I feel the redesign was a missplaced effort. In my view the mandate of the board is to facillitate discussion and research, not board cosmetics.
And even as far as cosmetics are concerned, I thought the beige clors were mellower and easier to look at than the current design (which wold be better suited to a printed magazine or newsletter) The default font in the Post & Reply fields is uncomfortably small and tightly spaced.
When I say facillitate discussion and research, I mean that discussion is facilitated by making it easier and less loud to look at, hence easier to spend more time, look at more posts and spot/correct typos in your own posts (also undermined by the irritating tendency of of the scroll bar to refuse to go to the bottom of the new post/reply frame or the way it sometimes jumps when you try to click into a specific point in the text - major pis-soff...)
The research is facilitated by well tuned Search function, the ease of tracking down old posts and threads by finding them in your own or other member's Profile & Post History index. This has been undercut by the limitations on how far you can go back in Post Histories, the WAY those histories are displayed (removing the search for Threads-Started-By ...) and the fact that in the Post History index you can no longer go to specific post - it now takes you to the start of the thread and you have to go through every page to find it.
STILL unavailable is the little "camera" icon which in other vBulletins shows up over the "envelope" icon denoting threads that you have posted on - very useful for checking in on a thread with an unmemorable title.
The hardware's capability would have been better used for such functional purposes instead of enabling silly, needles video's & anaimation in the posts or the superfluous "visitor message" log who's function can already be served by PM or the Forums.
Even the smilies are pissed off.
