A few weeks ago I warned you that I'd be updating the site with a new design, and this weekend I deployed it. For the most part everything should work the same, but if you encounter any bugs or other problems, let me know.
One of the big changes was the removal of the 'pop up' window for commenting. I now use an inline form that uses Ajax to do validation. That worked well until I needed to reload the page and focus on your comment. Luckily this StackOverflow question demonstrated how to do that: How to force a page to reload if all what was changed in url is hash?
Since this theme is responsive, I've removed the jQuery Mobile subsite. Don't take this as any sign of me going sour on jQuery Mobile. I think the recent 1.3.0 release is the most exciting build yet and both myself and Andy Matthews are working to update our jQuery Mobile book for 1.4. But I just didn't need it anymore here so I removed it.
The only feature really lacking now is a dedicated way to subscribe to comments without actually commenting yourself. I'll probably add that back one day if folks complain, but at the end of the day, if you have to post a quick "Just commenting to subscribe" comment, I won't complain.
Finally, one small feature I like (that people will probably never notice) is the "Recent Commenters" box at the bottom. It simply lists and displays the gravatars of the last few readers who left comments:
I expect some folks will not care for the redesign, which is always the case, but I hope they continue to participate and add to the conversation.