I logged in here and the forum looks much better. Then I noticed the new gradient in thead. Much much better.
BTW, it might be good to make the background color of thead close in color to the gradient for those instances when loading is slow.
The black border between posts has also been tamed a bit too
Ah, yes. I see that now. The previous one was too heavy design-wise, but I think the current one is too weak as a signal to guide the eye. Maybe a tad stronger but not heavy like before.
There's another black that might need some taming, but it might just be me. The near-black elements such as upper menu, tcat, and new reply button are too near to black. I'd go a bit lighter. I use 5a5a5a on my forum, but my blue is lighter so it would probably be too light for here. Maybe something in between.
OTOH, one can nit-pick and second guess these things all day long. And I've gone nuts sometimes trying to dial in my own themes. I get it perfect, get up the next morning and realize it looked better before I changed it. So I appreciate all the work this has taken Justin to make.