It's less cluttered that way, which I like. I think there were too many buttons there before. Now maybe too little.
As the site admin, you could mod the forum to add back the buttons you want.
I'm not going to add all of them back, but I will probably add at least the profile button back. A lot of my visitors are computer newbies, so a button that links to the profile would be useful to those who don't realize they can click on the user's name. I figure once they get to the profile, they can search, PM, e-mail, IM, etc. But I think it should be more obvious on how to get to the profile since that is where all the action is, as far as interacting with a specific user is concerned.
Edited by wistex - 20 April 2006 at 3:30am