there was also an option to hide/show add a site tab which i cannot find.
Opera does not currently have that option since the relaunch of the browser.
shouldn't there be a better way of dealing with this???
Yes. Guest user accounts for Windows. If someone is sitting in front of your PC and its log into your WIndows account its game over. The time it takes to launch a simple script that would harvest all of that information (when is all unencryped when you log into Windows) is literately seconds. Having your password hidden behind a few *** in Opera does not change that. If someone wanted to steal your passwords and had access to your system they would be gone. Putting them behind an asterisk is a hold over from the pre-internet days when shoulder surfing was considered one of the larger security holes.