"The grey is promising (with a little graphical retooling it will work) I do miss the kick ass graphics though (NO MORE LOG!!!)"

getting rid of the graphics was a tough decision ... one that almost has made me create an "old school" option for old sito users (maybe i still will? low priority tho) ... the whole thing is, of course, the log is cute and funny -- but confusing. we get lots of questions and email about what all that means and it tends to be, from a strict point of view, bad interface design. (disclosure: i love it too!) especially when users dont speak english! the joke is lost a little then. heh

"Also, the text in the search bar area are not define in a '''' therefore are subject to user settings which can force the bar to be even thicker when text size is set to larger/largest, or when viewing at lower resolution... Again I would favor the graphics approach, even if it is just text as graphics vis a vis the top row nav"

understood. we will be playing with the formatting of the text on the "sub-bar" (as we are calling it). it would be nice to have the luxury of this bar being graphical (like the text-graphic buttons on the tabs), but so much of this is built on the fly and therefore not really conceivable to have as graphics. but hopefully we can address some sizing issues and whatnot. ((grumble grumble ... stupid design limitations of html))