You will tear noscript from my cold, dead hands.

Opera is getting extensions, in the mean time you can use the built-in functionality:

Preferences > Advanced > Content. Uncheck Enable JavaScript to disable it globally.

Then when you want to manually enable JS for a single site:

Right-click anywhere on page> Site Preferences > Scripting. Check Enable JavaScript.

Yes, it is extremely inconvenient (available exactly as you described), and JavaScript is a small portion of what NoScript does for you. A quick rundown of features as I understand them:

* blocking is the default, with whitelist enables

* quick script block for individual sources on a page; I can disable content from turner.com and revsci but can allow cnn.com when I am viewing cnn.com pages

* block is for plugins, too, and I can left-click the plugin image to selectively enable that specific plugin, whatever site it is from -- flash, silverlight, java, and other embeddings

* blacklisting sources per site or for all sites

* XSS protection

* weird script behavior protection, such as malicious attempts to overlay controls so that a user accidentally activates the wrong thing

* global override (allow all scripting temporarily)

* some cookie control

Here is a more comprehensive description: http://noscript.net/features

Maybe there is not a one-stop shopping for Opera, though, and I can get all this with multiple Opera extensions? I did run down a path at one point that made the JavaScript control more NoScripty, but the rest of NoScript's benefits provide a too-nice user experience and sense of safety.

Note: I am not a Firefox fanboy. I just really love NoScript's help. The only other real advantage I feel Firefox has over Opera is its JavaScript support (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/JavaScript#Ve...). I periodically check to see if the next version of Chrome will support the hooks a NoScript clone would require, and Opera periodically grabs my attention.

> Yes, it is extremely inconvenient (available exactly as you described)

There is a shortcut key for that - F12, so it's actually quite convenient :-)

It's also worth pointing out that we recently added a preference for enabling click-to-play for plugins. Open this: opera:config#UserPrefs|EnableOnDemandPlugin url in the browser, and check the box.

It's worth pointing out, you don't need to go through all the menus. Most (all?) functionality accessible in menus can be put on a button on the status bar. I have my Enable JavaScript checkbox down at the bottom, next to disabling images and CSS (useful for SEO work).

While we're pointing out different ways to disable JS, the F12-menu is also nice to have. F12 pops up a menu with some handy settings, including "Enable plugins" and "Enable JavaScript".