Directory permissions behavior changed?

[mike]

I just upgraded from 0.7.4 or so to 0.7.8. One of my clients
complained his website wasnt working. In the error log it showed
permission denied on the directory. The directory had 0711 on it.
Changing to 0755 fixed it. However I still have plenty of websites
running fine with 0711... Why would certain dirs report permission
denied and others not with the same 0711 permissions? I want to have
things set to 0711 to deny directory listings... Could it have
something to do with the directory index priority? If index.php isn't
found it should go to index.htm etc. Does that issue some weird dir
list api instead if a file exists check? Thanks...