@leocg They do, however, have a start button. Maybe they should allow actual users to decide whether they want such a button or not. Why should I have to close a current tab then open another, to get the start page? It's a waste of time and effort (albeit a small one). Imposing your choices on users is a sure way to lose them.

@reverse7 You can get the Speed Dial button back, it's in the side bar settings. However, it's till really annoying. Here's why.
It doesn't work the way the old button used to. If I had a tab open and press the Speed Dial button, it would change that current tab to Speed Dial. The new side bar version keeps all open tabs open and creates another, new tab with Speed Dial displayed. Here is a scenario that makes nonsense of this new approach and seriously needs fixing.
I have a habit of pinning long YouTube videos, so I can go straight back to them later. If I have a tab open and want to get Speed Dial Up, I now have to close the current tab so to avoid having lots of unneeded tabs open. Problem is, the minute I do that the pinned You Tube tab starts auto-playing, so, I also now have to go and re-pause that tab.
Basically Opera are forcing us in to a greatly increased workload, just to manage tabs. It's totally unacceptable.

@danielderstolle Thanks Daniel. Good to know I'm not the only one. For now, I've gone back to Firefox but will keep trying Opera until it's fixed. It's silly of them to ignore this as it will drive people to other browsers. Thanks for the reply.

@mormani Yes, I've found that. However, I had already found a kind of solution. It's so simple, not sure why it didn't occur to me before. I've simply pinned the tab with the start page and it works just the same as having the official start page icon. There may be a downside to this approach but I haven't found any problems so far. Even better, clicking on it doesn't close the current window.

@mormani Yes, I've found that. However, I had already found a kind of solution. It's so simple, not sure why it didn't occur to me before. I've simply pinned the tab with the start page and it works just the same as having the official start page icon. There may be a downside to this approach but I haven't found any problems so far. Even better, clicking on it doesn't close the current window.

@danielderstolle Thanks Daniel. Good to know I'm not the only one. For now, I've gone back to Firefox but will keep trying Opera until it's fixed. It's silly of them to ignore this as it will drive people to other browsers. Thanks for the reply.

Opera 102.0.4880.29. Well, this is driving me nuts. Almost every time I type in a search and press return, Opera replaces the search text with a similar, earlier search. It seems to be only looking at the first couple of words. This is ridiculous, as, when searching faults with software, for example, the name of the software often takes the first couple of words and Opera is ignoring the rest of what I type and replacing it with a previous, unrelated, search text. I am also finding that, if I type a sentence into Opera, when I press return, it deletes all but the first two letters. It's so bad, I'm considering going back to Firefox. And yes I have turned off "Improve search suggestions". Anyone else, or just me? Or, even better, any fixes?

Newest Opera doesn't have a home button (WTF Opera!). This looked good but, after clicking to launch the Speed Dial page, it knocks out all the news links and displays them as grey squares. Not the end of the world but bloody annoying.

@reverse7 You can get the Speed Dial button back, it's in the side bar settings. However, it's till really annoying. Here's why.
It doesn't work the way the old button used to. If I had a tab open and press the Speed Dial button, it would change that current tab to Speed Dial. The new side bar version keeps all open tabs open and creates another, new tab with Speed Dial displayed. Here is a scenario that makes nonsense of this new approach and seriously needs fixing.
I have a habit of pinning long YouTube videos, so I can go straight back to them later. If I have a tab open and want to get Speed Dial Up, I now have to close the current tab so to avoid having lots of unneeded tabs open. Problem is, the minute I do that the pinned You Tube tab starts auto-playing, so, I also now have to go and re-pause that tab.
Basically Opera are forcing us in to a greatly increased workload, just to manage tabs. It's totally unacceptable.

@leocg They do, however, have a start button. Maybe they should allow actual users to decide whether they want such a button or not. Why should I have to close a current tab then open another, to get the start page? It's a waste of time and effort (albeit a small one). Imposing your choices on users is a sure way to lose them.