It has always been a bug bear of mine that I choose to have to many tabs open on any given session on the net. In fact, I’m so used to using some of the in-built functionality in Opera that I shyed away from using a stand-alone RSS reader for a while.

One of the most useful things about Opera that I’ve discovered recently is that you can in fact run multiple sessions (or Windows) in Opera and navigate them all from the same window.

Perhaps you knew this already, but I’ll just explain a little further if you didn’t. Using sessions as Opera calls them to organise your web browser tabs is something I’ve done for a long time, but I hate having multiple Operas on the task bar, because that is not the ideal way to find your way to and from sessions.

Enter the dragon: Windows panel. Previously I was unaware that when you open multiple sessions of Opera the Windows panel actually shows you every tab open under the appropriate session. So, just by having this panel open when multi tasking makes it really very easy and unburdensome to find what you need.

See this picture to find out what I mean:

I have to admit there isn’t much organisation going on in that screenshot, mainly because I opened a saved session to show you what it looks like. But I’m sure you can see how you might be able to have multiple sessions open and have it all neatly organised.

For example, you could have your favorite websites open in one: We’ll say for example that they are SitePoint.com, Digg.com, Facebook.com perhaps Twitter.com etc etc.. and in another window you have say a bunch of stock photography websites open because you’re looking for a certain picture for a project. You can quickly see how organising your browser tabs in this manner is going to help de-clutter your experience.

The other side to this point is considering the windows panel does a lot for you, do you need a tabs bar at all? I generally have an extremely cluttered browser by default, with the panels open either on Mail, RSS, or even Window/sessions as in this example. Plus I have the view bar open as I store handy Opera functions such as user-style sheet and page zoom. But could I do completely without the tab bar? Not me, but for someone who likes a minimalist approach, it is really just a few clicks away:

To me, removing the tab bar and the menu bar is a pretty extreme approach. But there is something nice about it too I think. And with that a quick tap of F4 (if you are on WindowsOS) will pop open the panels and you have access right there to your tabs and windows. Yeah, even ctrl+tab will cycle through.

Although I’ve mentioned that I clutter my browser with lots of handy quick ways to navigate around, and for me that improves my ability to navigate quickly, using window panel now makes managing my tabs a whole lot easier, and while this doesn’t really apply to just browsing around, it comes in handy just at the point where you are multi-tasking like working on a project and needing lots and lots of tabs open.

Welcome to armchaircritic, v.2. This theme is based off of the old modified theme I used, designed originally by UpstartBlogger. I’ve assigned it version 0.2 for this reason. As the second incarnation of my changes to the original theme.

There are a few niggles still, and notwithstanding all the pushing and shoving I did for IE to display it somewhere near envisioned. I’ll be getting to those in the future, since I’ve only noticed them since uploading.  I’ll also want to look at a few areas again once my eyes haven’t been staring at the mock and sandbox version for so long. There’s only so much you can see after a long time looking, and usually not the bad points. I decided to push it out there on this blog for two reasons really, one I wasn’t happy with the old version, and that was always intended to be just a stop gap. And the second,  I wasn’t happy with the old version, and that was always intended to be just a stop gap. Now I realise that’s only one point, but I thought it was such a pertinent one that I should say it twice.

That’s all for now, Smegheads. And yes, I’ve been watching Red Dwarf recently. If you’ve never seen that TV series, a whole lot of what you just read won’t make sense.

So, most people visiting from SitePoint will want to know or have already asked about the whole disney JungleBook avatar thing.

Well there are a number of reasons why actually. It wouldn’t have escaped the casual sitepointer that both avatars have been the cats from the book/cartoon. I do like cats, yes it is true. In fact, they are the best pets, but not if you have a large hungry one. Those are best in the wild, and not in zoos. Average cats, the kind that are too arrogant to go looking for food themselves make good pets. I’m preparing myself for getting a pair of them actually, and do you know you can buy special poop-palaces for them nowadays? Oh yes, your cat must have a private place to do their business, plus it comes with a air filter so that few oudors escape. Perrrfect.

So back to the disney Jungle Book. It was one of the very first films I can remember watching, and I think it sparked a life long interest not just in cats, but in adventure and far flung places of the world. I still find adventure literature really engaging, same for documentaries also. Actually finding usable stills to make avatars of, and vectorising them is a problem. I usually resort to a google image search.

So I was using the good old Bagheera avatar on sitepoint for quite a while, but when I became a mentor it just didn’t seem to fit with the colour orange, and on a passing suggestion from Raffles in my congrats thread, I started to think about using Shere Khan. So I did, and no doubt any sitepointer visiting this ere blog will already have seen it.

I watched the flick again just recently, and I have to say I really still do enjoy it. The animation was actually quite ahead of its time when it was produced, and was the last Disney film to get the real Walt Disney touch. The backgrounds are incredibly detailed and have an almost watercolour-like property to them. Although, the animation of water has come along way since they did it in Jungle Book. But, I don’t think they ever got better songs for a flick than what they achieved in JB. You have to admit, (Or at least, I will admit) that the groove to “I wanna be like you” is one dandy fine jazzy number.. and who could not love the scatting from King Louie and Baloo?

And, you gotta admit, the voices of Sebastian Cabot as Bagheera and George Sanders as Shere Khan is absolute genius.

I also have to point out that King Louie didn’t feature in the book but the similarity to how the monkey people are portrayed in the book is still evident in the film. Louis Prima, the voice and singer of the classic “I wanna be like you” was probably the inspiration behind the character.

So anyway, having deleted alot of stuff unnecessary to this post, I conclude it. That’s the most abrupt ending I can think of. Now go read something more interesting. lol.