MultiTorg Opera 8

You've seen the screenshots (well, if you haven't, then maybe you should take a look). Yes, it is pretty outdated (or is the word 'rustic'?) by today's UI standards, but it was an impressive heritage that gave rise to the Opera that we know and love today. But for those who yearn for the Good Ole' Days ™, there is a way to reverse time, reverse all the enhancements, user interface changes, superior standards support ... Get back to the raw HTML 2.0 Web, and MultiTorg Opera. OK, I'm not one for inspirational speeches, so let's get down to the instructions.

This assumes you are currently using Opera 8.

Skin

1. Install the fantastic skin developed by DiscoStu. It's about as close as you can get to the original appearance. There are a few minor differences (progress bar percentages cannot be correctly coloured or located), but overall, it is a very complete skin.
2. Tools - Preferences - Advanced - Fonts - Interface menus = System, 12, bold, black (or an appropriate sans-serif font on other platforms)
3. If you are running Windows, you can also make the following modifications if you want, to make the title bars look authentic (depending on the window manager, some Linux installs may also be able to simulate the Windows 3.1 theme [there is a Windows 3.1 theme for the FluxBox window manager]):
   • The hard way:
     1. Use WindowBlinds to make Windows look like Windows 3.1. It may make your computer feel slower though, and it's not worth the effort.
   • The easier way:
     1. Right click on your desktop - Properties - Appearance - 'Windows and buttons' = 'Windows Classic Style'.
     2. Click 'Advanced'.
     3. Set 'Color 1' and 'Color 2' for 'Active Title Bar' to the light blue on the bottom row of the colour selection pallet, and set the font colour to black.
     4. Set 'Color 1' and 'Color 2' for 'Inactive Title Bar' to white and the font colour to black.

Toolbars

1. Install the toolbar setup.
2. Tools - Preferences - General - untick 'Show close button on each tab'.
3. Open up your Opera6.ini file in a text editor, and under '[User Prefs]', add this line:

   Title=MultiTorg Opera

In theory, you should also install the relevant Norwegian (bokmål) language file, since MultiTorg used bokmål only. However, that will not be much use to you if you do not understand it.

Menus

• Install the simple menu setup. It mainly only changes the top level menus, and in general, it just renames them to match the original names.
• Alternatively, you can Install the full menu setup. It much more accurately replicates the main menus used by MultiTorg Opera. Note that some Opera 8 functionality will not be available through the menus (you can always revert the changes later).

Rendering

1. Save the MultiTorg stylesheet into a folder (any folder) on your computer.
2. Preferences - (Preferences) - Advanced - Browsing - 'Page icons' = 'Show no icons'.
3. Preferences - (Preferences) - Advanced - Content - untick:
   1. Enable frames
   2. Enable inline frames
   3. GIF animation
   4. Enable sound in web pages
   5. Enable JavaScript
   6. Enable Java
   7. Enable plug-ins
4. Click 'Style options'and set 'Default mode' = 'User mode'.
5. Use the 'My style sheet' to choose the MultiTorg stylesheet you saved earlier.

Test run

1. Open 4 pages, preferably some complicated ones that use scripts, stylesheets, whatever (just to see how much things have changed).
2. Window - Tile vertically.
3. Welcome to MultiTorg Opera!

Note; you could also use one of the options in 'Preferences - Preferences - Advanced - Browsing - New pages' to set it to tile or cascade automatically. Enjoy.