Arve Bersvendsen

Opera equivalents to Firefox extensions

Roger Johansson lists his favourite Firefox extensions — some of which are quite common. Let’s review the extensions he lists, and find their equivalent in Opera

This document has been translated to a number of languages.

AdBlock

The AdBlock extension for Firefox disables advertising on most pages. Many people use this mainly to get rid of annoying animated ads.

Opera 9 offers an integrated ad blocker out-of-the-box. When you are on a page, just right-click on the page, and select “Block Content”. When you do this, the page greys out, and you can start clicking on images and plug-in content to block it. Holding down shift when clicking an image or plug-in content blocks that specific image/embedded object.

If you go to Tools -< Advanced -< Blocked content menu. You will be presented with a list of the already blocked content. You can edit or delete these entries, or add your own. The URL’s added uses simple wildcard syntax.

Opera 8.5 and prior versions doesn’t have an internal adblocker with a UI. Which is only to be expected, since Opera is a commercial product. That doesn’t mean you can’t block ads, though. There are two routes to blocking ads with Opera, let’s call them “Ad annoyance remover”, and “AdBlock”:

1. Press F12. Disable plugins
2. Press F12. Disable GIF animation
3. Press F12. Disable sound in web pages

This option is what I’m using on a day-to-day basis, since I see ads but without any of the annoyances usually associated with ads.

If you’re more vehemently against ads, your option is using URL filtering. First,repeat the “Ad annoyance remover” steps. Then, open up opera6.ini, usually located in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Opera\Opera75\profile. Add the following to the [Adv User Prefs] section:

URL Filter File=C:\Documents and settings\username\Application Data\Opera\Opera\profile\filter.ini

If your paths are different, change accordingly. Remember to substitute username for your real username

Then, create a file named filter.ini and place it in the appropriate directory, and create filters. The syntax is described in Opera’s documentation

An example filter could look like this:

[prefs]
prioritize excludelist=1

[include]
*

[exclude]
http://ad.*
http://ads.*
http://adserv*
http://banner*
http://count*
http://*.doubleclick.net/*
http://*.hitbox.net/*
http://*.ivwbox.de/*
http://*.tradedoubler.*
http://*/ads/*
http://*/Ads/*
http://*/banners/*

Martin Schrode keeps a tutorial and default filter file. If you also want to reclaim the space used by advertisements, you can set display: none; for common ad sizes. There is also a section on blocking advertisements in the Opera wiki.

Dictionary Search.

Roger mentions a Dictionary Search extension. Dictionary searches are built in in Opera. Not only that: Online translations are built in.

New dictionary searches and translation services can be added and customized. For instance, my dictionary search looks up in Merriam-Webster. For customizing anything related to search in Opera, see the search section in the unofficial Opera7wiki.

Update: Opera 9 has direct support for adding new search engines. Just right-click in a search field and select “Create search”. See the manual for more information.

Fangs

Fangs is a screen reader emulator. Opera is a screenreader:

• Opera 8 on Windows supports Voice .
• Opera 8 on Windows supports aural style sheets

In addition, if you don’t use the voice support Opera has user stylesheets that are able to create a decent visual emulation of a screen reader. You can also add any number of personal user stylesheets.

Google PageRank Status

The Google PageRank Status extension in Mozilla allows display of pagerank.

In Opera, you can drag the Opera PageRank Button to any toolbar

Tabbrowser Preferences

The Tabbrowser Preferences allows for greater control over how Tabs in Firefox behaves.

This is, again, built right into Opera.

TargetAlert

The TargetAlert extension is emulated using the Link alert User JavaScript in Opera. In addition to providing the same defaults as the TargetAlert extension, the “Link alert” User JavaScript offers Phishing protection, warning you when you are about to click a link that is not what it appears to be.

User Agent Switcher

There is a User Agent Switcher extension available for Firefox. Again: This is built in in Opera, simply press F12 and choose betweeen:

• Opera
• Internet Explorer
• Mozilla

Update: In Opera 9, these settings have moved from the quick preferences, and into site-specific preferences. The menu you get when you press F12 no longer has the “Identify as settings”. The setting has been replaced by “Edit site preferences”, which allows you to control many aspects of a page (scripting, image cookie policies, etc. ). In this settings window, you change the “Identify as” setting in the “Network” tab. In addition to the aforementioned three, you can now also mask as Internet Explorer or Mozilla. When doing this, there is no trace of “Opera” left in the User-Agent string, and can be used for those sites that go out of their way to block Opera.

Web Developer Extensions

The Web Developer Extensions for Firefox adds a few tools for web developers. Opera can:

• Edit pages in cache. Which means you can do View Source for a document, edit it, and then reload the cached version. Tools → Advanced → Reload from cache.
• Validate a page by pressing Ctrl-Alt-V.
• Add any validators to the search engine.

Other

Other stuff built into Opera that you’d need extensions for:

• Mouse Gestures. These are built into Opera by default
• RSS. Opera has an easy-to-use aggregator built right in
• Fully reconfigurable UI: Menus, buttons, keyboard shortcuts, mouse gestures.
• Mail. The Opera Mail client, a.k.a. M2 is a full-fledged mail client which integrates with newsfeeds and Usenet as well.

Disclaimer

I’m not arguing that “Opera is a much better browser”. Which browser people choose should be up to them. I wrote this to point to features in Opera, which might make the out-of-the-box install of Opera more suited to some users.

Update

There is a follow-up to this story that lists more equivalents — make sure you read that as well.

Translations

This document has been translated to:

• French: Fonctionnalités d’Opera équivalentes aux extensions Firefox
• German: Firefox-Erweiterungen in Opera (Teil1)
• Brazilian Portuguese: Funcionalidades do Opera equivalentes às extensões do Firefox - 1^a. parte