You have to disable the disable NPAPI flag in opera://flags

However, in O34, my java stopped working even with the flags and plugins properly set; I don't know if that's a bug or deliberate. You may want to keep O32 & 33 on hand or switch to Firefox, which will support Java until Dec 2016.

re: Java/Flash vulnerabilities. The purpose of a browser is to display content first, safely second; browsers are not security products.

I'm using 34; where is that feature?

With Opera 34, I noticed the ability to type (in a forum post or address bar) stopped after viewing/closing a PDF via plugin (Soda PDF and Foxit but not the included Chrome PDF viewer).

It is fixed now.

Chrome 45 dropped NPAPI support. In spite of this, Opera developer did support it until yesterday. Since the flags are still present, I infer that support wasn't deliberately dropped.

I've been using Opera 34 with Java just fine until today. Java still works on beta 33.0.1990.20

I still have the disable NPAPI flag disabled (which enables NPAPI plugins) and, to be certain, I toggled it with no effect.

Is this a bug or is NPAPI support dropped?

Spell-checking doesn't work even though the default configuration is enabled. I have to toggle the setting in order to get it to work every time I launch Opera 34. I'm almost certain 32 and 33 have this issue also since I don't remember having spell-check in the brief time I used them.

You have one issue to troubleshoot first: Google Maps not rendering properly/screen blanking. Check Windows Event Viewer and ensure your video drivers and OS are up to date.

Did you uninstall Opera or reinstall or anything? Did you install Firefox during this process?

I wasn't referring to "privacy" (or what some misconstrew as privacy, such as analytics); I was referring to drive-by malware, exploits that could steal your actual personal data and/or destroy your irreplaceable files--actual security not-the-tinfoil-hat-kind.

Around Opera 8 or 9 I had to give it up becuase I had too many sites not rendering correctly. I prefer straightforward simplicity, efficiency. I want fast, compatible, extensible and Opera 33 gives me that. I haven't found a faster browser (Edge is faster but it isn't extensible, so it doesn't even qualify).

Web page compatibility and security are two very big reasons to keep your browser current.