opera://flags#standalone-discover-page

The Discover feature has been updated to look and feel like the bookmark manager. Opera 31 Changelogs

http://www.opera.com/docs/changelogs/windows/

There are some features that Opera has not/ will not implement because they have developed something better. Sadly, a few examples do not come to mind. Chromium and Presto do not resemble each other because they are completely different.

Here is an analogy describing working on the Presto engine and them moving on to the new Chromium engine: It is like making a beautiful sculpture and then learning that the foundations have started to crumble. You now have to start all over again, but with a completely different building material. After working with clay for so long you are used to that material as opposed to the new material you are learning, however, you know what it is you are trying to create and where you were going with your creation. For some info on why the change was made see here: http://www.operasoftware.com/press/releases/general/opera-gears-up-at-300-million-users other info is derived from comments made by the developers that I remember reading.

If you prefer Chromium, that is fine. The engines are nearly the same if not exactly so (I need to look into that more). The philosophies are and directions are different. I think the best things that I like about Opera is that they feel everyone is different and try to make the browser adjustable for each user and they are against spyware. http://www.operasoftware.com/company/vision

If anyone wants to correct me on any of the above feel free.

I would like to see a list of those features that have been restored. I have been using Opera since the mid 90's, and I see nothing in the chromium opera that resembles presto opera. I only use Opera for discover now when I want a different random selection of articles, and for the speed dial, but now I mostly use Chrome. I was using stash, which I started to like, but they discontinued it. Opera and Chrome are so similar that sometimes I forget which one I am using.

Whatever happened to Opera where you could change and customize everything T_T

Presto became impractical to work with, so Opera made the hard decision to stop work on it and move over to the Chromium engine. Opera had to redesign the browser from the ground up. It has taken a great deal of work, but Opera returning more and more of the features that were lost during the move to a new engine. The core philosophy of Opera is still the same.

But no matter what, that left bar is almost constantly empty. Just look at it! 50% of it is just blank space. What a waste. And of course we can't just resize it... sigh

Work is still being done with Discover. In Developer 32 the extra space has been reduced somewhat. Hopefully it will be reduced further. I do like the idea of making the Discover sidebar adjustable.

But no matter what, that left bar is almost constantly empty. Just look at it! 50% of it is just blank space. What a waste. And of course we can't just resize it... sigh

Whatever happened to Opera where you could change and customize everything T_T

Here is mine at 1920x1080 at 100% scaling.

With the previous version of Opera I could see 1 or 2 stories side by side. With the new version of Opera I could see between 3 and 4 and once in a while 5 stories side by side. Resolutions and scaling stayed the same. I could post a screenshot of my previous discover page, but I didn't want to download and install Opera 30, take a screenshot, etc.

Syntax for images is: 

An exclamation mark: !;

followed by a set of square brackets, containing the alt attribute text for the image;

followed by a set of parentheses, containing the URL or path to the image, and an optional title attribute enclosed in double or single quotes. http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#img

I am not sure why this is relevant. These were the same settings before Opera updated and everything was fine.

I can understand the desire for a different scrollbar, but it doesn't really bother me as I don't use the scrollbar when using Discover.

You can always download an older version of Opera. Opera has not moved away from making Opera customizable. Quite the opposite. Many more customization options for users are coming.