Formating fonts in Opera Chat

** updated 28/09/2004 to make changing background colour easier**

I'm sorry, I'm sorry and I'm sorry again. I really shouldn't make this public, but it's only a matter of time before someone else does. If other people using it drives you insane (it does for a lot of us), you can use my im.css customisation to disable it completely.

Opera does not have a way to use colours, bold fonts or underline the way that other IRC clients do, but it can display them. Well, in fact, Opera can generate formatted text, but to save us from floods of newbies littering our channels with what they think is "kewl", the developers decided not to make it part of the Opera menus. As a result, creating it in Opera is a difficult task of opening another IRC client, making it there, then copy & pasting it into Opera.

Well - and here is the reason for my apology - I have worked out how to put it in a menu to make it easier to use.

In most channels, using this will result in a kick or ban - you have been warned! This feature should be used only for official warnings or notifications.

Click here to install the menu (JavaScript is required to install it). You can then right click in the message box to access the formatting features. Note: this menu also uses significant parts of Toman's chat menu.

Note, if you used this menu in Opera 8, you will need to grab a new copy for Opera 9 - it now includes search shortcut creation, and spellcheck on Mac.

User agreement

Do you agree use this feature only for official warnings or notifications?

Do you agree not to over-use this feature?

Do you agree not to use this feature for advertising?

Do you agree to stop using this feature on channels where you have been requested to do so?

Do you agree not to pass this menu to anyone else, except by directing them to this page?

Do you agree not to inform people how to use this until they have enough IRC experience to use it responsibly?

Using the formatting menu

While composing a message in Opera Chat, right click in the message input box to access the chat formatting options.

Chat font formatting is very basic.

• Bold text
  • Select the 'Toggle bold text' menu item
  • It will insert a control character
  • Select it again to disable bold text
  • All text between the control characters will be in bold
• Underlined text
  • Select the 'Toggle underline text' menu item
  • It will insert a control character
  • Select it again to disable underline
  • All text between the control characters will be underlined
• Coloured text
  • Select a colour from the 'Text colour (only)' menu item
  • It will insert a control character and colour code
  • To change the text background colour you must select a text colour from the 'Text and background colour' menu item - a menu will then appear that allows you to select a background colour
  • Select the 'Toggle text colours off' menu item to disable text colours
  • All text between the control characters will be coloured as you specify
  • The first character you use following a colour change must not be a number
• Reverse text
  • Opera ignores this formatting when it displays the text, so I have not included the option to produce it (instructions are in the source if you want it)
• Plain text
  • This resets all bold, underline and colour formatting

To be interpreted correctly, formatting starts and ends must not overlap. In other words, if you enable bold text, then enable underlined text, you must disable underlined text again before you disable bold text.

On some Windows XP installs, the control characters all look different, but incorrectly offset the caret. On other Windows platforms, the control characters all look like a little square. On Linux/Unix and Mac, the control characters all look like a long space. You will need to remember which one is which ...