Animated avatars are back, for good or ill.
thanks!
Any way to change number of posts per page from 50 to 100, like you could before?
No, unfortunately that's gone for good. I was a 100 posts per page fan, too.
Gone for good? What the hell did you guys do?
Upgraded the software. Variable pagination was removed by the authors of the software a couple of versions ago. They ascribed the decision to esoteric things like "issues with post URLs being shared between members with different pagination settings", but I think the primary motivation was to move another entire step away from the concept of pages of posts. Pages (especially long pages) are the suck for mobile devices, which is where everybody's focus is. Give it another version or two and there probably won't be page links on the subforum topic view, either. Just the button at the bottom of the screen to "show more topics". Actually, it shouldn't even be a button, it should just trigger the "show more" event when you try to scroll past the bottom of the current page.
Forum software makers are all struggling to remain relevant in the mobile device/Twitter/Facebook world. They're going to continue to morph the products they put out to look more familiar to folks who are used to more modern platforms. But you can only hold off upgrading your forum for so long. Once the authors stop releasing security patches for the version of the board you're running, you're living on borrowed time. The version we were on was about to go unsupported, so we had to upgrade.