Opera equivalents to Firefox extensions: Spread the word!

January 6, 2006 · by Haavard

I like to keep updated on what the word is on Opera outside of the community, so I read quite a few forums and sites where people discuss software and browsers. One thing that pops up a lot is how some people prefer Firefox because it has extensions.

Now, I'm not going to get into the whole argument about whether Opera should have extensions or not, but I think those who complain about the lack extensions in Opera are often unaware of how flexible Opera is even today - without extensions and the possible security problems they introduce. Especially Firefox fans seem to dismiss Opera simply because they can't live without extensions. They think.

But the fact is that Opera can be extended in many ways, and last year, Arve posted a couple of posts on this very subject:

- Opera equivalents to Firefox extensions
- Opera equivalents to Firefox extensions part 2

Usually the question is how to emulate Opera features in Firefox, but now Opera users can point out to Firefox users who miss certain extensions in Opera that Opera equivalents actually exist, and if they don't, they are most likely possible to do anyway!

This might be old news to many, but I'd like to see those articles linked to more often!

While you are at it, send them to UserJS.org, which has lots of useful User JavaScript "extensions" for Opera.

Readers' comments 15

Left under the original article, as archived.

FataL9. January 2006, 16:20
What is really block me from using "extensions" for Opera that most of the scripts are not UserJS's yet, but bookmarklets. And most of bookmarklets don't work with "Reuse Existing Page" feature off.
Haavard9. January 2006, 16:41
Bookmarklets work fine here. Even when added to a toolbar.
timkar10. January 2006, 18:39
You know, if someone could find a replacement for the bookmark feature of the yahoo toolbar, I'd never looked back. I so very much want to stick with Opera, but being able to save a bookmarks on my machine at work or my wife computer or a cafe computer, knowing that I can then access it later at home on my laptop, is invaluable for me. Perhaps if there were another service that I could use instead. Manually sync'ing my bookmarks via a remote storage location, manually navigating to some page to access them or some such solution is non starter. I know, I'm lazy but a centralized and menu-driven bookmark support has been a god-send for me.
Haavard10. January 2006, 19:40
Well, I'm afraid this is kind of the wrong place to post feature requests Try the wishlist forum.
Arve Bersvendsen11. January 2006, 15:21
timkar: If you don't mind having your bookmarks openly accessible, there's always del.icio.us, as they have a button/bookmarklet that works beautifully in Opera
Ivan Minic12. January 2006, 03:11
Thank you haavard for pointing this out
Me14. January 2006, 18:03
Why did NO-ONE tell me about this before?!? There was me trying to defend Opera against Firefox, and all this stuff was already there...

Oh, and do you think it's possible to make a UserJS like Firefox's GameFOX extension? If it is, I might look into doing it...
gaby de wilde31. January 2006, 14:01
It makes me currious how many firefox extensions you know/used/installed.

May I ask this here?
gaby de wilde31. January 2006, 14:41
I don't know where this post should go. I've used a lot of the firefox extensions on the list.

I'm looking for a nice and kind way to put this to words:

"it's obvious when a firefox extensions described was never used"

To say tabmixplus is something thats already available build-in opera just isn't true. Tabbrwoser preferences is a old version.

From the user perspective:
I wanted the google page rank but could not make sense of the documentation as the firefox toolbar will clearly install in 3 seconds after reading nothing. It even has a video tutorial. If it was a rational thing to put on the google toolbar why is it not on my opera?

I'm going to learn userscripts now and find the script to display the google page rank bookmarklet popup output or was that an iframe? Never mind I'm going to find out now I bet it's more work as writing this. hahaha

Not that anyone is interested but:

I've made this some time ago:
http://googlefox.blogspot.com

The only extensions I really miss using Opera are:

1 Lookahead
Opens the fisrt X search results for queries in the toolbar. (I have it set on 10)
http://lookahead.mozdev.org

Smileyextra
I know it sounds a bit silly but it's an easy and fast way to add custom smiles to a forum. (it's something I'm not willing to do googles read licenses and host images for)
http://www.smileyxtra.co.uk/

Collorzilla
I use to pick colors with images.
http://www.iosart.com/firefox/colorzilla/

For the rest I can (so far) manage to find another way to do the same thing in Opera.
Sigup1. February 2006, 09:15
Just because something doesn't work the exact same way doesn't mean that it is not an alternative. Why are you advertising Firefox extensions here anyway?

Also, did you read the "I'm afraid this is kind of the wrong place to post feature requests" comment?
velmu15. February 2006, 18:52
What I'd like to see is something similar to the Web Developer plugin. I'm a total Opera newbie, so enlighten me if such a thing exists. The links advice does not quite cut it:

Edit pages in cache. Which means you can do View Source for a document, edit it, and then reload the cached version. Tools → Advanced → Reload from cache.
Validate a page by pressing Ctrl-Alt-V.
Add any validators to the search engine.
Haavard15. February 2006, 19:19
I don't know what a Web developer plugin should contain, but this is a Web developer toolbar:

http://nontroppo.org/wiki/WebDevToolbar
rogerleos28. February 2006, 18:50
Hello, room I like to surf opera browser and Mozilla rather than IE.
The dif is that in IE I know how to clean the cache, the cookies and the hirtory.

I have one month using Opera and I'm afraid it's turning slow for the lack of maintenance....
Edward Piercy23. March 2006, 12:57
At far as I know so far in Opera to clean stuff out you go to Tools >> Delete Private Data. You have to select what to clean out from the list by checking or unchecking the relevant check boxes. So to clean the file transfer history, for example, you just make sure that one is checked and uncheck all the rest. I with there was an easier way to do it. Being able to clean out the transfer history should be easy (although as least there is SOME way of dong it in Opera, as opposed to IE or Mozilla. I'd like to have a setting which give an option like "clear Transfer History upon exiting browser".
qicai0211. June 2006, 18:09