Welcome to Daily Kos 3.0.
The site functionality remains exactly the same. This revision updates the look (courtesy of design wunderkinds Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer), and creates a nearly all-CSS layout.
That means a couple of things. For one, if you've got an older browser, this thing will look all screwed up. Upgrade to the latest version of IE or Firefox.
Second of all, I can now change the entire look and feel of the site by editing a single file. Pretty cool.
I can guess the two big complaints -- The fixed width of this design is too narrow for your monitor. You hate the ads in the middle. Both those items can be taken care off with alternate stylesheets. I'll get to that eventually.
As for the ads in the middle, I know it's unorthodox. But when I started this blog, so was having navigation on the right side of the site. Now that's become commonplace. That's because most web surfers hover their mouse cursor on the right side of the screen. Left-column navigation bars force people to move the cursor across the entire site. Shitty user interface.
So this site puts the main content top and left (which is how the eye reads a page, top to bottom, left to right). And it puts the navigation, which includes diaries, on the right column. Hence, by default, the ads got the only real estate left.
If the demand is there, an alternate stylesheet can easily switch out the middle- and right-hand columns. Other tweaks can happen based on user feedback.
So what's next? Probably a "stats" page, collecting site stats like jotter does. And other meta data. Stuff like top diaries last week, month, year. Total number of diaries by day, month, year. Total number of comments. Etc. Should be a fun page.