Hi all,
It certainly is different in look and feel from the old forum design. I can get used to different, although it may take a bit of time.
My main issues that do impact the ease of use and user experience are:
1. Speed. As others have noted, there is a significant difference in load and response times. That said, there has been some incremental improvement in the speed over the past few days. Still not close to the old forum software, but an marginal improvement nonetheless. I hope that the speed continues to improve.
2. Navigation. I really liked the ability to see all at once all the sub-forums and the latest post in each. This is clearly missing in the new forum design.
3. Use of screen real estate. In a word, inefficient. On my large monitor, the fact that the width of posts uses only about 1/3 of the screen width gives them a much more cramped feel and slightly increased difficulty in reading.
I didn't really use little graphic smileys and what-not, so no issue there. I haven't tried to post a photograph or image, but I understand that this still requires a link to an external server such as Photobucket or the like. My hope has always been a direct upload from my computer, but I understand that this would end up storing the image by the forum host, thus placing huge demands on storage capacity.
Most of the other things about the forum re-design I can live with. Although not color blind myself, I can appreciate that the color, shade and contrast could have a major impact on usability for many folks. This is certainly something that the fine folks at FSM should take a look at.
In terms of the non-forum parts of the web site, most of what I have seen is either a nice improvement or no worse than the old FSM web site.
My thanks to FSM for hosting the forums, and for their commitment to improving both the web site and forums, even if it doesn't always hit the mark for some folks.
Cheers, Rick