Glad to hear development has moved in-house. Any chance I can beta test? ;D
Of course. The whole team can beta test.
I'm planning to add some awesome features we've been working on in to the theme.
I hope it doesn't use jQuery.
jQuery adds extra load, when there's already the Prototype library which can be used for your special effects. And they can also conflict with each other.
Each theme I've used with jQuery I've never had a problem with the conflict. (Since I've been using the jQuery.NoConflict()
but I'll look in to this and this will be discussed among the team.
I really don't see the issues with jQuery. So long as you know what you're doing, it doesn't cause conflicts. I can understand being annoyed if it's only used to add a single dropdown or something, but it barely adds any extra load that's noticeable to anybody except those still on dial-up really. In the age of broadband, a single minimised JS file shouldn't be killing your load times.
I used it once in a plugin and regretted it almost instantly.
It's not the extra load, or the fact it might conflict with other stuff, it's simply because you can do everything you'll be doing with jQuery with what comes with MyBB*. It's already there and it's updated by us so you won't have to worry about keeping it up to date (unless it changes drastically, which even if it does, they normally make it compatible anyway).
For me, it was just like adding a new fish to my tank. It's a new fish, and it looks cool, but it's still just the same thing as the others in there that do exactly the same thing.
*Unless you're adding datepickers and theme widgets, which are pointless anyway without javascript.