A Beginners' Guide to Customizing Opera

So you've decided you want to use Opera to surf the web, but you're not exactly sure of what to do next. In order to help you enjoy your internet-surfing experience as much as possible, NeoSmart Technologies has compiled a guide to some of the more popular & important options available in Opera, with some tips to get you started.

If you're an advanced user looking to get the very last bit of juice out of your web browser and tame Opera to obey your every command, have a look at our [Advanced Opera Configuration Guide].

Get The Browser

First you will want to go to the official Opera website and download the browser, then launch setup to install it. The setup procedure is quite simple and straight-forward: just a few clicks, and you're done.

Customization

Now that you've installed Opera, all what's left is to customize it to act the way you want it to.. So let's get started!

After you install Opera, double-click the big, red Opera logo (above) to start it up. Once the browser window pops up, it'll take you to an Opera-related screen thanking you for using Opera and providing you with some handy links. Feel free to browse through them and see if there isn't something you can use there.

What we want to do now is open up Opera's options and change some settings... So, using the menu at the top, select Tools -> Preferences: from here you'll be able to modify most of Opera's common settings.

The first screen that pops up will give you the options for your homepage, startup, pop-up controls and your language settings:

Here you'll probably want to change your startup type to "Start with Home Page," which is the default behavior in other browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox. This is just a simple drop-down menu which expands once you click on the arrow off to the side. Some people prefer to have the Opera start with the same webpages and tabs that were open last time... To do this, just select the appropriate option here instead. Just remember, Opera will load these tabs from its cache, so if you leave it on a site that has constantly-updating information (like a forum or news page) you will have to press "F5" to refresh the content.

If you chose to have Opera start up with the homepage, it's probably a good idea to pick one now. You can use whatever valid URI you want here (hint: http://neosmart.net/forums/ is a good choice!).

Once you've finished configuring the "General" page, click on the "Advanced" tab and we will get started on some of the finer points of tweaking Opera.

First click on the "Browsing" section.

Here you should change the "Loading" option to Redraw Instantly. This will force the browser to render web sites instantly, instead of waiting one (or more) seconds for the content to download before rendering. The delay is not needed on any of the modern PCs, but if you have an old machine you might want to keep it on the default option (1-second delay).

After that click on the "Content" section:

Here you can adjust your JavaScript options to your liking. There are many JavaScript "widgets" written for Opera, which act just like Firefox extensions once installed. Just click the "JavaScript options" button, and point it to the installation location of Opera. Usually, this is something similar to C:\Program Files\Opera. If you wish to install new JavaScripts widgets, a visit to the Opera Community site is in order. A wide range of JavaScript widgets for Opera are available in their community forums. After you've downloaded them, save a copy of each to the C:\Program Files\Opera\ folder, and they will automagically run the next time your restart Opera.

Now click on the "Downloads" section.

Here is where you can adjust where you wish Opera to download your files to by default (you'll still have an option of selecting a different location when you download a file). Just press the "Choose..." button and select your preferred destination. If not it will save to your default location. Depending on the OS (Operating System) you're using, this location may vary.

Next, the "History" tab:

Here you can setup the history options for Opera. You can adjust the amount of websites it remembers that you typed in or visited (like address auto-complete in Internet Explorer). The default is 500, but if you're a heavy web-surfer you may want to up that some. The "Memory cache" is the local copy of images and other media that Opera saves to disk to save download time. This includes files like icons for forums, images from sites you visit, and CSS files amongst other content. You can adjust the size of the cache file. 20MB is the default, but you can feel free to raise that to 200MB or so if you have room for it.

Are you not the only one using this PC? Check the "Empty on exit" option to have Opera clear its cache of temporary internet files every time you exit for greater privacy.

The only options left to configure are the "Check documents" and "Check images" settings which specify how often Opera should check to see if a particular resource (website or other online-hosted file) has been updated/changed. It's recommended to set the documents' option to "Always" since it doesn't take much bandwidth or time to check for updated webpages, and it's rather important to be up to date if you're a heavy forum or social-network site member. The images' depends more on your internet connection than anything else. If you have a really fast connection (> 2MB) set it to 5 minutes, otherwise you might want a larger amount of time since images don't change too often and can also take quite a bit of bandwidth to check.

Once you've done all that, you'll have a pretty well-customized browser. It should act and react the way you would expect a browser to, and it'll behave in a fairly-similar manner to Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. In the next section we'll cover how to make Opera look the way you like as well.

The Look of Opera

Firefox isn't the only skinnable/themable browser on the internet, in fact, Opera has a wide range of easy-to-access themes and skins available for your perusal right out of the box; so let's get started.

First click on Tools -> Appearance. This will bring up the Appearance menu, which is where we make most of the changes to the way Opera looks and feels.

Here you can see the skin selection screen. There are several choices to make: you can browse through the "Editor's Picks" or click on any of the other tabs to find a skin you want, grouped appropriately. Once you've made a choice, it will automatically download and install the new skin, then ask you if you'd like to use the newly-installed skin.

Here's an example of downloading a skin and the resulting confirmation box (with the skin applied):

Now if you like the way the skin looks, press "Yes" and move on. If not, continue to browse through the skin library until you find a skin you like. There are plenty of skins to choose from, with a wide range of options that cover most of the OS platforms. Some skins are OS-specific and don't look to well on a different operating system (created with just one of Windows, OS X or Linux in mind). You'll just have to keep looking until you find one that suits your taste...

Now click on the "Toolbars" tab:

Here you can select as many of the default toolbars as you want or just go with the defaults. The major one you will want to add is the Personal Bar. This will give you a menu up above the Address Bar where you can add your Bookmarks to it. (If you're an ex-Firefox user, you'll probably want to enable this option to make Opera feel more like home )

Here's a screenshot of Opera with the personal menu enabled (and highlighted for clarification purposes):

(Sorry about the bad highlighting skills. It isn't easy to move a mouse straight left and right across a mouse pad!) But, as you see, you can add your bookmarks right to the Personal Bar so that they're quick and easy to reach. To do this, just click on Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks. To get them up there, just drag and drop them to where you like -- it couldn't be any easier.

Finishing Up

That just about covers all the usual Customization options that will make for the most-comfortable Opera experience.

Keep in mind, these are just general guidelines for users who are new to Opera. Each person's experience will vary, and while some will find these options well-suited for your tastes, others might not and prefer to choose some settings of their own. As you become for accustomed to Opera you'll know what needs to be changed to get the most out of your Opera installation.