Before the changeover from free to paid, the board allowed its members to use either the purple and maroon SDMB layout or the light blue VBulletin layout whereas now it seems that we can only use the purplish one.
I prefer the blue. Is this permanent?
It appears at least for now, that they’ve restricted the styles to this Straight Dope style. I preferred the light blue vBulletin style myself (and the font selection that went with it).
I hope they give us options again. If they don’t though I’ll understand. IIRC there were some issues with having to make the same changes in each and every style.
I note too that some people have mentioned that they have fully colored smilies again.
Not me. I’m running Mozilla Firefox (for what it’s worth).
I get yellow smilies and I use IE. :o isn’t blushing though.
It blushes under Windows 2000 Professional with IE 5.5. 
Interesting. Under IE6 I still get the pale smilies (including the blush). I’m running Windows 2000 also. I wonder if that might be the root cause.
Oh wait.
I compared the smilies side-by-side. Under Firefox, some of the smilies are a light blue. Under IE they’re all pale yellow.
I may have misunderstood. I thought people were seeing the old bright yellow/green/etc. smilies.
I’m stuck with the light blue version and blue smilies. I’ve tried clearing my IE cache but no luck.
I was using the light blue version before the switch if that makes a difference.
I realize that the baords may be screwy for awhile but here is another request to bring back the blue style. You know, whenever you mods have time. No rush.
I don’t know what version of IE I am using but I’m on Windows 98 (I know) and was using the VBulletin style as well but have switched over to yellow with no hitches.
Aesiron: I have become almost dependent on the Blue Look. This setup is very difficult for me to read… My guess is they’ll re-enable it, but I’m a little concerned that there’s no longer a “skin selection” within the Control Panel.
:crossing fingers and toes:
It’s not the browser that affects smilies. I run a vBulletin-based message forum, use Mozilla Firebied 0.8 for Windoes as my regular browser, have checked the site with IE, Opera, Konqueror and Safari, and haven’t had any problem with 'em.
Smilies are still screwed up with the default SDMB indigo layout. Smack (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/images/smilies/smack.gif), Dubious (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/images/smilies/dubious.gif), Wally (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/images/smilies/wallywink.gif) and Happy Orthodox Jewish Man (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/images/smilies/happyyid.gif) don’t display, regardless of browser.
A little research on the two machines I have access to shows that…
… some of the smilies are pale blue and white with Win2000 (regardless of whether I’m running IE6 or Mozilla Firefox)
… all of the smilies are pale yellow and white with WinXP and IE6 .
Yes, please bring back the “bright links” option. I thought of it as light purple rather than light blue, but it’s far less ugly than this layout, and it’s not so hard on the eyes.
