A major innovation in the Opera 7 series has been FastForward: automagical guessing of the next page, and providing easy access to that page. How does it work? FastForward (=FFwd) looks at the page content and looks for certain links which are often used for navigation in multi-page documents, such as "next" and ">>".
When one or more of those tell-tale links have been found, the FastForward button ( ) on the toolbar will appear and by clicking on it, or pressing a key combination you automatically go to the next page. The default shortcut is shift-x, but when there is no "forward history" (meaning you haven't used the back-button yet) the normal Forward shortcuts/gestures such as ctrl-⇒, alt-⇒ and "forward gesture" will also work as FFwd. Or, even simpler, use space as page down, and when it reaches the end of the page, it becomes FFwd.
FFwd also integrates with Wand, Opera's password manager. When you save a password in Wand, a yellow border will appear around the form fields the next time you visit that page. A click on the Wand button or by hitting ctrl-enter, you can auto-fill the fields and login. However, this can also be done with FFwd. This means you can automatically login on your webmail with a simple flick of the wrist!
Another feature of FFwd is the ability to do slideshows! When on a page with thumbnail links to images, the FFwd button will become a "Show" button and with FFwd you can now easily browse through the images with a press on the space/x/etc. This looks even better in fullscreen! Background becomes black and the images are centered on the page! Lovely feature.
The FFwd feature is fully configurable through the FastForward.ini which can be found in the same directory as the Opera executable. Just look at the following excerpt from the FastForward.ini shipped with O8.5.
Opera Preferences version 2.0 ; This file is part of the Opera browser. ; This file is UTF-8 encoded. [Fast forward] ;First some built in types and their scores Link element=400 Wand login=300 Show image=50 Next image=200 ;Then other words and their scores. ;If no score is given, it defaults to 100 ;If score is 100 or more, Opera will allow ;the word or words to also only be the start or end ;word of the whole link text ;Special ones -> --> "==>" » >> ;English Next Next page "[Next]" ;Norwegian Neste Neste side ;Deutsch Nächste Nächste Seite Weiter Vorwärts Naechste Naechste Seite Vorwaerts ;Dutch Volgende Volgende pagina ;French Suivant Prochaine Page suivante Page prochaine Suivants Suivantes ;Your languages here
So by adding new terms and giving them scores you can enhance FastForward the way you want it! When more than one option is possible, a dropdown menu will appear next to the FFwd button and you can select the option you want.
© 2005, Mark Schenk. Last version: 15 March 2006