Downloaded 7.5 beta and it's looking good! The basic set-up is very neat indeed.
The only problem I had was removing the 'set-up dialog' that offers a choice of ad types for the free edition. I registered fine with my existing registration number and got rid of the ads, but still kept getting the start-up dialog. Turns out you need to select the ad-type you want anyway (even after registering). That kills the dialog fine.
Other thoughts (still very early days)…. The 'tools' menu is a good idea, and the left-hand panels are very neat (though I've hidden them away as I only use a 15" screen). Nice to have them though.
7.5 also seems more rigid on web protocols. I've had to tweak one or two of my own pages which were fine in everything but 7.5 (minor issue, but it may mean some pages won't appear as intended on 7.5). The problem I had was on line justification following after a table. The text should have aligned to the left but on one or two pages it didn't until I added a tag. That's down to my bad coding, so Opera will again push the boundaries on html mark-up (which is a good thing).
One of my images less well in 7.5 than 7.23. I'll try and add a screen grab to show what I mean (an example is on <http://www.permuted.org.uk/intro1.html>. The email and blog buttons on the right of the page are definitely rendered more sharply in 7.23 than 7.5. In fact 7.23 knocked spots off every other browser on those graphics. Guess I'll have to re-do the image files a bit more carefully (they also look slightly ragged in IE, Mozilla etc).
OK.. just put the comparative screen grabs here:
UPDATE: a helpful reply in the Forum tells me it's more likely to be a problem with how I've sized the image. Will re-do them tomorrow and see how it goes.
But all in all a good looking browser!