Hi Rene, I'm not trying to be abrasive either. I appreciate the work that has been done. Preferences and likings is something that is impossible to explain, I'm only trying to "vote against". Maybe if there is enough guys like me you will consider redesigning?
look very ugly and... amateurish?
OK. How is it ugly? How is it amateurish?
Ugly is just my personal feeling. But amateurish is because it looks like somebody forcibly tried to do something more interesting than the standard, but the result is actually worse than the standard. There is a fairly estabilished standard on how links should look in "professional" sites. This is either "normally underlined" text in different colour, or nonunderlined text in different colour that changes colour when pointed by mouse. Microsoft.com, google.com, ibm.com, yahoo.com, amazon.com, nytimes.com, you name it, all stick to it. Deviating from that makes me say it looks non professional enough for boost.
Additionally, I'd rather have links in boxes on the right have the same style as links in the text.
Why?
For consistency. They do not look like links immediately. Also, on my machine mouse cursor briefly changes to hourglass when moving on the link. It looks like it was flickering. But that's less important for me than links in main text. cheers, Marcin