Note to self: Start reading Opera’s Blog regularly.  Two blog posts later, and I’ve attained enlightenment. 

Check the excerpts.

Not all browsers hide text while downloading web fonts. For example Internet Explorer always renders text in a fallback font while it is downloading fonts. This has been dubbed the Flash Of Unstyled Text (FOUT). This misnomer. FOUT is a feature and a condition everyone should anticipate and design for. Selecting and testing fallback fonts is an important task while designing and building a site. - The State of Web Type, Dev.Opera


What happens when you slap a fancy new @font-face custom web font into your CSS? As it turns out—not much. Just including a @font-face block doesn’t actually initiate a download of the remote font file from the server in almost all browsers (except IE8). - Better @font-face with Font Load Events, Dev.Opera 

The second article gets crazy quick, using JS to management fallback fonts for newer browsers. Some seriously awesome stuff….