Hey Brett. Good job so far.

My only criticisms would be:

1. Change the order of comments in news/articles back to oldest->newest as was the case in VGC1.*

2. Screen size should be handled by browser not hard coded in a professional site. You should be able to set various divs and areas that make everything more modular so each piece has its place and the sizes/widths are relative. I know this as I make websites everyday. Granted mine are all behind firewalls, but it can be done.

3. I would like to show a mockup of  what I think a better home page layout would be.

Notice I have reduced width by a good portion and returned the recent thread portion. I deleted the 'most popular stories' part because that is really already covered by the new flash screen. That is far more usefull.

Granted there still is cleanup needed as this was just a quick mockup w/ paint and the portions below that are not in my image would remain.

So, what do you guys think? BTW, I like the colors overall.

I love the order of comment in the news articles now.

I hated it when new comments would be pushed to the bottom in the old version. :P

So I noticed a minor graphical glitch thing - Smilies. They weren't edited down right, and have a slight white background. Have a look

So on and so forth. I DO happen to have a large set of these smilies that we use on our private dev forums. If you'd like the files/graphics, hit me up in a PM and I'll get them out to you.

Thanks ioi,

Anchoring to the right on forum pages would fix the biggest irritation on width for me, even if it is something I have to turn on/off myself - just so long as I don't have to scroll right everytime I page down a massive thread.

Just the one more suggestion if as it sounds we'll be keeping the wide format. It might be worth jigging the front page a bit, so that the numbers (which after all are the primary pull to the site) were fully visible on first opening to all users without scrolling. Perhaps just shifting the first column (articles) to the end would do it - plus having the numbers down the middle would break up the text blocks. Just a thought.

I'm gradually getting the hang of the rest of it!

By the way, the first two columns are limited by the character length of the news headlines, as we don't want those to wrap to a second line (it looks terrible that way). That also affects the font size that can be used in those sections.

It should be possible to have a button on the comments pages to show oldest first but there are higher priorities right now obviously.

I had no problem with table editing using the "row properties" and "cell properties" buttons as normal. The only change is the "change highlight color" button, which now only changes the background color of the text and not the entire cell - which is actually a bug fix that came about from using the CSS properties correctly. I'm not sure how much flexibility Brett has to program the text editor but the one suggestions I would make would be to allow selecting multiple cells/rows, and having the table properties buttons apply to the whole selection.

How about these?

You can use them if you like? (I edited them in Gimp)

I don't know if someone said this but when using Chrome you get many errors when trying to view screenshots.

@Brett:
My contribution, in part subjective, in part opinions and problems or apppreciations shared with others.
About problems you listed:
1. Flash top menu:
Nice to read you'll ditch it, maybe Flash allows cool things, but far too often it gives problems when uset to navigate a site...
2. Site width:
On my old CRT is bad, but on the notebook it's fine and it will be even more on my next LCD monitor
3. The black colour scheme:
Although I don't like it, I would have no problems with it in the homepage and some other parts, but it becomes tiring for my eyes in reading-/writing- intensive parts, like forums, longer articles, etc.
4. Homepage being cluttered:
Almost no problem at all with it, it's a part I'm getting used to and the new charts rock. But, as I showed in the screenshot I posted in the other thread, some elements cover the login and password forms.
5. Performance issues:
This is a problem particularly loading the home page, reducing Flash use as you anticipated should benefit.
6. Text editor issues:
It looks solved, thanks!
7. White text on dark backgrounds:
Yes, particularly a problem in Forums, like I wrote at point 3
8. Recent threads on homepage:
See point 4: as I don't find the homepage too cluttered, adding them wouldn't disturb me...

About new features you listed:
1. Revamped graphical style:
Although I don't particularly like it, it doesn't disturb me outside of Forums.
2. Massively overhauled game database with lots of new features:
Excellent!
3. Improved game index page:
It already worked decently, if it's improved, very good.
4. Improved world totals page AND 5. Improved chart pages:
Very good, I like them.
6. Improved news pages:
All improvements are welcome, but I agree with people that like the comments section sorted like it was before, older comments first, newer last.
7. Improved homepage:
As I already wrote, although I don't really like the black scheme, I like very much the new charts and most of the renewed parts of the home page. Only problem, apart my personal tastes about the black scheme, that in the homepage is only a subjective and aesthetical issue, is that one about the login form covered by a Flash element (just in case it's hard to find it amongst all those 78 pages of the previous thread, I posted the screenshots at the top of this page: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=73593&page=77 )

Thank you for number 7. If I can easily view the site on my G1 again I am happy.

Also, I love the monthly option for charts.

^ g1 for the win.