Opera has an habit of changing their interface, sometimes for the good, sometimes not, in my opinion, that's why I stuck with version 28 for so long. This info is current as of 1:11 PM August 12, 2017 with version: 47.0.2631.39 (PGO) - Update stream:Stable, System: Windows 7 64-bit
I've been a fan of the Opera browser for awhile now. It was very customizable at one time then came version 15 where you couldn't even save bookmarks. We now have a little bit of that control back.
Opera was the first to create Speed Dial where you can set up a home page on your system with links to your favourite sites. I always referred to it has Bookmarks On Steroids.
When you first install Opera there are a few Speed Dials installed. If you want to setup your own just click on the Speed Dial that looks like a plus sign the one marked Add a site.
Just type the web address where indicated and click on the Add it button. You could also click on one of the Suggestions (last web sites visited - I edited this picture for privacy).
Another way to add one is just right click on a blank space of the Speed Dial page and click on Add to Speed Dial, then same procedure as before.
And yet another way is to right click on any web page you go to and then click on Add to speed Dial.
So it's easy enough to add them, just as easy to remove them. Just run your mouse over a Speed dial you want to remove and you'll see a circle appear with 3 dots inside. Click on that and then Move to Trash.
With Speed dial you can even add a background picture to your browser. Right click on a blank spot on the Speed dial page and click on Change wallpaper or click on the button top right hand side of screen - when you place your mouse over it out pops the words Customize start page.
Then a panel pops out on the right side of the browser. Here you can customize the Start or Speed dial page. Set wallpaper by clicking on it or click on Get more wallpapers and you'll go to Opera's addon page. There you can check through the backgrounds available and click on a picture you want, that takes you to another page, click on the green Add to Opera button. It automatically download, installs and sets up that picture as the background picture.
You can also add a picture from your own computer by just dragging your picture from your computer to the Opera browser. The picture will open in the browser. Just right click on it and choose Use image as wallpaper. The same option appears for an image online.
Enable dark theme turns top bars on browser black and gray.
Sidebar - on left hand side of browser - click on the > symbol to expand the choices. Check or uncheck the ones you want.
Speed Dial- uncheck to get rid of Speed Dial if you don't use it. If you don't want to see the Add a site speed dial just remove it.
Show Speed Dial suggestions - usually last pages you visited that haven't been added to Speed Dial already.
Search box -if checked puts a search box on the speed dial page. Worthless since most all modern browsers let you just search from the URL or web address bar. At one time Opera would not allow you to remove this item or the items currently in the sidebar.
Then right at the bottom click Go to browser settings.
Down the left hand side click on the word browser then go to the bottom and click on Show advanced settings.
You'll see the familiar settings already discussed, plus the setting to Pin sidebar - The sidebar, when pinned, will always be visible on the left hand side of the browser, otherwise it disappears into the background.
Manage sidebar... gives you the same options to choose whats on the sidebar like Facebook messenger for example.
And finally, Maximum number of columns - the numbers go from 3 to 11 columns but if I try anything higher than 6 it still will only show 6 (at least that's the way it works on mine). They use to go from 2 - 11 and also allowed you to adjust the size. These two options no longer exist.
You can adjust speed dials for slower hardware. I keep that one checked.
That's it. Have your browser looking the way you want it.