» Fri May 27, 2011 5:42 pm
Many of the nuts and bolts are definitely an improvement. The search feature seems much more powerful, the text does look clearer on screen, the new spoilers are an improvement, etc... The personal profile space is likewise a big step forward, with the ability to put a picture there, display your friends list, and for people to leave comments.
The color scheme seems fine in the Oblivion area to me. The parchment texture has a nice feel to it. But the dull battleship grey here really does not do much for me.
The downside, well, as has already been noted, the narrow width really makes things more difficult. I took out my ruler, and there is actually more empty space at the sides than there is content in the middle. Not an improvement. I feel sorry for the people without widescreen monitors, since they must really be hurting for space. This will make trying to read fan fics much less pleasant, as a paragraph that once went 3 lines will now be 6, and even a relatively small post will seem like an intimidating block of text.
I can see the reason for reorganizing the front page into links to the different games' forums. The old way with everything thrown on one page went on a bit. But this new layout makes things take longer to get to. After trying out both I honestly prefer the old way, as it took fewer mouse clicks to get where you want to go.
Which brings me to the reason for not wanting more mouse clicks. The new forums are much slower now. Combined with the much smaller amount of data on the screen now because of the narrow layout, this makes a for a real one-two punch.