Cool Opera Features

Below is a selection of the features we think make Opera stand out from other browsers. For a more complete list of the current features, take a look at our feature page.

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The coolest features

Mouse gestures

Opera's unique mouse gestures can speed up your browsing. Go back and forth, open and close new windows, or perform other routine operations efficiently using a gesture of the mouse. Find out how on Opera's mouse gestures page.

Keyboard shortcuts

Nearly every operation in Opera can be done using a keyboard shortcut. This includes navigating back and forward in your browsing history, opening and closing pages, and much more. Here are some of the most useful keyboard shortcuts. For a complete list of keyboard shortcuts, press Help > Opera Help > Keyboard.

Fast searches

Searching with Opera is easy and fast. Next to the address bar there is a search field. Click in that field, type the word(s) you want to search for and press Enter. Your search results will be displayed in the active page window. Use the dropdown to change search engines.

Tip: If you want to look at several of the search results, press Ctrl+Shift when clicking on the link you want to see, and it will open in the background while you are looking through the rest of the results. You can also use the Fast Forward button to make Opera automatically go to the next page in the search result listings.

You can also search in the address bar using search keywords. Opera has several keywords available that provide quick access to several popular and useful search engines. For example, to search for "cakes" using the Google search engine, type this in the address bar (without the quotes), and press Enter;

"g cakes"

You can see a list of available search shortcuts using Tools > Preferences > Search. To add a new search shortcut, click the "Add" button, and fill in the details of the search engine. To simplify this process, Opera allows you to convert almost any search engine field into a search shortcut. Simply open the Web page for the search engine, right click in the search field, and select Create search.

Block pop-ups

By default, Opera will block pages from opening pop-up windows without your interaction, and this is usually the preferred setting. Select to allow or deny this function completely from Tools > Preferences > General > Pop-ups. You can also choose to have them opened in the background, or of course to refuse or allow them all. This can also be set in the Quick Preferences, displayed by pressing F12.

When Opera blocks a pop-up, a notification will be displayed. Clicking on the notification, or the trash icon on the page toolbar, allows you to open the popup that was blocked.

Undo Close Page

If you close a page by mistake, or if you want to bring back a page you visited earlier that session, you can use the usual "undo" keyboard shortcut; press Ctrl+Z to get the page back. You can also reopen closed pages using the trash icon on the tab toolbar.

Notes

Speed up researching with the notes feature.

Content Blocking

As well as being able to alter several aspects of page display using the View menu, Opera also offers a content blocking feature. This allows you to selectively block undesirable image or plug-in content on Web pages.

While viewing a page, right click on the page, and select Block content. Opera will enter content blocking mode, and will highlight all content that is eligible for blocking. Click on the content that you want to block, then click "Done" button when you have selected everything you want to block. By default, Opera will block everything in the same folder as the images and plug-ins that you click on. You can choose to block only the exact file by holding Shift while you click.

Site Preferences

Opera allows you to set several preferences for individual sites using site preferences.

Widgets

Widgets are small Web applications that live outside the main Opera window. To learn more about widgets in Opera, please see widgets.opera.com.

BitTorrent

As well as being able to make use of normal file downloads from the Web, Opera also supports download of files using BitTorrent. For more information, see Help > Opera Help > BitTorrent.

The start-up dialog

When starting Opera, you can decide whether to:

Continue from last time
Continue from a saved session
Start with your home page
Start with a blank page

You can also disable the start-up dialog if you always start Opera in the same way. You can set all this by going to Tools > Preferences > General.

When you have a set of pages open, such as your Web mail, your regular chat room and your favorite news site, you can save them as a "session". If you then close all open pages, and load the session later on, you get the same set of pages back. To save one or several sessions, open the pages you want the session to contain, go to File > Sessions > Save this session and choose a name for that session, which will then be available for you to open whenever you wish.

Customize it

Opera can be customized in many ways, and you can make it look just as you want to. You can add or remove buttons and search fields, change the colors or skin, move or remove bars, and so forth. Most of this is can be done via the Tools > Appearance menu, or by right-clicking on the items you want to change. Read more about this in the section on Opera's user interface.

View Options

The icon on the right side of the address bar toggles display of the view bar. The view bar contains several options to help alter the appearence of a Web page to suit your needs. For pages that use a font that is too small, there is the zoom field, that allows you to zoom in on the page to make it easier to read. For pages that try to use too much space, and produce a horizontal scrollbar, there is the "Fit to width" option. This readjusts the page to remove the horizontal scrollbar, while still making it readable at almost any window width.

The "Show images" option allows you to choose if the page should be able to load all images, cached images, or no images. The "Author mode - User mode" option allows you to enable and disable style sheets on the page, including user style sheets or the in-built style sheets. For further details, see the Opera style sheets tutorial.

Voice

Opera for Windows 2000 and XP is able to read the contents of pages, obay spoken commands, and even interact with voice-enabled pages. For further details, see the Opera voice tutorial

Hotclick

If you double-click a word on a Web page, or select some text and right-click it, the Hotclick menu will pop up. You can now choose different actions for the word or text you selected, like searching the Web, translating it to a different language, or looking it up in a dictionary or encyclopedia.

Wand

The Wand is Opera's password manager. When you log in to a site, the Wand offers to remember the username and password for you. When you return to the site later, you can click the Wand button on the main bar to log in automatically. The log-in fields will appear with a yellow border when a saved Wand log-in exists.

If you prefer to always log in to Web sites manually, you can turn the Wand off completely. Note: Your username and password are scrambled before saving to disk. However, to get full protection, create a master password in the Security preferences, go to Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Security.

You can remove stored passwords using Tools > Preferences > Wand > Passwords. You can also choose to enter information about yourself into the Wand configuration. This can be entered into form fields by right-clicking in them, and selecting Insert personal.

Spell Checker

Opera can integrate with the Aspell spell checker, and the Mac OS X spell checker, to allow you to check spelling in text inputs, form fields, and e-mail, including Web mail systems. Find out how to check spelling with Opera.

JavaScript Options

The "JavaScript options..." button in Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Content allows you to enable or disable certain JavaScript functions, depending on your needs. Although these functions do have valid uses, they can sometimes be an annoyance when browsing the Web. You can prevent pages from using JavaScript to:

Resize your windows
Move your windows around
Raise, or move a window to the foreground
Lower, or move a window to the background
Change the text on the status field
Intercept the right mouse button
Hide your address bar

There is also an option to open Opera's JavaScript console when a JavaScript error is found in a page. This is not very useful in your daily browsing, but it can come in handy when debugging scripts or trying to figure out why a page using JavaScript does not work correctly in Opera.

Opera also allows you to run a User JavaScript on pages that you visit, allowing you to control what scripts on the page are allowed to do. For further details, see the User JavaScript tutorial.