Ok, so I said I liked the new course design, well that was until I realized how (supposed to be) embedded additional content in lessons is now treated, whether it's PDF's or video/audio. My main focus in this text, (that is copied  from a discussion in a somewhat unrelated feature request about autoplay because I found it would be relevant to add here) is focused on pdf's but the same goes for video or audio as additional content, it's been put there for a reason, and if it's embedded (and even expanded from the start), it's because we want it to be easily accessible to our students. Here goes:

PDF's are almost never the main asset on a lesson (even if the current interface supported that in a good way, it would not be used a lot), the most common case I have seen (and I've seen a lot) is, that the pdf is something that supports a video or audio file, like slides or a textbook that goes with the video/audio content. So it's super important for usability to have the option to have both elements visible on the same page, not in the next lesson and not as some additional hidden stuff down in the corner. I really feel the development is going backwards not forward here, just took a look at some of my own lessons in the new look and it's basically a disaster, Simplero is with the current plan of development literally pouring hundreds and hundreds of their clients carefully spent course design hours down the drain.

That embedded (in the lesson!!) pdf feature on the old layout is killer, it works SO well, and it's fantastic to be able to stop and start the video and the peruse the relevant part of the adjoining pdf. That will not be possible anymore.

What is the inspiration for these new designs? Which and how many of Simpleros current long time loyal users have been asked about how they use their courses, what they're lacking, and what is really working well? Where's the pedagogical evidence supporting the new structure, because clearly there must be some logic behind, that I just haven't realized yet? I'm afraid the strong focus on building community features is taking the educational design side of things hostage in this proces.
And yes, the current development process is turning me into a grumpy old git! and that makes me sad because I really love using Simplero.

In general I like the new look, but I really don't like that my members can now get notifications from all other sites as well, when they're on my site. It really should default to show this site only notifications. Simplero is a paid platform, where users put in a lot of work to make their courses attractive and to create great learning environments which usually include as few distractions as possible, and having my students distracted and transported to other peoples accounts by notifications is so not cool. That's part of why people want their communities away from facebook etc. because they have no control and there's too many distractions, and now Simplero is replicating that. And yes our clients could just get their act together and stop paying attention to their notifications, or to have them start each visit by setting the notifications to this site only, but really is that how we we want the Simplero experience to be? I've made a feature request about it here https://simplero.canny.io/feature-requests/p/only-show-new-site-notifications-for-current-site 

Is it possible to turn off email notifications of Reactions in the new community yet? 😅

I had a question about member bios when you are part of more than one communtiy and maybe have different roles and want to say different things

We definitely need inactive members to no longer be visible  :) 

We definitely need to test it some more...
It kind of feels a bit too clean/dull.
But I haven't yet looked into if it is possible to spice it up with other colors and a cover image. 
We would also miss the possibility to go live, create polls, use background in posts and so on.

For my part, i'm getting very close to switching over. One thing i hope gets a bit of touch-up is the Member directory - there are still some work to be done there on limiting the set of members being displayed. 

testing attaching an image (couldn't do it a few weeks ago)... image quickly designed via Ideogram.ai :)