Possible to reposition Toolbars?

It would feel more natural and intuitive for me if I could swap the
positions of the Address Bar and the Tab Bar, so that the tabs are
immediately above the web pages they refer to, and the Address Bar is at the
top, just beneath the menus.

Is this possible?  I can't find a way to do that, but perhaps I'm missing
something obvious.

Also, would there be a way of hiding the menus?  I never use them in normal
browsing.

In these two respects I think IE7 seems a bit better (dare I say that? 
:-)  ).

Thanks,

SteveT

On Sat, 01 Dec 2007 11:32:00 -0000, Steve Thackery <nobody@nowhere.com>  
wrote:

> It would feel more natural and intuitive for me if I could swap the
> positions of the Address Bar and the Tab Bar, so that the tabs are
> immediately above the web pages they refer to, and the Address Bar is at  
> the
> top, just beneath the menus.
>
> Is this possible?

No. The address bar is 'joined' to the window displaying the web page  
whereas the tab bar is separate from it, so the tab bar can be positioned  
above or below the ouside of the browser area whereas the address bar can  
be positioned above of below the inside of the browser area. When you're  
in simple tabbed mode it just seems like the various toolbars are stacked  
one after the other, but if you switch to MDI mode and then start  
cascading or tiling your tabs you'll see how each window has its own  
address and progress bar, while the application still has just one tab bar  
outside of the area where the web pages are allowed to be displayed.

It's just part of the design in Opera though perhaps they'll redesign it  
to allow this in future versions?



> Also, would there be a way of hiding the menus?

Yes but for some reason they only bind a hotkey to this by default for  
Linux. You can add your own easily enough in the preferences. Go into  
them, go down to 'shortcuts' and double click your keyboard profile to  
bring up the editor. Now, under the 'Application' section add a new hotkey  
(you'll have to pick one that isn't already in use - I use the "'" key
for  
convenience) and give it this value for the action:

Enable menu bar | Disable menu bar

Save it, now when you press that hotkey it will toggle the menu bar.

You can probably edit one of the INI files to permanently disable it but  
it can be useful to have a toggle for it sometimes.

For the keyboard and mouse profile editors, it really would be useful if  
it warned you that the hotkey you just entered was already in use because  
at the moment it's too easy to break things without realising. In GIMP,  
for example, it warns you and offers to let you overwrite the old one or  
cancel. It would be even nicer to have the option to save the hotkey you  
just entered and also prompt you to enter a hotkey for the old one you  

Steve Thackery wrote:

> It would feel more natural and intuitive for me if I could swap the
> positions of the Address Bar and the Tab Bar, so that the tabs are
> immediately above the web pages they refer to, and the Address Bar is at  
> the top, just beneath the menus.
>
> Is this possible?

Yes, it is.
Go to Tools->Apparence->Toolbars.
Uncheck "Address bar".
Check and select the "Main Bar".
In the Apparence dialog, go to Buttons->Browser view. Drag & drop the  
address bar element to the Main Bar.
Add any button you need: Back/forward, etc.

> I can't find a way to do that, but perhaps I'm missing
> something obvious.
>
Just keep in mind that the main bar is common to all windows and there's  
one address bar for each window.

> In these two respects I think IE7 seems a bit better (dare I say that?  
> :-)  ).

That's very subjective. I highly prefer a customized Opera with the page  
bar positioned at the bottom of the MDI window, close to my taskbar to the  
IE7 interface.

-- 
If you've a question that doesn't belong to Usenet, contact me at  

On Sun, 02 Dec 2007 10:03:12 -0500, Steve Thackery <nobody@nowhere.com>  
wrote:

>> Go to Tools->Apparence->Toolbars.
>> Uncheck "Address bar".
>> Check and select the "Main Bar".
>> In the Apparence dialog, go to Buttons->Browser view. Drag &
drop the
>> address bar element to the Main Bar.
>> Add any button you need: Back/forward, etc.
>
> Ah, yes - in effect, turn one bar into another.  Clever idea.
>
> Incidentally, is there a way to remove the text from underneath the  
> icons in
> the main bar?  Again, I've looked and can't see it, but I'm beginning to
> think you can do anything with Opera!
>

Sure is!  With the main bar highlightes, right-click and select  
"Customize". In the ensuing dialog, go to "Style" and select
"Images only"  
 from the drop down selector.

> Thanks again for all the superb assistance you are giving.  I really
> appreciate it.
>
> SteveT
>



-- 
Ken

On Sun, 02 Dec 2007 11:53:03 -0500, Steve Thackery <nobody@nowhere.com>  
wrote:

> I knew it!  Thanks, Eik and Ken - I've got Opera just as I like it now.
>
> I'm most impressed by its highly customisable interface.  It does occur  
> to me that some of the things you've kindly explained for me could,  
> perhaps, be more "discoverable" by people used to other browsers.
 I'm a  
> (very) experience PC user, and still missed a few tricks.
>
> I'll think about it and see if I can suggest some improvements in the  
> customisation parts of the UI, and put them up here for us to kick  
> around.
>
> Thanks again,
>
> SteveT

You're entirely welcome.  A hint for you....I found that a lot of Opera's  
features became much more apparent when I learned to right-click on most  
anything. :-)

-- 
Ken