Opera Browser - Climate Bloggers' Best Friend, ver. 2.0

Table of Contents

• Chapter I - Introduction
• Chapter II - Bookmarking via Context Menu
• Chapter III - Bookmarking via Main Menu
• Chapter IV - Bookmarking with Panels via Drag'n'Drop
• Chapter V - Bookmarking Using Sessions
• Chapter VI - Arranging pages - Horizontal, Vertical, Cascade
• Chapter VII - Fit to Width Option
• Chapter VIII - Multi-Window Browsing
• Chapter IX - Another Interesting Examples
• Chapter X - Scaling, Resizing, and Hiding Images
• Chapter XI - Hardware and Software Used by Author

Chapter I - Introduction

Opera Homepage [>]
Nice wallpapers can be found on Opera Wallpapers [>] page.

Opera Browser Ver: 9.6 [>]
Opera description. Quote - "Discover the new standard in Web browsing. Download Opera today to get the fastest and most powerful Web browser available and make the most of your time on-line."

Download Opera [>]
Very detailed page for downloading Opera according to archive types and operating systems. Example: Opera 9.64 for Linux i386 exists in mny "flavors", you can select from dozens of Linux distributions.

Opera Watch [>]
Tips and Tricks. Quote - "Opera Watch, an Opera browser blog, is run by Daniel Goldman, who used to work for Opera Software as a Technical Evangelist."

Opera Tutorials [>]
Tutorials - Intro to Opera, Video Tutorials, Opera Mail, Security & Privacy, and Control Opera.

NOTES:
The main features (copied from the website): Quick Find, Opera Link, New browser engine, Speed Dial, Mouse Gestures, Download Manager with BitTorrent, Tabs and Sessions, Content blocking, Zoom and Fit to width, Built-in e-mail and newsfeeds, Customize your browser, Add a Widget to your life, Quick and customizable Web search, Stay safe with new Fraud Protection and EV, Web developers: Meet Opera Dragonfly.

P2O2 - The most interesting features found in Opera are marked with the following colors - bold magenta color denotes the most important feature, then, in decreasing order, bold red, and bold black.

And few quotes from official website for the end. Believe me, they are not the hype, one so often reads about in software products' descriptions. I am "testing" Opera browser in every day life sitting at the keyboard for many hours a day (up to 12!) and using it as my primary application (I'm blogging).

A few quotes:

New browser engine
We've made the fastest browser in the world even faster with superior support for Web standards. Opera 9.94 is quicker to start, faster at loading Web pages and better at running your favorite Web applications.
* More than 2x faster than Opera 9.2 in rendering JavaScript and HTML
* Faster handling of third party plug-ins
* Much faster start up time
* Superior support for Web standards

Chapter II - Bookmarking via Context Menu

In the latest post etitled How to open multiple web pages from Opera Speed Dial? [>] which I have found on Opera Watch [>] there was an excellent description of several ways to open multiple web pages. But first one has to save his bookmarks. Me too described the ways in the former version (1.0) of the article but I did it making use of self-made screenshots. Let's look at them once again, the more so I have added several new ones. This and several follow-up pictures will illustrate different ways to save bookmarks.

Fig. 2.1 (click to enlarge): The picture presents Opera browser having the number of Speed Dials increased from traditional 3x3 array to 5x4 one. Speed Dials contain homepage contents, here most of them point to weather forecast websites apart from 20th Speed Dial, which shows Whatts Up With That [>] blog's thumbnail. BTW. How to change the array dimensions is described in the post of How to add more Speed Dials in Opera? [>] (found in Opera Watch).

Fig. 2.2 (click to enlarge): Let's assume that we've found a new interesting blog entitled Hall of Record [>] and we wanted it to be bookmarked. Let's start the tour with a context menu.

Fig. 2.3 (click to enlarge): Opera keeps the name of latest folder to where it has saved last bookmark. Here, on the picture, it is News Data directory. The presented Add Bookmark window is in full view but it must be further opened with the help of the Details button.

Fig. 2.4 (click to enlarge): Time to change the directory to Blogs.climate in our example. Use the Create in drop-down list and select the target directory. Then press the OK button.

Chapter III - Bookmarking via Main Menu

Fig. 3.1 (click to enlarge): Another way to make a bookmark is tradition one, which uses Manu bar and its Bookmarks option. In case of many subentries (complex bookmark tree), like the one presented on this picture, the process of bookmarking is somewhat gawky. What's more,...

Fig. 3.2 (click to enlarge): ...it may happen that the last window would be hiding former windows underneath (with bookmark tree branches), what would make changes to other target directories very inconvenient.

Chapter IV - Bookmarking with Panels via Drag'n'Drop

Fig. 4.1 (click to enlarge): You must grab your tab - position cursor on tab, press left button, keep it - then move the cursor to target branch of bookmark tree.

Chapter V - Bookmarking Using Sessions

Fig. 5.1 (click to enlarge): You can save all tabs from ALL opened windows or only from the active one. Easy as a pie. This option use Opera's Session function, so de facto you are not making a bookmark but you are saving a whole session of open websites. You can add or delete websites in the session but only indirectly adding or removing tabs from active window and saving the new session under the previous name.

Fig. 5.2 (click to enlarge): You can open session directly but I advise you to use Session Manager.

Fig. 5.3 (click to enlarge): Very rudimentary Session Manager but I think what's simple will not get botched easily. Pay attention to option Open tabs inside current window - very convenient.

Chapter VI - Arranging pages - Horizontal, Vertical, Cascade

Fig. 6.1 (click to enlarge): At last we have come to functions interested from point of view of "climate or weather blogging". A lot of bloggers publish many images and drawings, frequently in time order. Matching them for comparisons in Opera is a piece of cake. Opera works thru main window, sort of canvas, in which it keeps the opened pages. But first we have to open the same page again. Do it in tab's context menu pressing the Duplicate Tab option. Then, thanks to the Arrange option (part of context menu too) you will be able to arrange them horizontally (as above)...

Fig. 6.2 (click to enlarge): ...and vertically. Now look at the pages - their contents do not fit into the area assigned to them by Opera browser. Find now in the right-down corner of Opera window page icon with two small triangles on both sides. It's our small marvel - the Fit to Width button.

Chapter VII - Fit to Width Option

Fig. 7.1 (click to enlarge): Make active page from your opened ones and press the Fit Width button. Do the same with another page. You'll get the result shown on the picture.

Fig. 7.2 (click to enlarge): The Fit to Width is one of the best options which Opera offers. Another example with this option applied.

Chapter VIII - Multi-Window Browsing

Fig. 8.1 (click to enlarge): A real world example. Mr Brett Anderson keeping AccuWeather [>] blog presented recently two posts entitled June Satellite Temperature Anomalies (from July) [>] and Comparing Global Temperature Anomalies (from June) [>]. Each of the post contained three images dated 1) June 1988, June 2007, June 2008, and 2) May 1988, May 2007, May 2008, respectively. Having old 15 inch monitor I wasn't able to see them at once. Both in the case of each of the series or the two series at once. I reach for two Opera functions: 1) canvas-with-pages feature, and 2) Fit the Width option. First you should open two posts, then you should duplicate their tabs. When properly arranged you'll be able to see them for comparisons. The picture on the left shows the results - May-June 2008 and May-June 1988 pairs. Be aware that all the pages' windows are not in the state of "fit to width" (every window has its horizontal slider).

Fig. 8.2 (click to enlarge): Let's assume now you'd like to look at TWO pictures of the June 2007-2008 scheme. First hide the other "unnecessary" two pictures using "inverted triangle" (pointing downwards) from the windows Title Bars. Then use the Arrange option (from tab context menu) and select Horizontal option.

Fig. 8.3 (click to enlarge): Of course it is always you, yourself, who must decide how to arrange your images and in what way (this and the next three images).

Fig. 8.4 (click to enlarge):

Fig. 8.5 (click to enlarge):

Fig. 8.6 (click to enlarge): Here the Fit to Width function was applied to enable selection of parameters. Bigger PC screens would be better for the purpose! :)

Fig. 8.7 (click to enlarge): Earth & Space Research [>] website has irksome feature - you cannot hide the main head area scrolling down page content. Make the window with ESR page bigger, then make the second window opened on top of the ESR's one. Only then you will be able to compare the two presented charts (picture below).

Fig. 8.8 (click to enlarge):

Chapter IX - Another Interesting Examples

Fig. 9.1 (click to enlarge): In another example I will show global temperature images. The data covers Pacific Ocean. First image concerns with sea level height not temperature. All the images lack scales or legends for the images which are shown on the next picture (Fig. 9.2). Of course, bigger monitors (not 15 inch CRT) will deal with the problem without a hassle.

Fig. 9.2 (click to enlarge): The same images as above but moved up to show scales and legends.

Fig. 9.3 (click to enlarge): The same images as above but not put in order yet.

Fig. 10.1 (click to enlarge): SCALING Another example of very practical function of Opera browser. Right-bottom window was zoomed-in (180%) to have the same scale as the picture above it (look at the country boundaries). In other words you can zoom-in/out pages individually.

Fig. 10.2 (click to enlarge): HIDING Part of the open images can be hidden without loosing arrangement of the other images. Old layout can be restored with one click (via tab's context menu). The visible images can be resized to cover full window, and then rescale down to previous dimensions. Next making hidden images visible we will end up with the same arrangements as before.

Fig. 10.3 (click to enlarge): Another example of multi-window viewing.

Fig. 10.4 (click to enlarge): The last example shows 5 full-scale images which were then diminished to be visible in Opera canvas window all at once. The example shows interesting weather system over Poland (and Europe). The dark red spots in radar image (Fig. 10.8) shows heavy precipitation and indicate weather front. Jet stream over Poland (Fig. 10.5) is also interesting in this case because it corresponds with movement of storm air masses (Fig. 10.4, 10.6). Fig. 10.7 presents detected lightnings.

Fig. 10.5 (click to enlarge): Europe jet stream map from Weather Underground

Fig. 10.6 (click to enlarge): Europe satellite map from UK Weather Channel

Fig. 10.7 (click to enlarge): Map of detected lightnings

Fig. 10.8 (click to enlarge): Radar map of Poland

Fig. 10.9 (click to enlarge): All 5 previous images arranged in one Opera window. As you can see Opera browser arranges images asymmetrically as well.

Chapter XI - Hardware and Software Used by Author

I hope this short guide will convince readers to use Opera browser, not only for climate blogging. I do not have to add that Opera is exceptionally quick and highly integrated. I ditched the bloated F***x forever. And how marvellously convenient are Panels, and Notes! But that's another story.

My computer system consists of:

* PC HP Vectra VE (1998)
* Pentium III Katmai 450 MHz
* 256 MB DRAM
* embedded (on-board) Matrox MGA-G200 + 8 MB video DRAM
* Linux Debian 5.0 + FluxBox + old kernel 2.6.18-6-686 (last kernel driving my audio)

And last but not least. Linux operating system was known to badly play Flash images/movies. Not any more! Latest driver are good enough and from the time I installed it I did not have any problems with any pages using Flash technology. No more freezes or crashes!

With Java there is another story. Debian tries to make people happy with something independent from Sun Microsystem's Java. I even do not know what its name (its so kinky and do not want to know). Alas, the shit is installed together with OpenOffice whether you like it or not. I removed the "Microsoft Office for Linux" together with the "shit-faking-java", then downloaded original java jre1.6.0_13, and installed it in /opt directory. Next I set the real Java in Opera and everything started to run smoothly (Tools -> Preferences... -> Advanced -> Content -> Java Options...).

Happy browsing! With Opera, of course!