I have an 16x10 display and when I'm surfing the web at home, I'm usually just doing that. I don't have another window opened that I want to arrange side by side with Opera. (It's a different story when I'm at work, but I can't use Opera at work anyway)
Because a usual website only uses about 50% of my available screen space, I loved the Opera features that actually made perfect use of the additional screen space:
-Having panels as a side bar (especially for showing information about downloads)
-Show tabs on the side as thumbnails

This is nothing an extension could solve in a way Opera 12 did.
(Having panels back would even blend in great with the additional extension availability, if it would be possible to have a panel page for each extension...)

You might be interested in the dockable sidebar that they are working on. It's in beta as an extension for Chrome.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewise-tree-style-tabs/biiammgklaefagjclmnlialkmaemifgo

And here are a couple reviews.

http://www.bitrebels.com/technology/google-chrome-sidewise-extension/

http://www.sidewise.info

I think it would be too risky to try it at this point, but it's worth following. Opera can use Chrome extensions, so this is a possibility. Anyway, sidebars could well come back.

But they are light years ahead in website page rendering!

so I hope they improve the UI

But they are light years ahead in website page rendering!

To install: drag&drop it in the Opera Extension screen. You can also import your notes from Opera 12 by copy the content of your notes.adr and insert it in the Notes Extension > Options.[/quote]

.nex is just for opera? because i think this kind of extension format they were investing to be supported for all the browsers

I am a panel fan. I hope it back.

I really miss the panel... I started to use opera because it was inovative and proposed different stuff than the others (like the "heart function" ) and it is sad to see stuff disapear and make opera more like chrome...

besides the above mentioned Bookmarks, Downloads, History, Info, I loved the notes where you could simply paste something you wanted to keep in mind for a while.

I also loved the old function of having the tabs on the side since nearly no web site used the entire width of a non smart phone screen.

I would even push to introduce the "tab goups" again (you could merge tabs together), but I would suggest you would have all your tabs of 1 group open on the top but you could switch between different groups of tabs in the panel (or the other way around). It would be kind of having different windwos open but you would be able to handle them through opera and don't have any problems of closing windows and loosing tabs

@ice007
Sorry for my english.
The programmers can't create a float panel and position it on the right?
Do not believe everything you read. I'd bet they can.

Of course, we'll have panels in ChrOpera version 60 or 70 or 80, wait, maybe 100

@ice007
Sorry for my english.
The programmers can't create a float panel and position it on the right?
Do not believe everything you read. I'd bet they can. @ice007 knows nothing about the internal development.

@ice007
Sorry for my english.
The programmers can't create a float panel and position it on the right? It's so ridicolous destroy all good features of opera! 12.16.
Integrated notes were a good thing! You see a interesting text, select it, right click and save! the ceo of opera is going crazy?

You can have notes by this Extension: Opera Notes extension

If you don´t know, how to handle it: I have created a .nex-file for simple installation. If you want you can download it from here: notes.nex

To install: drag&drop it in the Opera Extension screen. You can also import your notes from Opera 12 by copy the content of your notes.adr and insert it in the Notes Extension > Options.

Reason: The UI (Chromium) does not allow vertical screen division.

This is a pretty big problem, but there is a solution:

Currently, all of the new opera://* pages are coded in HTML as web pages, where in the past these were built into the UI. It could be solved by instead adding javascript on each page which created HTML panels, although this would be a very messy fix.

Sorry for my english.
The programmers can't create a float panel and position it on the right? It's so ridicolous destroy all good features of opera! 12.16.
Integrated notes were a good thing! You see a interesting text, select it, right click and save! the ceo of opera is going crazy?

there can be no panels in any way.

Reason: The UI (Chromium) does not allow vertical screen division.
So, no vertical screen division - no panels.

I have read this in the very beginning in the blogs, claimed by a user apparently familiar with it, and yet no developer has said: "Of course it is possible". I also asked several times if this is true and never received a response.
Furthermore this is confirmed by the fact that not a single Chromium browser-derivative has a panel or something else that involves a vertical division.

I started to use Opera more than 10 years ago, because it was different and better from the competition, now doesn't have nothing new! What made me Opera user doesn't exist any more!