No end of OSX stability problems in sight - I give up

Enough is enough. I imported my Opera bookmarks into OmniWeb today. It was not an easy decision, and it is not a final one either. Let's call it a test drive. My ideal scenario would still be a Opera not crashing at least once a day on MacOSX and - since I work a lot on Linux, too - I really like to have identical browsers on all my platforms (OmniWeb is an OSX-only product).

The problem is: Opera has never exhibited the same stability on MacOSX as on Linux. I have the application open all day, usually with 35+ tabs (can be many more, e.g. when we're bugfixing, I guess you guys know what I'm talking about). When using a browser for editing Wiki articles, adding text to bugtracker entries, writing stuff for fun in Internet forums, I just get %$#?-mad, when just before finishing the text the browser crashes and all my changes are gone. And this has happened many times by now. Even if I am one out of few, this lack of stability is simply not acceptable. I appreciate daniel's comment that this is being worked on, but with a problem that serious, I believe that (a) there should be more openness about the problem, i.e. let users know which problems you're working on right now, give at least approximate schedules for bugfixes, and (b) this should have priority over adding new features.

I have been a passionate fan of Opera for many years, and this really makes me sad, but since my switch to OSX the program has cost me too much time and nerves, and there does not seem to be any end in sight. I've repeatedly offered my collaboration in tracking down the crashes, just in case they are difficult to reproduce by the developers. I am a developer myself and I know well how to use profilers, debuggers, etc., and this offer still holds.
I would also like to state, from a user's perspective, that if I like a program I don't insist on it being free. In other words, if Opera cost, say, EUR 70.-- I would long have bought it.

I will now give OmniWeb a try for a couple of weeks. My initial impression is that it lacks some features I've liked on Opera, but all in all the balance between features and weight seems better to me (in my humble Opinion Opera by now has far too many features making it bigger and more complex). Let's look at memory footprints: Opera with 35 tabs open takes 1.7 GB when running on my box. OmniWeb with the same tab list occupies less than 700 MB. Opera's user interface still often feels a bit unresponsive. OmniWeb's GUI seems lightening fast. Now I can't make a statement on what is most important to me in this little shoot-out: stability. But I will probably be able to deliver some figures in a few weeks.

I still sincerely hope that in the near future a stable version of Opera comes out which fixes the crashes on OSX, is more responsive than now and occupies far less RAM. But having waited for several months now I'm getting more and more pessimistic...

Daniel, I have too have these issues. In fact, I just sat down, after not even being on my computer for the last hour, and Opera crashed all on its own! This is ridiculous! Why is Opera for Mac THE most unreliable, memory-hogging, & unstable browser? It's especially ironic, as Macs are far more reliable than PCs, but for some of the browsers we have to choose from. What seems to be the reason that Opera for Mac has lagged so far behind the other platforms, for years now?

Hi,
I mentioned it in other topic too... It sad to see that Opera on mac is far beyond the stability of others platforms where it is renowned for speed, stability and robustness. Right now, Opera crash aproximatly 4 to 7 times a day without any special action of my side. Browsing same pages from other browsers is fine a fluid but with Opera on my "old" macbook Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, it's quite frustrating to use my favorite browser because I have to restart it (or even the system) 7 times a day.

I would loved to help you improving Opera on Mac... Just ask, I'm sure there is a lot o users you are ready to test too.

Hi there, I just test Opera Next Alpha, the last 12 snapshots from the Desktop Team. With HW it's incredible and really really stable.

Thanks Opera desktop team!

I have had endless problems after using Opera for years on Windows 95 up until Mac OS X 10.4.11

I did learn that having a good back up was necessary after losing my entire Mail contacts and messages (not Operamail web mail) more than once.

I could not import the messages into Opera 11.10 on Intel 0S X 10.6, so I gave up and am now using Mac's Mail. I did try installing the old Opera version I had on my OS X 10.4.11 onto the 10.6., but to no avail. I did write about this ages ago but got no response.

The bookmarks are flaky .. sometimes all show, sometimes a handful, and I need to "Manage Bookmarks to show them all.

Not all my Form Filling data shows up.

Some of my Wand/Password manager data has vanished .. and so on.

I did try to use Opera link, but for some reason I can not work out how to switch it off again .. I though this might import my mail messages, but apparently not.

I intend to make a totally clean install of Opera and see how that goes, but I have to say I will only be using it for certain browsing activities, and not any longer for mail or password use since I can no longer trust it in such matters. I would like to be able to import my contacts into Mac address book, but I can see no way .. short of saving the exported File and searching it when I need something. I think I have found a way to retrieve my passwords that I do still use. When I have done what I can I will make a totally clean install and see how things go ....

Hi theHobo2,
I've experience also some of the problems you describe.
I will try to give you some advices that work for me.

1. Download and install Applejack from http://applejack.sourceforge.net/ and run it from the scripts prompt (cmd + S at startup) with "applejack AUTO restart"
2. Backup your Opera data from the Application Support, ~/Library and Preferences folders, then delete theses folders
3. Make a clean install of Opera 11.51 and update all your internet plugin to the last version.
4. Re-import your data from your backup folder to your new opera preferences folder before launching your new installation of Opera : copy bookmarks.adr, wand.dat, note.adr, opcacrt6.dat, opicacrt6.dat, opcert6.dat, opssl6.dat, search.ini, speeddial.ini, unite.adr files. If you have skins, dictionaries and toolbars installations/modifications, copy skins, sessions, toolbar and dictionaries folders. Copy from your backup application support folder your "mail" folder to recover all your M2 data.
5. Launch Opera. Everything should be Ok. You will just have to reinstall your addons extensions and widgets.

wand.dat contain all your passwords, that's true, but, if you don't copy also opssl6.dat, opcacrt6.dat, opcert6.dat, opicacrt6.dat files, you won't be able to use your passwords again, even with the correct master password.
If you don't copy your ~/Library/Application Support/Opera/mail folder, you won't recover your emails from one fresh/clean installation to the other. If you forgot to copy theses files and folders from your old installation to your new one, I think it won't be possible to recover part of your passwords and emails. Sorry about that. Maybe some one else will have an other idea.

For the bookmarks, I've got a similar problem. I've solved it with Opera 11.5 when i export my bookmarks in Opera format file from 11.1, delete them, then reimport them in Opera 11.5. The file format of bookmarks.adr file was corrected in Opera 11.5. Since this time, I've not experience any problem with bookmarks.

To disable Opera link, just clic on the cloud icon in your status bar and choose "Configure" A dialogue box appear where you can disable sync. Opera link won't sync (yet) your mail/feed account(s) between computers(not even your extensions and widgets). If you want a description of what can/can't do Opera link, have a look at https://my.opera.com/community/operalink/ and http://www.opera.com/link/

Originally posted by alharawi:

Hi there, I just test Opera Next Alpha, the last 12 snapshots from the Desktop Team. With HW it's incredible and really really stable.

Thanks Opera desktop team!

Thanks for nothing. I tried the alpha hoping it would be more reliable. How sad is that? It’s not. Redraw issues are so prevalent it’s unusable.

Originally posted by Swapnil99pro:

Originally posted by theHobo2:

I have had endless problems after using Opera

Just one request, before you really give up using Opera - Try Opera 12 Final when it's ready. For now, try a clean-install of Opera 11.51. Wish you good luck. Opera 12 Alpha is much more improved and stable. But an Alpha will not make you happy now as it's buggy, wait for the final release.

WHEN IT’S READY? What decade will that be?

Opera has declined in reliability and workability since v9. What would make anyone think that it will get better with a new version? Especially one with new “features?” Anyone who knows anything about programming knows that new features means MORE new bugs. No thanks.

I agree with the OP on this topic. I too am frustrated to the point of resorting to other browsers. You have to wonder why Opera even codes browser for the desktop, they clearly DON’T CARE about the quality of the software.

I am having to post this with Safari, as Opera cookies no longer work properly … AGAIN! Every other update kills the cookie functions. This is ridiculous.

Hi MarkLJackson
I've experience many and huge problems of stability with Opera on Mac. I won't say Opera Next is the solution. It's still a on developpement browser with a lots of bugs, crashes and need debbuging. Have you look at this topic? => http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=1073672

Opera 11.51 crash around seven times (or more) a day. Many time I've been obliged to use alternative browser to "just" work. What king on issues are your experiencing? Can we try to find solution or identify some bugs.

About cookies, did you try to delete cookies.adr from your preference folder? Are your setting about cookies well configured and fit your needs?

Originally posted by MarkLJackson:

Thanks for nothing. I tried the alpha hoping it would be more reliable. How sad is that? It’s not. Redraw issues are so prevalent it’s unusable.

Well, we have to consider that Opera 12 is in alpha stage. I've just notice that, on my system, this alpha snapshot is "more stable" (less crashes and freezes) than Opera 11.51.

I'm right with all of you... I have seen Opera descend into terrible unfunctionality over the last 12 months... OSX 10.5.8 and Opera 11.6. Each update gets progressively worse. Common offenses... You Tube player controls stop functioning (you need to back to a previous page to gain control of the the flash player). Tabs after idling become unrepsonsive... slow page loads and total crashing 3-4 times daily. I'm just a common user. I manage a few non commercial websites and at most have 6-8 tabs open. Virtual memory is always at a premium... some times hogging as much as 60GB!!!! I have a Dual Core 2.66gHz, 8GB Ram. I've since started using Chrome 15 and it's blindingly fast and stable. Buh bye Opera. Honestly... get you s**t together!

I gave the latest stable version another try. I cannot give any statement on stability. Memory usage seems modestly lower than before (but I may be wrong since I did not use it for long). However CPU load according to Activity Manager never dropped below 23% when I wasn't even using it, and higher load with the program feeling unresponsive when I was switching tabs.

Having been using OmniWeb for quite a while now I must say I'm not entirely happy with it either (it too has stability problems, though memory usage is significantly lower and I don't have these CPU load problems), and its "workspaces" make it increasingly more difficult to move away from it again (hey, that would make a nice feature in Opera, too!), so I'll drop in again once version 12 has become stable, still hoping for the best.

HI there,
I used Omniweb too, some time ago, workspace can be achieved by sessions. Omniweb was a very good, feature rich browser... but its developpment is now sadly in a "coma" stage.
Opera 11?6 is a little bit more stable on SL, but I have to say that Opera 12 is really impressive and will (I hope) solved lots of problems. I will wait for it!

Originally posted by alharawi:

workspace can be achieved by sessions.

Yes, there's not much missing. But the missing bit is being able to switch between sessions just like cycling through the tab list.

The way I've set it up now is reduce the tab list sizes per workspace to about 5..7, so each workspace takes very little memory. When I switch workspaces using Ctrl-Cmd-"left" and "right" respectively, of course the memory usage goes up, but I've set the time before releasing memory for inactive workspaces to 5 minutes, so in effect I have a browser with more than 40 tabs altogether but still occupying just about 300..400 MB on average. That's really cool. However it seems that OmniWeb has some bugs frequently leading to crashes when releasing memory for unused workspaces, thus the number of crashes has gone up significantly. As like you sad development on the program is not noticable, that too is not really a usable work environment either.

I'd be willing to pay for a good browser if it is fast, stable and well-maintained - and has about the feature set I'm using on Opera or OmniWeb. And sadly, at the moment there does not seem to be a single product on OSX meeting all of these requirements (the situation is much better on Linux, since Opera on Linux is both, fast and stable).

mbert i have the same issues as you. I've been using opera for windows since version 5 and this year i switched to a mac andi thought the natural step was to install opera for mac. But my happiness was short lived. Apart from the small hangs that occurred from time to time the most annoying thing were the crashes.I never got those crashes on windows.

Because of this i have now installed safari/chrome/firefox/opera/ tried camino / will give try to omniweb , and i am trying to decide which one i like, although i find myself using more than one at the same time depending on the tasks.

I installed last night the latest version of opera 12 but it was so slow when browsing tabs i never got to try the crashing part.

It seems that until opera becomes usable again I'll use a combination of safari and others.

For the developing strategy of Opera i think they should separate the browser module from the mail/widgets/unite modules and allow you to install only the ones you want.

I've been a loyal opera fan for many years but this latest version 11.6 has tested my limits of what I will put up with. Opera has always been finicky in not fully rendering some sites. But now I'm getting program stalls and page malfunctions on a regular basis. The irony is that when I try to revert back to 10.63, Opera reinstalls the 11.6 update on its' own. I see no option in the preferences to control this behavior. Opera has always had the best user interface but now the unreliability has killed it for me. It's really painful to go back to firefox.

It seems we are many to experiment problems with Opera on Mac, with 11.5X, 11.6 and early stage of 12.

As Opera is not a Open Source software, complaining will not solved the problems alone. We have to send crash and hang logs of our problems in the most detailed and precise way through the bug report wizard to help the developers finding and eradicating theses bugs.
I'm sure that the Desktop Team test the browser on many config but can't test it in every possible way and on all the hardware and software (in)compatibilities.

Opera 10.10 was still the most satisfying release for me ______ . I wish they would re-integrate some of the features that really made me loyal to the browser in the first place: Shift + scroll wheel = horizontal scroll (extremely useful for very large images such as ones found on wikicommons), ability to scroll in the drop-down URL bar, and overall stability. I was very disappointed with Opera 11 and have since (temporarily) abandoned ship. I haven't migrated any of my bookmarks into another browser yet, as I have hope that I can continue to use Opera in the future. I am still running browser version 10.10 on OS X 10.6.8 — almost exclusively as a bookmark management tool these days

Not having read all this thread..I can confirm massiv problems with Opera and Java SE 6 both 32 and 64bit, v.1.6.0_31-b04-413 on 10.7.3 64bit
opera is Version 11.62 Build 1347. To not seem like I want to flame on Opera only, I am totally unsure, wether its relatet to java, or any other Framework on my maschine, but here I will do the Opera rant
Opposed to a rockstable Lion this browser seems to crash on any moving Content on the screen, be it flash, youtube (with or without html5 conent) or just any animated little gif on a site. Thats not funny anymore, even wenn i open a very textbased site with small icons on a fast server...it would have never had crashed there, but now it does...maybe the one adbanner can kill a browser v 11.x...

So U people are the last chance for Opera here, its at a point of totally unusableness...crashes on the first Page it loads, can send as much reports as your server can manage^^

Originally posted by mctoto:

mbert i have the same issues as you. I've been using opera for windows since version 5 and this year i switched to a mac andi thought the natural step was to install opera for mac. But my happiness was short lived. Apart from the small hangs that occurred from time to time the most annoying thing were the crashes.I never got those crashes on windows.

Can approve that, same thing here on 10.7.3. Additionally there seams to be a problem with Java SE 6 both 32 and 64bit, v.1.6.0_31-b04-413
Abouit one Month ago I tested next or 12 alpha builds, but the were even worse. Just don´t have nerve on that anymore

I am a felt 100 years with Opera, since a version 2, if i remember right.
Since v.9 it was getting a little unstable, hogging mem and cpu at times, but never ever crashed. I do have 1 to 2 workspaces with each up to 20 tabs open usually.

Originally posted by mctoto:

Because of this i have now installed safari/chrome/firefox/opera/ tried camino / will give try to omniweb , and i am trying to decide which one i like, although i find myself using more than one at the same time depending on the tasks.

I installed last night the latest version of opera 12 but it was so slow when browsing tabs i never got to try the crashing part.

It seems that until opera becomes usable again I'll use a combination of safari and others.

I second that!

Originally posted by mctoto:

For the developing strategy of Opera i think they should separate the browser module from the mail/widgets/unite modules and allow you to install only the ones you want.

That would be (if possible) the perfect soution in my opinion. Used Opera Mail bevore, but am now quite happy with Apple Mail and SpamSieve, dont want Opera Mail for now
Unity is nice, if you can throw it out alltogether, if not needed. I´ve got 168969 ways to share files, if I want to do that, why must it be in my fav browser?¿?
Not installing these two in the first place would be the choice of mine. But I seem to cannot find a stripped and pure Operabrowser, U did that before, why no more?

If it makes you feel better opera have the same problems on PC. I have a windows 7 64bit OS and opera crashes at least twice a day. The crashes was not really that bad since it did't disturb my daily activities though yesterday it decided to delete all my bookmarks but one folder. I got no idea why or when but it was probably during a crash. i had over 100 bookmarks and now i have 15 so I chose not to use opera. I would really love to use opera because it have so many cool functions. But it needs to get the basics right before i want to try it again.

I know what the OP is saying. I am really close now to giving up with Opera. Between Opera throwing up the spinning ball more often than not and the constant delays when typing text, using Opera on Mac is becoming excessively frustrating.

Then again, I've been here before and I've been using the damn thing for over twelve years!

This is quite puzzling to me. I've been a paid Opera user since the 3.x days, and it was always the quickest, snappiest browser. When I moved to a mac in 2009 I somehow felt the performance was just not as good as the Windows or Linux versions. As time passed, I'm with Opera 12 now, and the other three browsers (Safari, Chrome and Firefox) perform consistently better than Opera. I'm also quite surprised at the number of times Opera becomes unresponsive when switching tabs using Ctrl-Tab or just decides to beach-ball me for a few seconds every now and then.

On the activity monitor I see Opera consistently eating up more CPU and memory than the other browsers with the same tabs open.
I'm seeing behavior I've never seen with Opera before - incredible delays when typing in a text box, and so on.

I just switched back to Opera 11.52 and it seems to behave itself much better, but its performance is still nothing like the Opera I remember from a few years ago.

It's got to a stage where I only use Opera now to manage my bookmarks and import them into chrome every now and then. I'm not criticizing, but I seriously wonder what's going on here with the design, coding and performance testing of this once fastest browser. Why not just get back to the slim, light and fast browser we once knew. What's happening here?

I've finally had enough, after about 7 years of using Opera.

So I'm moving everything over to Safari (I don't like FireFox and I don't trust Google). If anything it seems to use a bit more memory than Opera, but at least it has the decency to give it back when it has finished with it, so doesn't need a re-start every few hours!

I've found how to (more or less) replicate nearly everything Opera can do that I want- the only thing I'm going to miss is Opera Sync, I can't find anything for Safari that works as simply and unobtrusively.

I'll keep an eye on this forum to see what users think of 12.01 when it appears, maybe I'll change my mind.

Originally posted by kraterz:

Why not just get back to the slim, light and fast browser we once knew. What's happening here?

Yes, that's what I have been thinking for long.

*raises hand in the having problems with Opera crashing issues* I'm done, time for a new browser. No one should have to go through these constant problems with flash crashing, or pushing a certain command only to get a command that is completely opposite of what you pushed.

Originally posted by virgod:

*raises hand in the having problems with Opera crashing issues* I'm done, time for a new browser. No one should have to go through these constant problems with flash crashing, or pushing a certain command only to get a command that is completely opposite of what you pushed.

+1, can't waste anymore time in the opera ecosystem unfortunately.

For all the time I save by using Opera mini on my mobile, I lose probably double that productivity by using Opera as my main desktop browser on OSX. I'm not sure if you guys are getting it ... between phones, tablets, and traditional laptop/desktop, a browser needs to have the same quality and experience on all platforms. Otherwise the ecosystem of syncing bookmarks, history, passwords, tabs [oh wait, that still isn't available:( ], is useless. Whats the point of having all my browsing metadata synced if I no longer feel like using Opera on my MBP laptop due to the quality issues? You've lost not only an OSX user, but you've also lost me as a user from my Windows machine, and as a user from my Android phone all in one shot!

Whats worse is the opportunity to gain me back has a small window as I get entrenched into another ecosystem. If I switch to chrome and it meets my quality/stability requirements, then I will be using it on 3 platforms and all my browser meta data will be in their ecosystem, making it quite unlikely that I will "give it another go after some time away from Opera"

What bugs me the most is that developers can't just say "Yeah, we screwed up with a Mac version, we'll have to fix this, this and this and it will take us this much time". Instead all we get is marketing crap about Opera supporting the Mac community, while they can't even fix the scroll bars.

I was an Opera user since version 5 or 6, and I can't tell you how much I was disappointed in my favourite browser after switching to Mac about a year ago. It just makes me sad.

Yes, I totally agree. The situation reminds me of the 90s when I used to use WfW version 2 for doing my writing. The program had a serious bug - in documents of 100+ pages you could run into a situation where you could no longer save it. Came Word 6 and I happily switched to it, just finding that they had added more features, but the bug was still there. That was what had been missing to leave Microsoft for good (and never regretted it(.

Bug back to Opera. The only browser so far that is stable and fast on Mac has turned out to be Google Chrome. However for somebody who had been using Opera for many years, Chrome's user interface is just insufficient. OmniWeb is a great browser, but it suffers from an old WebKit underneath and lack of development resources at Omni Group (there will eventually be a real upgrade for Mountain Lion, but nobody knows when).

Thus for me (and I guess for many others) the door is still wide open. But every new release introducing new features but not fixing the bugs and reducing resource usage will drive more users away on the Mac platform. And indeed, that marketing stuff sounds like a big bad joke in this context.

I agree with many of the users here. I have been an ardent supporter of Opera since version 6, but when I took a new job earlier this year I changed over to Mac. 11.6 for Mac (in addition to general instability) refused to render the sites I use for my work on correctly, I was forced to use Chrome. After hearing that Opera 12.02 was out (and missing the Opera feature set), I came back to it only to find that it's all but unusable. Allow me to add to the chorus of users that find Opera to be the only satisfying browser experience, but find it to be too flaky on the Mac to tolerate.

Please fix it so I don't have to go back to Chrome.

Why? Why can't you work? I'm forced to use Chrome, because the current Opera version (and a few of the earlier ones) is so slow and unstable.
I want to use Opera, but it slows down my entire system, and can't ever close without crashing.


Here I just started up opera, usually it uses around 700 - 900 MB

About Opera
Version information
Version
12.02
Build
1578
Platform
Mac OS X
System
10.7.4
Browser identification

Opera/9.80 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7.4; U; en) Presto/2.10.289 Version/12.02

Guess I can consider myself lucky, as I've never had crashing problems with Opera on my mac. It's even the other way around: Opera is somehow the most stable third party browser I've tried (tho Chrome and Firefox have got a lot better as well) on my system.

But today I stumbled upon Tom's Hardware most recent browser comparison and… Was shocked. Opera doesn't only fall behind (even in the categories I thought were its strongest, like security), but it lags behind by such a huge margin it gets eerie

The review's here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/firefox-15-safari-6-web-browser,3287-16.html

I'm just about there. Started using Opera in late 1996, so I've REALLY loved it for a long time. Version 12.0 practically made me want to throw my Mac out the window; downgraded to 11.64 and yet, it still has miserable quirks, like practically freezing when typing text and hanging several times a day. Today I downloaded Camino and OmniWeb, and I might follow my wife's lead and drop Opera altogether. It's gotten to the point where I have to restart it 4-5 times a day to get my work done.

This is disheartening to me. I have not used any software product for as long as I've used Opera (not even Word, and I'm a writer!) and until this year, I have enjoyed Opera very much. If the company ever goes back to the zippy, flexible and lightweight "Swiss Army knife" version, I'd pay for it all over again, just to be able to do things the way Opera taught me how so long ago.

I have to say that since this topic start, a year ago, major improvements had been made to Opera, specially 12.02. On my macs Opera still run erratically (specially with third party firewalls/adblock softwares) but I don't have to restart my computers 10 times a day… Opera devs please keep working on bug fixing. Thanks!

I've been also a rather early adopter (90s) and Opera user in too many platforms to list all; QNX, Solaris, ..., even Windows. I still try to use it as my main browser in MacOSX (which in turn is my main OS) but I have stayed with 11.64 build 1403 for many reasons, despite the instability. I found out that most issues that concern me have not been fixed in later versions/builds, many other have been introduced, not mentioning lame decisions for the UI (main bar anyone? ).

The main issue for me is Opera 12's inability to handle my large (over 6MB) bookmarks file. That exists in Opera 11 builds later than 1403 but I do not remember exactly since when. I don't know if it is the address field search algorithm or the corresponding drop down menu implementation but once there are a couple of thousand entries in bookmarks.adr (either #FOLDER or #URL, have tried with test dummy automatically created bookmarks) Opera gradually becomes _really_ sluggish regarding keyboard input. It takes over 1sec to respond (often get a spinning ball) to a single key press in the URL address field, in keyboard menu shortcuts, in web page textfields etc. And that's it with no dictionaries installed and spelling disabled, having no font conflicts, having opera link disabled, using clean cache and opera setings folders, using different Macs and different MacOSX versions, and having tried most combinations of the settings below:

opera:config#UserPrefs|AddressbarInlineAutoCompletion
opera:config#UserPrefs|Addressfield:mixsearchenginesuggestionswithhistory
opera:config#UserPrefs|AutoDropdown
opera:config#UserPrefs|PageContentSearchresultsInAddressfieldDropdown
opera:config#UserPrefs|ShowSearchSuggestionsInAddressfieldDropdown
opera:config#UserPrefs|TreeViewDropDownMaxLines

Since my workflow depends on a large bookmark file I have not upgraded and didn't have the time to delve into the problem. 11.64 has no such issues (but, as in the subsequent versions, I get the random crash sometimes, have UI element focus problems once there is a tab with a web page that has flash content, etc).

I can only agree with this.

Between their closed bugtracking system and the cheeky attitude at Desktop Team blog it's like they don't want a dialogue with their users but prefer a detached monologue with comments within the topic of their choosing, seemingly oblivious that they are not the only act in town, and that their heyday has long since passed.

I can only helplessly watch as they pile on new fringe features without addressing basic functionality flaws such as this (or letting us know that they are).

I feel like a victim of bait and switch, stuck with the few unique features I've gotten used to, using a browser that once was great, but now is best at nothing.

Had similar feelings about opera quality in anything 12.x, but - the current opera next 12.10 builds are pretty nice!
Where 12.02 keeps memory hogging like crazy (have 8GB of ram, still after half a day system starts swapping and gets unbearably slow) -
the next builds stay at <<1GB and actually free unused memory at some point. I couldn't believe it when suddenly it clocked in at ~400MB, didn't have that for years.
Btw. I am testing this with the exact same opera profiles, same tabs opened, same extensions installed, same plugins active, same mail db, and starting with a fresh installation every few builds. Also this way, crashes are more or less down to zero.
If the next release build keeps this behaviour, I will be very happy with using opera again.