I'm a big fan of Opera. I use it on Windows and Linux and it's extremely fast. I like that it starts downloading things as soon as you click a link. So when you're hunting for a place to store the file, it's already got it. I like download completion. I like that it's fairly small (~3MB for the QT shared RPM). I like the MDI-style tabbed windows. But most of all I like the keyboard shortcuts.

For example, to turn on JavaScript, hit F12 and then 'e' (for 'enable'). To turn off pop-up windows, hit F12 and then 'r' (for 'refuse'). Turn then on again with F12 + 'w' (for 'windows'). Turn off plugins (Flash) and GIF animations with F12 + 'p' ('plugins') and F12 + 'g' ('GIFs'), respectively. This makes for a lovely wayback machine-type, neoluddite browsing experience. Just the way I like it.

The best keyboard shortcut, however, is F8. That places the insertion point in the location bar, and highlights the text ther. So you can hit F8, then start typing in a new URL, just like that. More useful is hitting F8 and then 'g' with a space and then 'Hungarian Cheesecake'. You just searched Google for an ethnic cake recipe. You can do a similar thing with F8, then 'e' and search directly at ebay.com. Using 'z' does Amazon, 'w' does download.com, 'x' does Google's Linux area, and 'r' searches Google's newgroups. Once you get used to this, it's second nature. Handy enough to be indispensible.

But one thing I've always thought was lacking was a way to customize this. For example, one thing I like to do is ad hoc spellchecking at Google. I need to know a word, I just hit ctrl+n, F8, 'g werd' and I'm done. Google says "Are you sure you didn't mean 'word'..." when I misspell. If I want to know a definition or something, then I can always click the little link up at the top that says "Searched the web for 'word'". That link goes to dictionary.com. How come I can't just go there directly?

Using F8+d leads you to search for a new domain name. I think I've done that like five times in as many years (and I use whois anyway). Opera does have a dictionary set up, but there's no hotkey for it (and it searches Lycos anyway... ick). So I'd like to search a dictionary web site, but not Lycos. The UI has no way to assign your own keys to these location bar shortcuts, so I've been going through Google all this time. Today I accidentally found out how to make your own location bar shortcuts. Here's how:

Open up $HOME/.opera/search.ini in a text editor. Look for a section like this:

[Search Engine 10]
Name=&Domain Name
URL=https://opera.domaindirect.com/cgi-bin/domainsearch.cgi?do=search&searchdomain=%s
Query=
Key=d
Is post=0
Has endseparator=1
Encoding=iso-8859-1
Search Type=6

Change the 'Key=d' line to just 'Key='. Now look for a section like this:

[Search Engine 18]
Name=Dictionary
URL=http://r.lycos.com/r/opiprefdic/http://www.infoplease.lycos.com/search.php3?in=dictionary&query=%s
Query=
Key=
Is post=0
Has endseparator=0
Encoding=iso-8859-1
Search Type=50

Change the 'URL=...' line to 'URL=http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=%s' and the 'Key=' line to 'Key=d'.

Now you can hit f8+d and search the dictionary. Fast and easy, like Opera should be. BTW, on Windows, the search.ini file lives in the Opera install directory. The format of the file is the same.