Well, I decided to take a look across the web at other user's perceptions of the new VB4. It seems the response is indeed mixed, but a lot of people are not fans of the new design. They say that it feels too much like FaceBook or other forums and consequently uninspired. Numerous posters seem to prefer the VB3 skin/style over that of the new one, and this is coming not just from users, but designers and administrators as well.
In fact, some are going as far as Not upgrading to VB4 just because of the new look, and also due to the poorer performance in certain areas. They find the upgrade rather useless since it is being rolled out over several versions and VB3 already runs very smoothly, whereas VB4 is still quite buggy and has no overwhelming new features.
Impressions
vB4: Are you impressed (Link)
VBulletin 4 is like Vista (Link)
What does 4.0 have over 3.8.4? (Link)
Even vbulletin.org (not to be confused with vbulletin.com) has not upgraded yet (still using Version 3.6.12, in fact), so maybe they know newer is not always better. What's interesting is that the preliminary shots of VB4 looked awesome when presented by the former lead developer. Sometime after that, it seems the team tried to update all the beautiful graphics and design elements that were already so attractive.
First Look: The vBulletin 4.0 Style
Even so, I still find VB3 to be a more impactful design, even if it isn't considered the most contemporary. But, unfortunately it seems the goal of the new graphics/layout was just to provide something different from the old one, instead of truly making it stunning.
Should I downgrade? (Link)
Who's not upgrading? (Link)
Users have said many of the things I have, pointing the Poorer Readability due to the cluttered layout that has less contrast with odd fonts/colors. They are hoping in the coming weeks that better themes will come out for us to pick from.
If I find it bad with my great eyesight and young age, I can imagine how others must be dealing with it with handicaps.
Many of the elements have been toned down to the point that they are virtually Nondestinctive.
For instance, the Online Indicator is so Small and Dull it gives so Little indication. The reputation indicator is actually brighter!
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Replying
Strangely as well, the Reply to Thread button doesn't even directly take you into Advanced Reply anymore. Instead it forces you wait for the Quick Reply box to generate and then you must click Advance, which is a major time waster.
Before you could Choose one or the other with just one click, giving you twice the functionality. The buttons should really be renamed for clarity, but better yet, reverted to the original behavior. If people like synced buttons and defaulting to the quick reply box (which I admit is theoretically a good idea), then maybe there should be a setting in the user control panel for that. Unfortunately, I think VB4 made the mistake of making Quick Reply strictly an on/off option in the administrator options, so having different dedicated buttons like VB3 may be out of the question. I have found double-clicking (quite odd and unintuitive for a webpage!) the button (at least in Firefox) gets you to Advanced, so I suppose that works for me. Still, not all browsers probably support that, so it still is no grand solution.
Quote and Reply With Quote and WYSIWYG editor
Reply to thread button and Quick Reply
Internet Explorer 6 (and many other browsers, too)
Even if this release is all about cleaning up the underlying code, I think it is a real mishap that it performs so badly on IE6. Even though I use Firefox, IE6 is still the most popular version of IE with 20% of the browser market. It seems ridiculous to abandon support for this browser with such a large userbase, especially when VB3 looks great on it. Heres's how VB4 looks on IE6:
..
Notice the posting date/time doesn't even appear! Nor do any of the formatting controls. Other pages have similar graphical and misalignment issues. But it seems like VB4 is giving almost all the browsers problems.
Wanna see just how bad vb4 is with IE6
Slowness
I have noticed that some have mentioned the slowness that you mentioned Sam_Zen, but it could just be an isolated event on the server or your browser. I use Firefox, but I haven't really noticed a real slowdown so far, though. However, I have read about some time-out issues with vBulletin and even experenced them in VB3. Sometimes the browser doesn't get informed that your post was successful and times-out. I have had that happen to me, where the preview doesn't respond correctly, and even the submission seems to not take, but in reality it has. In theory VB4 should be faster, but through more use perhaps it will prove not so.
Searching
Probably the worst problem right now is the lack of searching. What good is the forum's wealth of knowledge if user's can't find anything before 2010? Administratively, the forum needs to be re-indexed so that all the results will display.