Favorite Places/Bookmarks

boblink

boblink

Hi, I am replacing IE with Opera and have a question about importing Bookmarks/Favorites Places to Opera. I see that Opera has Speed Dial, does it also have or allow Bookmarks/Favorite Places to be imported (and used) in the Opera Browser?
Thank you,
Bob

lem729

lem729

Welcome to Opera and the Opera Forum, boblink I assume you have downloaded and are going to be using Opera 20. I'm not the world's greatest expert on importing bookmarks. All I had to do was import from Opera 12.16 to Opera 20. That was fairly easy. I went to settings in Opera 20, and put a check in show the bookmarks bar. And I think they just showed up. If for some reason they don't, there is an Opera extension to install, which is a rudimentary bookmarks manager, and is specifically designed to help importing from Opera 12.

https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/bookmarks-manager/?display=en

Since there isn't an easy way to move bookmarks directly into Opera 20 from IE, my thought would be to download Opera 12.17 for Windows from this link.

http://www.opera.com/download/guide/?ver=12.17

If you click on File in version 12.17, and click on Import/Export, there is a place there where you can click on importing favorites from IE into Opera 12.17.

Once you have the bookmarks in Opera 12.17, just go to your Opera 20 browser, settings, and put a check in show the bookmarks bar. Assuming your favorites don't show up there from that check (they probably won't), download/install that add on -- the Opera bookmarks extension for Opera 20. Click on it on the toolbar, where it will show up in Opera 20, and you will see a place to click called, Manage and Import, and hopefully that should do it for you. (Ultimately there are better bookmark/manager extensions, but you are using this one to help with the importing from Opera 12 to Opera 20.

As an aside, you mentioned the Opera Speed Dial. There is no browser elsewhere on the internet that has anything quite like the one in Opera 20. It's a quantum leap forward On this Speed dial, you can create folders within each speed dial item by dragging one speed dial link (showing up as a rectangle in the dial, with an image of the website) over another link/rectangle in the speed dial, so this is a unique Speed Dial (you can have -- if you keep adding to it -- a folder of many speed dial items within each part of the speed dial if you chose) with wonderful storage capacity. Still, it definitely helps to have the personal bookmarks toolbar also.

Deleted User

Deleted User

You might also find reading this following link to be helpful; particularly the part about the transmute app.

https://forums.opera.com/post/29402

boblink

boblink

Thanks for the suggestions guys, Lem, the https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/bookmarks-manager/?display=en like doesn't open and (the latest version of Opera) Opera 20 is the only available download (earlier versions are redirected to Opera 20) http://www.opera.com/download/guide/?ver=12.17

and Leushino, the link (article) was interesting but it appears to be OLD (i.e. directed to earlier versions of Opera) but at least it gives me a better understand.

FYI, I was able to piece together a something that includes my bookmarks but it really is not very usable since I need to click (drill down) 4-5 deep to get to a bookmark.

Do you know of any reason why a Browser )like Opera) would NOT include "normal" bookmarks?

Thanks,
Bob

Deleted User

Deleted User

Do you know of any reason why a Browser )like Opera) would NOT include "normal" bookmarks?
Thanks,
Bob

That's the $64,000 question, Bob. According to what was posted months ago, studies showed that few were using a traditional bookmark manager so Opera decided to offer an alternative method: Speed Dial, Quick Address Bar (what was renamed the bookmarks bar) and Stash (for temporary "come back later" and read, bookmarks). The feeling was the these features would accommodate average users who have few bookmarks right up to those with a thousand. Those users with more than a thousand bookmarks constitute a fringe group (according to Opera's study) and therefore a traditional bookmarking scheme was not offered. That's about all I know about their decision. Will a traditional manager be offered in the future? I have no idea but my guess is, probably not.

boblink

boblink

Thank you for the explanation Leushino, I understand but doesn't make sense at least from my prospective and people that I know, Bookmarks/Favorites are VERY important and will limit my use of Opera.
I use Chrome, Mozilla and IE and have found IE to be terrible so I am replacing IE with Opera (I would have used Safari but Apple no longer supports Windows).
And under the circumstances (no Bookmark import function), I probably will only use Opera to have quick access to my Yahoo mail account (I have 2 Yahoo Mail accounts and unlike Gmail, Yahoo only allows you to view (open) 1 Yahoo Mail account in a browser so I will use Mozilla and Opera to view my Yahoo accounts and also use Mozilla to "surf the Web" and use Gmail for my Gmail accounts and "surfing".
Too bad Opera came to the conclusion that Bookmarks/Favorite Places are no used but that's why then offer vanilla AND chocolate and I am sure that they know what they are doing.
Thank you for your help Leushino,
Bob

lem729

lem729

@boblink

what you said -- and please forgive me -- is totally laughable. It is not at all vanilla and chocolate. The people who say that just don't understand what a powerful/awesome vehicle Opera 20 is for bookmarking/favorites. You can have tons of bookmarking -- way more than in Opera 12.16 -- and it can be normal bookmarking, in Opera 20. Your main question related to importing, and I gave you a workaround. So just download Opera 12.16 from another site. It's easy to find it, and then try the importing (both into Opera 12.16 from IE) and then from Opera 12.16 to Opera 20.

First, are you sure you can's download from the opera website, Opera 12. Go to this link:

http://www.opera.com/computer/windows

Scroll 2/3 down the page and see in red, "looking for previous version, download Opera 12.". That's where you have to go to get it. If that doesn't work, you can get it elsewhere, such as maybe-- but only download if you are comfortable, as I haven't done it from these sites. I just did a quick search to see what's out there.

http://www.softexia.com/internet-tools/browsing/opera-12/

http://www.downloadcrew.com/article/27699-opera

On bookmarking, damn, it's awesome, what you can do with Opera 20. It's head and shoulders beyond Opera 12.16, or, in some regards, any other browser. Certainly, the Speed dial possibilities for bookmarking make Opera UNIQUE.

First, you can have a normal bookmarks bar in Opera 20. Just put a check in the menu item under settings, "Show the bookmarks bar." Now if you want to do more with bookmarks, just add an extension. I use Chrookmarks from the Chrome store.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrookmarks-chrome-bookma/kcdheengilgkagjehknnnofigbmlnnfj?hl=en and I like it.

It gives you the ability to organize your bookmarks, not only alphabetically but chronologically. Keep in mind though that there are many bookmark extensions in the Opera and Chrome stores (Tidy bookmarks in the Chrome store is another one) (also, I think, "Neat bookmarks." I haven't explored them all. Certainly there may be better than what I have. And the thing is, for the future, Developers will be working to make all of this stuff better.

Still even just with the Bookmarks toolbar activated the way i described for you, you should be good to go. You want a folder on the toolbar, right click on an empty space, and you can create a bookmark folder. You want to put a bookmark on the toolbar. Just drag the icon (wrong word maybe, but all I could think of to describe) for the website from the right of the Address bar to the toolbar. If you want it to stand alone, it will. If you want it in the folder, drag it in the folder.

Now this is just one way to bookmark. In the Speed Dial, you can create folders for each speed dial item. it's similar to the way Apple handles apps in the Ipad or ipod. Drag two apps on top of each other and you have a folder of apps in the ipod or ipad.. In the Opera 20 speed dial, you can create two speed dial items/links and drag them on top of each other. Voilà, you then have a folder. You can have multitudinous items (10, 20, more?) in the folder -- which is JUST one place on the Speed Dial. Damn, you can have a thousands of links to sites, JUST in the Speed dial. Now I use the personal bookmarks on that toolbar more (you can also have voluminous bookmarks there) and save the speed dial for really nice things you go to all the time. But it's up to you. You can drag sites/individual dial items (not folders) from the speed dial to the personal bookmarks toolbar, and vice versa.

Then you can bookmarks in the Stash feature. One person told me he had 1000 bookmarks there alone. There's a search engine for retrieving from Stash. Now I'm don't use Stash for voluminous bookmarking, but just things I might want to read later one, but it is an extra vehicle.

Deleted User

Deleted User

lem, you kill me! You're one of the best advocates for bookmarking in Opera Blink that is currently posting here and helping others. I'm sure the Opera Team greatly appreciate your help.

The thing I'm finding is, many are resistant to change. Whereas they have bookmarked a particular way for years, now that alternative methods of bookmarking are presented, they resist changing. However, from everything I've been able to gather from personal experience (i.e. asking fellow workers, friends, family members), Opera's findings regarding the usage of bookmarks is pretty much spot on. That's not to say that bookmarks are no longer useful OR used, but it is indicative that most users no longer bother with literally thousands of bookmarks. Like it or not, that is pretty much the way many use the internet these days, particularly younger users. I've found that I no longer have the huge bookmark list I once had (never had literally thousands, but there was a point at which I had a few hundred). For one thing, many of those sites I had formerly bookmarked are no longer there. For another, my interests and needs have changed. I find now that besides a few dozen frequently visited sites, easily taken care of by the Speed Dial, and a few dozen other sites that I have in reserve for work and research which are taken care of by the bookmarks' bar, I simply use a search engine and I'm where I want to be within seconds. I'm not saying that my way is the best... but I am saying that things are changing and the complainers are resistant to this. This has been my experience with the Seamonkey crowd. When the old Mozilla suite (formerly Netscape) vanished and Firebird and Thunderbird were split off (Firebird being renamed Firefox), a very small group of users who were upset at the loss of the suite with integrated email, formed a community to take care of their needs (i.e. Seamonkey). Hardly anyone uses Seamonkey with the vast majority of users today opting for standalone apps, but there will always be the small group who cannot and will not change. And that can be likened to the bookmark complainers.

A question for you. What extension do you use that enables you to make use of Chrome extensions from the Chrome store?

alex00752

alex00752

I probably will only use Opera to have quick access to my Yahoo mail account (I have 2 Yahoo Mail accounts and unlike Gmail, Yahoo only allows you to view (open) 1 Yahoo Mail account in a browser so I will use Mozilla and Opera to view my Yahoo accounts and also use Mozilla to "surf the Web" and use Gmail for my Gmail accounts and "surfing".

Too bad Opera came to the conclusion that Bookmarks/Favorite Places are no used but that's why then offer vanilla AND chocolate and I am sure that they know what they are doing.
Thank you for your help Leushino,
Bob

You can use Opera Mail for having multiple mail accounts at the same time, it's great.

lem729

lem729

@leushino

Thanks on your comments. The Opera extension is called, "Download Chrome Extension." Get that extension, and then you can download from the Chrome store. When you download something there, click on your Opera menu to open it, go to Extensions, and you will see the Chrome Extension you have just download, which needs you to click on Install.Click on intall, and you are "good to go"

I think you're right maybe that the Opera team didn't think people bookmark as much, but after the complaints about no bookmark toolbar, they added the capability. So suddenly with the voluminous possibilities to bookmark in the speed dial, and not the toolbar, as well as in extensions, they've created (by adding the capability of bookmarking in the personal bookmarks toolbar to what they had already put in Opera) the most extensive and varied way :)))) to bookmark the browsing world has ever seen. And yet, people still complain, there's no bookmarking here. It is beyond laughable.

Now there are some bookmarking nits I think they should fix. For example when you are at a website, I'd like a right click menu that gives you the ability to add the bookmark to the personal toolbar. As it is, you can right click to add to the Stash, or the Speed Dial, but not to the Personal bookmark toolbar. Of course, you can easily add it to the speed dial and drag it from there to the personal bookmark toolbar (or drag the icon on the far left of the address bar to the personal bookmarks toolbar), but I would add one more option on the context menu (its more intuitive since its already there for adding to the Speed Dial or to Stash) for the right click (now that they have added the personal bookmarks toolbar), so you can get the bookmark on the Personal bookmarks toolbar without needing to drag it.

And even more critical, Opera needs to make the importing of bookmarks from other browsers -- directly from Opera 12.17, IE, Firefox, Chrome, etc. -- easy. All the user should have to do is click on import, select the browser they want to import from, and it should be done. We have people from other browsers who want to use Opera, and are stymied by the "not few" hoops they have to jump through to get their bookmarks here.

Deleted User

Deleted User

Thanks for the information, lem. We're in a coffee shop right now (wife and I) and I'm on my iPad. Once I get home from shopping, I'll download that extension. If any problems present themselves, I'll let you know. Have a good one.

boblink

boblink

Hi Lem, you appear to be VERY passionate about Opera or work for them and/or own shares in the company, in any event I wish I had the same passion for ANYTHING as you do for Opera. I was able to download 12.17 and it wasn't quite so simple,I was able to download 923 Bookmarks. FYI, I use quite a few Websites and don't want to memorize them (I don't use all of them but I would guess that I use 50-75 at least once a week) so bookmarks ARE important to me. Also when I said that's why they have vanilla and chocolate it was not a comment on Opera per se, it was meant as, "one size does not fit all and why people are given choices.
But now that I uninstalled Opera 20 and installed Opera 12.17 (with Bookmarks), I am having difficulty upgrading 12.17 to Opera 20 and would appreciate your help.
Thanks Bob
P.S.- this is what's installed at the moment (I have aW7-64bit not 32bit)

About Opera
Version information
Version 12.17
Build 1863
Platform Win32
System Windows 7

lem729

lem729

Haha, no shares in the company or relationship at all to Opera. Don't know anyone there. I do like the Speed Dial a lot (the creation of folders in it), and that Opera 20 is faster, able to access sites better, is the browser that Opera intends to work on developing, and I enjoy playing with extensions, etc.

If you got the Opera 12 download on the Opera site, and they only gave 32 bits, I think it works fine with 64 bit Windows. They probably wanted you to use that one. I found some discussion at a website to the effect that the Opera 32 bit download is better than a 64 bit version..

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/opera.general/Es9UV640yOU

Anyway, all you want the Opera 12 for is to get the IE bookmarks and to move them to your Opera 20. Right? For Opera 20, there seems to be only one download at the top of the main windows of the site, so take that one.

http://www.opera.com/computer/windows

Install Opera 20. Then follow my instructions in my first post in this thread. Go to settings in that browser, click on browser, go to "User Interface" there, and put a check in "show the bookmarks bar" (and, if your items/folders don't show up, maybe won't, then download the Opera Extension that is a rudimentary bookmarks manager that is supposed to help with the migration. There are also the Chrome bookmark extensions like Chrookmarks, which you can get (by first downloading the Opera extension, "Download Chrome Extension." (That extension is what makes it possible to use Chrome extensions in an Opera browser). Then you go to the Chrome Store, download the Chrome extension, Chrookmarks, maybe, or Tidy Bookmarks. After you download the Chrome extension, click on your Opera 20 menu, click on extensions, and when you see the Chrome extension there, click install it. It's really easy. (It's possible just that Chrome extension will find your bookmarks for the activated bookmarks toolbar, and you may not have even needed that Opera Bookmarks manager). Now in getting my bookmarks from Opera 12 to Opera 20 it happened easily. I don't even think that I used the Opera Bookmarks Manager, but others in the forum seem to recommend it. Play around :))) It will work. Nothing ventured, nothing . . . Or post back.

boblink

boblink

Hi Lem, please let me know when Opera goes public, with devoid users like you it is sure to be a HUGH success. FYI, I was able to download v20 and also have v12.17, what I don't have is the Bookmarks from v12.17 on v20, (I tried all your suggestions but they didn't work) and have invested enough time for something that is an easy import with every other browser that I used, so I will live with what I have and hopefully I will find Opera to be a "speed demon" and will do away with Mozilla and Chrome.
Thank you again for your help Lem and good luck to you
Bob

lem729

lem729

"devoid"? (devoted?) (or devoid of common sense?) ;)))

I'm sorry it didn't work. I tried. I had bookmarks in Opera 12, and they easily went to opera 20, but they were not bookmarks that came from IE. Now that Bookmarks manager extension from Opera did have a rectangle when you opened it, for clicking "import.". Also the Chrookmarks extension in the Chrome store seemed to recognize what I had. Opera needs to make the importing issue much simpler. It's definitely a shortfall of Opera 20. You should't have to jump through hoops.

boblink

boblink

You have been VERY helpful Lem, may be they'll get enough feedback and add Bookmarks to the next release and it also seems strange that you don't UPGRADE from one version to another version but install the new version and uninstall the old version.
Anyway, I am using Opera but would use it MUCH more if I was able to import my Bookmarks and it should have been DEVOTED but for dyslectics like me, it came out "devoid".
Bob

lem729

lem729

Yes, they do need a better way to import bookmarks. Of course, the ability to make bookmarks is very much in Opera 20. Thanks so much, though, Boblink for your kind note.

blackbird71

blackbird71

Yes, they do need a better way to import bookmarks. Of course, the ability to make bookmarks is very much in Opera 20. ...

If I were "king" of Opera, the very highest of priorities would be placed on development of an effective means of importing user data into Opera directly from other browser brands. If Opera intends to grow its market share, that share will have to come from somewhere - and it will want/need to bring its data with it, whether or not Opera believes bookmarks are that major a deal. But if users can't easily bring in their favorite/bookmarked sites from other browsers, that barrier risks killing the deal for many of those users. A good product trying to win users from other products will strive to make their transition as painless and easy as possible... but Blink Opera, 9 months later, still has a glaring "import" defficiency. Now that Opera has a bookmark bar, that import deficiency seriously needs to be corrected.

lem729

lem729

@blackbird71

Absolutely. We can't ask users to jump through a thousand hoops to get their bookmarks into Opera 20.

alex00752

alex00752

I transfered my bookmarks from opera 12 to opera 20 whit the help of bookmark-importer option from "more tools" menu. It gives you the option to import opera 12 bookmarks to bookmark bar or to a single speed dial folder...

It will be nice for the bookmark bar to have a alternative display, for example a button in the area where extension buttons are. On a laptop 16:9 display 1366x768 you need all the vertical space you can get. Full screen also needs a auto hide bar for displaying and switching tabs.