Opera tip: How to disable the context menu when double clicking on text?
36 CommentsPublished July 25th, 2007 2:34 PM EDT By Daniel Goldman
When you click multiple times on a word, Opera shows a context menu (see screenshot below). The context menu offers some quick access to search, translation, dictionary and more.
So how do you turn off the context menu, if you don’t like it?
- In the menu bar go to Tools > Preferences
- In the Preferences dialog click on the ‘Advanced’ tab.
- Under the ‘Toolbars’ option, uncheck the following option: “Double-click text to display context menu”.
(The context menu in Opera)
(Option to disable context menu)
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Nice. For those who might not know it already: I just discovered by mistake that control-clicking an image (in Windows anyway) opens the Save As dialog…
Unfortunately, like the standard right-click, there is no way to save a background image (CSS). Or is there?
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Too bad that many things are just available via opera:config and not elsewhere…
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This is available in the advanced toolbar prefs.
“Double-click text to display context menu”
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Chuck you can try to find background image in ‘Opera 9\profile\cache4′ or you can use CSS Editor to find its URL, I don’t know if there is other way (but if there is, I also would like to now it
).
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Slapstick, thanks. I made a note to myself to blog about disabling the context menu, though when I came to write it today I looked all around in the Preferences dialog for the option to disable it, but couldn’t find it.
I’ve now updated the post.
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In my opinion, it’s by far one of the most annoying feature of Opera. The double-click context menu is the first thing I disabled when switching on Opera.
I use to triple-click on paragraph in order to highlight them and make them easier to read (I fell more comfortable with white on gray instead of black on white). Having this unwanted menu popping up from nowhere is very disturbing, and doesn’t add something to the regular right click context menu (they are strictly identical). It’s well known that in Opera, you have a lot of means for doing something, but this double click context menu is just too much.
I didn’t see the stats for this feature on the Desktop Team blog – is it a popular feature?
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i don’t mind it a bit in fact i love it anyway and use it when there are links on a page but it’s only as text and not a true hyperlink
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Romain, the only time I really double click to get to the context menu is when I want to lookup a single word in the dictionary. Otherwise, for translation, search, copy to note and copy, I usually do it for multiple words, in which case double-clicking won’t help.
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What!?! Disable it? I love that feature. I just wish it would appear when I highlight some text, too!
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Thanks Marol
Unless it is easy-to-find inline style, I usually I end up using Firefox’s View bg image > Save, or IE’s Save bg img As (provided elements aren’t stacked, in which case the long way is the only option.)
Another feature I really miss in Opera that is in IE7 on Vista is the “Panning Hand”, which lets you drag with your mouse to scroll up or down a page, like in a PDF doc (space bar / Pg Up-Dwn scrolls a full screen, rather than 3/4 as I’d like). This is super handy (no pun) when using a tablet+pen instead of mouse. Does anyone know if there is a way to do this (or something approaching) in Opera currently?
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PS: The Graphire tablet I use mostly has a scroll thingie, but it sucks very badly when trying to scroll upwards; (Intuos has none at all)
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Ryan, when you highlight text, you could still get to the context menu by right-clicking the highlighted text.
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Actually, it is quite useful feature. Well, I disabled it a time ago, but then I found out it’s much more faster double-clicking the word and choosing copy (or another option) than trying to highlight it by dragging the cursor.
Ctrl+click is a good tip, thanks.
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Awesome tip, thanks! (Works on GNU/Linux, too.)
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@Michal & Mathias: no problem
I’ve used it quite a few times already, so much easier…. (Glad it works on Linux too)
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Opera may want to turn this off by default to make the browser more approachable to new users. I disabled it some time ago because I’ll right-click if I want the dialogue. That makes more sense to me. But then again, I love Opera for giving its users tons of chocies, because they truly understand that not everyone works the same.
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This is tunring into an interesting discussion. Should the context menu be disabled by default?
I’ll report back the feedback here to the desktop team.
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I’ve only just disabled it because I didn’t realise you could! I can see how people find it useful, but I simply do not use the context menu much and it’s quite distracting when triple- and quadruple-clicking..
(ctrl-click is an awesome tip though)
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I found that option annoying at first, but after a while I realize that when I double-click a word, it was ALWAYS followed by a right-click. So if Opera did not put it in the default setup, I think I would never have tried it, ans would never have realized how it just… made sense!
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I feel the exact same way as Luchio – perhaps asking the user for pref on first instance? (Like mouse gestures)
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“Double-click text to display context menu”, seem to doesn’t work in textarea.
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No. Very useful for me.
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I tend to think that the context menu is a “power user feature” or “advanced users”, and having it enabled by default is a reminant when Opera used to be a nerd-only browser. Now Opera wants to attract mainstream people. Opera could choose to reveal this feature like mouse gestures, but right now I’m thinking it would be best just to tuck that feature away. I think your Opera tip series, Daniel, is a really good way for normal users to become power users and discover new features without the nuisance of prompts in the interface, having to dive deep within the preferences in Opera, or struggle through hundreds of pages on Opera’s website or forum.
This kind of reminds me of OperaLover: slowly learn more about the browser, one feature per day. It makes it a lot more fun and managable (not to mention being able to give my input on a feature and listen to other’s input).
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I fully agree with IceArdor.
The double click context menu should be disabled by default, since it can be very disturbing for new users (and is furthermore annoying for some older users). It goes against what was learnt for years to computer newbies: for contextual menu, right click with your mouse, or hit the “Context Menu” key on the keyboard (on the left of the right Ctrl key).
Anyway, it can indeed save time to some users, because double, triple or quadruple clicking (yes, it works for this too) means for them that they want to interact with the selected text (memo: double click = word, triple click = sentence ending with a point – doesn’t work with question marks and the like, quadruple click = paragraph). Having the contextual popping up as they select the text avoid them a supplementary right click.
But as far as we don’t know what for people uses the double-or-triple-or-quadruple click, making the context menu appear by this way should be disabled, like the Desktop Team did with the bar which appeared when focusing the address bar. Opera shouldn’t prompt us if we want to use it or not.
Posting on your blog some tips like this one is actually helpful, and I was thinking about something: Firefox has an extension database. Since Opera has a lot of feature built-in (and some are very hard to find – Where’s Wally?), there can be a sort of tip database, where users can search for a feature and how to enable/disable it, discover new ones, etc. Something more sophisticated than the Opera tips page and more organized than the Opera Wiki tips page, where there can be both Opera and user-submitted tips. I think it could be useful for users who switched from another browser and don’t know how to do something and users that to do more with their browser.
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IceArdor and Romain, these Opera Tips (I hope) are a useful way for both savvy and new Opera users to learn more about the browser. I like the idea of soliciting tips.
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Here’s my analysis of this issue:
When double-clicking on a single word, which of the following options are people likely to use?
Copy: Likely.
Copy to note: Very unlikely. Why would you copy just a single word to a note?
Speak: Unlikely. How many people have voice installed? And for those who have voice installed, would you speak just a single word?
Search: Somewhat likely. You would usually search using multiple words to narrow down your search.
Search with: Same as search.
Dictionary: Very likely. Most people often lookup just a single word in the dictionary.
Encyclopedia: Somewhat likely.
Translate: Somewhat likely. When I use the translate option, I usually translate multiple words or a sentence.
Go to URL: Not likely.
Send by mail: Very unlikely. Why would you send someone an email with just a single word?
After reading many of the comments above, I’m now in favor of turning the context menu off by default, since most of the options aren’t used often.
What do you guys think?
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Daniel: I agree with your analysis, except for URL: I have tried double and triple clicking a well formed URL, but Opera does not seem to recognize it as a “word”, or single text entity. If it did select the entire URL, at least optionally, I would use it very often, and choose Go to URL – which I can only do after carefully selecting the URL.
A nice addition would be the selection of the parent HTML element with a quadruple click! And why not its parent, with a fifth click? That would be real nice
I don’t know how known the following is: when choosing search, go to url, dictionary, etc. from the context menu, holding down the Shift key opens in a new tab with focus, and holding down Ctrl+Shift opens in a background tab. I use one of these two most of the time, rather than load in current tab.
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Chuck, all you really need to click for the url is the domain name. Opera will automatically add the www and com.
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Daniel: Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, the link rarely targets the homepage of the site; rather, some long URL (like blog posts with numerical year, month, and interminable file name). I regularly come across text (vs link) URLs in blog comments, emails, etc.
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Hummm, I’m a geek.
Seriously, I use very often:
- Copy
- Copy to note (one word (like €, N/D, N/A, · ) and many words)
- Search
- Search with
- Dictionary
- Encyclopedia
- Translate (one word and many words)
- Go to URL (very often)
- View selection source (custom – webdev)
- Speak: Rarely
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I forgot to mention in my last post, that I often highlight sentences and paragraphs to increase readability (poor colours/background), or to help me concentrate on that block of text. The context menu obviously doesn’t help here, and ends up covering text I want to read.
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Context menu is very useful for me!
I use very often “Copy” and “Dictionary”!
I think it should not be disabled by default, because
it is one nice feature of Opera browser which new Opera users must see!!!
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Bulgarian thinker, when I was a new Opera user, I saw it, and quickly disabled it.
The point is not how useful or useless it is: it should be disabled because it breaks the habits of the user, it’s a very unexpected behavior.
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The context menu is very useful. You cannot just double- but also tripleclick to select a whole paragraph. And then it makes perfect sense to have a menu entry to Copy to note.
Regarding Go to URL: Just doubleclick the last part of the URL. e.g. http://www.somehost.com/asdf/foo/bar.html – just try to use your cursor on the ‘html’-part.
The other options: search/search with is pretty important for me, as I usually use them to translate words, as I don’t use the inbuilt translation service, but define a search on another dictionary page (using Create search… in form fields). With ’search with’ I set the default search/translation engine on a web page and then simply reuse it on other words on that page with ’search’.
As all features in that menu can be used with CTRL/CTRL+SHIFT they are _very_ convenient and easy to use, once you find them.
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I’m wondering if a ‘preview’ function would’ve helped me in posting that URL.
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I like keyboard shortcuts. I Ctrl+C instead of Right-Click+Copy.
As far as the Go to URL feature, there’s probably a userjs file out there that searches for a string of text ending in .com, .net, .org, .co.uk, etc, and adds an anchor link to it.
Power User Suggestion: What I would like is to be able to highlight a word and press the letter “d”, which I have assigned for keyword searches (typing in “d query” looks up the word query at dictionary.com). Of course, the limitation of this is you can only use one-letter keyword searches. But the above tips make a reasonable exchange for the context menu while still allowing speed and efficiency for the power user, and providing for mainstream users.