Disabling auto updates, saving certificates, displaying full url and grouping tabs?

samkook

samkook

A problem with v12.16 trying to update itself to v20 made me check if there was any improvement with the new version since v15 and, so far, it doesn't look good so I wanted to ask in here in case I missed something with advanced parameters like the old opera:config(I took a look at opera:flags which I found about a couple of minutes ago and there didn't seem to be anything of interest to me there).

First and most important, I noticed that opera next(if it's still called that) is always up-to-date on my HTPC which makes me believe that it auto-updates itself without telling me which is pretty troubling. Is there a way to disable that because I can't find an option for it anywhere and searching for "update" doesn't bring any results.

There's a manage certificate option, in the settings, but I tried again and didn't succeed in trying to whitelist a self-signed certificate of mine so it would stop giving me warnings every time I check the webpage(which was getting so annoying that I simply stopped looking at it on that pc). Exporting the certificate and importing it in my personals one doesn't seem to work, it doesn't throw any error, but the certificate doesn't appear in the list after and the warnign keeps showing up.

I don't have high hopes for that one, but is there a way to have the full URL in the address bar? Not being able to see/change the http/https is incredibly annoying to me since I have to type everything each time if I want to switch between the 2 and I don't know which it's trying to load(and no, it doesn't always automatically pick the right one if I leave it out).

And, finally, is there a way to group the tabs yet because I couldn't find one. It's one of the main reason I'm still using 12.16 on my main pc instead of switching to firefox(for which I haven't found one that works well and fast) full time so if it gets implemented in a similar way, it would be a nice step forward.

leocg

leocg Moderator Volunteer

It's trying to update to 12.17. Opera Presto will not updated to Opera Blink and if it happens, there will be a notice about.

samkook

samkook

I'm almost certain it was saying v20(could have just been a label mistake though) and I know it's not supposed to, but I can't be sure since it can't find any update now and also, that's not the point of this thread.

lem729

lem729

@samkook

I think most of what you want (except for the certificate issue, of which I know nothing) can be had, maybe with a little pluck and daring At the link below is a discussion of disabling automatic updates in Opera 18 and higher. Now this is from a third party discussion, not coming from Opera, so I guess you take your chances, though it looks promising. All you do is delete the automatic update file (so you might want to make a copy of that file before deleting, and also, make a note of where the file came from).

http://www.iterative.info/2014/01/disable-auto-update-on-opera.html

You can pin tabs on Opera 20. Just right click on the tab and you will see the feature.

Then there are extension possibilities. You might want to look at the Opera Easy Tab Manager Extension, https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/easy-tab-manager/?display=en

and also in the Chrome Store (You need the Opera extension, "Download Chrome Extension," and then you can download extensions from the Chrome store) take a look at: Tab Manager, which helps you to pin and unpin tabs (it looks better than the primitive pinning feature in Opera 20. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-manager/coonecdghnepgiblpccbbihiahajndda?

Then there is: Too Many Tabs for Chrome, which looks even more sophisticated.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/toomanytabs-for-chrome/amigcgbheognjmfkaieeeadojiibgbdp?hl=en-US
and Tab Outliner for organizing tabs.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-outliner/eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl?hl=en-US

On having a full URL in the address bar, my understanding is that the ability is coming in Opera 21 ("option to show the full address", I believe.

http://blogs.opera.com/desktop/2014/03/opera-21-next-includes-option-show-full-url/

Now Opera 21 is close to being released, so there appears to be hope

samkook

samkook

I don't really care about pinning tabs(which I haven't mentioned), I only used it to not accidentally close some tabs I always keep open.

As for those 3 extensions, they seem to be doing the exact thing I want to avoid at all cost with grouping which is having to open a popup or a new windows to show the tabs(firefox works that way too). I find this way terribly inefficient compared to the way it's done in the presto version.
I do a lot of small groups of related tabs and having the possibility to hover to see the content and switch or just expand a group on the tab bar is the fastest way I can think of working which is what I want.
I'll give searching the store a try, but I'm not very hopeful with my previous experience with trying to find one for firefox.

Sadly, everything seems to go the pretty way instead of the efficient one these days, like, in addition to grouping, the new menu style which force us to make one more click and still waste the whole space of the bar in v20(v12 where the tabs could be directly on the right of it was an acceptable compromise since it gave more screen space for the actual page), or easy access to bookmarks for the pages I visit less often, all the alternatives to a good old bookmark menu I've seen are always slower to use.
The only exception are direct links on the speed dial, but having folders in it pretty much destroy that speed though so a bookmark menu becomes faster when you have too many less often accessed pages you want to keep.

The full URL coming back in v21 is great news, so thanks a lot for that. I hope they'll finally give use the ability to display the full url in black though instead of having part of it gray and harder to read, it's one of the things I absolutely hate about v12.

Thanks for the reply, it's appreciated even if it may not seem that way for most of the post.

Edit: Just saw you edit about disabling the update. Thanks, I'll definitively give that a look and a try tomorrow.
I still can't believe there's no way to easily disable that. It's so wrong for a software to do that it would be reason enough(for me at least, I'm sure many don't care) not to use it. The only reason I still do is my undying hope that things will get better and the fact I rarely have to use a browser on my HTPC so it's a good place to keep track of the changes.

And it seems the forum doesn't display two empty lines in a row... [rant]Why must it think it knows better what I want to do than myself. And having to refresh every time you want to edit is so annoying.[/rant]

lem729

lem729

Well, we can't afford to sweat the little things. Like refreshing pages to edit. I know you were being light there. Now you did talk about wanting a way to group tabs in your initial post, and I find pinning is definitely a way of grouping. And if one of the extensions handles it well, I thought, maybe it might accomplish, if not what you want, then at least something that may be useful to you. Oh well. I hope you find something that will help in your closer look at the situation, If not now, well, surely developers will be refining their extensions . . . And so, maybe next month. One can surely hope

samkook

samkook

I guess you're kind of right about pinning since it does save space in the tab bar and group them together, but you're limited to 1 "group" at the beginning of the tab bar.

For the auto-update, renaming the "opera_autoupdate.exe" file works, but you have to rename it back when you want to update and since it's located in a folder with the version in the name, it complicates things a bit if I don't want to have to do this manually every time I want to update.
I guess I'll have to make a bat file to read the install log to be able to rename the file and enable/disable auto-updates.

I just went through all the results that looked remotely promising for "tab group" or "stack" in both chrome and opera extension and I sadly haven't found anything that doesn't require a popup window to manage groups or that does it automatically(which is a big no-no). It's so discouraging, especially when there's so many of them.

I looked at "Tabs Outliner" in a bit more detail and it looks pretty good as a bookmark replacement though. I'll probably give it a try if I start using the new opera version more one day.

You're right, one can always hope, even if they don't make this easy for us who don't like what the majority of users seem to want.

christoph142

christoph142

You can also use the --disable-update command line switch to stop Opera from checking for updates.
Not sure if this is easier though...

lem729

lem729

@samkook

On the auto-update issue, there's a super program -- free -- if you have Windows (I'm using Windows 7), now called, Keybreeze.

http://www.keybreeze.com/

It's a Command line launch program For any location (file) in your computer you can type a letter, letters or a word. Then when you need the file, just type a ; (semi-colon) to trigger this program, and then the code (the letter, letters, or word. The file buried in the computer pops up for your editing pleasure. As long as you write down or otherwise remember what code you assigned to this particular file, you can retrieve the file instantly. For this particular file, maybe you make the code , maybe "a" (if i's not being used) or "auto" or "auto 1". So retrieving the file to change it can almost be as easy as a toggle switch. Type ";a" and you have the file. Or ""auto", Otherwise said, it's a "breeze." As for the "; " trigger , you can change it to something else. if you keep the ";" and are typing and want to get a real ";" in a memo you are typing, just press very quickly after the ";" the enter key, and you get the typed ";" instead of the file you assigned the code to.

I've used this program for years. So with it, you ought to have no problem keeping track of and changing that auto-update file whenever you need to.

samkook

samkook

With the command line switch, I can simply disable it in the main shortcut I use and create a second one to enable the updates so it would be simpler than the bat file and has more chance to still work if opera change the update behavior, thanks.

As for keybreeze, I doubt you can associate a file to a shortcut without specifying the absolute path(which I would have to redo for every update so it pretty much defeat the purpose) and even if it could, opera also keep the previous version(as a backup I assume, in case things go wrong with the update) so it wouldn't know which of the two is the right one.
If it could show both, then I would have to pick the right one and rename it manually which is more work than needed for such a simple task.
Plus, I would have to let the software index my computer all the time from what I'm understanding and that's not something I like to have done(I disable windows search engine to avoid just that since I almost need to search for a file).

lem729

lem729

When there's an update, the update file would very likely be in the same folder location. All you need to do is update, and check the shortcut in less than five seconds with ";+code"). If the file instantly comes up, make the change to it you want (again five seconds, maybe ten or fifteen:)) and you're set till the next update. If the file doesn't come up, you'd have to locate it again, which can be done very quickly. But again, it's likely the file location would be the same. Since you can instantly access the file through Keybreeze, fixing the "auto update" issue with each update could done in twenty seconds. And you're doing the updates manually, so when you do the update, you take a few seconds, or a tad more, not much, to fix the file.

samkook

samkook

It's never in the same folder location after an update since it install itself in a folder named after the version number inside the opera install folder.

The previous version was located at:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Opera\20.0.1387.82\opera_autoupdate.exe

And the latest one is at:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Opera\20.0.1387.91\opera_autoupdate.exe

The fastest way to do it, other than having the ability to check for updates from inside opera, is to launch a different shortcut to start opera without the disable update switch since the launcher file is located directly in the opera install folder and never change location so you only have to set everything up once. I put such a shortcut on my desktop and I use one with the switch pinned to the taskbar.

Edit: I didn't intend to add so many empty lines, but the forum wouldn't let me skip to the next line without doing this. It really doesn't make life easy if you don't want to always write a wall of text and have clear separations.

lem729

lem729

Oh well, it was an idea . . . When they change file names, they make it harder. I guess it depends that how much you want to stop automatic updates. And then there was Christoph 142's suggestion, "You can also use the --disable-update command line switch." I don't understand that (I'm low-tech), or how hard it is.

christoph142

christoph142

Just open Opera via a link.
Target: "path/to/Opera.exe" --disable-update.
opera:about will then tell you "Update checker is disabled"

samkook

samkook

You make a shortcut, right-click it, go in properties and add the --disable-update at the end of the the target field which would look like this:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Opera\launcher.exe" --disable-update

It's really easy when you know how these things work, but not so much when you don't.

That's what I'm using as we speak and what I was talking about in the paragraph before the edit in my previous post and the first paragraph in the one before that.

berng

berng

The problem with the disable option from a shortcut is that this option only works when using the shortcut. If you open Opera from an email web link or link form another program (such as Keypass)then update will be active.

blackbird71

blackbird71

The problem with the disable option from a shortcut is that this option only works when using the shortcut. If you open Opera from an email web link or link form another program (such as Keypass)then update will be active.

Which is precisely the reason why I am so opposed to auto-updating schemes that can't be turned off by a user from within a program itself. There may be a hundred legitimate reasons why a user wants/needs to block updating, but there are dozens of ways around his blocking unless it's done within the program itself, by design. Probably the most assured method of blocking Blink Opera currently is to change the updater file extension to .xxx or something similar... but even that has some risks attached (a repair re-install, for example).

berng

berng

The problem with the disable option from a shortcut is that this option only works when using the shortcut. If you open Opera from an email web link or link form another program (such as Keypass)then update will be active.

Which is precisely the reason why I am so opposed to auto-updating schemes that can't be turned off by a user from within a program itself.
That is my complaint too.

The same applies to the command line override of the cache location. It can be a serious issue for those who have SSD drives not being able to fully control cache location or size.

suntana

suntana

In my case, in my inquiry in that other thread yesterday, I was referring to an OFFICIAL method of disabling the Auto Update thing. You know ... as in perhaps a hidden button or link that I just wasn't seeing.

I've never been into Frankensteinizing, McGuyvering or Shade Tree Mechanic-ing Opera or any other App into doing something that it's not doing as per the official functionality of the finished product.

Using one of the various methods mentioned would just be a Band-Aid. Not practical. I periodically close Opera and then bring it back up if I'm having problems with sluggishness, Etc. If I had to ... say --- perform that modification on the Opera Shortcut EVERY TIME that I bring up Opera, that would get old and seriously irritating very quickly.

suntana

suntana

It is seriously very ridiculous and warped thinking to go the route of forcing Auto Update on Users like that. Many times with Apps, we find a version that we really like and is working great for us on OUR system and we want to stay with that version. Why should we be forced to take on another newer version that might then have introduced problems and / or that now won't work as great on OUR system as the old version?