Has anyone used the latest version of phpBB3?

I installed it here just to see what it was like, and I think it is good, but the layout of the posts is different to what I am used to, so I would prefer to stick with version 2.

I know it from another forum and I hate the new interface design even more than I hate the interface of phpBB 2.

From what I saw of it, I quite liked it, but I didn't like how the user information was at the right hand side of the post. I'm guessing that can be changed.

I won't be upgrading this forum to version 3 though as 2 seems to work fine, and I have a feeling that the theme would need rewriting completely to work (it already doesn't seem to be fully compatible with the latest versions of phpBB 2).

What is it that you don't like about phpBB2 Ronald? I really like th interface of phpBB2. I find it nice and simple. I like it alot better than vBullitin.

I don't know exactly why I do not like it. It does not look good, it feels awkward as if everything is in the wrong place, it took me a long time to learn how to use it. By contrast, I find for instance UseBB very easy to use and YaBB less so but still better than phpBB.
http://www.usebb.net/community/
http://www.yabbforum.com/community/

I had a quick look at those and they look similar to phpBB.

Well, yes, they all look similar, but there are differences in how they work. Especially in UseBB I feel more at ease, I click naturally on the right buttons without thinking, while in phpBB I always need to think what I should do next, I need to scroll more than in the other forums, the BBCode tags seem to always end up in the wrong place, I sometimes even loose a message before it has been posted. One would expect that I would have less problems with phpBB because it is the most widely used forum software and most forums I am active in are phpBB forums, but the opposite is true. It is personal, I suppose. For others it may be different.

I find phpBB easy to use, but then, most of the forums that I have used have had phpBB or Invision Power Board 1.x, so I am very familiar with those two, but I do usually work out how to use others quite easily.

It is really just a matter of preference. I know people who prefer vBullitin

One advantage I found with Olympus (code name of phpBB 3) was that the Styles Team was able to accept any templates rebuilt out of subSilver and proSilver. If you obtain the latest phpBB 3 and use subSilver, all the user information should still be kept on the left.

The one thing I hate about the most is simply proSilver because mostly they run off Javascript while their colors/backgrounds are deemed hard to change.

From the underground, I develop skin-based styles for phpBB 2, but it will take a little bit of subSilver to adjust to 3. Developing styles for phpBB 3 is more challenging because it uses W3C's XHTML 1.0