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Topic: Otter Tips and Tricks (Read 37039 times)

Otter Tips and Tricks

In this thread, share your little discoveries :)


KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

Reading this https://github.com/Emdek/otter/issues/161 I figured out how to customise keyboard shortcuts.

1. Go to Preferences --> Advanced --> Keyboard
2. Under Action Shortcuts, select Default setup
3. Press Clone next to it
4. Accept the name change
5. Select the renamed setup and press Edit next to it

Now you see a bunch of actions and you can personalise the keyboard shortcuts :)
To make sure that Otter uses the customised setup, move it upmost in the table.

Hopefully more actions and macros will become visible as the development progresses.

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #1 –
I built "z" for back and "x" for forward but neither responds.  Is there an option to enable single-key shortcuts I'm not seeing?  My guess is the problem is elsewhere as my back and forward arrows don't work either.



Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #2 –
The single-key actions seem to be a missing feature. The ones I tried and got to work are:

- F1 for About application
- F5 for reload

When I try 'r' for reload, it's not just that it doesn't work - it refuses to stick. When I return to the configuration dialogue, it's gone! So this feature is either missing or disabled.

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #3 –
I'll investigate this, possibly some widget "eats" them but  it might be something wrong with recording / saving them.
Nadszedł już czas, najwyższy czas, nienawiść zniszczyć w sobie.
The time has come, the high time, to destroy hatred in oneself.

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #4 –
Despite its lack of some rather basic features and not quite providing the same level of configurability as Opera did, Otter is already a very good downloading tool.

- Downloads can be flexibly paused and resumed over app restart
- After crash, downloads can safely be resumed
- After partial download, the download can be continued with another tool, such as wget

These features describe the original Opera as well. Only torrent capability is still missing in Otter, but honestly, Opera needed some more up-front settings to make it a viable torrent downloader. For example, there should be a way to open a torrent file to start downloading, instead of opening a URL.

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #5 –
More on single-key shortcuts.

There's buggy behaviour here. In my keyboard layout AltGr+2 makes @ sign but in Otter it causes the behaviour of key 2 (move to the right tab). This is surely not intended and should be fixed.

Also, changing the keyboard setup under Tools/Preferences/Advanced/Keyboard is buggy. I duplicated one of the setups there to delete the key 2 behaviour, so I could type AltGr+2 undeterred, but it had no effect. I'm sure that it's intended to have an effect when one duplicates a keyboard setup, moves it upmost on the list and changes its contents.

In the end, what had the desired effect was to DELETE ALL OTHER KEYBOARD SETUPS. Surely this was not intended to work like this!? The way it should work is to move the desired keyboard setup upmost on the list and there.

I am typing this here in the tips and tricks thread because this did the trick for me, but it's probably better called work around bugs.

I hope the Ctrl+Tab/Rightclick+scrollwheel feature gets implemented soon, so I get a replacement to the undesirable 1 and 2 keys.

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #6 –
@ersi, it is feature, not a bug. ;-)
Although I agree that it should be reworked to be more obvious, like adding checkboxes to decide which sets should be active or something like that.
It was done that way to allow to combine multiple lists without need to produce single set manually.
Nadszedł już czas, najwyższy czas, nienawiść zniszczyć w sobie.
The time has come, the high time, to destroy hatred in oneself.

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #7 –
@Emdek
The question arises: How do you plan to implement multiple setups, multiple interface interaction sets? How will you implement switching between them?

In Opera it works so that in each file there are all the keyboard shortcuts. I can keep multiple files in the dialogue and select between the files. The one that is selected works and the others just sit there until I select another one of them. Moreover, the selected file can be incomplete, in which case it will be completed from the default setup in the program directory, while my custom files are in the profile directory. Makes perfect sense.

What's the plan with your feature?

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #8 –
I do think it could be interesting to have a base config and one or more overrides (or cascades if you like, because it's the concept used in CSS). The main problem is how to implement it in an intuitive manner. In lieu of that, I think Opera's solution is better.

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #9 –
@ersi, by adding checkboxes deciding which items are active.
Nadszedł już czas, najwyższy czas, nienawiść zniszczyć w sobie.
The time has come, the high time, to destroy hatred in oneself.

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #10 –
Quote from: Emdek on

@ersi, by adding checkboxes deciding which items are active.

And what's the plan for cases of conflicts? By conflict I mean when a shortcut is reserved for one action in one file, but the same shortcut occurs in another file for another action.

I think already my case is bad enough and worth considering. My problem was that I needed to remove a shortcut and that's precisely what a normal user would do as I did: Go to the keybord shortcuts and remove the shortcut. But it turned out I have to delete entire files with I don't know how many useful shortcuts to get rid of a few bad shortcuts.

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #11 –
@ersi, in case of conflict we are using first occurrence, entries on top of the list have higher priority.
Nadszedł już czas, najwyższy czas, nienawiść zniszczyć w sobie.
The time has come, the high time, to destroy hatred in oneself.

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #12 –
This month Otter acquired systray icon. I updated by installing over my previous version and continued to use my old profile (since version 0.3 or so). When I launched the new Otter, the systray icon didn't show up by itself. I made it work this way:

- Go to about:config
- Look up EnableTrayIcon
- Set it to "false" and restart Otter
- Go to about:config again
- Look up EnableTrayIcon again
- Set it to "true" and restart Otter

This applies to Xfce.

In Openbox the systray icon worked just fine.

Thanks for the systray icon :) Looking forward to more flexible customisation of keyboard shortcuts, menus, toolbars, etc.

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #13 –
I don't get the system tray icon on lxpanel (lubuntu 14.10). Tried disable/enable in about:config. Still nothing?

EDIT: After installing weekly #38. I now have the tray icon in lxpanel.  :yes:

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #14 –
Good that it worked. I was just going to suggest trying new profile.

How to add more adblock lists

Reply #15 –
In the profile folder, there's an adblock.ini file and adblock folder with adblock lists (text files in the folder). If the number of immediately available lists is not enough for you, it's possible to add more. For example, I wanted to suppress social sharing banners in Otter with Fanboy's Social Blocking List, which is not pre-included.

1. Close Otter
2. Save an adblock list in adblock folder in the profile, for example https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/fanboy-social.txt
2. Open up Otter's adblock.ini in a text editor
3. The contents of the ini file has quadruple lines like this:
Code: [Select]

[EasyList]
enabled=false
file=easylist.txt
title=EasyList

4. Duplicate (copy and paste) one such quadruplet in the file.
5. Change the relevant parts to reflect the new adblock list. For Fanboy's Social List:
Code: [Select]

[FanboySocial]
enabled=true
file=fanboy-social.txt
title=FanboySocial

6. Save the ini file.
7. Next time you open Otter, you will see the list added and active under Tools -> Content Blocking and right-click -> Content Blocking.

Place tabbar anywhere

Reply #16 –
There's some space on the left-hand end of the tabbar. I used to think it was an unaesthetical glitch of design, but actually it's the place where to grab the tabbar with the mouse and lift it from the top to left, right, or bottom in Otter :)

And hopefully there will be more features coming into that spot https://github.com/Emdek/otter/issues/190#issuecomment-66915073

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #17 –
And there's also a "lock toolbar setting" if you right-click. ;)

(Although I think I prefer Opera/Presto's way over this more IE-like method, but the important thing is that it's there at all.)

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #18 –
In toolBars.json I added "GoButton" and now I got a go-gutton in the navigation bar.
Is there a list of "commands" we can add or change in this file?
Is it possible to add the menu to the navigation bar by altering the toolBars.json?

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #19 –
@rincewind, in theory you can place there any action or macro, you can find them on the wiki (a bit outdated):
https://github.com/Emdek/otter/wiki/Actions
Or in source code:
https://github.com/Emdek/otter/blob/master/src/core/ActionsManager.cpp#L59

Please note that identifiers etc. are considered unstable until 1.0 release.
Nadszedł już czas, najwyższy czas, nienawiść zniszczyć w sobie.
The time has come, the high time, to destroy hatred in oneself.

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #20 –
If you are like me and you have combined search field and address field, then the search field is unnecessary in the toolbar. Here's how to remove it.


Now you have only the address field on the main toolbar :)

Each search engine can be called from the address field by its keyword. The keywords can be set in Preferences > Search.

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #21 –
Quote from: rincewind on
In toolBars.json I added "GoButton" and now I got a go-gutton in the navigation bar.

A few more things that make sense in the navigation bar:

- "GoToHomePageAction"
- "GoToParentDirectoryAction" (without icon, but works)

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #22 –
Proper full screen can be achieved in current Otter release by switching off the tabbar. By proper full screen I mean no toolbars popping up by moving mouse to the edge, as it does in FF. The only offending toolbar currently is tabbar - and the scrollbars.

Eagerly waiting for proper options to get proper full screen and maybe implement a full screen mode with its own toolbars, the way it's possible in Opera. And I'd like to see the tab-switcher dialogue too some day, like Opera has at Ctrl+Tab.

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #23 –
Interesting, but I get the full screen like in the most of the browsers, also like in Opera. F11 works for me, I do not know why.

Re: Otter Tips and Tricks

Reply #24 –
Quote from: Pref on

F11 works for me, I do not know why.

Of course F11 works, but in older Otter releases the tabbar and address bar remained visible. In current releases, tabbar pops up when you move the mouse pointer to the edge.

By "proper full screen" I mean that nothing should pop up. This is achieved by turning the tabbar off, then going full screen. However, I noticed that when you turn the tabbar off, it returns when you restart Otter. It should stay away.