title says it all.
I would love the ability to do this. It really is almost enough to make me not want to visit. Knowing my eyes will have to stare at this super white color the entire time I am on them. I can appreciate the clean look and all, but how about an option to tone it down for those of us who can only browse at night when it is dark out/in the room and now have to stare at this bleach white.
I don't think this is the final version, as it says in the upper right, "Community Beta." I'm sure that as time goes on, there will be more allowed customization or template options.
Click on "Profile".
Look under your profile picture.
Click "Theme Selection".
The default theme is "Wizards of the Coast".
/\ Had done that, I mean the white in the boxes where your text and my text are. They are both white with black text on them. Many other forums offer an alternative, including the old forums.
I changed my theme too, but the text boxes are still neon white, it's killing my eyes. I hope there's options in the near future...
I changed my theme too, but the text boxes are still neon white, it's killing my eyes. I hope there's options in the near future...
Hear, hear! My poor astigmatism is crying.
Seconded, thirded, fourthed...whatever number we're on now. I miss the parchement look from the old days. And all the really good emoticons.
My god, this new white background is also killing my eyes... 
Yeah, there are 3 things I noted as being problems.
1) The lack of any way to change the background color!!!
2) The exceedingly wasteful use of screen realestate. The old forums did burn some screen space, but MOST of it was taken up by stuff that was useful. I'd say we're down below 50% of the screen being at all useful now. I know graphic designers love to be creative, but when you use the thing day after day you soon really don't care about the wallpaper and just don't want to have to fiddle scrollbars just to read stuff.
3) Its quite annoying that the editing box isn't embedded as it was in the old forums. It was QUITE handy to be able to scroll back in the thread while posting. Now I have to try to remember exactly what people said or else quote a boatload of text into the editor just so I can refer to it.
So if anyone goes through looking for ideas, that's my contribution. Shrink the "chrome" down to a very minimal amount, gives us colors, and embedd the post editor. There's lots to like though 
/\ Ive got two solutions ive been using for that third problem. Neither are as good as before but whathave you.
Solution 1- Open the reply into a new tab, then using Opera (maybe firefox does it too?) I open both pages at the same time side by side.
Solution 2- I draw a little /\ arrow if I am just responding to the person above me, instead of trying to go and quoteing them so they know I mean them.
Hmmmm, I don't find it that bad. Maybe you guys need to get out of the basement more? (Kidding! Kidding!)
The modular nature of the templates leads me to believe they will be adding more options soon. I'm sure they will have some that are easier on the eyes.
I'm looking for the 10 page thread where we complain about the new forums, but failing to find it for some reason.
edit: Nevermind, thanks... err.. poster after me whose name I can't see because I'm blind while editing my post.
Do you mean the one in community business?
I have to agree with pretty much everything that's been said so far. I HATE the setup of the forums.
The thread boxes are crammed so thin it doesn't even take up a 1/3 of the browser window's width. I can understand them wanting to put a pretty background but there is still two HUGE empty white spaces on both sides of the browser window. And they take up about 1/3 of the screen space as well. There is just a huge waste of space all over this new setup.
I also like the nice way forum threads list had nice big text that was grayed out when it had been read and had the red circle filled it when there was something new. As well as the Check mark on the thread for those that you have posted in. It made if very easy to skim through the headings to find the topics you were visiting on a regular basis.
Also the [SBLOCK] and [DECK] commands are no longer around. All the old post that used them are now messed up. These were a great way of organizing stuff into easy to read format.
You can no longer click on a user a select to view their most recent post like you could before which I used a LOT. Heck I even used it on myself a lot as it was a great way to keep tabs on the threads I was posting in and see which ones had new post. But also to see what someone is posting in other similar topic threads.
Seeing as it's still early in the proccess I will probably find more stuff that's changed for the worst. And I have to agree with the others above that the horrible white background and the other changes I'm not sure I wanna hang out in these forums anymore.
The forum seems to have less features with horrible display setup all in favor of this pathetic new social networking site setup. If they wanted to add social networking type stuff then ok that's fine. But why screw up a good thing with the forums?
Can we keep these to the thread in the community business section, guys? I know you're disappointed but there's already a place for this stuff 
Well, they've removed the space eating bars.
Hopefully next on their list is the background color.
And after that making the editor page more friendly.
Take heart, guys. They might actually be listening.
The one good thing about the white background is that I'm feeling more awake and I havn't even took a sip of my coffee yet. 
Just found another thing I don't like about the new forum. The old one seem to keep what you typed in the reply box should happen to navigate away on purpose of by mistake. I was typing this nice LONG post on a friends laptop which has a touch pad(hate those things) anyhow when typing I mistakenly tapped the pad with my palm which it took to mean a mouse click and the curser was over one of the tabs at the tops so it took me to the photos section. When i hit back table all my progress had been lost!?!?
I've been on several forum sites and many of them actually save what you were typing if this kind of thing should happen. In fact I've seen very few these days that don't do that. Well I've spotted other things since my previous post as well that make this forum not only worst then the old one but among the worst of any that I've seen. And I'm talking the actual forum stuff not the social networking fluff stuff they added which I also think is pretty bad compared to what's out there on "REAL" social networking sites.