Day: February 13, 2018

A feature I didn’t know I needed …


… until this morning, that is.

I turned on my computer and booted it into Linux Mint to do some work and the Update Manager reported that there were a number of updates.  This isn’t a new thing.  I always apply the updates and then go about using the application.  Generally, life goes one and the promise that the developer has “fixed some bugs or tweaked something to give better performance”.  Quite frankly, I just go along with the claims; I don’t spend hours testing them out.  I just figure things get better.

One of the updates was to the Opera Browser.  So, I let the Update Manager do its thing while I did something else.  When it reported that life was good (i.e. everything installed), I opened Opera.  A new tab opened which doesn’t always happen but that’s OK.  It shared that there were some updates.  The cryptocurrency issue was still at the top but I decided to do a quick scroll anyway in case there’s something really different.

And there was.

About half way down, I saw this.

Selection_001

Those reading this blog know that I would have to stop in my tracks and try it.  I literally sucked in my breath.  This is amazing.

I can’t think of the number of times that I’ll be in the middle of reading a long, scrollable article and then wonder who the author was.  Or some key point at the beginning.

My technique is usually to grab my mouse and roll the cursor to the top.  Or do the same thing with my trackpad.  Of, if I’m connected to this external keyboard and using Windows or Linux, just tap the Home button.  For the Macintosh, Home has a different meaning.

Regardless, I’ll admit there are times when I lose track of what I was doing.  It’s like walking into a room and then forgetting why I was going there in the first place!  But now, I can just tap the tab to go to the top and then tap again to return to exactly where I was.  This was built just for me.  I just didn’t know that I needed this feature until I got it!

Add this to the list of amazing things that Opera has added – cryptocurrency protection, Turbo Mode, free VPN, in-browser adblocking, sidebar, …

For me, this is big.  What about you?  How long before other browsers copy this feature?

OTR Links 02/13/2018


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.