It's not that hard. It was a bitch until John put up the Topics button (on top) (LOL! Having written a few pages, I DO know about that kind of error!). One can even set how many in each window and how the are organized, whether you want full posts or headers. It just takes a little experimentation. There are a few buttons where the labels are somewhat ambiguous, but that's an easy fix.
I didn't like it at first either. One thing I would like to see is a setting for a maximum size on the top frame with the banner announcements in the self-search (My Comments (bad label John)).
Flexibility such as this is a lot like freedom in self-government. It only works when the citizens are capable of managing it. Should we make the effort to learn or sit and whine that it's too hard?
I AM learning it, but that doesn't make it load any faster. If it's this slow now, what's going to happen when we have another event like 9/11 or the election fiasco? A few minutes ago I actually thought it had gone down, and was ready to head over to Yahoo.
Too many bells and whistles; whatever happened to the KISS Principle?