>Maybe it is the gray background? Maybe it is the orientation of the frames. I am not sure. I do think however, this place could use a face lift of sorts.

I like having the thinkness of the message window (easier for reading code, and long message maps). And the constanly refreshing replies/new is really cool. I think removing the upper left frame was a good move (made text on top), so maybe the lower left frame can be moved as a horizontal bar on the very bottom? And make those plain text links too.

I modified the open document in the Docs section so anyone can add a link to there idea.