With Ubuntu Unity-specific support being lavished upon Chromium and Firefox 4 it wasn’t going to be long before Opera, the oft overlooked web browser which a healthy 5% of OMG! readers use, received some due love and attention.
Opera user/fan/developer Kyle Baker – whose Opera themes and tips we’ve featured before — has written a ‘Unity script’ for the browser that adds in some Unity specific love including a tab count to the Launcher icon, right-click quick lists to your Opera speed dial entries and support for Unity’s “urgency” alerts.
Tab Badge
In Chromium and Firefox the ‘badge’ count has been used to display the number of active downloads. Not so in Opera where Kyle uses it to display the number of opened tabs.
Neat.
Urgency
Urgency is used in Unity when applications require attention. Opera Unity utilises this when new tabs are opened without Opera in focus, as Kyle explains: –
When Opera is not in focus and a new tab is opened, the Opera icon in the Launcher now enters urgency mode and wiggles once.
An urgency highlight is also applied to the icon and a small attention reminder in the upper left corner until you focus Opera again (this clears the urgency setting).”
Quicklists
This script also provides a ‘Quicklist’ – an menu available when right-clicking the Launcher icon – stuffed full of your Speed Dial entries and links for new windows/tab, etc.
Download
The Unity script, and instructions on how to install it, can be found on Kyle’s blog at kyleabaker.com.