As Teho has pointed out, most of the settings in Opera are fully customisable. The first thing I did for example when installing 9.5 was edit the torrent filetype so it automatically loads them into uTorrent, instead of trying to download them itself.

I personally like the new updated look and feel of 9.5. Most browsers have been undergoing a design update over the past couple of years and I think it is about time. They have basically looked the same for years. And the biggest idea I like is that they are trying to remove the clutter and create a cleaner more streamlined browser that is easier to use and gives you more screen real estate for the actual webpages. Yes, such changes can confuse you to begin with because everything is suddenly different, in a different location, or has new icons, but using them for a few minutes quickly gets you used to the changes.