Question

The Problem: nowadays websites extensively use JavaScript which sometimes makes it difficult for the Opera to remember passwords.
Interesting though Opera still can complete forms, but cannot neither remember new passwords nor update existing.
Question is how could one save passwords into the Opera if it Opera ignores those passwords?

FYI: I have tried Internet Explorer with the same result. To my surprise Firefox managed to remember that password, but still I prefer Opera.

Answer 1

Briefly the idea is to substitute a page with a simpler one.

I have one password, which was remembered long time ago. Fortunately website designers never changed authentication mechanism (i.e. form/field names, action url etc.). Nonetheless they used JavaScript autocomplete was still working. Once they changed website domain which presented a challenge. It turned out that Opera could not save password on a new domain, but could substitute it while previous domain was online. Later on they have added more JavaScript, so that it became even more difficult to make Opera remember.

Let’s consider this one by one.
First thing is to try Opera’s built in “View Source” to modify authorisation webpage client side, apply changes and give it a try. Thing to try: step by step simplify starting from stripping JavaScript (e.g. onmouseclick(), onkeypress() etc.) and styles (“style=…“, “class=…” etc.). I managed to save password using this technique for the first time. Also you could try Opera Dragonfly.

Sadly this was useless in the second mentioned situation. Well this time the idea is still the same, but we have to trick Opera. This time we need a webserver at least supporting PHP (or your preferred scripting language). For a security reasons I do not recommend using your web hosting or the like. We should run server locally. Good example is xampp. First we need to download our login page from real web server unedited (do not copy-paste after you experiment in “view source”!). We don’t need resources (styles/scripts) so don’t bother getting them. Next we need to trick Opera. That’s easy. You should add to your hosts file a record, pointing your webpage to localhost. Something like this: 127.0.0.1 www.example.com. Have a look at your webpage source and you might need to add other entries, like 127.0.0.1 login.example.com. Start your local websever when done and make sure it listens to 80 port at localhost (or any other corresponding port if original webserver was on a different port). After server has successfully started (see logs to be sure) you should put your saved webpage to the exactly the same location on local server as it was on real web. That is login.php or auth/some/folder/structure/file.html. Now you can do the same experiments and follow the same procedure as with Opera’s built-in tools. This gave me immediate trouble – Opera refused to save passwords at all. Even if I tried simplest <form...></form> possible. Solution was to put another webpage to the place pointed by form’s “action=…” property. It seems to me that Opera ignores forms unless they return 302/301 code with redirect. Like this:

<?php
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"); 
header("Location: www.example.com"); 
?>

First of all I made wery simple form and password was saved, but was not working on real site. So the best is to simplify gradually step by step. Another tip is if you try to replace existing password you’d better remove the old one first. As far as I know Opera should replace existing password, but it didn’t work for me with this tricky page.
At last Opera gave up and saved my new password. Do not forget to stop your webserver and delete entries in hosts. Viola – password is saved and auto complete is working. Feel comfortable again.
But there is more. When you substitute real webpage with localhost Opera sees this and gives you warning. I was afraid that this may ruin this approach, but fortunately it does not. Well if after some Opera updates it will there’s another trick to try.
As before we try to substitute a page with modified one. But this time we need to use something transparent, so that Opera will not notice a thing. For example we can make Opera use proxy and try to use Proxomitron as a proxy. You might already guessed, that next step is to put filtering rules, which would substitute the page. Another way is to use Squid and SquidGuard. I think you got the idea, I will not go into details on this.

You might ask why would one do so much effort with the only aim – to put passwords into the Opera, where it cannot on it’s own. I can answer this question. That’s because I think that Opera is (in my humble opinion!) still the best and the most convenient browser at least for me. On the other hand I don’t like easy solutions. I prefer solutions, which solve presented problem without compromises.