No Escape From Speed, Can't Use Awesome New Tabs Page

A Former User

Hi.

I’ve added the Opera Extension which allows you to use Chrome Extensions with Opera, and then subsequently installed the “Awesome New Tabs Page” extension, which I love in Chrome. Which I love to use in Chrome as my dash board / launching pad to all my favourite web sites with it’s highly visual, large, easy-to-click-on squares which my chosen images.

Problem is this, unlike Chrome where hitting the New Tab Button will open a new tab with my custom designed “Awesome New Tabs Page” (assuming the extension is enabled), in Opera, hitting the new tab button (or using any other method to open a new tab) does not yield my Awesome New Tabs Page (despite the extension being on/enabled, obviously), instead it takes me to the Speed Dial page, which I don’t want.

I’ve tried every settings to try to find a workaround. Using other settings open. Ticking the box to hide the speed dial page makes no difference, takes me to the same speed dial tab, but this time blank. Setting the On Start Up choice; “Open a specific page of set of pages” to my Awesome New Tabs Page URL, also fails to make a different. I even tried an extension that redirects a new tab page to a predefined url of one’s choosing. But no – taken back to the same stupid speed dial page rather than my extension OR any website I specify for that matter.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Also, in setting, under “on startup”, I select “Open a specific page or set of page” and then set the page (to my awesome new tabs page), this works to bring up ANTP once in one Opera window the first time around, but then if I open Opera up a new window, it’s straight back to that speed dial again.

Can anyone either solve these issues for me or give me a workaround / alternate way to easily, quickly, and ready access my Awesome New Tabs Page and not the speed dial page.

[p.s. I have managed to add the extension URL the bookmarks bar, but clicking on it is not only fiddly because of its size, and its slowness to load compared to a new Tab. But it also means I’m having to do one extra click and load every time I want to just reach a page when I can access my bookmarks, then find the one I want and clicking and loading again to bring up the site.]

leocg

leocg Moderator Volunteer @Guest

@kiaseth Not all Chrome extensions work in Opera.

As far as I know, there is no way to change the behavior when opening a new tab, you will always see the start page.

'Open a specific page or set of page' is for setting up one or more pages that will be loaded on startup.

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer

There's a way for an extension to override chrome://startpage/ with a different URL, but Opera blocks it because they don't want anything being able to change it. This extension works around it by listening for chrome://startpage/ tabs and then navigating to the extension URL. This is a decent workaround that extensions can use. But, it causes chrome://startpage/ to remain in the history for that tab (as you can see by the back button). But, I think that might be solvable by having the extension delete those entries.

So, you could ask the extension author if they want to provide a workaround for Opera. If not, you're SOL, unfortunately.

See https://forums.opera.com/post/145429

A Former User

Thank you for the reply guys. And thanks for the extension link burnout. It's certainly a visual upgrade over the normal speed dial, although the dials are still quite far apart and it lacks the customizability of Awesome New Tabs Page.

I was wondering, do you happen to know of any way to automatically navigate to a specific link (it doesn't need to be Opera's 'New Tab' page), or if not then a possible next best option, of perhaps to do so via a simple hot key that may be a little easy that picking out a small bookmark on the bookmarks bar?

As a last resort if these aren't possible, do you know a way to expand the size of the bookmarks bar and especially its favicons, to make the easier to pick out and click on? Many thanks guys.

icl7126

icl7126

You can also use "Custom New Tab Page" add-on to override New tab page with any URL, including your favorite add-on new tab page URL. I'm using it with my Group Speed Dial add-on and it works well.

https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/custom-new-tab-page/