I've read an article about Opera 7 today which had some quotes from the developers. Fact is that the core (the file size) gets smaller with every release. The average time to load a page has been decreased, too, so it is also faster. Only on systems fast enough to run the software properly of course. So 'their smaller and faster' is not the same as 'our smaller and faster' (measured by system requirements).

Would you care to explain this further? I'm pretty sure you know what you're talking about, so please, enlighten me.

"smaller" is not the same as "smaller" and "faster" is not the same as "faster". Opera 7 is "smaller" than its older versions, too. Mozilla also gets "faster" with every version....

If you want minimalism and speed, you should check out the Phoenix browser from http://mozilla.org; it's currently only at version 0.5 but they plan to make it even smaller and faster with each release... I don't know if it could replace Opera 6.05 for you (that's a matter of personal preferences) but I can tell you it's the only up-to-date browser that runs fast on my Pentium 200 - 32MB RAM.

I reported a whole bunch of them at the Opera 7 beta board; the developers are checking it quite often. Meanwhile, I have found many more problems. The biggest problem, at least for me, is that it doesn't register paragraphs when you copy/paste text from Opera. Line breaks are okay, but you don't get the empty lines between paragraphs. That one drives me absolutely crazy...

That last example really smells like 'beta'. Is there any way to report such 'errors'?

Here's a good one: if you don't let a page load fully, it doesn't register in the history. I just clicked on the "back" button, and it transported me 7 pages back, instead of one...

I did delete a few stars when taking the screenshot

Bah. Don't like those buttons You might consider changing your password though

I didn't figure out how, yet. I did download the classic Opera 6 buttons, which helps a little, but not too much. However, some features, like the secondary search toolbar, have not yet been implemented.

By the way, this is how a form looks now...

Can these 'features' at least be turned off?

It's only a Beta; I hope it'll iprove when they release the final version. However, I can already see that they have abandoned their minimalistic approach: all buttons are now animated, for example. I really wish I'll somehow fix the Opera 6 problem and stick with it for a few more years.

Oh, damn! The last browser which took this into account until now lost

Opera 6.x started crashing on my system every time I loaded a page, so I had to switch to Opera 7 beta, and so far i don't like what I see.

* It is a major resource hog. On a Pentium II - 600MHz with 128MB RAM, it refuses to run more than 3 windows when Word 97 and Excel 97 are open. I was able to run up to 12 windows in Opera 6.05.

* It crashes and freezes all the time. Well, this is to be expected from a Beta version, but it doesn't make my life easier.

* The display looks so much different that it'll take me a while to learn. Everything is round and 3D, especially all the buttons...