Honestly, why?
Are there some though hard-core forum enthusiasts complaining about the B1 look and feel of today?
Maybe not hard-core enthusiasts, but many people I have spoken to (myself included) would be more in favour of something more modern looking. I am trying to base the design on the 'plex' theme to make it more in-line with the board (beta software).
Of course it's a matter of personal preference and I am not talking about imposing what I like on anyone. IBF has good skinning support and each user can select what skin they preffer. I am certainly not thinking about getting rid of the old one. It will simply be an additional skin people can select, and if the majority of people prefers it, it may become the default.
it's the best version ever for people running with the pics turned off (like I do when I use the old laptop). Personally I don't give a shit about flashy design based on different scripts.
Who said anything about a flashy design with lots of scripts. So far I do not use a single bit of javascript, and if possible I prefer it to stay like that.
As to images, I certainly use less than this skin (which uses 8 seperate gifs for the border of each section, and 11 just for the title logo. I tried disabling images in my browser and it didnt drastically change the look of my concept design - except one cell table which is too light making text unreadable, but thats easilly fixed. In contrast disabling images here makes the title become a mess of [ x ]'s, and generally everything looks ugly.
Ah, you get it - in my opinion there is no need for a facelift. (And yes, I went there and no, I don't need a sidebar and extra frames.)
That's why you will be able to select which design you prefer. Also notice that nothing is based on frames (as it screws up "open in new window..."). Its all based on standard HTML tables - nothing fancy. As to the sidebar it can be easilly hidden, and the setting will be remembered on a per-user basis. I usually browse on a computer with a hi-res display, and the current theme leaves wasted white chunks on both the left and right.
Sometime I browse from a handheld windows ce device. It chokes on some of the scripts on the frontpage here. It works flawlessly on the mock-up I made. From a technical point of view I am going for simplicity.