I wrote this in the World of Warcraft thread as well, but I figured I'd reach out to more admins here.
The new skin (not that I care about it since I'm using the 2005 one) is horrible from an ergonomic point of view. I spent a good year studying webdesign and the rules were to never do dark on bright background, always bright (toned down, preferably) on dark background. I've also spent the last year studying to become a teacher and we've had numerous courses in how to present power point shows and such. Always white on black, not black on white. That's why blackboards in schools are black even in these modern days.
This is about as bad as changing the default font to Times New Roman. If that ever happens, I'll take the next plane across the pond and dish out some severe ***-kicking. Hire a webdesigner or something to do this. Don't just go with bright cream colors because people like bright. Those people are probably the ones spending <3 minutes on the site at a time. I spend upwards of three hours a day looking through the forums. I'm just fortunate the old layout still works.
Don't go with bright. Ever. People shouldn't use their monitors + Allakhazam as a homemade tanning salon. If they want more brightness, tell them to go outside or turn on the lights.
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Please "talk up" if your comprehension white-shifts. I will use simple-happy language-words to help you understand.