Dinge, die ich an IE9 Beta mag

Ich nutze seit einiger Zeit IE 9 Beta. Meine I love Opera Kategorie ist vorerst trotzdem noch gültig. Dennoch gibt es so einige Dinge, die ich an IE9  Beta wirklich mag. Die will ich der Welt natürlich nicht vorenthalten.

1. Der Farbwechsel des Navigationsbuttons

Der Rückwärts-Button wechselt abhängig von der besuchten Seite die Farbe.. Das ist zwar sinnlos, aber irgendwie schick.  (Und funktioniert auch nur, wenn man einen Link auf die Seite aufruft.) Das sieht dann ungefähr so aus:

2. Der schnelle Start

IE9 startet schnell. Das ist gut. Mehr muss man nicht wissen.

3. Die Anzeige der Ladezeiten für Add-Ins

Wenn IE9 nicht schnell startet, liegt es wahrscheinlich an einem Add-In. An welchem? Das sagt einem IE9 selbst. Hier hat man dann auch die Möglichkeit die Schuldigen abzuschalten.

Auch, wenn das alles keine Killerfeatures sind: Die gute Nachricht dabei ist: Ich vermisse gerade noch fast nix. D.h. ich kann problemlos IE 9 beta nutzten, statt meiner alten Liebe Opera. Dadurch hat IE9 echte Chancen im Alltag als Standardbrowser zu bestehen. Ein bisschen was fehlt mir aber trotzdem noch, nämlich:

1. Die  (anpassbare!) Adressleistensuchfunktion (bekannt aus Opera und Chrome)

2. Die Mausgesten (auch wenn ich gar nicht mehr so oft mit Mäusen arbeite)

3. Die “Roll-Over-Tabs” (ich weiß nicht, wie das wirklich heißt, wenn man eine Maus hat, ist das aber der Hit!)

Aber vielleicht kommt davon ja noch was. Vielleicht in der Beta zwei. Oder in RTM. Die Adressleistensuchfunktion möchte ich auf jeden Fall nicht mehr missen. Den Rest brauch ich nur, wenn ich auch einen Maus hab…

You are here!

Opera 10.60 bietet jetzt die Möglichkeit andere Opera User zu finden. Ich bin mir noch nicht im Klaren darüber, was es bringt, aber es ist auf jeden Fall witzig. Und die Genauigkeit ist beängstigend. Hier bin ich:

Opera Speed Dial + Sync

Yes, Opera still rocks. Even more in V 10. Now you have more than 9 speed dial positions. Well… maybe, you don’t even know, what speed dial is? Here’s the deal: Have you ever wondered, why there is always a  lot of space wasted, when you open a new tab and haven’t inserted an address yet? You don’t know, what I’m talking about?

Do it! Open a new broser tab right now - but come back to this page again afterwards and continue reading! What did you see? Right: Nothing. When using Opera 9, the big blank page is replaced with nine speed dial fields, that means, you can place up to nine previews of your favorite websites on this “blank” page . You can then access these websites by

1. a) clicking the with the mouse (this is ok and fast, but only for beginners)
2. b) typing the position into the address bar (e.g. “3” will call the third link – so this is for more experienced users *g*)
3. c) using the shortcut CTRL+ <position>, e.g. CTRL+3 to directly access the page (yes, this is for pros :-) ) Hint: This only works for the positions 1 to 9. Why? Think about it…

That’s cool isn’t it? And with Opera 10 you have even MORE than 9 speed dial fields. Yiepee! But, that’s not all!

When you’ve got a myopera.com account you can sync your speed dial fields (and all your favourites and so on) between all the clients you’re using. This is great, because now I’don’t have to manually find an interesting article again on my private pc that I discovered at work.

Ok, before you ask: The data transfer for synchornisation is encrypted. Otherwise this feature would be completely useless anyway. I checked it out using the (great) tool fiddler. But I will talk about fiddler another day… Well here’s the evidence for encryption…

Just for you to know

Ok, this is not a feature, but I just want to share this: At work, we are using a terminal server infrastructure for software development. Only two days after setup, I asked our admin to install Opera 9. Seems like I just can’t live without it …

Roll-over tabs

One of the features I use a thousand times every day and don’t even notice, is a special way of tabs switching. When I have about 10 tabs opened and want to change from let’s say tab 3 to tab 9 I could do so by mouse click on the target tab or by pushing CTRL+TAB. This ist kind of standard.

Now try the following: Keep the right mouse button pressed and scroll the mouse wheel. You will get a list with all the titles of your opened websites and you can scroll through it by scrolling the wheel.

The best thing is, you can adjust your browser settings, that you don’t even see the wheel (this is my setting, too). Now you’re really lightning fast.

This is the kind of usability I really appreciate! Thanks Opera-Team!

Incremental Search

Ok, so here is my third cool feature of opera. It’s the incremental search. We all know that we can search a website for a certain string by simply pushing CTRL+F. But much cooler is to press “.” (without CTRL, just “.”) In the left corner of your window a little overlay window will appear and you can just type in your search string. With the first character you type in the search starts and all matches are highlighted. When you type in another char, the result is automatically updated and so on and so on.
When you type “Return” or just don’t type at all, the overlay window disappears.
This is so cool! You don’t even have to close the window!
By the way, I’m blogging all these features in the moment I use them (and realize, that I use them!  )

Abbreviations in the address bar

Did you know, that you can use abbreviations in the address bar?
Per default “g metallica” leads you to the result page of google when you search for “metallica”.
“e metallica” displays all items on ebay, that have “metallica” in the product description. The big befefit is, that you don’t have to visit the starting page of google or ebay first. With “z” this also works for amazon.
But the best thing about it is, that you can add customized searches. I added a search for geizhals.at, musicstore thomann.de and dict.leo.org to find cheap products, musical instruments or translation easily.

Hide Opera to tray icon

Hi there!
The first cool feature I would like to share with you is, that you can hide Opear Desktop Browser to the tray icon on windows systems. Just push STR+SHIFT+ALT+H. Okay, this is not really a combination that automatically comes into your mind, but hey, it works!
For me this function is essential, because Opera is my “always on” application and I don’t want to see it in the taskbar.
To see Opera again in teh taskbar just click the tray icon.
Another really cool thing about this feature is, that all your widgets stay on the desktop, if you have chosen to set them to “always in the background”. You can do this by right-clicking the widget.