Posts made by multitasker-5

@leocg

O.K., and thanks. The explanation makes sense and fills in that gap.

Let me then ask this, if you or anyone else may have the answer. I tried to graft the section for an installed, known to be working prior version extension -- from one Opera ver. 99 to another Opera ver. 99 on a different machine. This will be a crude, inexact representation, but close enough, and hopefully the idea will come across:

This (example): 

in Opera, under \Data\Profile\Data

\Extensions
\bdallnkjchemfeicfdneeaidongbpdnj
\1.1_0
\metadata

\kgodbpmaebgibhnnejlcmcfpfenfmfo
 \0.1.1_0
  \data
   \icons
    \interface
     \resource
      \vendor
       \codemirror
        \lib
        \mode
        \sql
        \sql
        \lib
        \chrome
        \metadata

I realize that these extensions are not explicitly identified (until you look in the Manifest.json under 'Name:' for each), otherwise they are just getting some code ID string as seen above.

But the graft wasn't seen, and did not work. My speculation was that when the extension got installed, something essential also went into some Opera registry file(s) for them ?

Another question was whether there was something in these sections to click on, that might install what is in one of these older, transferred sections ?

I'm just trying to extrapolate from some brute force type hacks that I think I may have managed to do with other browsers in the past -- although their designs and structures were different. Sometimes such a thing might work, provided one had some basic grasp of the rules.

@leocg

All very well, but as I wrote I am running v. 99, not Opera One, so that does not help me. I still need the previous (now withdrawn) extension, so I'll be dependent on whoever can supply it, or wherever I might still be able to find and install it from.

The former page for it in the Opera Extensions repository now goes 404 -- not found. I had it installed and successfully working on a couple computers, but wanted to add it for another. (I continue running Opera v. 99, without incident, and want nothing to do with Opera One. If & when I'm forced to stop using the older Opera version, I will simply switch to Vivaldi.) This gateway to being able to use Chrome Add-Ons was a truly important extension. ! There are at least a couple Chrome extensions I'd really like to add to the mix, just as I had them going on the previous machines. It may not even matter to me why this was withdrawn: I had encountered no stability issues. If there is anywhere that this add-on for using Chrome extensions has been archived, -- even a third-party site -- I would much appreciate being directed there. Also, if applicable, instructions on how to properly integrate that extension into the pre-Opera One version that I'm using. (I found a 5 year old page at Github, but it wasn't clear to me whether that was what I was looking for, or how to proceed from there.)

Just gave it another try, this time using Bookmarks Sorter ver. 2.1, from the Chrome Web Store -- which should have been installable and usable thanks to the "Install Chrome Extensions" extension for Opera. I did not invoke Bookmarks itself, which remained available for callup in the Sidebar. Right clicked on Bookmarks Sorter under Extensions, which opened a checkbox panel. Left the Speed Dial unchecked, as I did not want to affect that. (It was tremendously briefer -- under 30 entries -- and can be rearranged easily enough by dragging entries wherever I wanted them onscreen, via the mouse pointer.) The Bookmarks Sorter extension seems to have ignored the Bookmarks Bar bookmarks proper, which remained alphabetized from the accident, despite the box for sorting it having been checked. I think the extension may have succeeded in restoring "Other Bookmarks" (which is HUGE, and the largest section) back to By Last Date Entered. If so, guess I would settle for that. Will have to compare to the pre-accident Bookmarks file to be sure of this. By this point, I think the entire Bookmarks file must exceed something like 7.5 MB in size. Can't even estimate how many entries that would add up to.

Additional queries:

Do Bookmarks (the .HTML file of them) follow the same standardized format for pretty much Every browser out there ? I do seem to notice extensive similarities.

The Date Created info seems to reside in the individual bookmark entry 'Add Date' xxxxxxxxxxxxxx, such as ADD_DATE="1322971515" (?)
But I don't know how you decypher what each of these actually mean.

@noavalon

I've installed the Extension that you mentioned, plus a couple of others claiming to have that sort of ability, but have so far found no way of engaging / using them. "Details" for each of these offer a recap of the purported features, but no clue as to usage. I've tried right-clicking on individual bookmarks, as well as Bookmark Bar or entire Bookmarks category, looking for context menu options, but no joy there either. How do I proceed with this ?

@noavalon

Thanks. I'll look for that. I already had the extension that allows the use of most extensions for Chrome.

There was a similar topic (but concerning Speed Dial, rather than Bookmarks file proper), from 2021, not answered and then inexplicably locked.

I made the mistake of an inadvertent click that alpha-sorted my Bookmarks listings, but I'd like to get it back to the original chronological order, most recent first. So far, I'm not finding any way to do this. Is there one ? That really ought to be fully user-customizable ! If there is an Opera Extension that can do this, that would be acceptable. I'm using Opera from just before the transition to that atrocious Opera One, which I want no part of.

@redwolftrash

In case it was not previously posted here (I've lost track), a long history of Opera versions can be downloaded from https://get.opera.com/ftp/pub/opera/desktop/
(seems to take you to a Google link, but click on that)

I'm a major fan of the portable apps from Portableapps.com. Unfortunately, that extensive past version repository above does not apparently include those portable editions. I inquired about this at Portableapps, and was told that due to licensing issues they are not allowed to offer their versions prior to the current one. With considerable searching you might be able to find them on some third party sites, but then if you managed to do so you should then (for security reasons) also obtain the hash values of that release (CRC32, SHA-256) to confirm that they weren't tampered with. I would probably take the further step of running it by Virustotal.. Sounds like a lot of trouble to go to for this.

The Portableapps launcher is just a framework for consolidating a bunch of portable apps in what is supposed to be a more convenient structure. It is not required, any of those apps can be a la carte. (I've never bothered with their Launcher . . . but if I ever wanted to carry around a rather large collection of their portable apps on a flashdrive, I might look into it.) You just need to make a shortcut for the portable .Exe file on your Win desktop, and you're in business. As far as the Passwords / Logins are concerned, I think Opera made it super difficult -- if not quite impossible ? -- to migrate them to other Opera installations, unless you did some kind of a Cloud Sync deal, which is a category I am allergic to. NirSoft Utilities included a tool that was supposed to handle a migration like that, but it is quite old by now and may only pertain to Opera from quite a few years ago. I did have it in mind to test that at some point though.

@cdelsol,

There used to be a place in Settings where you could select the background wallpaper. Not sure whether that remains the case. (And that is only one part of the now quite bad visual UI.)

It looks like some form of the AI came in somewhere after v. 97, the one I first updated from in terms of this discussion. I say that because in the May release of v. 99, although it was for the most part a satisfactory looking and performing reversion, when I highlight something (in order to save it to the Win clipboard) that bunch of other, stupid context menu options like in v. 101 ('Make a Joke About', 'Rephrase Like Yoda') still comes up. I wiped out the entire \App tree when I reverted Opera versions, so I don't believe this could be a holdover from 101. [Just checked that again, and it is actually a different set of useless new context menu choices added, like "Write a Haiku."]

@jcmlny,
Regarding Vivaldi, it became the primary browser -- for some time now -- on my Android cell phone. That was because it proved more reliably functional there than a few others I had tried. Haven't used it on the desktop though. (It is also Chromium-based.) I was a FireFox user on the desktop & laptop for many years. It remains in place there, although I have not been a fan of several changes that began coming into FF a few years ago. Whenever a product is good the way that it is, it seems like developers just can't resist trying to "improve" it . . . which usually winds up leading to bloatware in the case of software, and a clear dis-improvement.

@jcmlny,

O.K. -- we shall see. I never do anything confidential like online banking. I assume that any email could be read off the server, should a hacker want to do so enough. (So, keep really confidential stuff out of email.) The only issue with Opera I can recall was a couple years ago, an annoying nuisance redirection popup that was extremely difficult to get rid of. It finally got blocked, and has not put in any appearance since.

If anything comes up that is even slightly of a confidential nature, there will be LibreWolf, or a non-Chromium browser.

Fortunately, I managed to find a version 99 from last May that I had downloaded at the time and then forgot about. As "Opera One" has absolutely nothing new that is of any interest to me, and actually introduced major impediments, I have now used that aforementioned ver. 99 to back-level the browser, zapping all traces of Opera One. Good riddance ! In my case, I've always used the portable edition from Portableapps.com. The Updater in those portable editions proved broken and inoperable some time ago (like around ver. 87 or thereabouts ?), so I don't even have to worry about this back-level coming undone ! With some programs you periodically hear talk of security issues arising, but in my experience this is very overblown: I'm not concerned -- at least not for a good long while.

Some early reports had it that you could not find prior versions of Opera available for download. That turned out to be incorrect however, and here they are: https://get.opera.com/ftp/pub/opera/desktop/

Islands, Shmylands ! (I've got 25 tabs open as I type this. Substantially more than the usual, but they seem to be "organized" well enough, and are well behaved, not getting in each other's way.) I wouldn't touch ChatGPT or any AI insinuating its way into my browser, not with a 50 meter bargepole. And newsflash for y'all, the built-in Opera VPN is phony baloney, far from the real deal in that category ! Rely on it at your definite risk. I'll use an external VPN -- a carefully vetted one, -- when I feel there is a need for one. (I dropped a rather popular one, even with considerable subscription time left to run, after finding out that it had been bought out by a data-harvesting consortium.)

I'm in complete agreement with None-now & Prizrat & others, posting here and several other places online. They have -- to put it quite simply -- murdered what had for years been my favorite browser. This new look is atrocious, like some psychedelic cotton candy mess that has melted across our screens. Otherwise, Opera One is bloatware -- full of features I never wanted, and would not use. For me, productivity is based upon simplicity and streamlined familiarity. (Plus good options for personalized customization, and without undesired changes that are rammed down your throat !) I don't give a damn about supposedly improved video performance: I have VLC and a bunch of other video tools for that. Bugfixes and security updates are one thing -- and necessary -- but "If it Ain't Broke and Was Working Just Fine, Don't Go and Reinvent It !"

Tomorrow I am going to revert this godawful mess back to version 99, buying time for exploring alternate browsers. I already had Vivaldi demonstrated as being the most functional browser for my phone. And I already had SeaMonkey (old school type suite, a la Netscape) and a couple others on the desktop computers, as backups. But I expect to be sampling Brave and LibreWolf., among possible primary replacements. Such a Crying Shame, What You Went & Did, Opera !

My suggestion today may be of greater interest to power users, but I'd like to see a greater ability to edit single items within Opera -- in this case, to remove the display of individual items from the Downloads list, rather than clearing out the entire list in one go. I fondly recall having this pinpoint control over almost everything in legacy (5290) FireFox, which I still make some use of occasionally, even though it is supposedly very outdated.

I recently had a nearly disastrous outcome due to following the advice of AT&T Tech Support, a mistake that I won't make again. I had gotten temporarily locked out of my email accounts, with repeated, circular Login failures. (This happens from time to time, and is entirely caused by faults in their system.) Their advice was a standard one: first, clear the Cache & Cookies. However, their advice for doing this in Opera deleted not only all of that but also other things like the entire browsing History -- which I really wanted to retain for reference and the ability to retrace my steps for certain sites I had visited. That indeed proved to be "throwing out the baby with the bathwater." I managed to recover or reproduce some of what was lost in this process, but not the History. In the aforementioned Legacy FireFox, I had long had the ability to delete individual History items, edit or delete individual Cookies or groups of them, as well as individual items that would show in the Downloads list, without disturbing other items. You could put that degree of control somewhere under 'Advanced' Settings, leaving it for users seeking such more detailed options, without it getting in other user's way.

Fortunately, I have found and begun to explore some Opera extensions, including Cache Cleaner, Cookie Cleaner, and Cookie-Editor, which provide some of these controls. I've learned that individual History items can be deleted in Opera, in a straightforward manner. Still nothing for editing the Download List, though.

Another thing I really miss from the older FireFox was the ability to backup one's entire Profile, rather quickly and easily.

@leocg

Thanks for your reply. I was just going by the new version announcement, which sounded like some major changes might have been in store. I'm glad to hear that nothing is being forced on us, a la that Pocket feature in the other browser.

I'm going to start keeping a list of websites that upon starting to load still insist that I must "disable your ad-blocker" or access will not be granted -- despite the fact that it remains disabled by default, which setting I have not altered. When there is enough of a list, I will update this thread, and then you will be able to see for yourself. They must be detecting something that raises their objection. (I get it: they insist on having their ad-serving revenue unimpeded. With another browser that used to support extensions like Remove It Permanently and the rather selective Nuke Everything, and of course NoScript, I had multiple ways of evading the ad clutter.) If so, and there is no way to further "stealth-isize" this with Opera, so that sites can't detect the counter-measures, I will have to continue such site access via the method I mentioned.

I see there was a significant new features drop for version 77.0.4054.146 -- which just auto-updated, rather than asking me as it usually does. While I have no objection to the introduction of new features, as a general principle I much prefer my software to remain the way I had set it up and used it, unless I give express approval for any changes. The recent "News and Interests" sidebar that Windows 10 forced down our throats was egregious, and a disaster. Had to dive into the Win Registry, in order to rip that out by the roots. (I also despised the so-very-distracting 'Pocket' articles feed FireFox latched onto awhile back, and had to do likewise with that. It was only one of several big wrong turns that FF has unfortunately made, ever since that last "legacy" 5290 ESR version.) Please, Please, don't do that to us ! Major UI changes that some users might object to should be strictly on an Opt-In basis, and reversible !

While I do like the basic idea and availability of an ad-blocker, quite a few websites these days will simply slam their front door in your face if they detect the presence of one. (Or the No-Script extension, for that matter.) And you are one of a few browsers that now have the ad-blocker built-in. Even when you follow the instructions to temporarily disable the ad-blocker, this sometimes won't satisfy them. I've had to resort to use of another browser -- plain Vanilla, with no ad-blocker or extensions -- if / when I had to access such sites.

On the plus side, I do like that light blue-grey wavy wallpaper that now shows up behind the Speed Dial tab.

@flipmode

I don't think so. I think your best bets for YT downloading are either TubeDigger or Allavsoft Downloader (both paid programs), although TD is cheap with uncommonly generous license terms, and the Allavsoft turns up once in a rare while as a free promo, with a one-year license.

@pinheadlucas

Depends what you mean by "dead." The functionality of the Opera version seems to be sorely limited . . . and I'm guessing that would likewise hold true for the contemporary FireFox edition. I continue to use the old-extensions-architecture version of DTA in a FireFox Legacy 5290 setup, where it mostly continues to work as it always did. Some sites tell me that this browser is outdated or no longer supported, but I'm able to ignore the warning and proceed. An exception would be in cases where the file to be downloaded exceeds somewhere around 1.7 GB, and DownThemAll will then just quickly download a useless HTML info file. I'm not sure why, and don't recall that being a regular problem back when these programs were still considered current. In Win-10, some of the controls for that old FireFox do not display, but I've found shortcut workarounds. When you have a tool you like that is still at least fairly useful, you do what you must to be able to keep on using it.

I was really hoping that there was an Opera extension directly comparable to the older ones for FireFox: Nuke Anything &/or Remove It Permanently. Those were both very useful, as long as they continued working. Is this extension as close as it gets to that ?

A follow-up to my post of 5 months ago. I worked out how to have this extension do something in Opera, though it under a fully manual control. From a Right Click context menu, I open a separate small window with 'Add Download',. then input the download URL from a clipboard Copy. (In these cases, one must first be properly logged into the site in question, in order to be able to download at all.) This gets a DTA download going.

What remains to be answered is: WHY this strictly manual approach, when under the aforementioned legacy FireFox DTA initiates the requested download automatically, in effect intercepting the download request that the browser would ordinarily offer to do. That is a smoother, preferred behavior that I had long been used to.
Also, Why is the DTA download under Opera so abysmally Slow ?? We're talking a low kb/s vs. a decent MB/s that I typically got under the old FireFox.

Perhaps there are some valid reasons, and I'd love to hear about from the developers.

Tried to post a bug report for the Opera extension version, on the appropriate bug-tracker page, but for some reason it did not post. I did install the new Opera extension, which shows up under their Extensions, but it seems to do nothing. It won't trigger DTA in a download situation (as one of the options), whereas the Windows extension for FireFox always worked, at least up through that final 5290 Legacy release of FF. Looking for some help in getting the extension for Opera to work that way also. As I noted earlier, I had donated previously for the Windows extension, and would do so again for this new one -- if I can get it to actually work.