Opera 7.10

I installed Opera 7.10 earlier this evening, and I can’t say that I’m entirely happy with it.

First of all, they’ve gone and changed the default font size. In Opera 6 (and I think in the beta versions of 7) it used to be smaller than the Internet Explorer default font size. Then in the early versions of 7 they set it to be roughly equal to the IE default font size. And now it’s back again to small. Make your mind up, guys.

Secondly, they seem to have changed the point at which a web page’s stylesheet is applied. Now, as I watch a page loading, I get a brief (sub-second) flash of what it looks like without any css formatting. It seems to take just a fraction of a second longer to apply the style sheet in this version, but it is noticeable, and it is annoying.

I suppose it’s possible that this allows people with slow ‘net connections to see at least part of the page’s content before the stylesheet itself is fully downloaded. But on a broadband connection it feels jarringly crude, like a throwback to the last generation of browsers, where page elements would jumble and rearrange themselves madly before landing in their final configuration.

Hmm.