In that case, you must shorten the URL yourself before tweeting, which is a pain. Your next step will be to browse to a site like tinyurl.com, shorten your URL, then paste it back into your Twitter client. This can be a pain. And now there’s a better way!

Method 1: Shorten URLs via the Opera address bar using custom search

It’s easy to create a custom search in Opera. But here I prove you can use it for more than searching! Create a custom search that posts to http://is.gd/create.php using URL=%s as your query string. Click OK, and you can now create a shortened URL directly from the Opera address bar by typing u <URL> and hitting Enter, assuming you used “u” as the shortcut key.

Here is my original blog post with more detailed instructions:

http://my.opera.com/BAMAToNE/blog/2009/10/04/how-to-shorten-urls-from-the-opera-address-bar

Method 2: Shorten URLs via custom Opera button

After my blog post became famous (thanks, Espen!), Opera Community member mistressEVIL furthered my idea and showed us a way to shorten URLs using a custom button. I think it’s a great idea because not everyone is comfortable customizing Opera the way I have shown. But using a custom button is easy because it just takes a click.

Here is mistressEVIL’s blog post with more detailed instructions on how to create custom buttons:

http://my.opera.com/missevilat/blog/2010/01/15/shorten-url-with-a-button

• Bookmarking web pages to a folder, navigating to folder from bookmarks menu and clicking Open All Folder Items.
• Bookmarking web pages to a folder, giving nickname to folder and entering nickname in address field or setting nickname as home page in Tools > Preferences… > General > Home page.
• Opening web pages, saving them as session File > Sessions > Save This Session… and opening it File > Sessions.

The advantage of sessions over bookmarks is it can store several settings (zoom, fit to width, images, etc.) per tab.

Sessions can be opened quickly by assigning it to a Speed Dial slot.

• Open web pages.
• Save them as session File > Sessions > Save This Session….
• Assign it to a Speed Dial slot.

The path to session file should not contain space. If path has space use DOS name. To find DOS name of a directory/file, open Command Prompt, change path to parent directory of directory/file and type the following command.

dir /x

Command Prompt to find DOS name

Speed Dial edit dialog with path to session file

Speed Dial with session

Opera will show above thumbnail but you can replace it with any image.

[Eric J. Goers via forums]

Most of the Opera users know that Opera has a long (and glorious) history of browser innovation. However, the “outside world” needs to know – especially those who like to claim that they were first with something.

Therefore, Opera Software Documentation team has created a very comprehensive and easy-to-use history of Opera’s desktop versions with release dates, release types, rendering engines, JavaScript engines, and features in major releases.

See it here.

[via Espen André Øverdahl]

Opera Turbo is a server-side optimization and compression technology similar to Opera Mini that provides significant improvements in browsing speeds over limited-bandwidth connections by compressing network traffic. This does not only make you surf faster, but also lowers the cost of browsing when you are on a pay per usage plan.

• Opera Turbo can be easily turned on/off by clicking the Opera Turbo button in status bar. When turned on, Opera Turbo will display the average compression rate and the amount of bandwidth saved will be shown in a tooltip when Opera Turbo button is hovered.

  

• Opera Turbo will work with any type of connection, but to get the most out of it you should be on a situation with limited bandwidth. On a fast network the main reason to avoid Turbo would be reduced speed due to sending data via a proxy and the reduced image quality.
• Opera Turbo doesn’t change the Web site but image resolution may appear considerably lower as a result of the compression. Dynamic Web technologies such as Ajax and Flash are supported, but some plugin content will load only after clicking on the empty element.
• Even when Turbo is enabled, encrypted traffic does not go through compression servers.

Opera Turbo demo

Download Opera Turbo

1. A new Javascript engine is on its way from Opera. But even if it weren’t, who bases his or her choice of a web browser based upon Javascript speed benchmarks? Nobody I know. All that matters is real world results. (Haavard makes the same argument here.) That Safari or Chrome or Firefox may or may not load a given page .3087 seconds more quickly than Opera surely won’t be noticed by me.
2. “[S]o I really don’t see what the Opera fans are clinging on to.” Obviously, Lanxon is not an everyday Opera user or the answer would be quite simple. For some, it’s Mouse Gestures (done right, without a buggy extension). For others, it’s enhanced keyboard navigation. (Spatial Navigation ftw!) Or maybe it’s the ability to synchronize bookmarks across multiple installations and platforms with Opera Link. Or maybe it’s the “full page zoom” feature that so many people for years said was dumb – that is, until Safari recently decided to include it. Or maybe it’s the ability to run custom Javascript and CSS on a per site basis. All of these things and more are included in Opera “out of the box.” They just work. And if your counter argument is “but that makes the browser all bloaty!” then explain to me how Opera’s installation exe file is 5.4 MB (4.8 MB for Classic Installer), while Firefox’s is 7.1 MB (before any extentions added!) and Safari 4 Beta’s is a whopping 25.5 MB!? (That’s without Quicktime bundled!)
3. Look at the hot, new features of Safari 4 and tell me how many of them were Apple innovations. (Don’t quote from the Apple site – they lie. More on that here.) Opera innovates, and other companies incorporate those features into their browsers. This is not a bad thing. But Lanxon is forgetting that competition breeds innovation.
4. Even Asa Dotzler, one of the faces of Firefox, knows it makes no sense for Opera to abandon the desktop.
   

   Opera’s desktop browser means millions and millions of desktop users logging hours and hours of testing and providing lots of feedback to the Opera team. That feedback allows them to keep their rendering engine, javascript engine, and other bits of the browser as functional as possible across as many Web sites and Web apps as possible. Take it away, and the Opera mobile efforts will slowly but surely fall behind the “one Web” as Opera calls it.

5. And even if Opera were to concede it will never gain a significant foothold in desktop browser market share, why abandon software that saw a 117% increase in revenue from one year ago? Opera Software actually makes money at a time when many companies across the globe are hemorrhaging it.

So no, Mr. Lanxon. Opera will not abandon the desktop browser. Thanks for the advice, though.

Read Lanxon’s opinion here: http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/natelanxon/0,139102300,49301254,00.htm

See Opera’s Haavard respond here: http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2009/03/02/cnet-uk-opera-should-give-up-on-desktop-browsers

Entire text of Asa Dotzler’s response: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2009/02/opera_should_gi.html

Starting with this release, Opera on Windows supports the security measures Data Execution Prevention (DEP) (available in Windows XP SP2 and newer) and Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) (available in Vista and newer).

These security measures are a kind of second line of defence once an application runs into a serious fault, which would normally cause it to crash sooner or later.

Changelogs: Windows, Mac & Linux/UNIX

Download Opera 9.64

See the changelog for more information.

Download Opera 9.63

Here’s a short list of things we should expect in this alpha:

• Presto 2.2 Engine
• Performance boost
• 100/100 and pixel-perfect on the Acid3 test
• Auto-update
• Inline spelling checker
• Opera Mail improvements, including rich text composition and delete after X days
• Widget Improvements on Linux

For a more detailed list and downloads for Windows, Linux, and Mac please visit the developer blog.

When I first ran the Acid3 test, it only scored 97/100. I mentioned this to a few people, and Kyle Baker reminded me that UserJS can interfere with the test. I disabled UserJS for the Acid3 test, and my score was much better.

For those of you keeping score at home, the usage is up by 40% since the end of 2007 and 55% in the past 12 months.

Some other desktop stats for you: Usage of the desktop browser in Russia, where Opera apparently has a 25% market share, has grown by 112% in the past 12 months, while Indonesia has grown by 115%.

Opera Mini, on the other hand, had 21 million users in October.

See the changelog for more information.

Download Opera 9.62

See the changelog for more information.

Download Opera 9.61

Highlights include:

• Feed preview
• Speed enhancement
• Opera Link synchronizes more data (Custom search engines and typed history)
• Mail improvements (Low bandwidth mode, Follow/Ignore threads & contacts and Go to Thread)

This release is a recommended security and stability upgrade.

Opera 9.60 Changelog
Download Opera 9.60

Opera also launched a new site today: Discover Opera. It shows in simple steps how to use many of the powerfull Opera features.

Note: You may have to use Opera Standard skin to view scroll marker after enabling it. (Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Browsing > Show scroll marker)

Digg!

Major new features include a nicer preview of RSS feeds and a ‘Low bandwidth mode’ for the Opera Mail client. In addition, the typed url history can now also be synchronized between various Opera browsers using Opera Link.

The new RSS feed preview allows you to preview the feed before giving you the option to subscribe to it with Opera’s built-in feed reader. This is certainly an upgrade from the previously unstyled feeds, though I hope Opera will also include some links to subscribe using other feed readers, such as Google Reader and Bloglines (FeedBurner already does this).

Read the changelog
Download Opera 9.6 beta

Opera Link synchronizes more data, adding custom search engines and typed history (i.e. URLs that you type into the address bar).

Feed previews when you click on an RSS/Atom feed, so you can look at the content before subscribing.

Mail improvements including:

• Low Bandwidth Mode. In this mode, IMAP will only synchronize new messages and only retrieve attachments when requested, and POP will only fetch the first 100 lines of each message until you request that it download the full message.
• Follow/Ignore threads and contacts, making it easier to track discussions when you have a lot of messages.
• Go To Thread, which filters the view to show only the current thread.

As usual, the preview is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Download the Opera 9.60 snapshot

See the changelog for more information.

Download Opera 9.52

Digg!