Opera Supports Socks 5 Proxy (Finally)

I was in the process of adopting Chrome as my browser, looking for and installing extensions that would make it work like Opera (speed dial and content blocking), simply because Opera wouldn’t support Socks 5 Proxies. Imagine my relief and surprise when I discovered a little-publicized additional function in the latest release of Opera (11.10) – it actually does support socks proxies, including version 5.

For easy, step-by-step instructions including screenshots, see How To Use Opera with a SOCKS Proxy.  For the short version, read on.

I found this while reading the release notes, which mentions how to go about setting it up, as it is not available in the normal preferences menu. You have to put opera:config in the browser’s address bar and hit enter, which brings up a preferences editor. Scroll down until you see the Proxy section. Expand the tree, and enter the IP address (not DNS name or alias) and port in the SOCKS Server field. If you, like me, use ssh tunneling to establish a SOCKS proxy, this will be something like 127.0.0.1:8080 (substitute your own port). A few lines down, click the checkbox for Use SOCKS. Leave Use WAIS, Use HTTP, Use FTP, and Use HTTPS un-checked. Click the [Save] button, and Voila! Opera is using a SOCKS proxy.

I’ve tested this on both Windows XP and Ubuntu linux.

On a separate note:
WordPress Anti-Spam Plugins
While looking for alternatives to good old Akismet, I put together a little hub on the Best Anti-Spam Plugins for WordPress. OK, I didn’t run in-depth tests to see if they are really “the best,” but other than Akismet itself, they are all free, and my preliminary testing has been very successful.