It's been a week+ since the new theme here...

[matthew1]

I'd like to know what you think of having the avatars on the right side of the page.

Plus, leave any critique or error reports here. My always-barely-adequate emotional defenses can now handle the shock of angry mob criticism .

The site should look good in modern, popular browsers:

• Internet Explorer 7 and 8 (Windows)
• Firefox 3+ (Windows & Mac)
• Safari 4+ (Windows & Mac)

Firefox 3+ on Ubuntu for instance I'd like to support and will if it's a quick fix.

If you're on Internet Explorer 6 or lower, this site probably has issues. I urge you to upgrade for that reason and security reasons. Browsers are free -- there is no reason to stay with an old one.

[vegasjetskier]

I prefer the avatars and profile on the left.

Love the post content in the emails!

Can you put "view new posts" at the top of every page?

[matthew1]

Can you put "view new posts" at the top of every page?

Done.

[FireFox31]

Matt, thanks for always improving the forums! A few thoughts:

Links in posts should be blue and underlined, not pink and highlighted.

Avatars on the right is unconventional but helps viewers with narrow screen width. It prevents the message from being cut off, instead cutting off the less important avatar. This helped me immediately, but it may confuse everyone who's used to avatars on the left.

The login button is being dwarfed by all the other content on the screen.

Work to implement "friendly URLs", which show a part of the post title in the URL. Then add the forum to Google Webmaster Tools. This should really help your performance on search engines, bringing more visitors, and increasing your ad revenue.

Consider making a small visual banner for your Amazon and Tire Rack links, placed up by your advertised vendors.

[egads]

Firefox 3+ on Ubuntu for instance I'd like to support and will if it's a quick fix.

Worked fine from day one for me on Ubuntu 9.04/9.10/10.04 in Chrome. Just tested in Firefox on these systems and seems OK. What is the issue people have been running into? Should mention that Firefox is not spoofing as anything else.

[matthew1]

Thanks egads. I have started using Chrome full time, and test in it. Should have added that . My usual browser Firefox 3.6 has become so slow with all the dev extensions I have on it now (Firebug, etc).

FireFox31, thanks. You're 100% correct about links. I put in underlines and made them blue. Kept the background (yellow) - I just can't leave it alone. The site's been in Webmaster Tools (w/ xml sitemap for the repair database) for years. I just turned on RSS feeds for forum topics the other day, so that should help with SEO. URLs I will improve fully, but for now I did a little improvement when you click the URL button while writing a post. It now asks for the link text as well as URL. Rewriting forum topic URLs fully will be a big change. I don't want to rush into that, but you're 100% correct that MVS should move toward those in the forum.

Everyone, I added a "Quick Reply" button at the bottom of each topic. It lets you just start typing something rather than going to a reply page, which was the way things have worked in the past. But the traditional way is not gone! It's still there. Now you have a choice.

[matthew1]

That quick URL thing I spoke of ^^^ doesn't work in Chrome or Safari, but does in Firefox and does in IE8 with a script warning .

It fails gracefully, meaning in Chrome and Safari it acts like it always has.