hey dark, don't know if you read that, but i like that the overall background color with the standardized white text drastically improves readability compared to the old layout, but you're right. contrasts are too strong. i can see it right now. the reply box uses grey as background color and it's much easier on the eyes than black
here are some suggestions:
* the swirl as icon is nice and all, but it takes too long to see which posts are new. how about using different colored swirls? to be honeyt, i liked the old layout's way of telling you which thread was new better, because it fitted the style of the subforums very much. example: you have the huge orange swirls on the front page. the orange color totally breaks out of the whole style, but if you go to any subforum, it lacks the color and thus irritates the eyes, which are still looking for the swirls
* the small "segahub.org" line above the threads isn't a link any more when being on the front page. i liked to use it to refresh the page
* coded stuff is still extremely hard on the eyes due to the far too small font. compare that to the ones from snesorama. those are perfectly readable because they use a bigger font that also uses a much bigger distance between the characters
edit: i just blocked the off.gif. now only the animated swirls are shown. this looks much better!
