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There are times unfortunately that a certain webpage won’t render properly in Opera, be it as a result of an Opera bug, a bug with the website code, or browser sniffing. Spoofing or masking the browser’s identity (User Agent) often helps, however opening the page in Firefox or Internet Explorer (IE) is sometimes a quicker solution.

One of the neat features of Opera is the ability to create custom “drag ‘n’ drop” buttons for you to add onto the toolbar.

Drag (using the left mouse button) the buttons below to your toolbar. These buttons will open the current page in Firefox and IE.

I use these buttons often for testing and debugging webpages outside of Opera. They offer quick access to your current page in Firefox and IE.

 in-firefox.png
(Drag button to toolbar — Open in Firefox)

 

in-ie.png
(Drag button to toolbar — Open in Internet Explorer)

Note: You could easily remove these (or any other toolbar button) by right-clicking on the button, and clicking no ’Remove from toolbar’.

(Custom buttons via Rijk)

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32 Comments

  1. 1 legalalien

    Still no match for Firefox’s “Open in IE Tab” extension. :-(

  2. 2 Adrian Lee

    I love those buttons, been using them for a little while.
    Opera is my primary browser, but as a web developer I obviously need to test in other browsers.

    Just makes it that much nicer to open the page I’m currently looking at in FF and IE.

    Maybe we can get a Safari one sometime as well?

    Oh, and are the buttons Windows only?
    When I was using a Mac, I’m fairly sure they didn’t work…

  3. 3 Adrian Lee

    Ah, heh, looking at the code, yeah, I guess they are Windows only…

  4. 4 Chuck Monroe

    Wow! This is nice. Any way to add a custom icon to the button?

  5. 5 -gary

    Here’s code for Safari. It only seems to work if the application is in your path, which Firefox and Safari are not on my machine, so you must specify the path to the executeable.

  6. 6 -gary

    Try again. Apparently you can’t post anchor links even though it says “HTML allowed:

  7. 7 Steve Barker

    For sites that do not render in Opera I’ll stick with the keep e-mailing the web master untill they sort it method.

    Current gripe:

    http://www.royalopera.org/

    Ironic that the Royal Opera House will not allow you in on Opera - works fine if you ID as Firefox for the first page, the rest then works well ID’d as Opera. E-mailed them twice so far no reply….

  8. 8 Antero Hytönen

    Not really Windows only, all the code really says is to excecute program named firefox or iexplore.

    I even tested Firefox and it works.

  9. 9 -gary

    Never mind. Can’t even post encoded HTMl.

  10. 10 Daniel Goldman

    Steve Barker, I see the site you mentioned is still sniffing for IE4 and IE5.

  11. 11 suribe

    tested on Ubuntu Linux & working..the FF I mean :-)

  12. 12 IceArdor

    I edited the buttons so that they say “IE” and “FF” instead of “InIE” and “InFF” to save me toolbar space. Edit C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Opera\Opera\profile\toolbar\standard_toolbar.ini, under the section that is titled “[Customize Toolbar Custom.content]” Just below that, add in

    Button0, “IE”=”Execute program, “iexplore”, “%u”, “IE”, “IE”"
    Button1, “FF”=”Execute program, “firefox”, “%u”, “FF”, “Firefox”"

    Or just make your own html page with an href of opera:/button/”Execute program, “iexplore”, “%u”, “IE”, “IE”"

    and

    opera:/button/”Execute program, “firefox”, “%u”, “FF”, “Firefox”"

  13. 13 chat

    And if you speak hungarian (magyarul) than here are a lot of Hungarian opera button:
    http://bartosslajos.atw.hu/news.php?item.14.3

  14. 14 Madis

    Using for quite a long time already

  15. 15 Simon Houston

    Sure its not like IETab, but using IETab on a site won’t make your browser any securer than IE being on that site.

  16. 16 graste

    In case someone wonders: You can have a nice Firefox or IE logo if you use certain skins, that support these buttons, e. g.: Tango CL, Breeze Simplified Micro, Breeze II, Plastikopera, Opera Standard Compact Edition and probably a few more. :)

    http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins/

  17. 17 operafan2006

    Open Page in IE inside opera window using neptune plug-in. It is just like IE tab in firefox, I guess.

    http://my.opera.com/operafan2006/blog/show.dml/498628

  18. 18 operafan2006

    There have been similar button in the opera wiki custom button page for long time.

    http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons#webdev

  19. 19 Mathias Brodala

    In case someone wonders: You can have a nice Firefox or IE logo if you use certain skins, that support these buttons,

    You can add these to every skin yourself. Just drop them anywhere in the ZIP archive and refer to them with “$browsername = path/to/image.png” and “$browsername.hover = path/to/image.png” in the skin.ini. (Not sure if the .hover part is actually necessary, though.)

  20. 20 EC

    i don’t get it:

    1. Firstly, everything is rendered fine here.
    2. i drag and i drop, but nothing happens except for the following:

    Firefox doesn’t know how to open this address because the protocol (opera) isn’t associated with any program.

    another proof that opera isn’t the answer to all.

    On a serious note, though - this does not compare to FF’s IETab extension. This opens up IE within the FF session - in another tab. Hence the name. Unfortunately, there is no OperaTab extension for FF to open up Opera embedded in a tab, but I still have not really had a need for that as of yet. But, Opera doesn’t support any opening of other programs within the current session, only “from” within the current session, as the title of this post suggests. Oh, well, maybe one day (when they introduce extensions in Opera).

  21. 21 Adrian Lee

    Uh, EC, the buttons are for Opera, and you’re using Firefox…. yeah, that’s why the Opera buttons aren’t working for you…

    Personally I prefer having IE and FF in seperate windows, rather than in other tabs, also means I can spread them across different monitors if I want to.

    And I hope to hell Opera don’t do Firefox like extensions. When I install Opera, all I need is to edit the status bar and add a few custom buttons like these, and I’m ready to go. I don’t have to find half a dozen extensions to do things that Opera does out of the box.

    The ONLY thing I miss about Firefox is Firebug and Web Dev Toolbar. Everything else is either mirroring Opera functionality (like mouse gestures) or little ‘nice’ things that don’t really matter( like SearchStaus).

  22. 22 legalalien

    The ONLY thing I miss about Firefox is Firebug and Web Dev Toolbar. Everything else is either mirroring Opera functionality (like mouse gestures) or little ‘nice’ things that don’t really matter( like SearchStaus).

    I can think of a few more. I use UA Agent Switcher, Copy Plain Text, and TinyURL Creator regularly with Firefox - does anyone know if there are equivalent plugins on Opera?

  23. 23 Simon Houston

    Well UA Agent Switcher equivalent, you already have some default UA’s to switch from in site preferences or grab the button from (tools > appearance > buttons > preferences or status section (Identify as)), but you can’t make your own UA string.

    Copy plain text is default in opera, as it does not copy formatted text at all currently.

    And tinyURL bookmarklet can be found at http://tinyurl.com/#toolbar

  24. 24 Arve

    Adrian: Strictly speaking, these are not Windows only: The Firefox button works out-of-the-box in Linux, and the IE one works in Linux with a tiny modification, provided you have IEs4Linux installed.

  25. 25 Simon Houston

    A button for TinyURL who don’t have javascript turned on. Or
    TinyURL

  26. 26 Simon Houston

    Hmm the opera: section gets removed from the button :S

    The code anyway for it would be


    Go to page,"http://tinyurl.com/create.php?url=%u"

  27. 27 Nikon

    legalalien you can make your own custom buttons using this webpage http://home.wanadoo.nl/sipke.reina/opera/buttons.html

    if you want a button to use tiny url just paste this code in the step 3 of that page and press create button

    Go to page, “http://tinyurl.com/create.php?url=%u”, , “Tn”

  28. 28 Pallab
  29. 29 Adrian Lee

    Adrian: Strictly speaking, these are not Windows only: The Firefox button works out-of-the-box in Linux, and the IE one works in Linux with a tiny modification, provided you have IEs4Linux installed.

    OK, but they didn’t work in Mac OSX, which is what I was trying to use them in before.

  30. 30 WolvenSpectre

    Too bad these buttons don’t work on standard toolbars that try and turn it into a bookmark

  31. 31 Jadd

    actually, there is a plug-in somewhere for Opera that would let you open a page with Internet Explorer inside an Opera tab. Forget what it’s called.

  32. 32 kyleabaker

    @Jadd
    You’re talking about the Neptune plug-in..
    http://www.opera.com/support/search/view/415/
    I’m personally not a big fan of the plug-in, but it works.

    @Daniel
    I’m a bit late on suggesting this, but I think it would be beneficial to use some css cursor styling for the buttons that you provided. Might I suggest using..
    cursor: move;
    ..to demonstrate that the buttons are to be moved in a visual way rather than making the user uncertain since the default cursor is the pointer hand (most commonly associated with a hyperlink). I think that may make it more visually pleasing and easier to understand for new users that they can just drag an element from the web page to their tool bar and drop it. Just a suggestion..food for thought. ;)