Thanks, Avi. I'm using a supported OS but truth-be-told, I never "hide" menus or mess around with the more cosmetic side of OS tricks. I'm a low-dazzle grunt worker in the audio & visual design trenches, and I have no use for most of the OS bling... so can be completely thrown by "features" that other people take for granted. I was hoping someone would say - "Hey, did you try xxxx yet?" and throw some really OBVIOUS (to everyone else) trick at me which I don't know about because I never use it. I don't do the menu bar trick... so just like I defaulted to full-screen by accident; I discovered the solution by accident.
So far as I know, you can't. Admittedly I use Windows and Linux rather than OSX, but neither of those versions allows you to modify the address bar except using extensions.
@costica There isn't such option in Opera for Android, so there's no way to disable Speed Dial.
And by the way, posting in the correct forum is part of the rules of these forums.
The way the links open is strictly up to the link author. AFAIK, no browser can override that behavior.
At some point, the "rel" tag may also affect links as browsers adopt the recommended behavior. rel=external is supposed to open in a new tab or window.