page is very common on the Internet. Web masters want their pages to appear new and fresh, and to utilize the newest and most sophisticated technology, but unfortunately, for very many Web masters, this means catering to the known Internet browsers, and as such, most Web pages are written for either Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator, and all other browsers are denied access to the Web page in most cases.

Opera have been on par with these Internet browsers for quite some time, in certain cases surpassing them, and is now in the process of pulling away with the lead, as far as the support for standardized technologies and protocols are concerned. But given the extensive installed user base of Microsoft's and Netscape's browsers, a lot of Web masters will not even bother to assess other browsers for their Web sites, in many cases, leaving Opera users no chance to use their sites and services.

Therefore, we have created a workaround for this problem in Opera: User selectable ID's for Opera! It is now possible to select from the drop down list here what you want Opera to identify itself as when asked which browser it is.

The list goes:

• Identify as Opera
• Identify as Mozilla 5.0
• Identify as Mozilla 4.76
• Identify as Mozilla 3.0
• Identify as MSIE 5.0

There are two things to note here; First of all, the name "Mozilla" is Netscape's internal application name, which is in many cases the best setting, as most Web sites look for Netscape, or its compatibles. Identifying as Opera will give up the Opera name purely, while the others will display Netscape or Internet Explorer, compatible with Opera.

The second thing to note is the "Identify as MSIE 5.0" setting. If enabled, Opera will attempt to execute scripts that are of JScript kind. Also, the browser will respond to document.all and document.id calls if this is what Opera identifies as.

Proxy servers

A "Proxy Server" collects information from the Internet and stores it locally until you view it. In order to work correctly, and indeed, in many cases to allow Internet access at all, proxy servers must be configured. This goes for every program that utilizes these servers.

In Opera, this is done in the "Proxy Servers..." menu, accessible through the "Connections". Here, you may enter the name of the proxy server and the proxy port number it uses. There are a number of protocols which may use the proxy server, and also a check box to the left of each of these protocols, which, when checked, enables these protocols.

The biggest box is used for entering your proxy server name. Please enter it like this example:

	http://www.operaproxy.com
or	111.950.2.721

To the right of this is the box for the port number. This number is crucial, unless your proxy server uses the "default" proxy number (8080). Please write it in like this example:

8080

Each protocol may use its own proxy server and/or port number, or be disabled/enabled without interfering with the other protocols.

This is information your Internet Service Provider or System Administrator should have provided you with. If you do not have it at hand, or if you do not know whether you use a proxy server at all, please contact them for information.

These are the different protocols and their uses:

The "Don't use proxy on:" field can be used to specify which HTTP servers should be accessed directly because they are so close that the proxy would be a bottle neck even if it had the document stored locally.

Note! Some Internet Service Providers and System Administrators are using autoconfigured proxy server files ("proxy.pac"'s), something Opera does not support, so you'll have to enter this information manually. We are working on this feature for implementation in a future version of Opera.

If you believe this to be the case on your system, please contact your ISP or System Administrator and ask them what the proxy server host name and port number used are. If you know that your system is in fact using an autoconfigured proxy server, you can check the ".pac" file and find proxy server and port number in this file.

FTP

Logging onto FTP servers anonymously, such as publicly available download sites, you will for the most part be placed in the root directory of the server. Opera behaves similarly on this note as most FTP-clients and Internet browsers, but if you are logging onto a personal or work defined FTP server with a user name and password, you will find that Opera behaves differently from other browser by placing you in your user directory.

If you wish Opera to behave like other browsers in this respect, you need to enable this feature by adding a checkmark in the box in this part of the "Connections" preferences.

Server name

Pressing the "Server name completion..." button will take you to a sub-menu that will let you decide how Opera handles incomplete URLs.

Look for local network machine
Accessing a machine on the local network is highly possible in Opera, but addresses for these machines lack top domains, and look very much like incomplete URLs, which will make Opera add the prefix and suffix of the below boxes to it. Enabling this option will make Opera look for local network machines before attempting to complete incomplete URLs - the reason this is not enabled by default is because it takes some time looking through an entire network.

Try name completion using
Here, you set the prefixes and suffixes that Opera will try when an in complete URL is entered into the URL field of the Progress bar or the Direct URL addressing box. You can add several prefixes and suffixes, which Opera will look through them, matching them up one by one until it finds a match. Add several prefixes and suffixes separated by commas (",").

Performance

If there's one thing that Opera's known for, it's its performance! Just like with all the other features in the browser, the performance can also be tuned and its settings changed by the users of the browsers.

Synchronous DNS
DNS stands for Domain Name System. It's the mechanism that turns your IP name into an IP number. Like opera.nta.no corresponds to 193.156.19.29. By default, Opera will fetch information from the Internet asynchronously, because the browser can have several active windows open and receiving information at the same time, giving increased performance, unlike other browsers that do not have a Multiple Document Interface (MDI), but a Single Document Interface (SDI).

Since not all servers or even Internet Service Providers, support asynchronous DNS, it is possible to set Opera to "Synchronous DNS", which is a way of doing a lookup for a machine name that will block all threads of execution in an application until a request for the reply has been received.

Set this option by checking the "Synchronous DNS" box in this part of the "Connections" preferences menu, but note that unless the server you connect through requires synchronous DNS, you may experience noticeable slowdown in Opera if you use several windows for receiving information at the same time.

Max number of connections to a server
This will allow you to decide what the maximum number of connections to one particular server should be. It is recommended that you do not set this too high, as this may slow the program down a bit, but an average of in between 8 and 12 is not uncommon.

Max number of connections
Here, you set the overall maximum number of connections you want Opera to be able to perform at any one time. If you open more connections than the number listed here, Opera will ignore them until it has received the information in the number of windows it's currently downloading information into.

Size of network buffer (kB)
The network buffer is the part of the cache that receives information from the network. Its size can be increased to allow for better performance in most cases, but if you experience Opera becoming unresponsive, you could try decreasing it.

Tip! This is only one of the places you can tune the performance in Opera! Please see the accessibility page for more hints and tips on how to get the most out of your Opera!

Server error response handling

Every so often, the server you are connecting to will report errors back to the program. Here, you set how Opera is to act when it receives such error responses from the server.

Always show server response
If enabled, this will always show the error message Opera receives from the server in the active window.

Always show dialog box
This option will always display the Opera dialog box for the type of error the server is reporting.

Show response from server when appropriate
The default setting, this will show Opera's own error dialogs whenever the error does not appear to be meant directly for the user's eye.

Default browser

Opera can be set as the default browser for a number of file types and protocols. Unlike other Internet browsers, you can select which file types and protocols to be the default browser for yourself, simply by going to this menu and checking the boxes.

File types
Opera has full support for and can be set to handle the following file types:

*.htm	These extensions both refer to the same type of file, documents of the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) type.
*.html
*.xml	Any XML-type documents can be opened in Opera. Check this box to make Opera the default for this kind of documents.
*.bmp	These types of images are called "bitmaps", and are built up of "pixels", which are the smallest building block of the screen. Due to this fact, bitmap images are often very large images.
*.gif	Images of the GIF type often have better quality than JPEG, and the image type can even hold animation.
*.jpeg	These extensions both refer to the same type of file, images of the JPEG type, which are small in size at the expense of quality. Probably the most used image format on the Internet.
*.jpg
*.png	PING type images are ideal for images with large areas of similar colors, such as landscapes, and give good resolution.
*.xbm	XBM (xBitmap) is a monochrome bitmap format in which data is stored as a C language data array. It is primarily used for the storage of cursor and icon bitmaps, for use in the X graphical user interface.

Protocols
A protocol is a way of transporting information on the Internet. Opera has built-in support for these types:

http	The HTTP protocol, HyperText Transfer Protocol, is the protocol that's been designed for transporting documents of the HyperText Markup Language type.
https	The HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure) protocol is the protocol that is used for transporting secure HyperText Markup Language documents on the Internet.
news	This refers to the NNTP, or Network News Transfer Protocol, is the protocol that is used for news groups on the Internet.
ftp	FTP stands for "File Transfer Protocol" and this is the most suitable way of transporting files over an Internet connection.
gopher	This is a protocol that is designed to be used for searching for files in large archives of documents, but which has become almost obsolete with the advent of the Internet as we know it. Due to the fact that it still is used on a number of servers, backwards compatibility is available, but remember that you must always specify a proxy server when using gopher.
wais	Wide Area Information Server/Service - Used to build up information on a number of servers which is kept track of in special locations that are searchable through these servers using specific clients. WAIS access must always be done through a proxy server.

Documents

Roughly every Internet document consists of the two logical parts of contents and presentation. While there is no way of changing the contents of a document from an Internet browser, the presentation can be altered to suit your needs. In this menu are located the tools for doing so.

Presentation modes

Cascading Style Sheets, CSS for short, are a way of separating contents from presentation that goes far beyond the limited control HTML will give you. The advantages of CSS are numerous, but one of the highlights is the ability to efficiently define the style of an entire site, which would require every HTML page to be written with all the properties for font and color on all the pages of the site using only HTML. Another fact is that changes to the site's interface can be implemented easily by changing settings in one file only, cutting a tremendous amount of time off the Web master's maintenance tasks. CSS can also significantly reduce the accumulated size of the site to a fraction of what it could potentially be while still giving the user full control to override these settings in the Internet browser, should the need occur.

Opera has been a pioneer in the implementation of CSS, and has actually won several awards on behalf of our aim to support the standards of the Internet. Below are the settings that can be set for the two different CSS modes in Opera, "Document mode" and "User mode".

Document CSS
Selects whether or not Opera should use all CSS defined in the document. This is enabled as "Document" by default.

Document font and color
Selects whether or not Opera should use all fonts and colors defined in the document. This is enabled as "Document" by default.

User CSS
Selects whether or not Opera should use all CSS defined by the user. This is enabled as "User" by default.

User font and color
Selects whether or not Opera should use all fonts and colors defined by the user. This is enabled as "User" by default.

User links
Links in documents can be turned off with this option, but that will make Web page navigation very difficult. It is recommended that you keep them on for both "Document" and "User" if you don't specifically want them off.

Tables
Selects whether Opera should enable tables. Enabled in both "Document" and "User" by default.

Document mode as default
Documents opened with Opera will be displayed with document mode as defaulted, if this setting is checked.

Frames

In this section of the menu, frames are controlled:

Enable frames
Frames are "shell" documents which divides the document up into user-definable containers where other documents appear. Because frames are actually several documents in one window, they are not the most convenient way of showing documents, and are not considered to be "good practice" by many. Although enabled by default, Opera will allow you to disable frames if you check this box.

Enable in-line frames
In-line frames, or "Iframes", are frames that are added to a document in the middle of the contents. They differ from regular frames in that their parent document may contain as much or as little information as the writer wishes. Opera supports iframes, but, as with regular frames, gives you the last word in whether or not you want to have them enabled.

Always show active frame border
If checked, this will show a black border around the perimeter of the frame that is active. (Tip! Use this setting in conjunction with the hotkey 3 to navigate quickly and easily between frames in a document.)

User links

Hyperlinks, the "magic glue" that connects one Web page to another, are often presented to the user as the browser wishes it, giving little or no thought to the fact that this might not be what all users want to see. Not so in Opera! The Link presentation is the menu in which you can change the appearance of links in Opera.

Not visited

This part of the menu will let you change the appearance of links linking to Web pages that you have not yet visited. They can be set to be underlined or striked through , or have a certain color. Click the "..."-button to bring up the operating system's standard color palette, from which you can select the color or define your own (on most systems). You can set each effect individually as you choose.

Visited

This part of the menu will let you change the appearance of links linking to Web pages that you have not yet visited. They can be set to be underlined or striked through , or have a certain color. Click the "..."-button to bring up the operating system's standard color palette, from which you can select the color or define your own (on most systems). You can set each effect individually as you choose.

Visited links marked

The links in Web pages changes status from "Not visited", though "Hover", to "Visited" when you click on them. They remain "Visited" for the period of time that is set in this part of the menu, which is 10 Days and 10 Hours by default. Type in the amount of time you wish them to remain visited if you have other preferences.

Border

Want a border? You've got one!

Always have border on image links
Images can also be defined as links, which can some times make them hard to spot on the Web pages. In Opera, you can set image links to have a border around them at all times, by checking the checkbox in this part of the menu.

Always have border on links
If checked, links appearing in Web documents will always have borders around them, which will be 3D in appearance.

User font and color

In this part of the menu, you are able to change the type of font and its color for most of the types of text areas in HTML documents, and the background color of the documents.

Text areas
This is the list of text areas you will be able to change the font type and font color for. Highlight one from the list and press the "..."-button to bring up the operating system's default color palette, from which you can either select one of the standard colors or define your own (on most systems).

The list of text areas you can make changes to are:

• Normal
• Heading 1 <H1>
• Heading 2 <H2>
• Heading 3 <H3>
• Heading 4 <H4>
• Heading 5 <H5>
• Heading 6 <H6>
• Preformatted text <PRE>
• News group
• Forms text field multiline
• Forms text field singleline
• Forms button text
• CSS serif
• CSS sans serif
• CSS cursive
• CSS fantasy
• CSS monospace

The CSS settings are to set the default for the CSS font families on your system, as used in Opera.

Invert marked text
If enabled, this will make Opera invert the text of links to highlight them instead of showing a border around them.

Minimum font size (pixels)
This selects the minimum size for a font in pixels. Fonts that are very small are more often than not hard to read, even by the most trained of eyes, so the field (xx) is set to 6 pixels by default, but you may change that at will.

Background color
This directly changes the background color of the documents in Opera. Press the "..."-button to bring up the operating system's default color palette, from which you can either select one of the standard colors or define your own (on most systems).

User CSS

The open Web standard of CSS requires the browser to allow the user to set an external CSS file that can be used to contain the specific settings a user wants to use. In Opera, the style sheet file is linked in this box, where you can either type in its path or use the "..."-button to browse your way through to the file itself.

Tip! CSS is a fascinating language, and if you are already learning HTML, you could do well to learn CSS alongside this. Please go to the World Wide Web Consortium in order to learn more about this technology.

E-mail

In this day and age, the theme seems to be "communication". Electronic mail is one type of communication, and Opera has got a built-in, modular e-mail client for your convenience. Since this is an integral part of the browser, it's settings are handled in its own document.

File types

Opera handles a number of file types itself, but with the rise of the Internet as it is today, the number of what is considered to be standard media file types is increasing at such a rapid rate that a whole new class of applications have been created: Plug-ins. The "File types" part of the Preferences is the main place Opera handles plug-in settings, and as such, a very important menu. Here is an explanation of what the different fields in this menu are:

Type handling

The first thing you'll see on the "File types" menu is "Type handling". Here, Opera is set by default to "Trust server to always return correct file types", which means Opera will check the content-type in the HTTP header of a received file and continue to handle the file type in the manner it has been set up to handle that kind of file type.

If you uncheck this box, and the server gives that the file is either an "application/octet-stream" or "text/plain" in the HTTP header's content-type, Opera will check the extension of the file type and/or the actual content of the file by reading the first few bytes of it and attempt to execute this in the way the browser has been set up to respond to the file type, to see if it is behaving correctly.

If the testing works, Opera manipulates the file in the way it's set up to do in the file type's settings, but if the test fails, you'll be presented with the File download dialog from which you can select what Opera is to do with the file.

The files and their types

Below this option lies the meat of this menu proper. The Mime type part contains a listing of currently "installed" Mime types on the system, while the File extension(s) lists their file extensions.

Mime types

The "Mime type" list details what kind of MIME type the file is. This field is dependent on what kind of extension the file has, and should list the various file types, such as application/binary for example.

File extension(s)

The "File extension(s)" box shows the extension or extensions that are connected to the type of file this is, and is closely tied to the Mime type field.

There are also three buttons to note here:

New...

The "New..." button will let you make a new MIME type entry to the list in this menu. Pressing it will give you a dialog box with these details:

Delete

Pressing the "Delete" button will delete the highlighted filetype entry from the list of file types in Opera.

Edit...

The "Edit..." button will let you edit a MIME type entry on the list in this menu. Highlighting the entry you wish to edit and pressing the button will give you a dialog box with these details:

File type

The file type dialog will let you create a new MIME type file or edit an existing one, depending on whether you press the "New..." button or the "Edit..." button.

Type
In this box you can type in what kind of MIME type it is.

Press the "OK" button to finish creating the type, or cancel to exit the dialog box without saving changes made.

Extensions

The "File extension(s)" box shows the extension or extensions that are connected to the type of file this is, and is closely tied to the above.

Action

Next up is the "Action" part of the menu, where what Opera is supposed to do with the MIME type it receives from the server is detailed. There are several actions that Opera can perform:

Show download dialog
For some file types, you may wish to decide what to do with it manually on each encounter. These kinds of file types have their action set to "Ask user", and will prompt you with Opera's own File download dialog.

Open with Opera
If set to this, Opera will attempt to open and execute the file type itself. For documents of types like HTML, CSS, JPEG and GIF, this will be the natural setting.

Save to disk
Under the option "Save to disk", there are two options you may enable:

Open when transfer is complete
Opera can also be set to automatically start file types that benefit from this. These kinds of files are set to "Open when transfer is complete", and Opera initializes them by sending a message to the operating system that these files should be opened and executed.

Warning!
If used unwisely, this feature can be a potential security hazard, as it may initialize software on your system that should not be run under any circumstances, such as computer viruses, because they would then not require your confirmation to run or install on your system.

Don't ask for folder, but save directly to:
Whenever you download something like a program or a zipped file, for instance, with the file extensions .exe and .zip, Opera will initialize the operating system's standard "Save as..." box, enabling you to select the destination of the downloaded file on your local drive. This option will set a permanent download directory for the type of file you are downloading, such as C:\My Downloaded Programs for program files with the extension .exe and C:\My Zipped Archives for files with the extension of Zip Cool, eh?

Note! The default association "..." with no extension should be set to "Show download dialog". This makes sure that downloads are not just saved to the Cache directory, but that a dialog box prompts you what to do with that file. You can then save the document in a folder/directory of your choice.

The three remaining options under the "Action" section of this menu will, if either is selected, send the file to another application. The three may vary in execution, but their nature remains the same throughout:

Show with default application
If this is selected, Opera will send the received file to the operating system, which, depending on the kind of MIME type the file is of, will initiate the program that is associated with this kind of file on the system, e.g.: an .mp3 file is sent to the mp3 player that's set as the default mp3 player on the system.

Show with other application
An application that is installed on your system and is able to handle specific files, without having to be set as the default for the specific file type on the system, may be selected here. Enter the path to the application's .exe file in this box manually, or use the "..."-button to browse your way to it.

Show with plug-in
If a certain file type only works with one type of plug-in, or at the very most, a few types, such as is the case with some audio and video formats, for example .midi, the type with its extension(s) should be set to "Show with plug-in". The drop down box is accessed whenever you have several plug-ins installed that can handle the same kind of file, for you to select from.

History and cache

If set correctly, the Opera cache settings can be a great speed boost to your Internet surfing. There are a quite a few settings you can tamper with in this menu, in order to increase Opera's speed and off-line browsing capabilities, which will be explained in more detail now:

History

In this part of the menu, you get to decide how many lines you wish to allocate to the current window's history, the go-to dialog and the global history.

Window history
Set how many lines of history each window in Opera is to have. The default is 100, which translates to 50 for the "Back" button and 50 for the "Forward" button. The maximum is 255 lines.

Note! If this feature is disabled or the number of lines is set to 0 (zero), "Back" and "Forward" in Opera will stop to function, rendering this kind of navigation quite useless.

Go to dialog
The "Go to dialog" box is accessed through the hotkey F2. Here you can toggle it and set the number of lines its history consists of.

Global history
Opera's Global History has references to the Web sites and pages that have been visited over the last days/weeks/months/years, depending on whether or not it's enabled and how many lines it's been set to hold.

Disk cache

The disk cache refers to the part of the cache that's actually stored on your hard drive. It is set to 2000 Kbytes by default, but this is by no means a definitive limit, it is merely set in order for Opera to be used instantaneously by our users who are running a low spec system, such as a 386 with 6 MB of RAM and 6 MB of available hard drive space, the minimum specification for running Opera.

If you have more hard drive space available, you should experiment with this setting, as the more that's saved to the hard drive, the more you can set aside for reading later, when not connected to the Internet.

You may also select whether you wish Opera to cache Documents, Images and other things, or not, or to automatically empty the cache when exiting Opera, by enabling/disabling the checkboxes next to these options. If you wish to manually delete the contents of the cache, please press the "Empty now" button.

RAM-Cache

The RAM-Cache operates on a similar note as the Disk cache, with the exception that the documents and objects that are saved in the RAM are written to the disk later, not while Opera is active. The RAM-Cache is also divided into Images and Documents, which can be set automatically to 10% of your installed RAM by Opera, if you enable the checkbox here.

They can also be set separately, or disabled individually, if you wish to; If you are running a system with more RAM on it, it may well be worth it to set the RAM Cache to more than 500 Kbytes, but this must naturally be weighed against the number and type of applications that you are running at the same time as you run Opera - as well as the number of windows open in Opera at any given time. The hobbyist Internet surfer who are using an e-mail client and a music player at the same time as surfing the 'Net with Opera will naturally have more RAM available than the professional Web master or database developers, who are in need of a stable system as it is, in order to keep workstation downtime to a minimum.

Enabling the "Cache rendered images" setting lets Opera free up additional cache in order to download files quicker from the server. It's great to have if you are using a modem to connect to the Internet, and would like to download images and documents quicker than you normally do.

It is also not a good idea to set the RAM Cache too high, even if you do have the RAM to spare, as doing so will have Opera save and keep all of the contents it comes across on the Internet, in its cache, which will then have to be searched every time a call is made to a document or an image, which will consequently slow Opera down proportionally with the cache size.

Note! This is only a tentative table. As a general rule, the only way to check what's the perfect cache for your system, is to experiment with the cache settings.

Check modified

This is where you change the timing for when Opera checks whether an item you have in your cache has been modified on the Internet or not.

Setting it to check for modified documents, images or others at an infrequent pace will cause less Internet-traffic by your Opera, but may also lead to old information in your pages, as the pages grow very old before being updated.

The settings for Documents, Images and Others can be set individually on this menu.

You can also elect to have Opera always check redirected documents and images, so that not even sites that simply redirect you to another spot will be able to hide!

Hotlist

Here is where you change the settings that apply to the Hotlist pane on the left hand side of the Opera workspace and Bookmarks menu.

Hotlist window font

The font type and color of the Hotlist pane in the left hand side of the Opera workspace can be changed for your convenience. It comes set to the default font in Opera, but if you set it to "Custom", you'll be presented with your operating system's standard font properties menu from which you can easily set it's type and color.

Bookmarks

This part of the menu refers directly to the Bookmarks part of the Hotlists pane to the left in the Opera workspace.

Show "Last visited" column
When enabled, this will display the "Last visited" column to the immediate left of the "Title" column in the Hotlists menu.

Show "Created" column
When enabled, this will display the "Created" column to the far left of the "Title" column in the Hotlists menu.

Auto column resize
The columns in the bottom part of the Bookmarks part of the Hotlists pane will resize to fit the entries automatically if this is set.

Show address in status line
Showing the URL of the link the cursor is currently hovering above in the Status line is enabled by default. Disabling this option will leave the Status line blank when cursor moves hovers over a hyperlink.

Bookmarks menu

Settings directly for the bookmark list on the menu bar.

Show commands
There are several commands in the Bookmarks menu on the menu bar. Disabling this option will remove them. It comes as enabled by default.

Max menu item width
Here, the item width of the items on the Bookmarks menu is set by characters. The minimum is 10.

Include hotlist when tiling or cascading windows

At the bottom of the preferences box you will find a check box. This is for use when you undock your hotlist from the left side of your workspace. If it is unchecked, Opera will leave your hotlist at its current size when tiling or cascading documents; enabling this will cause Opera to treat the hotlist like any other window.

Instant messaging

Opera's built-in instant messaging client is based on Mirabilis' ICQ client, which means that you will be able to communicate with all users of ICQ through Opera. Though the instant messenger itself is controlled mostly from the Messaging menu on the main Opera menu bar, the preferences contain some options for you to manipulate.

Instant messaging

Here, you can set Opera to automatically connect to the ICQ server upon startup of the program. If you use ICQ a lot, then this may well be what you should do.

Server

Although the current instant messenger in Opera will only communicate with programs running on the ICQ protocol, we have plans to enhance the feature as the Internet Engineering Task Force are setting up a standard protocol for instant messengers which we will be supporting when it's done. The fields in this part of the menu, Address, Port and Transport, are not currently user manipulative because they can only be used with the ICQ network, though this will change.

Languages

There are thousands and thousands of natural languages in this world, and the Internet being what it is, these languages may appear just about anywhere on the Web, and in any kind of document. Opera's on the ball, and this menu is where you can configure Opera to do your bidding.

User Interface

The menus, settings and dialogs of the Opera browser can be displayed in numerous languages by changing the language file Opera uses, selected in this part of the menu. Here is located a drop-down box containing first and foremost the entry <Default language>, which refers to Opera's default language, English. Additional languages you may have installed for your Opera will be displayed in this drop down box too, for you to select. Please note that if you select another language for your Opera, the browser needs to be restarted for it to take effect.

Web pages

The open Web standards that Opera supports cater for all kinds of languages in Web sites, and Opera supports this aspect by allowing users to select which language a Web document should display in if the server provides a set of alternatives.

In the field marked "Preferred language for web pages", your language preferences are kept, in the order in which you choose.

Accept Language

In order for your Opera to be able to send a message to the server it connects to that it would like the server's information presented in a particular language, other than what the server has set up to be the default language of the Web pages, you will have to add the languages that you wish your Opera to use, by clicking on the "Add" button in the "Web pages" part of the "Language" menu. You will be presented with this sub-menu.

Here, you'll find a list of languages Opera can accept, going from Afar, [aa] to Yiddish, [ji]. Select a language by highlighting it and press the "OK" button to have the language be added to the filed marked "Preferred language for web pages".

In addition, there's also an option to add a user-defined language in this sub-menu by typing it into the "User defined" field and pressing "OK".

Several languages can be added to this list and you can use the "Move up" and "Move down" buttons to move the language in question closer to the top, and hence the most preferred on the list, or to the bottom, and hence the least preferred on the list, respectively. If you wish to remove a language from the list, you may do so by highlighting it and pressing the "Remove" button.

Note! Although Opera 5 now is able to utilize this kind of client-to-server technology, Unicode, the standard that displays characters outside of the Westernized alphabet range, is not yet implemented, so sites using Chinese, Japanese or Arabic font sets, for example, will not render correctly. Instead of the character that should have been rendered, Opera will display a small square box.

Multimedia

In the early days of the Internet, mere text was enough to satisfy those hungry for information. As this hunger grew stronger, definable colors and image support was added, but still, the masses demanded more, and soon, other multimedia formats were introduced. Opera is a full-fledged multimedia Internet browser, and in keeping with the spirit of the browser, this is the place to go to configure Opera for multimedia access.

Images

Image support is naturally a part of Opera, but given the nature of picture formats, they are usually quite large files that can take quite a lot of time downloading from the server they are on. Therefore, Opera can be set to handle images in one of three ways:

• Show no images
• Show cached images only
• Show all images

The first option will make Opera skip image tags in documents and replace the image that would have been presented with a box displaying the alternative text that has been entered by the creator of the Web page, or, if there is no text available, the word Image will be displayed in a frame. The second option will show images that are already loaded and are placed in the Opera cache. If the page incorporates images that are not located in the Opera cache, the alternative text will be displayed, or, if there is no text available, the word Image will be displayed in a frame instead of the image. The third option will download and display all images that are of an image type that Opera supports. (See "Default browser")

JPEG images

Pressing this button will take you to a menu allows you to configure how JPEG images are to be handled. By default, Opera will cater for the bare minimum, allowing everyone to view this kind of images, so tuning can be handy in this respect.

DCT method
Discrete Cosine Transformation (DCT) is a process in which images are calculated from one type of data to another. Opera will handle the data in this type of calculations as Integers by default, but Opera users who are running systems that are equipped with a floating-point math coprocessor should switch to Floating-point in order to have the calculations performed faster than by use of integers. Alternatively for those without floating-point math coprocessors, but with the needed extra memory, the Fast integer option might be worth trying.

Smoothing
Off by default, this will give smoothing in order to counteract the jaggedness of images which should be displayed with more colors than the current display setup can handle if it is set to "On". The downside is naturally a more mushy appearance of the images, as their edges are smoothed.

Dithering (<= 256 colors)
Dithering is the process in which an algorithm is used to calculate which colors are to be displayed when the colors the image calls for is not available in the current display setup, in order to give the closest impression of the image. Floyd-Steinberg is by far the best, but processor-hungry, algorithm, which is why Opera can be set to either Ordered, meaning the color is first ordered, then picked, or None , which will simply pick the color that is nearest in the currently available palette - nice enough for large areas of virtually the same color, but far from best on for example portraits.

Passes (<= 256 colors)
If you are running with fewer than or 256 colors (8-bit), you would probably find that Opera's image handling benefits from using Two passes, i.e. calculating and painting the image twice rather than only once, with the obvious side effect of grabbing more processor speed. One pass will be easier on your processor than on your eyes.

Progressive JPEG loading
Progressive JPEG loading is a way of displaying a layout of the JPEG images while Opera is still downloading them. This means that you'll first see a black-and-white contour image which proceeds to gradually becoming more and more detailed and colorful. Disabling this will simply have Opera wait until the image is downloaded before displaying it for you.

Enable animation
There are image formats that can contain animation, often observed as advertisement banners. Disabling this option will display the first image in the series and no others.

Video

There is an important settings regarding online video presentations here:

Enable streaming video
Some Web pages incorporate streaming video in to their pages. If you do not wish to see this type of media, simply disable this option.

Sound

Enable sound in documents
Web sites may contain background sounds and music enrich the Internet experience for the user, but of course, it is solely up to the user whether or not to allow such sound and music by toggling the setting here.

News settings

News groups have been around since the beginning of the Internet, and to cater for this need, Opera has got an internal news reader for handling news groups. The settings for the news reader are detailed on the news reader page.

Paths

Information on the paths to a number of the applications you can connect to Opera is located here.

Opera directory
Here is the path to location of the Opera files written. It is advised against changing this option unless you are experiencing problems with your Opera. Clicking on the "..."-button will open the operating system's standard "Open" box, in which you can browse your way to the application.

Download directory
Enter a default folder for downloading files here.

Source viewer
All Web pages are written in markup languages, such as HTML, XHTML and XML, open standards which can be viewed for inspection by opening the Web page in a text editor. Provided your system has a text editor, you can set the path to this program here and use it to open the documents you view in Opera. Use the "View/Source" or "View/Frame Source" menus to do so. Clicking on the "..."-button will open the operating system's standard "Open" box, in which you can browse your way to the application.

Telnet program
A telnet program can be connected to Opera in order to connect remotely to other hosts. Telnet programs are often provided with the operating system, though they may also be developed by third parties. Clicking on the "..."-button will open the operating system's standard "Open" box, in which you can browse your way to the application.

TN3270
TN3270 is a standard protocol that utilizes TCP/IP for communication with the IBM mainframe. It also addresses access to the host via the TN3270 is a standard protocol that utilizes TCP/IP for communication with the IBM mainframe. It also addresses access to the host via the Internet. Details of the TN3270 standard are referenced in the IETF RFC 1576 specification. You usually require a user name and password to gain access. You must buy your TN3270 application separately from your supplier. Clicking on the "..."-button will open the operating system's standard "Open" box, in which you can browse your way to the application.

Personal Information

Ever get tired of filling in all those forms in the Web? Well, this is the solution! Go into this sub-menu and enter the information here, and you'll be able to access it from the right-click menu's spawned child menus forever after.

The information entered into this menu is not limited. You will have to right-click in the individual form fields and use "Insert Address" to access the entries Full Name, First Name, Surname, Address, City / Town, State and Country. The "Full Name" entry is the concatenation of the "First Name" and "Surname" fields. The "Insert Contacts" entry will access Telephone, Telefax, E-mail, Home Page, Special 1, Special 2 and Special 3.

Tip! - Opera does not save your passwords to the disk because this is not a safe way of storing these passwords, but one way of using the "Special" fields is to contain your passwords there. Again, this is not a safe way to store your passwords, and you should not use this for storing sensitive data, such as passwords for your online bank account or things like that, but it can be helpful when having to access your Web mail service several times a day.

Plug-ins

Plug-ins are special applications what are used in conjunction with the Internet browser to provide rich content either through the browser or linked to it. Please read more about plug-ins on the plug-ins page in this very Help.

Plug-ins

The "Plug-ins" part of the "Plug-ins" category has these elements:

Enable plug-ins
Here, you can select Opera to not engage plug-ins even if the browser comes across their file types in the documents that are accessed.

Find plug-ins
To the very right in this part of the menu is a button named "Find plug-ins". This button is used to look for all the plug-ins in the directory specified in "Opera.ini" file. Usually, this looks something like this:

PLUGIN PATH=C:\Program Files\Opera\plugins

By default, Opera's plug-in path is underneath the main Opera directory, but you can also reference another directory - Netscape's for instance - in order to avoid file duplication.

Plug-ins field
The field to the bottom of this menu contains the plug-ins that are installed for your Opera. The list can be sorted by Name, Description and Path, by clicking the appropriate bars.

JavaScript

Scripting languages were originally developed to allow for greater interactivity in Web pages. Opera 5 gives the user the option to decide how the browser is to handle scripting languages.

Enable JavaScript
Opera supports the standardization of the most popular scripting language on the Web, JavaScript, called ECMAScript, and of course allows you to turn scripting languages off for your convenience.

Report JavaScript errors
When a script is not written correctly by the server, instead of simply not carrying out the script, Opera will display an error message that the script cannot be executed. Remove the check mark to disable these kinds of messages.

Java

The last section on the "Plug-ins" menu contains a toggle for Opera's native Java. You may enable and disable Java by checking and unchecking the checkbox here.

Tip! Read more about Java and Opera on the plug-ins page!

Privacy

Privacy on the Internet is always something to be aware of. This section contains two important settings that you should be vary of when reviewing your own personal privacy in Opera:

Privacy

Under the "Privacy" part of the menu, this is what you'll find:

Enable referrer logging

It is common practice for Web sites to refer to each other, and indeed many Web sites behave differently according to which page you were referred from. Disabling this option will prevent this kind of logging.

Enable automatic redirection

Ever so often, a Web page will redirect you to another Web page when you go to it. This may take more time than you're willing to commit, so Opera allows you to turn this feature off.

Use cookies to trace password protected documents

By default, when Opera shuts down it removes all references to secure pages, cookies set by secure servers, and forms that were used to transport passwords. If you check this option, Opera will go one step further: it will trace interactions between cookies. So if a cookie set by a secure page interacts with one set by an insecure page, Opera will destroy BOTH cookies, not just the cookie set by the secure page. This gives you the highest possible level of security.

Cookies

One thing that seems to be very much in the eyes of the specialist media as well as on the mind of many users is the "security" hole of cookies. Actually, cookies are small text files that store information you have given about yourself to identify you on the Internet, or to store your settings for a site, set by servers for servers to reclaim, and are nowhere near as dangerous as they are sometimes portrayed.

However, they can used to collect information about your Internet usage pattern, and can therefore be a grave invasion of privacy if used in this way, particularly in the way they are set by servers.

Opera has a built-in cookie filtering facility, the settings of which are changed in this part of the menu.

The first drop down menu will let you select one of the following options:

Automatically accept all cookies
Accepts cookies regardless of who sets them and where they are referred.

Accept only cookies from selected servers
Use this to accept cookies from the servers you select.

Display received cookies
If this is selected, each and every cookie that is sent to Opera will display in an accept/reject dialog box.

Don't accept cookies
All cookies received will be discarded.

The second drop-down menu applies to all the settings except for "Do not accept cookies". It sets the handling of cookies to:

Only accept cookies for the server
Which will accept all cookies set by the active server for the active server or by other servers for themselves, inside of the domain.

Don't accept third party cookies
Does not accept cookies that are set by third parties to apply to the active server or other servers in the domain.

Display third party cookies
This option will accept all cookies that are set by the server for the server or by the domain for the domain in the manner which is selected in the box above, but will prompt you for action when Opera receives a cookie from a third party.

Accept from any servers
Accept all cookies from all servers.

Cookie server filters

Cookies received are automatically filtered unless you have them set Opera to automatically accept all cookies or disable all cookies. These are the cookie filters:

Accept from server
The servers that are listed here are servers you will accept cookies from. Type the complete server name, for example www.opera.com in the box to the far bottom and press the "Add" button to add them to the list. If you change your mind, you can press the "Remove" button to remove the cookie. Note the "Refuse" button on the left hand side of the list. This button is used to selectively remove the highlighted entry on this list and place it in the list for "Refuse from server", detailed below.

Accept from domains
It is possible to accept cookies from domains also. The domain name should be written akin to .com or .opera.com in the box to the far bottom. The "Add" button will place the domain in the list field. Domains can be removed from this box by highlighting them and pressing the "Remove" button. Note the "Refuse" button on the left hand side of the list. This button is used to selectively remove the highlighted entry on this list and place it in the list for "Refuse from domain", detailed below.

Accept third party from server
Trusted third party servers may be defined in this box so that your Opera copy will always accept cookies set to other servers from the server(s) defined here. Type the complete server name, for example www.goodserver.com in the box to the far bottom and press the "Add" button to add them to the list. If you change your mind, you can press the "Remove" button to remove the cookie.

Accept third party from domains
Likewise, trusted third party servers may be defined in this box so that your Opera copy will always accept cookies set to other domains from the domains defined here. The domain name should be written akin to .com or .gooddomain.com in the box to the far bottom. The "Add" button will place the domain in the list field. Domains can be removed from this box by highlighting them and pressing the "Remove" button.

Refuse from server
Conversely, it is possible to selectively refuse cookies from certain servers. Enter the name of the server, e.g. www.microsoft.com or www.netscape.com into the box to the far bottom of the menu and press the "Add" button to add the server to the list. Again, servers on this list can be removed by highlighting them and clicking the "Remove" button. Note the "Accept" button on the left hand side of the list. This button is used to selectively remove the highlighted entry on this list and place it in the list for "Accept from server", detailed above.

Refuse from domains
As above, it is possible to selectively refuse cookies set for specific domains. This is done by entering the domains into the box to the far bottom like this: .com and adding them to the list by pressing the "Add" button. Note the "Accept" button on the left hand side of the list. This button is used to selectively remove the highlighted entry on this list and place it in the list for "Accept from domain", detailed above.

Refuse third party from server
Distrusted third party servers may be defined in this box so that your Opera copy will never accept cookies set to other servers from the server(s) defined here. Type the complete server name, for example www.badserver.com in the box to the far bottom and press the "Add" button to add them to the list. If you change your mind, you can press the "Remove" button to remove the cookie.

Refuse third party from domains
Likewise, mistrusted third party servers may be defined in this box so that your Opera copy will always accept cookies set to other domains from the domains defined here. The domain name should be written akin to .com or .baddomain.com in the box to the far bottom. The "Add" button will place the domain in the list field. Domains can be removed from this box by highlighting them and pressing the "Remove" button.

Allow illegal paths
Cookies that are set with illegal paths may be considered an invasion of privacy, or at least they may not work as intended. This option will allow illegal pathed cookies regardless.

Refuse illegal paths
The previous option would allow cookies with paths illegal path statements, but it you want the exact opposite, Opera will let you refuse cookies with illegal paths. This is what you should select then.

The three remaining options in this part of the "Network" menu are:

Throw away new cookies on exit
There are times when you may have to accept cookies from servers that you do not particularly want to accept cookies from. In order to avoid having to keep these cookies longer than needed, enable this option is to discard of the cookies when you exit Opera.

Display warning for illegal domains
If checked, Opera will display a warning dialog if a server wishes to set a cookie to your system for a top level domain, such as .com, .org or .org, which is not a "legal" way of setting cookies.

Display warning for illegal path
If checked, Opera will display a warning dialog if a server wishes to set a cookie to your system that has a wrong path statement on where it is set to be allowed.

Search

The progress bar of any window open in the Opera workspace contains a search field. This field can be used to search the Internet through one of several well-known search engines. This part of the preferences contain these options:

Default search for new windows
In this field you will see a listing of search engines to the left and a keyword to the right. The keyword can be used to use the search faster, simply type in the keyword followed by a space and then your search phrase.

For example, typing in "g" followed by "Opera" will search for the word "Opera" through the search engine that's been allotted the keyword "g", in this case Google.

Number of search results
Further below you'll see a drop-down list from which you may select how many results you want Opera to return through the search engine. The list goes:

• 10
• 25
• 50
• 75
• 100

And that's about it! Enjoy this great feature!

Security

Security on the Internet with regards to transaction is a must when it comes to evolving the Internet as a viable platform for commerce, and, keeping in line with the spirit of Opera Software's goal of creating the best Internet browser available, Opera fully supports the de facto standard security protocols on the Internet, SSL v2 and SSL v3, offering encryption levels from 40-bit all the way up to 128-bit, making Opera the most secure browser money can buy! Please go to the security page to learn more about this matter!

Sounds

Here a list of events that can be associated with a sound is shown. To associate a sound with an event, you choose first the event and then the sound.

Enable sounds

Sounds for events have their uses, but are not always appropriate. Due to Opera's philosophy of user configurability, you can toggle the sound effects here.

Start and exit

As in the name, these are preferences and settings that work with Opera regardless of the other preferences that have been set in other menus. Here, you will find actions for the startup and shutdown processes.

Start

This is where you set Opera to start up. Your options are:

Show saved windows
This will open Opera with the windows, their active page and the active history of the window, that were open when the program last was closed.

Show saved windows using global homepages
If you have set specific windows to have window home pages, you should have Opera start up with these windows and their respective window home pages.

Show single window with global home page
As above, you need to set a global home page first, and then you can have Opera open with a window and the global home page.

Exit

Opera can perform certain actions when the program is closed down. Note that these actions are operating system dependent.

Confirm exit
This setting is enabled by default, making Opera ask you for confirmation before you close the program. Disabling this will let Opera close down as most other applications do.

Close dial-up connections
Opera can let the operating system know that the program is closing down and that it will no longer need to keep the dialer connection open. Off by default.

Save window settings
If enabled, Opera will save the state of the Opera workspace when exiting, which is a really good feature as it enables you to pick up where you left when next you return to Opera.

Window storage file

Here, the window storage file mentioned above is detained more. Use the "..." button to bring up the operating system's standard browsing dialog to browse your way though to either previously saved window storage files, or to a directory in which you can create a new one.

Toolbars

This menu is where you can set how most of Opera's interface is going to look. Options such as which button set to use in Opera, whether or not you even want Opera to have the Button Bar enabled, how the Status Line is to handle and which Fonts and Colors you wish to display, are all located here.

Images

Here, in the "Image set:" box, you can choose which button set Opera is to use. The Opera browser comes with two button sets already installed as standard, but further button sets can be downloaded from the buttons page on our Web site for use. An extensive library of both user-created and professional button sets are found on this page, and we even hold contests from time to time, for new, user created button sets.

Local window button bar

These buttons are located on the windows inside the Opera workspace. Most of them allow for easy user configuration of their respective functions and are grouped thereafter.

Local window temporary buttons (displayed when loading document)
Stop button Percentage of document loaded Number of images found/loaded
Security level icons
No Security Low Security Medium Security High Security
Image view button bar
Load and show images Do not show images Show loaded images only
Document view button bar
Document mode User mode
Print view buttons
Print View Printview as screen Printview active frame Printview all frames

Toolbars

Located in this menu group are these options, that decide how buttons are displayed in Opera's main button bar and other local bars:

Images only
The default, this will display only images on the buttons on the various button bars.

Images and text
This option will show both images and text, if you select it. Handy if you're unsure of what a button does!

Text only
The last of the three, you will only be presented with text, no button images, if this is what you select.

Always show border
If you set this to "enabled", all buttons will display with a border around them.

Always show color
The buttons are all images of either GIF or JPEG types, and if this option is on, their colors will always shine bright. Turn this off to let the ones which aren't active fade into the background.

Use same text width
Enable this option to make sure all the text-descriptions of the buttons are the same width, for clarity.

Progress bar

The progress bar is where you enter the URL for the specific pages in Opera. After entering a URL and clicking on "Enter", it switches to a progress gauge which tells you how much of the document you entered the URL for has been downloaded, how long it's taken and much is left in percent of the whole. You also see the icon displaying the security level of the page you are on in this menu, the button for toggling images between "Don't load and show images", "Show loaded images only" and "Load and show images", the button for toggling between "User mode" and "Document mode", as well as the button for going into print preview mode and the "Stop" button.

Here, you can choose if you wish the progress bar to be displayed with either:

Images only
The default, this will display only images on the buttons on the progress bar, with no descriptions.

Images and text
This option will show both images and text, if you select it. Handy if you're unsure of what a button does!

Text only
The last of the three, you will only be presented with text, no button images, if this is what you select.

Fonts and colors

Opera can be configured to use other fonts and colors than the standard color of the operating system. Go ahead, let your creative juices flow and create a look that's all yours! Opera is set to "Use system default" as standard, but disabling this option will let you directly control the appearance of the browser. Click on the buttons to the right of the description to change the settings.

Normal text
This sets the font type and color of the standard text in the program, bar the exception of the menu bar.

Inactive text
Conversely, this sets the font type and color for the inactive text, e.g. menus that aren't active and inactive widows in the Opera workspace.

Background
You can set a default color for the background of the main layout of the Opera browser here.

Button background
The button background shows up when the mouse cursor is over the button. For greater effect, set something completely different as the button background color.

Progress
This will set the progress bar to whatever color you choose in this field.

Popup help

Popup help is usually very handy, but like most things in Opera, it can be disabled quite easily in this menu. You can selectively enable or disable these options:

Popup addresses of links
When the mouse cursor is over a hyperlink, a popup menu will display with the URL of the link.

Popup button description
A description of the current button the mouse cursor is hovering above, this option is enabled by default.

Popup element title
If enabled, titles of elements on Web pages will pop up.

Windows

Located here are several options and settings that will define the appearance of how the windows in the Opera workspace looks. Note that most of these settings can be toggled by using the keyboard shortcuts details of which are located in this very Help.

General

This part of the menu configures how Opera is set to work. First and foremost, Opera's way of handling the configurable parts:

Tile windows automatically
Enabling this will make the windows you open in the Opera workspace tile side by side automatically. Use this with care. Or watch the wacky effect! ;)

Avoid flicker
This option is enabled by default, and will doublebuffer the Web documents in order to avoid flickering on images, but uses more RAM cache. If you wish not to use this much memory, disable it.

Foreground skin image
This allows you to choose an image that will form your foreground, filling Opera's buttons and toolbars.

Background skin image
Choose a background image here, an image that fills Opera's workspace.

Document windows

Most of the things you see on the windows in the Opera workspace can be toggled on and off. The below options are enabled by default:

Maximize new window when workspace is empty
If there are no windows open, or if your have got windows open and they are maximized, this option will maximize new windows opened, provided it is enabled.

Allow documents to create windows
Frequently, Web pages will open up other active windows when accessed, through the use of scripting languages. This is enabled by default, but may not always be what the user wants, so Opera gives you the option to disable this specific feature here!

Open new windows automatically
This option opens a new window for each bookmark you open from either the bookmark pane on the right side of the Opera workspace or from the bookmarks drop down list.

Open bookmarks in new window
This causes new bookmarks to open in new windows, rather than replacing the content in an existing window.

Show news toolbar when appropriate
If this is enabled, a specific button bar will appear on the news reader windows in Opera. Click here for more.

Show scroll bars
The bars for scrolling up-to-down, and left-to-right will automatically disappear when they are not needed, but if you wish to, disable them either in this menu or by pressing the hotkey CTRL + F7.

Show address bar
The address bar can be disabled either by this menu or by pressing the hotkey CTRL + F8.

Show window size
Ever wanted to see just how big the window is? Enabling this option will show the size of the window in width by height, e.g. 600:800.

Tip! This is a great way for Web developers to check how their Web pages will look on screens with lower resolution than their own - just for that pixel perfect appearance.

Default scaling
One of Opera's unique features is the ability to zoom in and out on not only text in documents, but even images, meaning you won't just see the text enlarged, but the entire page! Naturally, the default scaling is to 100%, but you can change it to whatever you want by using this pull down menu.

Note! You can select different scalings for all the open windows in the Opera workspace independently from what is the default scaling either by using the drop down box which is located in the progress bar, or by using the hotkeys + and -, zooming in and out respectively. The * key on the numeric keypad will reset the active window to the default scaling.

Apply settings to open windows
Lastly, you may press this button to go have Opera update all the open windows with these settings without having to exit the Preference Menus.

Window Menu

These options allow you to control the size of the dropdown Window menu:

Limit number of windows listed
If you enable this, Opera will limit the number of windows that appear in the list to the number you specify.