FAQ
FAQ
Common problems
Please note that this page contains a few general problems encountered while using Opera. Another section containing an extensive Opera 5 bug list (across multiple pages) also exists but unfortunately is not uploaded at this time.
Opera has stopped being the default browser
There is a problem with Opera 5 where after a soft reset the Web application will revert to being the default browser. Associated files, such as those with a .HTML, .GIF or .JPG extension will lose the Opera icon and clicking on them will launch Web. If you have Opera installed on a CF card then simply close all programs/files and open the CF door for 10 seconds. Close the door again and after the machine updates the Extras bars, Opera will become the default browser again.
To restore Opera as the default browser when it's installed on the internal disk you will have to access the System folder:
- Close Opera and from the System screen select the Preferences option from the Tools menu. In the dialougue that appears, choose to display the System folder.
- Navigate through the System screen and find:
C:\System\Apps\Opera\Opera.app
- Rename this file to Opera.appX and wait for 10 seconds.
- Now Rename the file back to Opera.app and leave the System folder. It is important that you don't manually delete unknown files from the System folder as doing so may cripple applications or permanently prevent them from accessing data elsewhere on the disk(s).
You should now find that all your web-related files have the Opera icon again and clicking on them will start it. Users of Neuon's popular nConvert conversion/viewing suite should note that the nConvert applet in the Control Panel can override both Opera and Web as the default application for Web-related files. To allow Opera to open HTML files from the System screen you must have the HTML files
checkbox unticked.
For general control over file association you can use plOpen from PsiNT which allows the user to assign any app to any file extension, in a similar way to the Open file with... tool in the Windows File-type preferences.
Opera 5 crashes when I try to start it
The most common reason for a KE3 error to occur at start-up is that there is insufficient RAM. Opera 5 requires at least 3.5MB to start safely and much more to be useful for normal browsing. If you have an 8MB machine it may be difficult to free up this amount of RAM. If your device has a CF slot, and you have a card, you should try to keep as many files and applications (including Opera) on that drive as possible. Programs may take a little longer to start up but the extra RAM will allow you to make more effective use of the browser.
A less common reason for this error is that Opera is attempting to load a corrupt Bookmarks database at startup, in which case you will have to remove the bookmarks file before starting Opera. To ensure you don't delete your bookmarks needlessly, first check whether Opera starts sucessfully after you've moved the Bookmarks file from the Opera folder.
My bookmarks have become corrupted
This usually happens when you try to add a new bookmark or edit the database when there is very little RAM available. Opera will attempt to write to the database but fail before it finishes and this will corrupt the entire database. There is no easy way to recover this data and you will usually lose a few URLs however by importing the following file into a plain text editor you can manually copy any preserved URL from the random characters around it:
Note that the Bookmarks database is a binary file and cannot be edited with an ASCII plain text editor. Attempting to do so will only corrupt it so this is only of use when attempting to recover raw data from an already corrupted database.
I get a message saying cookies aren't supported/enabled
Form elements are missing in some pages
Changes to Opera 5.14 have lead to form elements only appearing once the page has finished rendering. If you use Stop before loading is complete, Opera may render most of the page however there will be gaps where form elements should be drawn. Pressing Tab to cycle through form elements will cause each field to appear as it's brought into focus.
JPEG images are rendered very poorly
Dithering and smoothing of JPEG images has not yet been implemented in Opera 5 even though various options for JPEG decoding appear in the Multimedia preferences. As a result, severe banding is often present on images, giving the appearance that only a few colours are being used.
Opera 3.62 and Symbian Web render images far more smoothly because they apply dithering (diffusion) to make the colours appear to fade between shades on 16-shade/256-colour screens. This page shows the same photo rendered in different EPOC browsers.
Pages take a very long time to appear
Opera 5 often delays the rendering of pages when images are set to display automatically. Rather than displaying the main page as soon as it loads, and then adding the images as they arrive afterwards, it seems to wait until most of the images have loaded before it shows any of the page. This occurs even when the image widths and heights are specified in the document. There's no real workaround to this behaviour but browsing in Display cached images only mode will improve things enormously. On the first page you visit you can use the Load all images option on the View menu to load and cache most of the site's shared layout images which will then display instantly on subsequent pages.
You can also set Opera's Cache preferences to cache Images and 'Other', and not empty-on-exit so that pages will continue to display faster in subsequent browsing sessions. Another option to speed up rendering is to disable all of the Check modified... options on the Misc card in the Cache preferences.
Disabling Javascript except when it's required may also improve the load times of sites that use it to insert needless content such as ad banners or DHTML eye candy.
Pages scroll slowly or jaggedly
Because of the limited processor, graphics and memory resources of most EPOC devices, background images can slow down page rendering and refreshing times in Opera 5. More so than with Opera 3.62 which uses a much simpler rendering engine.
Small backgrounds
Web sites that use tiny background images can make Opera crawl as it slowly tiles the images before your eyes. Opera cannot abort the page while it is rendering a background image and will not respond to keypresses either, however one workaround is to click on the User CSS mode icon on the Progress Bar and go back to the System screen for a few seconds. Opera will then be able to calculate the page a lot faster as it doesn't have to draw to the screen at the same time. By the time you go back into Opera it should have already switched into User mode and filtered out the troublesome backgrounds. Unfortunately if the author is stupid enough to use a 1 pixel background image (and some of them do!) then even this might not be enough and you'll only see an almost blank screen when you go back. The only way to get out of this is to kill Opera and start again, then load the page in User CSS mode from the begining. Note however that even this workaround can sometimes fail if the page has the background image specified in the HTML instead of a (CSS) stylesheet.
An Opera-for-Symbian stylesheet that does effectively remove backgrounds is available here. For information on how to configure it please see the online manual.
Large backgrounds
Huge background JPGs intended to fill an entire desktop display will almost certainly crash Opera as they require far too much memory. In fact, this is usually the cause of the seemingly random and spontaneous crashes that users often encounter. Opera 5's error management isn't as good as other EPOC applications so it just tends to crash without prior warning that memory is getting low. Large images that Opera 5 does have sufficient RAM to tile will cause the page to scroll or refresh poorly. An example of this is the non-Javascript version of Yahoo Mail which uses a 1300px wide background image, most of which is plain white. When viewing these pages you can visibly see the background tiling from top to bottom of the screen. While scrolling, gaps momentarily appear at the bottom of the page before being filled by the background image.
The easiest workaround is to go into User CSS mode which will filter out most backgrounds and improve scrolling, or you can apply a user sylesheet with the following line to filter out background images:
* {background-image:none !important;}
For more information about applying custom stylesteets please see Documents in the Preferences section of the Opera 5 online manual.
A fairly complicated hack to remove backgrounds from specific sites is to go into Opera's cache and replace the relevant background image with a dummy file. To do this you'll need to know the URL of the image and then view Opera's cache by selecting Tools menu and then choosing the Cache option (or simply enter opera:cache into the Address bar).
From the list of cached files that appears, find the background image you wish to remove and make a note of it's cache name on the left of the table (usually something like opr000D9.gif
). Now close Opera, return to the System screen and navigate to the cache folder:
Find the relevant file and delete it. Now create a new plain text file with exactly the same name and just enter one random character as it's content. Save the file and next time Opera tries to fetch the background from it's cache it will only find your dummy file. Opera interprets this file as a corrupt image but instead of downloading the file again it simply ignores it and renders no background.
Note that if your cache is set to Empty on exit the dummy file will also be lost.
Smoother scrolling
A final method to improve scrolling generally is to enable Opera's Smooth scrolling
option which is disabled by default. This setting isn't available from the main menu so the only way to use it is to manually edit Opera's configuration file. To do this follow the same instructions as for moving the cache drive but insert the following new line in the [User Prefs] section of opera.ini:
Smooth scroll=1
When you next start Opera you should find a small but notable improvement on most pages.
Opera's Turbo Mode is another method which usually improves the scrolling of images greatly, however this function does not work in Opera 5 yet (along with several other features that remain to be implemented).
Forms don't submit when I press the Enter key
Opera does not support form submissions via the Enter key. This is not a feature of the browser and it cannot be made to work using Javascript in the page either.
To submit a form you must activate a submit button (or image) however this can still be done with the keyboard. Simply Tab through the form elements until the button is in focus and then use the Enter key to submit. With small forms, such as the search on Google's home page, a simple Tab+Enter is all that's required to start your search.
Some websites may not include a submit button of any kind however. Instead they rely totally on the browser being able to submit forms via the Enter key. There is no way to submit these forms in Opera 5 since, even with tabbing, there is no button to focus on. The only workaround is to save the page and edit it with a plain text editor so that it includes a submit button. You will also have to change the form action so that it points to the remote server, though for security reasons some servers may check the HTTP referrer and refuse to accept any form that wasn't submitted from one of it's own web pages. For most users this is hardly a practical solution.
Mailto links do not start the Email application
Opera 5 doesn't support Mailto links so it cannot start the Email application when you click on such a link. You will have to manually copy the Email address and create a new Email yourself. If the page doesn't actually display the address you will have to save the page to disk and look through the source code using a plain text editor, searching for mailto:
.
Opera won't start on my Psion 5 or Osaris
These machines require the system components of EPOC Messagesuite to be installed before Opera can work, unlike later ER5+ devices which are supplied with the TCP/IP stack and networking software already in ROM. Messagesuite should have been supplied on the CD-ROM that came with the device. If you are unable to find a copy for the Osaris, you can try installing Psion Messagesuite, however the applications that come with that package are designed specifically for the Psion 5 so they may not work properly. You may therefore like to remove Web and Email (but not the Comms/networking components) via the Control Panel to save disk space.
Opera won't start on my the EPOC emulator
Opera is written in a programming language which needs to be turned into an executable file before it can start, however these executables can only run on a certain type of processor. What is commonly referred to as the EPOC emulator
for Windows is in fact only a simulator as it only emulates the Operating System and not the ARM processors found in real Symbian machines. This means that many programs you download for your EPOC device will not be recognised on a Pentium/AMD Windows PC running the Emulator.
To run Opera for Symbian on a PC you need a special version that has been created to run on the Emulator, however Opera do not distribute these copies. They're only used internally while developing the browser.
A fairly reliable workaround to 'emulate' Opera for Symbian on a desktop is simply to download Opera for your own platform! Because all versions of Opera 5 are based on the same code you can be fairly sure what you see in a small window on a desktop will be exactly what a Symbian user gets (allowing for different font faces, form widgets, etc).
When I start Opera 5 it gives a Not found
error
This message is common on ER3 devices due to a programming issue that causes this edition of Opera to look for ER5 files. This has happened since Beta 3 (beta 2 did work on ER3) and unfortunately there is no workaround.
Another common reason for this error is that the Standard C Library has been removed inadvertently, possibly when another application which shared the file was removed via the Control Panel or by the user interfering with the System folder. This problem affects both ER3 and ER5 devices and can be fixed easily by downloading the Library and re-installing it on your EPOC machine. Please do not install this file on ER6/ER7 devices such as the Nokia 9210 or the Ericsson P800.
Starting Opera produces an error saying Opera.mbm isn't supported
Opera.mbm is an image file containing all of the icons displayed in the Opera toolbar. ER5 editions of Opera (and above) come with colour icons for the benefit of devices such as the Psion Series 7 and netPad, and are simply displayed in greyscale on non-colour ER5 devices. Older ER1-4 machines are unable to read these colour MBM files and require the ER3 edition of Opera which contains 4-bit greyscale images.
If you get an error at startup saying Opera.mbm is unsupported then you have almost certainly installed the ER5 edition of Opera on an ER3/ER4 device. To remedy this simply download the correct edition for your machine and install it over the top of the ER5 edition. If the problem persists, remove Opera via the Control Panel and make a clean install of the ER3 edition. If you're unsure which edition is required for your machine, a table of Symbian devices is available in the Opera 3.62 FAQ.
Opera has crashed, frozen or the machine has hung
If, while browsing, Opera hangs or freezes and you are unable to exit normally you can use the standard Symbian OS Kill function. Go into Opera (or to the blank screen that is being displayed) and press Ctrl+Shift+Fn+K. You should be returned to the System screen from where you can successfully start Opera again.
In very rare cases it may become impossible to kill a program, in which case you should attempt to close all open files and perform a soft-reset. Like the Kill function, soft resetting should not affect saved data on your internal drive however any unsaved changes made to open documents will be lost.
Note that the Kill function does not in itself perform a soft reset and if used while in the System screen will merely reboot the Shell without affecting other open applications or socket connections. The appearance may be similar to a reset because both involve rebooting the Shell (which resets the System zoom level, display options, key click speed, etc), however the two are very different.
After installing Opera onto the D drive, files appear on the C drive
This is perfectly normal. When you install applications onto an EPOC device, regardless of which drive you select, that application will create files in the System folder of the internal drive. These are usually settings or data files that are updated regularly while you use the application. Some of the files may also be temporary.
Opera will use the internal drive to store various files including:
- Cookies
- Bookmarks
- Disk Cache files
- Certificates
- Browsing history database
- Visited URL database
- Secure connections database
Any of these files can be deleted without causing problems. Opera will simply create new files when you next use it.
