My apologies - my first and second comments on the changes were both uniformly negative, even though I find the changes to have been a net positive. (Now especially that the number of comments is again visible on the index pages, I no longer have any major gripes.) From having both personally done and seen friends do similar projects before, I should have known to provide much more positive feedback from the onset.

In particular, I like the general appearance of the new layout, the karma bubbles being expanded (for the first time in ages, I'm aware of my own karma changes again!), and the highlighting of new comments. The highlighting especially is a great change.

Anyone putting in this much work in a project like this would deserve to have a page full of praise and positive comments in addition to polite, constructive criticism. I'm very grateful for you doing all of this, and have immense respect both for your work on the actual update, and on your calm and reasonable manner of handling the unfairly harsh reaction.