[AgentZero]

I must say, I agree with CW. I mean, even MSN has offline message functionality now, and IRC is great for multiplayer games, because everyone involved can have a general discussion, with private messages zipping around in the background. And most IRC clients allow you to log your chats, for those of you concerned with posterity. And given how many services there are out there offering free, anonymous email, arguments about privacy are fallacious at best.

That being said, I rather like the new look. I'm using a 22-inch widescreen monitor, and I actually like the fixed width, because it makes posts much easier to read than on forums that don't use a fixed width. I remember in some graphics design class or another, the teacher telling us that the human eye will only track over a certain number of words or letters before it starts to have trouble maintaining a fix on the line. I definitely notice that on forums that stretch posts out to the full width of a maximized window, but here, everything is nice and readable.

The text in this reply box was a little small but for those of you running firefox, hit CTRL + once or twice and it'll look all nice & big. Not the best solution, but a reasonable stopgap until something better is implemented.

Now, I will admit, my first reaction to the new forum was "What the hell is this crap?! Where's my stuff? I can't find stuff!" But that is how most people react to change, and after fiddling around with it for a while, I've found most of my stuff. Still looking for some of my stuff, but that's how we learn so I don't mind. I think any time anyone has ever come up with a new way of doing something, all back through history, there have been people who didn't like it, who thought the old way was best, and that we should get rid of this strange new thing and bring back the familiar old thing. Fortunately, we've an equally long history of not listening to these protests, as evidenced by the fact that I'm sitting in front of a computer munching on a tasty grilled ham & cheese, instead of sitting in a cave gnawing on a half-cooked skunk. ;-)