Opera : Java Glossary

It optionally comes with the Java plug-in built-in as its native Java. It will happily work with the latest Java plug-in as well. This is the browser I use most often myself, and my web host (Inter-Corporate) also uses. It is one of the few browsers that directly supports RSS (RDF Site Summary) feeds. Dragonfly is a tool similar to Firefox Firebug to help you figure out how CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) style sheet entries interact to decide the attributes of a given bit of text.

The secret to Opera’s speed is a technique called pipelining which allows it to download many small files almost as fast as if there were one big one.

Benefits

• Opera is a fast light browser. Opera handles CSS style sheets better than the competition, though it still has bugs. It even supports some CSS3 features.
• One of the nicest features of Opera is the fast file download. It gets on with the download in the background even before you have finished typing the file name to save as.
• Opera has a rich selection of root certificates pre-installed. Any certificate authority can submit root certificates to be included.
• Opera print options lets you control whether background colours are printed and whether there are headers and footers.
• Opera gives you options to control the display including:
  • Your personal overriding CSS style sheet.
  • Ability to configure fonts and sizes.
  • Zoom to control the magnification of the screen. Lets you rapidly zoom/out on a site with type and images too large or small.
• Full Text History Search indexes every word from every Web page you visit. You can type keywords in the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) address bar and Opera searches every site you’ve visited — in real-time — and suggests links for you.

Tips

• If your big O disappears from the top left corner, bring it by unchecking show menu in the File menu. This will simultaneously hide the menu tool bar. The expected ways to get this result will not work.
• You can jump to the address bar where you key in URLs with Alt-D.
• Configure your personal information in Tools ⇒ Preferences ⇒ Forms. Then you can rapidly fill in web forms with right click on each field.
• To search for something in Google type g xxxx on the address bar. This will give you plenty of room to type. To search the Wikipedia, type w xxxx on the address bar.

Gotchas

• Now that I have Adsense ads turned off locally, I use Opera for everything except filling in forms on other people’s websites, which sometimes fails. The Canadian government income tax websites refuse to work with it.
• sometimes Opera won’t run Java programs. This sounds like I am pulling your leg, but if the Applet writes a little on the console it works.
• However, Opera’s JavaScript stinks. Filling in forms often fails. I can’t login into Google and many other sites because of JavaScript incompatibility.
• Opera often cannot access the printer with print selection. I have this problem both with local and remote printers. Firefox and IE (Internet Explorer) have no problem.
• Opera is not a good tool to proofread images because it does not reload images, even if they are changed on disk. To see the new version of an image, you must stop and restart Opera.

Bugs

• The main bug prior to Vista, that gets me is hitting view source sometimes does nothing. You have to click reload or clear cache or failing that restart to get it working again.

• Browser Colgroup Support
  browser	version	col class supported	col align supported	HTML5 entities supported
  Firefox	12.0
  SeaMonkey	2.9.1
  Safari	5.1.5
  Chrome	19.0.1084.52
  Avant	2012:171
  Opera	11.64
  IE 9	9.0.8112.16421
  IE 8	8.0.7601.17514
  IE 7	7.0.6000

  Those browsers marked with an x all have a bug. They will not render <col class="xxxx">s correctly. The ones with a tick render it correctly. The Opera people say this is a feature not a bug. The language lawyers claim the W3 spec says that the browser is supposed to ignore the color attribute from the <col class. Logically, I think the <col styles should apply to the entire column, but not to <th rows. In addition Firefox, SeaMonkey, Safari and Flock also ignore the <col align attribute. Opera and IE render it properly.

  Firefox, SeaMonkey and Opera support almost all the HTML5 entities. Oddly Opera sometimes supports entities and sometimes does not. It appears to be random. Chrome and Safari support many of them.

  Colgroup Test
  	Style Test	Alignment Test
  On Every row	style	alignment
  Using Colgroup	style	alignment

  If both cells in the left hand Style Test column are the same colour, then your browser (the one you are using now to view this page) supports <col class=.

  If both cells in the right hand Alignment Test column right-align, then your browser supports <col align= correctly.

  Dreamweaver lets you apply a css style to all rows individually. Last revised/verified: 2012-05-23

• For Java to work under Opera, there must be a copy of msvcr71.dll in the C:\windows\system32 folder. If there isn’t, copy it from C:\Program Files\java\jre7\bin .
• If Java does not work, you can try reinstalling Java.
• If Java does not work, you can try borrowing the plugins from your Firefox installation:

Configuring

There are multi-user and single-user configurations. With multi-user, the data files are kept apart from the program in the user’s directory. With the single-user configuration, the data files are kept with the program. For Vista, single-user style installs are unstable. Use multi-user even when there is only one user.

Associations

Toolbars

There are the various configurable bars. Each can be configured off and on, and its contents can also be configured. Unfortunately, Opera has been very cavalier about preserving these configurations on new releases. They just tell you to start over.

Start by turning everything on, and gradually turn off the ones you never use. Make sure you don’t cover up the bars with the dialog box. It can be very confusing if you are trying to configure something you cannot see. Also make sure you click OK after your changes in the bottom right. If you simply click the close X, you will lose all your changes.

Panels

Configuring MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Types

Opera has a less than complete list of built-in extensions and MIME types. It sometimes does bizarre things like try to render Java source code as if it were HTML or display the contents of a class file on the screen. The basic problem is the chaos on the Internet about MIME types. They are not standardised or consistently used. Some sites mark everything with MIME type text/plain. One tool you have is to try either File ⇒ Preferences ⇒ File types and tick either determine action by Mime type (for well behaved sites), or determine action by file extension if MIME is type is unreliable (for incompetent sites). Unfortunately, you must toggle it back and forth yourself manually. Opera does not remember which sites are incompetent.

You can add extensions, MIME types and associated applications with Preferences ⇒ File Types ⇒ new to make it smarter, and you can also experiment with the Preferences ⇒ File Types ⇒ Trust Server to always return correct file types. Make sure you back up your F:\Program Files\Opera\opera6.ini file where all these MIME/extension configurations are stored both before and after your experiments.

Opera can also run any of the Netscape plug-ins without requiring a separate copy of the plug-in for Opera.

Plug-ins/Java

To find out what Opera is doing with Plug-Ins (add-ons to display specialised content such as Flash or Java Applets), click Opera ⇒ Page ⇒ Developer Tools ⇒ Plug-Ins. Opera tends to hold on to obsolete plug-ins and use them in favour of the up-to-date ones. You can fix this by clicking disable to turn off the old plug-ins.

If you are more technical, you can look in the file C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Opera\OPERA\handlers.ini where Opera keeps track of the plug-ins it has installed, and where the corresponding dll is to implement them. I do not recommend using ini utility to sort this file to make it more legible. It is not a true *.ini file. The order of the sections matters. For example, the [text/html] entry must come before any of the other entries that handle Extension=htm,html,shtml, otherwise Opera might try to interpret your HTML as if it were XML (extensible Markup Language). In the file are skeleton entries for all kinds of plug-ins that are not installed. Some have a path to the DLL (Dynamic Link Library) filled in. If the plug-ins are badly mangled, you could uninstall Opera, manually delete any remaining Opera files in X:\Program Files (x86)\opera\*, C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Opera\OPERA\* and C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Opera\OPERA\*. Then reinstall, saving/restoring your bookmarks and search configuration. I have not yet figured out how Opera figures out what Plug-Ins are available on the local machine or on the web and how it finds the corresponding DLL, particularly if you update the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) which would come with a new DLL possibly in a different directory.

There is an entry in the registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Plug-in\10.4.0\JavaHome but it points to the 64-bit JRE which is not what most browsers want. ’Tis a puzzlement.

Backup

When you click BookMarks ⇒ Manage Bookmarks sometimes all your bookmarks not in folders will have disappeared. To make them reappear, click in the white space on the left below all the folders.

Netscape can import bookmarks directly from Opera. You can export Opera bookmarks to Firefox, SeaMonkey, and Internet Explorer if you use the HTML export format. When you import into IE, it appends .url onto the end of each name. You have to manually rename each bookmark to get rid of it.

You might find the ini tidier program makes it easier if you resort to manually configuring Opera by editing or snooping through its ini files.

Use with Java

Security permissions are controlled by F:\Program Files\Opera\classes\Opera.policy. You may find Opera’s default permissions differ from the Sun standard, and so some signed Applets may not run without first modifying the file.

Opera’s classes live in F:\Program Files\Opera\classes\Opera.jar .

Forums

If you want to test the beta Opera, you will find out how in the beta test forum. When you switch to the beta version, you will have to import your bookmarks. Often you can find it here. See below for where to look for them.

Build Numbers

Pet Tricks

DDE

You