Brunel, Brunel, Brunel, Brunel. [Sorry, just trying to get the attention of the search engine.]

When I first played around with the Brunel skin, I was disturbed to see that it put My Conversations at the top of my Personal Space, and left the "About Me" section at the very bottom. Yet everyone else's Personal Space viewed through the Brunel skin appeared with "About Me" at the top.

If you experience the same problem, fear not. This section from the h2g2 FAQ: Your Personal Space explains what's going on:

"Please note that in Brunel, if you visit other people's Spaces their Introduction lives at the top of the page, but if you visit your own, it's at the bottom, as we presume you don't always want to read about you!"

Seeing these sections newly divided in Brunel, it reminded me a little of the way MyBBC can be customized to show only the sections of news or info that you want to see, in the order that you want to see them. Straightaway I went to the Feedback / Feature Suggestions area, but found that someone had already suggested that layout of h2g2 be made customizable.

Other layout changes in Brunel

Other weird new formatting in Brunel includes the extra large letters at the top of every page identifying it as "Personal Space" or "Guide Entry" or "Help Page," et cetera. I understand why this decision was made. Probably to prevent new users from confusing these different types, which aren't always obvious to tell apart. But if there has to be some extra large print at the top of a page I'm writing, whether my personal space or a guide entry, I'd like to be the one setting it. And if you've been around h2g2 more than a month or two, then those large words "Personal Space" and "Guide Entry" at the top of pages are redundant. Brunel is like the Playschool version of h2g2.

Also, those prominent links at the top or left side of every page are different from earlier skins. Brunel no longer shows the Read or Talk sections prominently on every page. Instead Peer Review and My Conversations are given prominent links. I guess my only complaint here is that, if you had a club or group on h2g2 (such as Agg/Gag/Cac that got more notice due to a prominent link in the Read or Talk sections linked from every page on h2g2, you'd be saddened to see them become less prominent too. But I have to admit that My Conversations being available on every page makes sense. And it's reasonable to bring more attention to Peer Review in any way possible.

How has your experience with Brunel been?

At first I thought this new skin was worse than Alabaster (a real accomplishment if you were an original Goo user who got Alablasted with that skin). But Brunel is growing on me like Alabaster did, like a fungus. And I might keep this one default, since it puts my conversations at top conveniently, and that's what I always go to first. Some of the other formatting differences still bother me, but I'll get over it.

Please drop your comments below. Also, if there are other big changes that you've noticed with Brunel, remind me. I'm not really concerned about the colors, because that's just a matter of taste that people will always fight over. Have you seen any changes that cause problems for you? Or changes that make things easier?