great! that really works! 😃
thx a lot!
as for the ominous reactangle: it always comes in the same size. which is why i still suppose it's a chrome issue - as though some widget's constructor is called and then the destructor immediately afterwards, not recognizing that some resources have been allocated: the area the widget "thinks" it would be occupying has been copied to memory, but isn't placed back on the screen. hence the black "nothing".
there is of course still another possibility, at least in theory. as i said in this thread i'm using hardware acceleration in opera-stable only, but not in the developer version, and in opera-developer the rectangle doesn't appear. but however esoterical this might be for an explanation, it doesn't explain why the effect appears in the manner it does.