July 25th, 2009 Software | comments_icon18 Comments

Tweak Opera for large amount of tabs

opera Opera had pioneered tabbed interface for browsing. However out of the box it provides tab experience that can be described as generic.

For users that tend to open multitude of tabs Opera offers quite a few customization opportunities to make most of them.

Give tabs more space

By default recent Opera versions have few non-tab elements in tab bar – buttons to open sidebar, add blank tab and access closed tabs. Such extra buttons can be removed by Right-click > Remove From Toolbar or moved elsewhere by Right-click > Customize > Drag and drop.

Now tabs have line completely to themselves, but sometimes even that is not enough. You can make tab bar extend to next line when needed – Right-click tab bar > Set Wrapping to Wrap to multiply lines.

Prevent unwanted close

I tend to click those Close tab crosses a lot when I have many tabs open. And they get even bigger when Windows Native theme is chosen. Close buttons can be removed by setting in Tools > Preferences (Alt+P) > Advanced > Tabs > Additional tab options > Show close button on each tab or same setting in opera:config#Show Close Buttons.

With those gone fast way to close tab is middle-click it or enable opera:config#Doubleclick to Close Tab option (handy for touchpads and such).

If you have some tabs open at all times you can protect them from any kind of close by Right-click tab name > Lock tab.

Change tab logic

By default new tabs are opened in the end of the list and when tab is closed focus goes to one before it. With many tabs open and working and gaming at the same time multitasking process can turn large amount of tabs in a complete mess.

Make new tabs open next to current tab Tools > Preferences (Alt+P) > Advanced > Tabs > Open new tab next to active.

Choose what tab gets focus when current tab is closed Tools > Preferences (Alt+P) > Advanced > Tabs > When closing a tab.

Use hotkeys

  • Ctrl+T opens new tab;
  • Ctrl+W closes current tab;
  • Ctrl+Z restores last closed tab;
  • Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab cycle through tabs, see post on enabling previews to make it more visual. Also can be used by holding right button and scrolling with mouse wheel – thanks to nimi for reminder in comments;

If single key shortcuts are enabled in Tools > Preferences (Alt+P) > Advanced > Shortcuts > Enable single-key shortcuts then:

  • 1 and 2 move back and forth between tabs.

Show tabs in full screen mode

Full screen mode in Opera (F11) makes best use of screen space but at the same time can be scary with complete absence of interface.

To make Opera show tab bar in full screen mode you can edit F11 hotkey in Tools > Preferences (Alt+P) > Advanced > Shortcuts > Keyboard setup > Edit to Enter full screen & View page bar, 6 | Leave full screen or simply use one of pre-made Opera buttons for full screen mode listed at Opera Wiki.

Overall

While default Opera setup is certainly functional it is additional tweaks that can bring in to next level and make usage of many many tabs as easy as possible.

What is your favorite way to use tabs in Opera?

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18 Responses to “Tweak Opera for large amount of tabs”

  1. nimi says:
    July 26, 2009 at 13:32

    You can also navigate the tabs using right click+ mouse wheel.

  2. Rarst says:
    July 26, 2009 at 13:34

    @nimi

    Thanks, I put in hotkeys for cycling but forgot to add about mouse wheel. :)

  3. Working With Many Tabs In Opera says:
    July 26, 2009 at 14:54

    [...] Opera. That becomes apparent if you look at the comments that he leaves here at Ghacks. His article Tweak Opera for large amount of tabs that he posted on his blog yesterday examines and describes some tweaks and settings that Opera [...]

  4. spacewalker says:
    July 26, 2009 at 20:11

    I don’t understand what to do on the last tip of what to change to make the tabs show up in full screen. Could you be more specific what to edit and what to type (especially with your line wrap in there). A picture here would be worth it as it isn’t intuitive like the other good changes you list here.

  5. Rarst says:
    July 26, 2009 at 20:26

    @spacewalker

    Editing hotkeys is little confusing and hard to explain. Since it is slightly offtopic to this article as well I decided to cut on long explanations (will certainly be covered in some future post).

    Easier way would be to use custom button, just click this full screen with tabs and Opera will offer to add it. Then you can drag button to some place in interface.

  6. Weekly Browsers Recap, June 27th says:
    July 27, 2009 at 12:03

    [...] Tweak Opera for large amount of tabs [...]

  7. spacewalker says:
    July 27, 2009 at 21:46

    Thanks, added button, but when clicked it only opened full-screen, not with tabs. I’ll have to live with the cool right click-wheel option when in full screen for now I guess unless you can explain it better sometime.

    Thanks for the tips and help.

  8. Rarst says:
    July 27, 2009 at 22:00

    @spacewalker

    Here is one more attempt full screen with tabs. Maybe blog eats space somewhere or something. Or you could try buttons from Opera Wiki I had mentioned in post.

    By the way I remembered I described how to remap hotkeys in post on mouse flips in Opera. You can look there for instructions and what you need to remap is f11
    from Enter full screen | Leave full screen
    to Enter full screen & View page bar, 6 | Leave full screen

  9. Willie says:
    July 28, 2009 at 16:22

    What about memory and other settings? When I get about 50 tabs (or more) open, my cpu utilization pegs and my computer crawls. I have 4GB of RAM in it. Usually it’s just a page from certain sites that does it such as MSNBC or multiple LifeHacker.com pages. Also, I configure Opera to be in Multiple Document mode instead tab mode.
    Thanks.

  10. Rarst says:
    July 28, 2009 at 18:08

    @Willie

    Had you done a lot of upgrading on top of previous Opera versions? That is one of the most common reasons for performance issues. Try exporting bookmarks, etc and doing completely clean install.

    As for specific sites only thing that comes to mind is crappy flash on those. Try visiting them with plugins disabled (quick menu on F12 can quickly enable/disable those) or flashblock for Opera. Reinstall Flash to latest version as well.

  11. Mike says:
    July 29, 2009 at 01:04

    Nice post! I have Opera set up to always open new tabs full-screen, and one thing I’ve started doing recently is using the “Restore” functionality to get some tabs to show up side-by-side within the Opera window. This is great for when I’m doing some reading on one site, and participating in a chat session in another.

    I’ll definitely have to try your tips on improving performance, as I’ve had Opera installed for years now and it does seem to take a while to start up.

  12. Rarst says:
    July 29, 2009 at 08:10

    @Mike

    I like to keep stuff fullscreen and use every pixel for app in focus. :) |Switching between windows is quite fast.

    I also had Opera installed for some years and it got to the point it barely worked. I never encountered clear explanation but many notice that performance degrades after numerous updates in place.

    Opera 10 will get self-upgrade (like Firefox) and it would be interesting to see if that fixes issue.

  13. Sinjin Smythe says:
    July 31, 2009 at 12:44

    You can also position the tab bar to the (left/right) side of the screen.

    This gives you a large vertical space for tabs at the cost of some horizontal screen real estate.

    Nowadays with wide screens websites are usually displayed with a large amount of white space on the sides.

    I’m not a big fan of this setup but YMMV.

  14. Rarst says:
    July 31, 2009 at 13:06

    @Sinjin Smythe

    I considered including this tweak, but from my experience very few people can adapt and like vertical tab bar (as well as taskbar or whatever).

    Since Opera also has extensive vertical sidebar – that doesn’t leave much space for tabs even on [mainstream] WS monitors. YMMV indeed. :)

  15. Opera User says:
    August 3, 2009 at 13:18

    Thanks.

  16. The DataRat says:
    November 5, 2009 at 01:04

    “You can make tab bar extend
    to next line when needed
    – Right-click tab bar > Set
    Wrapping to Wrap to multiply
    lines”

    Am using Opera v. 10.01, and all a right click on the tab bar
    brings up is “Customize”.

    Wrapping to multiple lines sounds great ? But ~how~ do I find
    that option ?

    The DataRat

    .

  17. Rarst says:
    November 5, 2009 at 18:11

    @DataRat

    Don’t remember if that got changed or I mistyped something. Look for:

    Right-click tab bar > Customize > Appearance > Wrapping (closer to the bottom of dialog)

  18. The DataRat says:
    November 6, 2009 at 03:57

    “Right-click tab bar >
    Customize > Appearance >
    Wrapping (closer to the
    bottom of dialog)”

    Thanks ! Got it.

    The DataRat

    .

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