Transition to Firefox/Chrome?
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cousinricky last edited by
I can get used to UIs of other browsers. What I'd like to know is how to import bookmarks from Opera into Firefox. I've got more than 2000 of them in nested hierarchies of folders. Chrome knows about Firefox, and will even import Firefox's bookmarks for you without your permission. But there seems to be some industry conspiracy to pretend that Opera does not exist.
Meanwhile, Opera. Does. Not. Work. On. My. Computer. At. All.
(I'm another one who paid money for Opera back in the day. Opera is the only browser that knows the difference between a requested pop-up and a spontaneous pop-up, which is what prompted me to pay them. Also, Opera has saved sessions and can assign user CSS based on Web site; I don't know of any other browser that does those.)
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sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer last edited by
Incompatible system upgrade, or what? If Opera ran - even without connecting to the internet - it could export your bookmarks as HTML which could then be imported to anything.
There have been over the years a number of Windows bookmark managers that recognized Opera bookmarks; I haven't looked for such a thing in my distro's available packages or at Sourceforge but I would be surprised if it wasn't available for Linux.
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A Former User last edited by
If you can run Midori, it might be able to put your Opera bookmarks in a form that Firefox can read. (I haven't imported bookmarks into a Mozilla browser in probably seven or eight years, so I'm about useless with that last part of it.)
Midori was able to find my file at ~/.opera/bookmarks.adr and even copy my old Personal Bar folder's items to its own bookmarks bar--in reverse order, and I didn't see an easy way to reorder them. :rolleyes: But I don't know that browser very well yet, and maybe the current version does better.
The export dialog gives me two choices of bookmark formats to save: XBEL and Netscape.
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A Former User last edited by
Okay, being clueless was driving me nuts, so I found some more information.
The only Firefox I have installed right now is Iceweasel 10 (because every time I upgrade it to v. 17 on Wheezy, I get bored trying to figure out why the tiny window that opens turns into a dot as soon as I touch it to try to resize it :irked: ), but that one can find and import Opera's bookmarks directly in addition to importing from HTML files. From the menu bar, Bookmarks -> Show All Bookmarks -> Import and Backup brings up those options.
The Windows executable for Bookmark Converter runs fine for me on WINE, so that's another possible solution if you can't run Midori and can't make Firefox find Opera's bookmark file under your home directory. Its dialog for selecting the source file doesn't list *.adr files that don't have 'Opera' in their filenames, but it did let me type 'bookmarks.adr' into the 'File name' field to pick one from the current directory. When I set 'Netscape 6-7 bookmarks' as the target format, it created a bookmarks.html file similar (but not identical) to the one I got with the Netscape option in Midori, and Iceweasel was able to use it.
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cousinricky last edited by
Originally posted by sgunhouse:
Incompatible system upgrade, or what?
Not sure. It did fail after some routine updates to openSUSE 12.2. After reinstalling Opera and upgrading to openSUSE 13.1, there is no change.
Originally posted by sgunhouse:
If Opera ran - even without connecting to the internet - it could export your bookmarks as HTML which could then be imported to anything.
As I said, Opera doesn't work at all. It grabs all of the system memory (8 GB) and all of the swap space (2 GB) right off the bat, and never even gets to the point of opening a window before the OS kills it.
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cousinricky last edited by
Originally posted by thattoo:
The only Firefox I have installed right now is Iceweasel 10 (because every time I upgrade it to v. 17 on Wheezy, I get bored trying to figure out why the tiny window that opens turns into a dot as soon as I touch it to try to resize it :irked: ), but that one can find and import Opera's bookmarks directly in addition to importing from HTML files. From the menu bar, Bookmarks -> Show All Bookmarks -> Import and Backup brings up those options.
Thanks for that info. It would be nice if Mozilla hadn't buried the feature in such an unobvious place.
Unfortunately, it's only giving me Chrome as an option, and now Chrome doesn't want to work either. (What's going on here???)
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A Former User last edited by
[Sheesh. I replied here to ask for answers to already-answered questions before I saw the other post that came in before the one that addressed me personally. And now I've edited this reply so many times, I almost wish this software would yell at me for it.
]You might need to provide more information about your own circumstances to get a good answer to that one.
You said that Opera doesn't work on your computer at all. Does that mean you couldn't make it run long enough to create the ~/.opera directory where Firefox would be most likely to look for your bookmarks file?
In that case, did you try creating the ~/.opera (or ~/.config/Opera, maybe?) directory manually, and then copying your old *.adr file into that new directory to see whether Firefox could find it there? (Because Opera does run fine on my own system, and because that old version of Iceweasel is the only Firefox I can test at the moment, I can't easily rule out the possibility that an unidentified Firefox version, running on an unfamiliar Linux system, is running some command like 'which opera' and then giving up on finding your Opera bookmarks just because it can't find that browser.)
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neon2k8 last edited by
I've been always using 2 browsers on my linux system (and I still do), so I never "made a switch". The only difference is that now I use Chrome and Firefox while back then I've been using Chrome and Opera (what an irony!!! Two different browsers then that became one now!). I've tested Opera 18 on my sister's windows pc and I consider it very fast and responsive. It lacks some of the presto-based opera's features, but most of them will be back little-by-little in each new version. There were 4 new releases of Blink Opera since OTeam made the switch to the faster release cycle and it's been just a few months. So, there will be many many more releases (and thus more new features) during 2014 I guess (and a Linux version too, very very soon I hope!). We've been waiting for so many months now, lets just wait a little more!!
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cousinricky last edited by
Originally posted by thattoo:
You said that Opera doesn't work on your computer at all. Does that mean you couldn't make it run long enough to create the ~/.opera directory where Firefox would be most likely to look for your bookmarks file?
All the directories are already set up. Opera used to work fine until after one night when I did a routine openSUSE 12.2 update. (I'm now running openSUSE 13.1.)
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ruario last edited by
To answer the original post:
The new Blink based Opera can switch to most recently-used tab with Ctrl+Tab (it is a setting on Windows [and Linux when it is released] and can be configured by tweaking the default keyboard configuration on Mac).
There are extensions that change the default tab opening position.
Session saving is not an issue.
Single-key shortcuts are a setting away from the default.
Basic Mouse gestures are on by default (on Windows and Linux).
Mouse rocker gestures can be switched on via a setting.
No panels but bookmarks can be access and manipulated via the bar or via various extensions. Windows and Links can be manipulated via various extensions.
P.S. For those worried that Opera's Linux version will never be updated, read this (no new news but it might reassure you somewhat):
http://ruario.ghost.io/2014/03/02/linux-and-blink-powered-opera/ -
stng last edited by
[quote]There are extensions that change the default tab opening position.
Session saving is not an issue.
Single-key shortcuts are a setting away from the default.
Basic Mouse gestures are on by default (on Windows and Linux).
Mouse rocker gestures can be switched on via a setting.[/quote]All of these are easily available through Chrome+Extensions for Linux, isnt't ? With such basic needs, there is no reason for Chropera/Linux.
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josefko last edited by
I've been an Opera user for many, maybe 10 years or more. Now I decided to try Evernote and in Opera 12.16 it is not possible to run a web client of Evernote. Web Evernote window is blank. Even a plugin for Evernote Web Clipper says that it needs at least Opera version 16. So I decided to switch to Firefox.
Maybe formerly Opera was something extra, but now I found that when I download about 10 plugins, I have a browser that looks like and works like Opera or maybe better. Especially important for me is speed dial plugin Super Start and plugin QuickJava for switching javascript, flashes, etc on and off. Firefox Link is also available.
I exported Opera bookmarks with folders of bookmarks into html format and an import to Firefox was flawless.
