If you have a problem using a feature of a website, this is an interesting way to detect whether the website fails because it detects Opera specifically.
Internet Explorer does not have a built-in "Identify as.." command like Opera, but it is possible to add the string "Opera" to its User Agent string by changing the Windows registry, meaning that both server-side and client side strict browser detection will believe it is Opera.
If identifying IE as Opera means that you can reproduce the same problem in IE, you have found very clear evidence that the site is disabling features based on browser detection.
Save the following text in a plain text file called IEisOpera?.reg :
Unfortunately, this only works for NT/W2K/XP. To make it work in 9X, change the “Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00” to “REGEDIT4”, add two spaces after the last line. Wiki chops off the ending lines, so the changes need to be manually done.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent] "Version"="Opera/7.23"
To make IE identify as Opera, double-click the file and confirm that you want the information inserted into the registry. You need to re-start IE if it is running for the changes to take effect.
To be able to disable the Opera "identification" again, save the following text in a plain text file called IEisNotOpera?.reg :
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent] "Version"=-
Then you can double-click this file and re-start IE to reset it to normal mode.