Opera Buttons

Updated 29 March, 2005

 

Main Toolbar Buttons

You can add any of these buttons to your main toolbar, address bar, or panel toolbars simply by dragging them into place. Click OK on the dialogue that pops up to add the buttons. All of these icons are found in the default opera_standard skin.

The Home page icon in the top left corner of the toolbar includes a dropdown for the Full Menu. Top right of the toolbar are a pair of buttons to scroll up and down

The Print button includes a dropdown for Print Options.

The page button displays the session menu, and the dropdown displays the Window menu.

This utilities button opens Irfan View and pastes the clipboard contents. The dropdown displays a menu of popular utilities inlcuding 7-zip, AVG, Irfan View, Babel Map, Calculator, Notepad, and Wordpad. New: Edit this menu,† Outlook Express, Volume Control, Windows Task Manager († Expects to find C:\Program Files\Opera75\Profile\Menu\lite_menu.in)

This button shows the Windows Task Manager — the dropdown shows the volume control

The file open button includes a dropdown menu to reopen recently closed pages. If you have not yet closed any pages in the current session, this dropdown is non-functional.

The Zoom button toggles the zoom level between 100% and 120%. The drop down displays the zoom menu. (Thanks to scipio for help with this one).

The fullscreen button toggles between full-screen mode and normal mode. In full-screen mode the advertising banner disappears, and this button retains the main toolbar, which extends to the full width of the screen.

The Properties button shows the toolbars and menu preferences, so if one needs to return to the original Opera interface, it is only a few clicks away.

This button shows the Skin menu, and the dropown shows the Colour Scheme menu

Opera Cache

Panel Toolbar Buttons

Export BookmarksA button to export your bookmarks. Open your bookmarks panel (Ctrl 2), and drag this button to the bookmarks toolbar.

Export ContactsA button to export your contacts. Open your contacts panel, (Ctrl 4), and drag this button to the contacts toolbar.

Tip: If the panel is narrow, customise the toolbar to show “images only.”

Control Panel Buttons

These buttons give quick access to Control Panel functions. I keep them on my Status Bar at the bottom of the screen, and toggle the bar on/off with the following mouse gesture:

GestureDown, GestureUp = View status bar, 4 | View status bar, 0

Accessibility controls

Windows Desktop

Device Manager

Regional Settings

Mouse Properties

Time/Date

Volume Controls

External Program Buttons

My modified standard skin reduces the size of the Print Preview and zoom field icons, and adds icons for my utilities menu. Save it in your \Opera75\skin\ folder. (Backup your standard skin first and make sure that Opera is not currently using the standard skin). After downloading, select the standard skin. My modified toolbar works best in conjunction with this modified skin. These buttons have been added to my modified standad skin:

  Notepad2Open Office

If you like to work in fullscreen mode, the taskbar and start menu are only accessible by pressing the Windows key, so it is handy to have your favourite programs on the Opera toolbar.

Export ContactsBabelmap is indispensable if you work with Unicode fonts.

Notepad2 Notepad2 is an enhanced version of Windows notepad that supports clipboard paste, so you can use it to edit the selected text or clipboard text.

Export ContactsThis button opens the current page in Internet Explorer.

Export ContactsWindows calculator is always handy.

Understanding Buttons

When you drag one of these buttons to the Opera toolbar or add one using customize toolbars in Opera, Opera adds a line of code to the appropriate section of the toolbar configuration file. When you customize the default toolbar, a new file named standard_toolbar (1).ini is created in your \profile\toolbar\ folder. This file contains only altered sections of the default standard_toolbar.ini file. If you drag the above Internet Explorer button to your main toolbar, Opera will add a line like the following line to the [Browser Toolbar.content] section.

Button23, "Open in IE"="Execute program, "iexplore.exe", "%u", "Open in IE", "IE""

Button23 is the unique identifier given to the button. In this case, it is the 24th button on the toolbar (Button0 is the first).

“Open in IE” is the title of the button

“Execute Program,” the first parameter to the right of the = sign is the action performed by the button.

“iexplore.exe” is the second parameter of the button’s action; in this case, the program to execute. For most programs the full path will need to be given, e.g. "C:\Program Files\IrfanView\i_view32.exe"

“%u” is the third parameter of the button’s action; in this case, an environment variable containing the URL of the current page.

“Open in IE” is the text to show in the tooltip when the mouse is hovered over the button and the text to use on the button if the option to show text is enabled or if no icon is defined.

“IE” is the name of the icon to use as defined in skin.ini for the current skin.

Not all parameters are required for all buttons. The following button has two simple actions: one on the button, and one on the dropdown.

Button6, "Print + Options"=Print document + Show print options

Opera knows which icon to use for the action “Print document,” and it knows the tooltip text to show. The action after the plus sign is performed if the user clicks the dropdown menu icon to the right of the button. In this case, no menu is defined, just the simple action to show the print options dialogue box.

Button0, "Home/Menu"="Go to homepage, , , "Home/Menu" + Show popup menu, "Browser Menu Bar""

For this button, no icon needs to be defined either, but the fourth parameter “Home/Menu” shows different text to indicate the dual function of this button. Clicking the button will go to the home page, but clicking the dropdown icon will dropdown the menu that is normally displayed at the top of the browser. If you use this button, you can turn off the browser menu bar (Control F11) to save vertical space.

Button11, "IrfanView/Utilities"="Execute program, "C:\Program Files\IrfanView\ i_view32.exe", "/clippaste", , "Contact22" + Show popup menu, "Browser Utilities Menu""

This button runs an external program, and the dropdown shows a custom menu. The “Browser Utilities Menu” is not found in the default Opera menus. You have to define the section in your customised menu. If the menu is undefined, but Irfan View is installed in the above path, the button will work, but the dropdown menu will not.

Creating Buttons

If you cannot find the button you want here, nor on the Opera Wiki site, you can make your own. The easiest way is to use the vBulletin code on the Opera Forum as explained in this thread in the Test Forum. The vBulletin code is easy to understand.

[Opbut=Button Action]Tooltip Text[/opbut]

For example, to create the Print Button explained above, you would post the following code on the Opera forum:

[Opbut=Print document + Show print options]Print/Options[/opbut]

This will create a button in your forum post, which anyone can drag to their toolbar and use.

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