What's the reason behind removing the address bar dropdown arrow by default?

I myself seldom use it, but a lot of the less techy people (mostly my relatives that I installed Opera for their systems) I know use it a lot. They just usually go to only the dozen or so websites everyday to read news and watch some videos, and they rarely touch the keyboard. Quite a few of them cannot type effectively and use some touch pad combined with mouse for most of their rare text input needs. So what they do are just starting up Opera, clicking the address bar dropdown arrow, and browse the web from there. Removing the address bar dropdown arrow by default is a catastrophe for them, a lot of them changed back to IE because of this despite they think Opera is much faster and smoother in browsing experience. I know it can be turned back on with an opera config setting, but it's quite annoying that I have to go to each of them who I have converted to using Opera over those past five years and change this setting for them.

I'm not sure how Opera collected their user statistics, but here I'd say about 90% of the people I know use this dropdown arrow everyday for a mouse-only browsing experience. Turning off this little arrow by default is really alienating those less techy users, as those are more likely to use this feature and less likely to be able to change settings for themselves. It seems more logical to have the default settings better tuned for those less techy people's user habits, and for those power-users to configure settings themselves if they want a more minimalistic UI. Also this full dropdown box is better oriented for mouse use, so it's absurd that by default it can only be triggered by keyboard shortcut.

I agree 100%. I use the dropdown arrow from time to time (not as much as some others may), but the less technical users should get priority for a friendly, practical, and logical user-interface. Its removal from the default is very peculiar. There should be a way to browse entirely with the mouse, without pressing a single key on the keyboard. Favorites, menus, and dropdowns make this possible after visiting your regular web sites.

Sometimes I feel the developers are going in opposite directions. The introduction of the "Favorites Star" button in the address bar (11.60) deviates away from a minimalist UI, yet it adds a practical and useful feature. However, the removal of the dropdown button from the address bar does the exact opposite. Hmmmm, why does that sound familiar? Where have we seen this before? Are we witnessing Google Chrome envy?

Originally posted by wellofsouls:

It seems more logical to have the default settings better tuned for those less techy people's user habits, and for those power-users to configure settings themselves if they want a more minimalistic UI. Also this full dropdown box is better oriented for mouse use, so it's absurd that by default it can only be triggered by keyboard shortcut.

I agree — it was absolutely wrong to change this default. Zero benefit, and its absence only annoys those who use it. In the long running thread about this, 19 users registered only to complain about this issue, i.e. they all had only 1 post to their name, and had posted in that thread to complain about it.

Originally posted by uptonpark:

I agree... we shouldn't remove the dropdown arrow...

Chrome doesn't have the dropdown arrow doesn't mean Opera should follow them too...

And Chrome has a self-populating Speed Dial/New Tab Page, which Opera doesn't have.