since 10.10, opera has been going downhill

since 10.10, opera has been going downhill

hi people. first post here, gonna keep it simple.

been using opera since version 8, i think, on my old pc.
i see already on this forum that 10.53 has lots of problems and there's a development snapshot there for download, so i'm not really looking for help, just want to share my thoughts with you.

problems (some already described on other threads)

1. on BilderHerunterlader webpage, if i click on BilderHerunterlader Binaries in Zip-Archiv (for other operating systems) to download, it navigates to an empty screen. i have to right click and chose "save linked content as". other zip files in other sites work.

2. if i click on a file to download, opera's built-in save dialog opens, if i "save linked content as", mac osx's built-in save dialog is used. maybe this is normal and i just never noticed it before. also the "remember choice and do not show dialog again" option, sometimes is greyed out for some files, maybe it's default, i don't know.

3. sometimes opera hangs on launch for a long time

4. crash when customizing my toolbars (the statubar has more bugs than ever, can't drag buttons around, sometimes buttons disappear, move by themselves). sometimes after i quit and relaunch, i see my statusbar config was not saved

5. sometimes, clicking a link on mail.app with opera closed opens my last session but without the link i just clicked on

6. slower page rendering compared to previous versions

7. have to click the back button several times, sometimes, to go back 1 level (page loading progress doesn't start and it's not one of those page schemes to keep you on the same page. nothing happens until the 3rd or 4th click)

8. sometimes, i get the hang beachball when i scroll

9. entering and ok'ing the settings window takes some time even if i don't change anything

now, the 2 things which annoy me the most:

1. since i was using opera on the pc, that opera keeps messing with my toolbar configuration and preferences every time i update it. every time a new default skin is released, opera imposes it on me and i have to change back to my own (if i saved it of course), my stausbar was all messed up with this new 10.53, had some custom buttons with custom icons and guess what, some icons were gone.
main question, are there any settings inside the app bundle that get erased when i just overwrite the old with the new, or are the opera devs just messing with my sanity?

2. opera is going the bloat path. opera-turbo, unite, widgets, mail, irc, developer tools, dragonfly, etc. every other new version, a new "just useful for some" feature comes along. maybe you should start thinking about releasing an "opera lite" to validate the "the fastest browser on earth" thing.

i keep using it because of the usefulness of the built-in features which have to be installed as extensions or plugins in other browsers, like a proper sidebar for downloads and bookmarks, saving open tabs and sessions, toolbar customization among many others.
but speed is no longer opera's trademark.

thanks for listening, best wishes and good vibes to everyone.

[edit] problems
10. saved a multitab session with the same name of an existing one (overwrite) created in the previous version. after quitting and relaunching, opened the saved session and a grey window with no toolbars, no tabs, no nothing, popped up. overwriting a new session from this point on, started to work.
[edit]

just want to add that i still have faith in opera.
after removing all opera's folders (cache, mail, widgets) except "opera preferences" and closing all my open tabs and starting from a fresh browser, it looks more stable now. it still takes too much mem (300mb real mem with just 5 tabs open) wven after i set mem cache to 4mb. but it works faster again.

in conclusion, opera is a wonderful browser with a painful update process.
btw, can anyone tell me which was the most stable version before unite, opera turbo and opera link was introduced?

thanks and positive energy to everyone.

11. changing "normal fonts" in the "web pages" tab in preferences, defaults the font size to a minimum of 33. google results and other pages show up with this huge font size until i manually edit operaprefs.ini and change the fontsize to 16.

12. launching opera after the last session never updates the webpages. i have saved tabs which open forums websites and the posts are always the ones in the previous session. i have to press F5 manually in each tab to update properly. i think i started to notice this in the previous opera version. anyway, i'm on pc opera 9.62 at work and it works fine.
i tried to change advanced > browsing > loading to "redraw when loaded" and advanced > history > check documents to "always" with no success.