Opera's Panels

The panels, toggled by pressing F4, are available as buttons on the panel selector, by default placed on the left of Opera's screen space. You can add and remove panels of your own (see below), and choose which ones to present in the panel selector. Panel and panel selector placement can also be changed by right-clicking them.

Some of the panels are hidden by default, and will appear when you enable certain features. For example, the chat panel will only appear after you have created at least one chat account. Other panels may not be visible by default, but you can enable them using Tools > Appearance > Panels.

< Previous | Start | Next >

Bookmarks

"Bookmarks" is a list of shortcuts to Web pages you wish to return to, and the bookmark panel is where you access, add, remove, edit, and sort your bookmarks in Opera. (Note: You can also go to the Bookmark menu and choose "Manage bookmarks" there, to get a larger view for editing.) Here are some of the things you can do:

Import

You can also import your bookmarks or favorites from other browsers. To do this, go to the File menu and select Import and export, and then which program you want to import from. Note that it might be a good idea to create a folder in the Opera Bookmarks first, and put all your imported bookmarks into one folder.

Mail

This panel is hidden by default and will appear only after you have created at least one e-mail or news account. The e-mail and news client and panel are covered in the Opera Mail Tutorial

Contacts

This panel lists your contacts. This panel is hidden by default and will appear only after you have created at least one e-mail, news, or chat account. Type in the name of the contact in the "Quick find" field, and Opera will start matching your search entry as you type. Click on the name of a contact to to view all your e-mail correspondence with that contact. Right-click on the contact and select "Properties" to view or change details, such as name, e-mail address, chat nickname, home page, notes or even an image of that contact.

History

The History panel lists the Web pages you have visited lately. Forgot the URL to that page you saw yesterday? Just go here and look or search for it; the "Quick find" feature makes searches highly efficient. Click on any of the pages in the history to go to them. You can change how many pages (if any) you want Opera to remember, by going to Tools > Preferences > Advanced > History. If you want to delete addresses from the History list, just select them and press Delete.

Note that you can access the full History window, which has times and dates for the pages as well, by pressing Ctrl+Alt+H or by going to Tools > History.

Transfers

When you download a file, it will appear in the Transfers panel. You can select the file you are downloading there, and choose to stop, resume or retransfer the download. At the bottom part of the panel, you can see information about the download speed, size of the file, and where you are downloading from.

To access the full Transfers page, press Ctrl+Alt+T or go to Tools > Transfers.

Links

The Links panel displays all the links in your current page. To go to any of the links in that page, click on the links in the panel (or of course click on the link in the page itself). Use the "Quick find" feature to quickly locate particular links or linked file types from the document. If you click on the "Lock" button, the Links panel will keep the links currently in the panel even if you go to another page. Click "Lock" again to change this.

To access the links listing as a page, press Ctrl+Alt+L or go to Tools > Links.

Widgets

The widgets panel allows you to group widgets into folders, as well as opening and deleting them. To access the full Widgets window, go to Widgets > Manage widgets.

Windows

The Windows panel lists the currently open pages. You can rearrange them, move the pages outside Opera, close them and much more. This panel is hidden by default and will appear only after you enable it using Tools > Appearance > Panels.

Notes

Speed up researching with the notes feature. Jot down a note in conjunction with a Web page, drag the note (or right-click and paste) to an e-mail message, Web form field, or chat conversation to share it with others, or simply store your notes for future reference. When notes get plentiful, you can arrange them in folders.

More information on how to use notes.

Search

Opera comes with a selection of built-in searches. Access them in a single search field in the "Search" panel.

Adding Web pages as panels

To show a Web page in the panels, press Ctrl+D to bookmark it, and then select to show it as a panel. Some Web pages provide special links (rel="sidebar") to add Web pages as panels. Note that pressing the "View" button in the panel and selecting "Small-Screen Rendering" will force most Web pages into more panel-friendly formats.

Tip: Right-click the Web page area in the panel for multiple choices.