I agree with Tim, this interface sucks balls compared to where we were previously.
Seriously, I want to know how other people navigate this site.
You are reading a thread and get to the bottom of the page. If there is another page, how do you tell what page you are on? If you mouse over the page buttons, the one that lights up blue is the page you are on, but why is it not blue to start with? Why should I have to mouse over it to figure out where the hell I am?
So I finally get to the bottom of the last page of the thread. Now what? The old forum interface had both a crumb trail where you could click to go back to the section you were reading or the main forum AND it had a combo box that would allow you to select the page you wish to view. Now, there is just NOTHING THERE. I had asked about implementing the crumb trail so we could use that to go back, and I'm sure that is on David's list of things to do... but in the mean time I have to scroll back up to the top of the page to navigate somewhere else (the "GO TO TOP" link helps with that). That is just retarded. I'm at the bottom of the page, this is the logical place for me to be after reading the thread, there should be simple navigation here to get me somewhere else. It should not be a dead end.
Ergo, how does everyone else navigate? Am I missing something that will make my life wonderful and glorious for browsing the forum? I ask because right now it feels like this interface was designed by someone who doesn't bother actually reading the content on the forums.
I know for a fact that I read less and comment less on this forum today with this new interface than I did with the old one. I'm not suggesting that we should go back, but we definitely need to improve the user's interaction with the site. Tim is exactly right that this user interface just sucks.