It's really about convenience. I've enjoyed Opera from the very beginning and lament the loss of customization in the new versions. The bookmark bar is ok, but there is no convenient way to turn it on/off when you want the screen real estate. (Going to the settings menu is NOT convenient.) On my Presto bm bar, I have it set for text only and abbreviate the titles so I can fit most on the line. Even as it overruns, the older environment conveniently provided a dropdown for those bookmarks that wouldn't fit. The new environment forces a useless icon to hog space on every bookmark and there seems to be no dropdown when the bar fills.
It is the little things like this which made the Opera environment so useful, and I hope that the developers can appreciate this element of what has been lost.