Hello everyone,
let me start this thread by mentioning, that I had been an Opera user for quite a number of years, until they announced the retirement of their own Presto engine. While I am not a fan of Google and their rather basic ideology, I now find myself in the position of needing to find a fast browser for a few dozen low-powered (older) desktop computers. My first thought was to install Firefox (I have been using it myself since Opera changed tracks from 12 to 15), but it feels very lethargic already on one of the faster systems, so there is no way to get it to work satisfactorily on even slower machines. Naturally I thought of Opera, because no matter if the old or new one and no matter what my problems with the new one are, the browser has always felt very fast and efficient. Now I'm willing to give the new one a chance once more.
Here are some of my questions which are mostly about features, the lack thereof, or workarounds to customize the new Opera at least somewhat. Please bear in mind, that the target audience for this are senior citizens, who may or may not be computer literate. Even if you can't imagine why I'm asking such a 'dumb' question, it can make a life of difference for someone else.
Q: Is there a way to remove the "x" from the tabs like one could do in the old Opera? When your target audience won't always be very accurate with mouse clicks, hitting the close-tab icon is a real danger and it has happened even to me a time or two since I began testing Opera again. To avoid this kind of hassle, I would like to remove this feature completely.
Q: Is there a way to always open new tabs last (possibly without an extension)? The people using the computers will have a difficult enough time remembering the open tabs and their positions, so why make it harder on them when each newly opened tab will throw out the previous order? I know about the "New Tabs At End" extension by "itworks", but the most recent reviews slam the changed permissions for it. Is that a case of different permission requirements for the API in recent Chrome versions or is there maybe another extension which does the same with less suspicion?
Q: Possibly related to the previous question on tab behavior and more of a personal interest, is there a way for Opera to remember the order of tabs I last viewed them in? When closing the active tab, Opera always switches to the one on the right instead of going back to the tab I viewed before the one I have just closed.
Q: Does something similar to the Firefox add-on NoSquint exist for Opera? You can guess why I'm asking this. Senior citizens generally have a lot more difficulty in reading from websites with all its different fonts, sizes and differences in general readability. The easiest solution would be an extension allowing the user to set a proper zoom level and remember it for the whole domain. Opera seems to have this built-in already on first glance, but I would appreciate some information on how this works exactly.
Q: Is there a way to always open content/websites from certain sources in a new tab? If I want to search something in the Omnibar, the search page should open a new tab (and switch to it!) but not overwrite the website in the current tab. The same should happen when clicking on a bookmark. When I'm simply browsing on a random webpage however, any click on the page should always follow what the target-attribute of the link indicates. Yes I know there exist ways - for example with bookmarks, to either click the middle mouse key/wheel or right-click and use 'open in a new tab' - but they're either not very user friendly or can't be executed on every computer in the same way, like when you don't have a mouse with a wheel or use the touch-pad of a laptop.
There will be other issues with this group of people I'm sure, but those questions are things I know how to fix in Firefox but not with a Blink-based browser. Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.
Bettina