Opera Single Document Interface

I met a guy who likes Opera but would prefer to use windows instead of tabs. The more technical name for this is SDI (Single Document Interface) opposed to MDI (Multiple Document Interface) or TDI (Tabbed Document Interface, which is kind of a crippled MDI).

As Opera is astonishing customizable it is pretty easy to make Opera behave like a SDI application. But it requires to change several settings. During my research I couldn't find a somehow complete guide for this. So here is my comprehensive description to make Opera SDI-like.

Update: Shoust made a nice Custom Button that toggles between SDI and MDI, which very easily changes the settings for Open windows instead of tabs, tab bar and Middle click option (background window / background tab):
button …

Howto get rid of tabs and run Opera in SDI mode

step by step instructions

necessary settings

• tools > preferences > advanced > tabs >

  check: [x] Open windows instead of tabs

• right click on tab bar > customize >

  check: [x] Show only when needed

  (worse alternative: view > toolbars >
  uncheck: [ ] Tabbar – with the disadvantage not to see if another tab is open for some reason)

additional settings to make it pure SDI

• tools > preferences > advanced > browsing >

  check: [x] Show window menu

• tools > preferences > advanced > shortcuts > middle click options >

  check: [x] Open in background windows

• tools > preferences > advanced > tabs >

  check: [x] Reuse current tab

• preferences > general > startup:

  Choose either "Start without open tabs" or "Start with home page"

• change Shortcuts (mouse gestures and keyboard – see below)
• change Menus (see below)

Mouse gestures

You can download this
sdi-mouse.ini
to your Opera/profile/mouse – folder and select SDI Mousegestures in

tools > preferences > advanced > shortcuts > mouse setup

Or you can manually do following changes:

GestureDown

from "Open link in new page | New page" to

Open link in new window | New browser window

GestureDown, GestureUp

from "Open link in background page | Duplicate page" to

Open link in background window | Duplicate page

Keyboard setup

You can download this
sdi-keyboard.ini
to your Opera/profile/keyboard – folder and select SDI Shortcuts in

tools > preferences > advanced > shortcuts > keyboard setup

Or you can manually do following changes:

[application]

t ctrl and n ctrl shift

from "New page, 1" to

New browser window

delete

4 Minimize page

[History panel]

Platform Windows-Unix-MCE, Enter shift and (I'm not sure about Mac) Platform Mac, Enter ctrl

from "Open link in new page" to

Open link in new window

Enter shift ctrl

from "Open link in background page" to

Open link in background window

[Advanced]

[Browser Widget]

Platform Windows-Unix-MCE, Enter shift and (I'm not sure about Mac) Platform Mac, Enter ctrl

from "Open link in new page" to

Open link in new window

Enter ctrl shift and Space ctrl shift

from "Open link in background page" to

Open link in background window

[Bookmarks Widget]

Platform Windows-Unix-MCE, Enter shift and (I'm not sure about Mac) Platform Mac, Enter ctrl

from "Open link in new page" to

Open link in new window

Enter ctrl shift and Space ctrl shift

from "Open link in background page" to

Open link in background window

[Edit widget]

Platform Mac, Enter ctrl

from "Wand | Open link in new page" to

Wand | Open link in new window

Menus: edit menu.ini

The menu file has to be edited manually.
You have to place the menu file in the folder Opera/profile/menu
About editing menu files see my former blog post about
Right Click menu file.
To adjust the menu.ini for SDI I mainly added semicolons in front of the lines
containing tab=page-related things, e.g.

[Link Popup Menu]
 Item, 67389=Open link
 ;Item, 53018=Open link in new page
 ;Item, 53019=Open link in background page
 ;--------------------1
 Item, 54020=Open link in new window
 Item, 67633=Open link in background window
 --------------------2
 Item, 70463=Add link to bookmarks
 Item, 50216=Copy link
 Item, 50761=Save link
 Item, 581357748=Download url

You can download this
sdi-menu.ini
and save it in the folder Opera/profile/menu. It contains only the changed menu sections, the other sections are added from standard-menu.ini. If you already use a customized menu.ini you have to merge the changes.

Finally activate the new menus in

tools > preferences > advanced > toolbars > menu setup

select: "SDI Menu"

(should be displayed in the list, if not ensure you have the sdi-menu.ini in the correct folder and you can try to restart Opera)

further information

For the location of your Opera/profile folder see Opera:about – either it is

C:\users and settings\{username}\application data\opera[xyz]\profile

or

C:\program files\opera[xyz]\profile

Opera documentation

The documentation on opera.com has to be updated

http://www.opera.com/products/desktop/windowmng/

To run Opera exclusively in SDI mode, change the default for windows settings in Preferences > Windows and select "Open pages in new window".

As you see above that's not enough.

http://www.opera.com/support/usingopera/operaini/

SDI

(to find this entry on the page just type ".sdi" in Opera)

Document interface to use as default

Simplified tabs = 0

Single Document Interface = 1

Multiple Document Interface = 2

doesn't fit to with the setting in opera:config

opera:config#UserPrefs|SDI (or go to opera:config and type "SDI" in search field)

there is only a check box

(this entry is triggering the same setting as:

tools > preferences > advanced > tabs > Open windows instead of tabs

I reported this issue on Bugs/errors on Opera Community (although it's not on my.opera.com but on www.opera.com – I couldn't find anything on http://www.opera.com/contact/ and it was the closest hit on http://my.opera.com/community/contact/ – this is pretty confusing for me)

Opera forum

The question for SDI could be found several times in the forum, e.g.
Forum-thread: Making Opera more SDI-like …

Operawiki.info

I added this topic to NonTroppo's OperaWiki, see OperaSDI on Operawiki.