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Opera's Slashdot Easter Egg and Speed Dial 157

Posted by kdawson from the easter-already? dept.
Thelomen writes "Opera Browser contains an Easter egg that is not widely known, recently reported over at OperaWatch.com: type /. in the address bar and you are taken directly to slashdot.org. Other recent news from Opera is their new Speed Dial feature, present in the most recent build from Desktop Team. At first glance Speed Dial just looks like 9 bookmarks you can open with CTRL+1 to CTRL+9. However, the pages on the Speed Dial are shown in thumbnail and are automatically pre-fetched in background — a useful thing if you have some heavy pages among your top bookmarks."
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Opera's Slashdot Easter Egg and Speed Dial More

Opera's Slashdot Easter Egg and Speed Dial

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  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ethercircuit ( 1057996 ) on Monday March 12, 2007 @01:31AM (#18313167)
    Microsoft just announced these features will be available in IE 7.1 slated for release in Q3 2008.

  • Or (Score:2, Funny)

    by malkir ( 1031750 )
    You could just hit your CTRL+1 preset :P
    • Feature request: a "miserable failure" easter egg, now that the google bomb is no longer working.

  • Hooray for Opera! (Score:4, Funny)

    by dreddnott ( 555950 ) <dreddnott@yahoo.com> on Monday March 12, 2007 @01:36AM (#18313183) Homepage
    As a classically-trained singer, I heartily endorse this software in the hopes that it will raise cultural awareness of the musical art form.
  • I prefer RSS feeds thank you.

  • easter egg? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by omeomi ( 675045 ) on Monday March 12, 2007 @01:46AM (#18313221) Homepage
    Cool, yes. But as easer eggs go, kinda lame...where's the fighting monster video or hidden game?

    • Re:easter egg? (Score:4, Funny)

      by l0cust ( 992700 ) on Monday March 12, 2007 @02:12AM (#18313319) Journal
      I agree. Its kinda cool and all but doesn't have the charm of real easter eggs. Now the great easter eggs would have been soemthing like:

      1. Type 'nerds' and it opens slashdot, digg, and theregister in tabs.
      2. Type 'mafia' and it opens RIAA and MPAA sites in tabs.
      3. Type 'sux' and it opens microsoft website.
      4. Type 'spam' and it opens hotmail.
      5. Type 'pr0n' and it turns off the pop-up bocker, opens 20 pr0n sites and an online catalog of kleenex in tabs .
      6. Type 'loser' and it opens ascii porn sites.
      7. Type 'kawaii' and it opens aninewnewsnetwork and anime sections of isohunt,piratebay and torrentleech in tabs.
      7. Type 'needalife' and it opens startrek and trekkipr0n sites.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Joebert ( 946227 )

      where's the fighting monster video or hidden game

      Opera Browser contains an Easter egg that is not widely known, recently reported over at OperaWatch.com: type /. in the address bar and you are taken directly to slashdot.org

      You must be new here.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by IceFox ( 18179 )
      In Qt's designer pull up the "About Qt Designer" dialog and draw a circle around the logo and then click the button that appears. You find a little game where you get to see everyone who worked on Qt.
  • /. takes me to file:///

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Here's a fun trick for you:

      Bookmark Slashdot in Firefox. Now right-click the bookmark and select 'Properties'.

      In the window that comes up, there's a field marked 'Keyword'. Enter /. into that field.

      Now any time you enter /. as a the URL in your address bar, you'll be taken straight to Slashdot. If you think that's cool, do some looking into the keyword search bookmarks Firefox allows you to create.

    • Re:In firefox... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Slack3r78 ( 596506 ) on Monday March 12, 2007 @02:18AM (#18313359) Homepage
      Here's a fun trick for you:

      Bookmark Slashdot in Firefox. Now right-click the bookmark and select 'Properties'.

      In the window that comes up, there's a field marked 'Keyword'. Enter /. into that field.

      Now any time you enter /. as a the URL in your address bar, you'll be taken straight to Slashdot. If you think that's cool, do some looking into the keyword search bookmarks Firefox allows you to create.

      (Accidentally posted this anonymous the first time. Reposting it so hopefully people see it.)

      • Re: (Score:1, Redundant)

        by piper-noiter ( 772438 )

        Exciting. Well, not really. Both Opera and Firefox have had this ability to make bookmark keywords for a long time. Woopty-freakin-do. Ranks up with the original post in terms of unnecessary information.

        Speaking of the OP, as easter eggs go, yeah it is lame. Hardly worth a post. It's all just fanboyism of one type or another.

        (burning some karma.)
      • Linux:
        $ sudo bash -c "echo \"66.35.250.150 .\" >> /etc/hosts "

        Windows:
        Start->Run-> wordpad %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
        and then add the line.
      • So, what cool keyword searches do people like to have?
        When I set up Opera, in addition to the builtin 'g' for google, I add
        'gi' for Google Images,
        'w' for Wikipedia,
        'wkt' for Wiktionary,
        'imdb' for the International Movie Database,
        'animenn' for Anime News Network and
        'bm' for a Norwegian Bokmål dictionary.
        It's become almost indispensable. Does IE7 have this yet?
        • Searches:

          'g' google search (which sort of makes the search engine box in the upper right corner redundant)
          'gcc' Google search for CC-licensed material.
          'loc' Search local.google.com
          'news' google news search
          'quot' stock quotes (as in 'quot msft' or 'quot goog')
          'amazon' Amazon search
          'wiki' Search wikipedia (through Google)
          'wikil' Search wikipedia, but using "I'm feeling lucky" (usually works)
          'pydoc' Takes me to Python documentation for the required module (such as "pydoc os" or "pydoc random")
          'flickr' Should b
      • Don't you find it's kind of funny that the best configuration you can come up with Opera ships with by default, bet there's lots of stuff like that... Oh well it's closed source guess it isn't an option.
        • How is that the best I 'can come up with?' I'm mainly pointing out that it's available in both browsers.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hkmwbz ( 531650 )
        Ah, bookmark nicknames. Another feature Firefox "borrowed" from Opera :)
    • Submit a patch. This is a critical bug which must be fixed.
  • Hey all browsers have a "speed dial" function. It's called favorites or bookmarks!
    • hejdig.

      Well they have... until you read the article and see that Opera preloads the page. Plus: ctrl-1 is more of a shortcut than alt-b d down right s down down down enter.

      /OF

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SEMW ( 967629 )
      May I refer you to the third sentence of the summary?
  • In Firefox, I've had /. set as my Slashdot keyword for years.
    • And Opera has had keywords (it calls them nicknames) since version 3, released in 1998.

      I don't recall if they worked for bookmark folders at that stage, though, But I was using nicknames for folders to open all my news sites back in 2001/2002, I think - before RSS was really common it was necessary to open a whole folder of bookmarks to do my daily reading. Just typing "news" and getting El Reg, Ars Technica, Slashdot and others was very handy...

      Finding a feature in a browser that Opera didn't have first or

  • Uh, Firefox has this also... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DigitAl56K ( 805623 ) on Monday March 12, 2007 @02:01AM (#18313265)
    Depending on your particular language version of Firefox 2, out of the box it will jump to various sites simply by entering keywords.

    For example:
    wp slashdot - look up Slashdot on Wikipedia
    slang pwned - look up "pwned" on UrbanDictionary

    Simply entering "wp" and "slang" also work because of the way the URLs are formed. As far as I know you can configure others. I haven't looked into it extensively.

    • Re:Uh, Firefox has this also... (Score:4, Informative)

      by DigitAl56K ( 805623 ) on Monday March 12, 2007 @02:06AM (#18313279)
      Sorry for the double-post, but here's how to do it and some further examples:

      http://johnbokma.com/firefox/keymarks-explained.ht ml [johnbokma.com]

      It's amazing what two seconds in Google turns up.
      • Additionally, it seems that if you type 'firefox xxxxx' in the address bar, if there is anything indexed at the Mozilla site matching that, it will open that page rather than revert to the default search engine. Try 'firefox help' 'firefox keyboard' 'firefox backup' etc.
      • Opera does this too. You can make your own; right click on any search field and click on "Create Search." I have "ma xxx" set to search Memory Alpha, "gv xxx" to search Google Video, "yt xxx" to search YouTube, "g xxx" Google, "gi xxx" Google Images, "wp xxx" Wikipedia, "d xxx" an online dictionary, "gr xxx" searches Gamerankings, "mc xxx" searches Metacritic, "imdb xxx" searches Internet Movie Database, "bt xxx" searches BitJunkie, and I can add any more when I feel like it. Pretty handy.
  • Who doesnt have slashdot as there home page anyway ?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 26199 ( 577806 ) *

      Because Opera uses persistent browsing there's little point in having a home page.

      You just always have the pages open you had last time. If you were reading slashdot, you're still reading slashdot.

      It's one of those features that you don't think about until you use it, then you can't live without it :)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Joebert ( 946227 )

        Because Opera uses persistent browsing there's little point in having a home page.

        I'm not really a fan of searchbars or similar utilities, so I always go directly to search engine pages.
        Right now I have Google set as my homepage, so using mouse gestures I right-click & move the mouse down a tad which will open a blank tab, then I double-click anywhere in that tab to go directly to my homepage.

      • You just always have the pages open you had last time. If you were reading slashdot, you're still reading slashdot.
        I gave up this feature in Mozilla the day some dumb ass sent me a link to goatse, when I was at work. I reacted by simply closing the browser immediately. Then I started it again...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by 26199 ( 577806 ) *

          You should have cleaned the temp folders out with bleach before launching it again :p

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Wii (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LBt1st ( 709520 ) on Monday March 12, 2007 @02:16AM (#18313335)
    I'm posting this from my Wii and indeed typing /. works here as well.

  • Not an easter egg! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by zsau ( 266209 ) <.ten.srehpargotraceht. .ta. .todhsals.> on Monday March 12, 2007 @02:16AM (#18313337) Homepage Journal
    That's not an easter egg. Easter eggs are hidden features which are unrelated to the main task of the program. Usually they give credit to the team in a fun way.

    At best, this is an undocumented shortcut. Lots of software has them.

    (You can tell it wasn't hidden, because the obvious shortcut for "slashdot" is "/.". If it were hidden, you'd be doing something completely unlikely and suddenly and unexpectedly get to Slashdot, like pressing Ctrl+Alt+/, then Shift+Meta+., then double clicking on the "Help" menu item.)
    • my little sister told me, that easter eggs are colorful eggs well painted by some mad rabbit.
    • Please make this shortcut to slashdot much, much more obscure. You are insulting our geekiness, and not providing us with any kind of challenge. Thank you.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dkf ( 304284 )

      If it were hidden, you'd be doing something completely unlikely and suddenly and unexpectedly get to Slashdot, like pressing Ctrl+Alt+/, then Shift+Meta+., then double clicking on the "Help" menu item.

      Damn, time to change the keybindings on my apps to something less obvious.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by R2P2 ( 193577 )
      A "completely unlikely" shortcut for Slashdot would have to involve the Windows key.
    • If it were hidden, you'd be doing something completely unlikely and suddenly and unexpectedly get to Slashdot, like pressing Ctrl+Alt+/, then Shift+Meta+., then double clicking on the "Help" menu item

      That's not hidden, that's a standard emacs shortcut!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by XO ( 250276 )
        But, you have to press them all at the SAME TIME.

        It takes like 4 arms to operate Emacs, doesn't it?

  • hejdig.

    FYI: writing "g whatyousearchfor" opens google, "r anothersearch" opens groups.google.
    It is one of those things that one won't understand how good it is before one tries it.

    /OF

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Slack3r78 ( 596506 )
      It's actually incredibly easy [mozilla.org] to create your own search keywords in Firefox, too. I've had 'gis' mapped to Google Image Search for years now, for example.
    • FYI: writing "g whatyousearchfor" opens google, "r anothersearch" opens groups.google.
      It is one of those things that one won't understand how good it is before one tries it.

      The g search shortcut is something I use on a daily basis, since it saves me the time of loading the search page. Also, right clicking on a search box and making your own search is another useful tool. A wikipedia search with this method is usually the first thing I set up in a new Opera install.
    • g]space] is more to type than [tab], so it's not a huge advantage for me. The other searches are useful. I'm glad Opera have implemented the control-number shortcut; I find the command-number shortcuts to jump to things in my (hidden) bookmarks bar in Safari to be invaluable.
      • OTOH on 640x480 screen, having the address bar fit more than 20 characters without scrolling is a boon. You can disable the google bar and use the address bar only.
  • /. is present in ELinks as sd for something like two years already. It's great to see Opera is catching up.

  • How Slashdot was named ... (Score:4, Informative)

    by deek ( 22697 ) on Monday March 12, 2007 @02:21AM (#18313375) Homepage Journal

      That's very cool, and very nerdy, of Opera to add the "/." egg. I'm now tempted into downloading Opera and trying it out.

      I've often thought that the Slashdot name was an unfortunately mistyped unix dot slash (./). Fortunately, I've recently discovered that it was originally named to confuse people who tried to verbalise the URL (i.e http colon slash slash slash dot dot org). Thus now I am reassured of the proper geek foundations for this site.

      It's still a little unfortunate that Rob didn't choose "dotSlash" for this site's name. That would have appealed to the unix crowd, and would have been almost as confusing when reading out the URL (http colon slash slash dot slash dot org). Too late to change now, I suppose.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Aoreias ( 721149 )

      That would have appealed to the unix crowd, and would have been almost as confusing when reading out the URL (http colon slash slash dot slash dot org).

      Looks like it even gets easily mistyped when written out, too ;)

    • The difference between slashdot (/.) and dotslash (./) is that the latter is in theory a legal address. Unless early monday sunshine has rotted my brain all internet addresses start with a . (.slashdot.org) to indicate the root of the address, just that it is usually left off.

      The / indicates the end of the domain name and the start of, eh what is the rest called again, DAMN YOU SUN!

      So ./ would be the website running on the root servers.

      Or maybe I am just spouting nonsense.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tim C ( 15259 )
        Actually, I thought it was the other way around - not that all internet addresses start with a ., but that they *end* with a dot (which is left off, of course) - so "slashdot.org" could equally well be written "slashdot.org.". Thus http://./ [.] would indeed be the default website of the root DNS servers (were such a thing possible), but because it's missing the domain name before it, not after it.

        In fact, typing "slashdot.org." into both IE7 and Firefox2 gets you to slashdot, while typing "http://.slashdot.org

  • Why not to put /. on speed dial (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12, 2007 @02:27AM (#18313399)
    *ring*
    Anonymous Coward: Hello?
    CmdrTaco: Stop requesting my website and closing the connection ungracefully!
    Anonymous Coward: Say what? Who is this?!
    CmdrTaco: You know who this is!
    Anonymous Coward: I have no idea..
    CmdrTaco: Fool! I know you have Slashdot on speed dial, don't be playin'
    Anonymous Coward: But I..
    CmdrTaco: I star 69'd you! Don't you be disrespecting my server no more *click*
    Anonymous Coward: ..

  • loving it (Score:5, Interesting)

    by scorilo ( 654174 ) <zam0lx1s@yahEULERoo.com minus math_god> on Monday March 12, 2007 @02:32AM (#18313415) Homepage
    I use both firefox & opera on my USB stick, but I find Opera more useful. It packs a lot (email with IMAP, IRC+RSS+torrent client, widgets in a small package), and with the latest version, you can block ads and add your own searches, which you could not easily do before (though you could with Firefox). You can also have the browser read pages to you aloud which I haven't figured out how to do with Firefox.

    Mod me as a troll, if you wish, but my Opera experience vs. Firefox is similar to Mac vs. Ubuntu. This is not to say that it's necessarily better, but sometimes you just don't feel like configuring everything, and for those times, it's great to have someone who does it right for you, and to top it all, gives it away for free.

    • Free Mac? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      So where did you get the free Mac..?
      Or did I miss the end of that analogy?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by zuiraM ( 1027890 )
      Agreed. Now all it needs is built-in XMPP support and the Gtalk extensions to that, plus an orthodox file manager and an nvi-clone, and I'll be all set to spend most my time in Opera. :P

  • Of all articles to show up... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12, 2007 @04:39AM (#18313895)
    I heard about this on IRC, tried it out and this article was the first one that showed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceeam ( 39911 )
      Of course, it's because someone else on IRC have read this exact article and posted it. No magic. Sorry.
  • Command-1 through Command-9 activate the first 9 links in your bookmark bar. This works even when the bookmark bar is hidden. If you like speed and real estate (and have a good memory) it's a great way to go. I've set the first 4 links to be the same on every Mac I use and it's really handy--my most-visited sites are a keystroke away and it's the same wherever I am.
  • I was looking for this over four years ago [opera.com]!
  • I've being doing this in Opera for months, perhaps years.

    In fact the first time I realized it, I just thought: 'one moment, I don't remember saving that /. bookmark'.

    Anyway, good thing you noticed it ^^.

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