I guess this is a post that rightfully belongs here but however I'm going to get these out there if anyone wants them is beyond me..don't want to step on the toes of the rightful authors by any means.

What I wanted on my speed dial was a custom pic I put up of Norman Reedus (who plays Daryl Dixon on the AMC TV show, the Walking Dead) Hey, who doesn't look badass holding a crossbow? Anyway, my problem was/is the stupid speed dial boxes snap to a central grid, meaning they can't be moved, like say..desktop icons. Irritating, as Norman's delightfully delicious face was being covered by speed dial boxes. So here is the hacked up-stupid-shouldn't be necessary but was-workaround way I fixed it. Here is my result: a theme I like, with Reedus' yummy face clearly visible. I know what you're thinking..how are those speed dial boxes on the left like that? Muhahaha!

First, I downloaded (for my viewing pleasure) a couple of themes that I liked that had transparency on the speed dial.

1. IBIS inspire Transparent 3.81b (Screenshot)
2. Ultra Glass Static 2-v.7.50
3. Aesthetical & Classy 2

Then I copied them to my desktop and unpacked them. The part that drove me nuts were throbbers in the speed dial boxes. So I located those in the anims files of the skins and opened them with GIMP, and deleted the throbber pic out of the image. Then I re- saved the blank .png. Once I did that I simply repacked all the files with the same name.zip as before and put them back in the /skins folder. Reopen Opera and there are now plain transparent speed dial boxes (when you make new blank ones I should clarify)

To get the exact look of the speed dial boxes 'grid' placement that I have (boxes to the left or boxes to the right) requires creating 'blanks' These speed dial boxes are going to have the address opera: in them..that's it. that will get a transparent, rather than white box.