Ok,
You can navigate the ImmInst forums and be completely oblivious about everything else that is going on other than the section you are looking at. Links in the header are one option but a) there isn't too much space and having two or three rows has proved inefficient, and b) from experience, many people ignore the the header.
YOU may know exactly what you want to get out of ImmInst, but new visitors heading straight for a particular thread may remain entirely unaware of other content.
Therefore, since 2008, the plan was to have a sidebar, and some people will have seen us experimenting with it for a few minutes off and on in the old forums. Ideally (trembling and gnash your teeth here!) I would like to move the right hand sidebar to the left, and have it appear not just in index view. However, there are technical difficulties with that atm. So the left hand sidebar is a stand-in, that will likely be populated with other links over time and probably an odd advert if we don't get enough clicks from other locations.
Now, the content therein can either be stuck to the top (so you have to scroll for it) or stay in place so that it is always to hand. I happen to think that the latter is more efficient and user friendly, but of course, secretly I am only it for some evolutionary reason or because I think its 'trendy'.
Now, the sidebar is causing real 'issues' that is obviously a cause for concern.
Frankly, the fact that it is new, in-your-face, or irrelevant in your eyes is not a real issue.
I accept the point about screensize and that is why the sidebar does not exist in the mobile phone skin. So, DaveM, your issue seems to relate to the fact that your Android isn't recognising the mobile skin. I have tested the forums in a 10' screen netbook, and, yes, if you are using a 800X600 resolution things become very tight, but everything else seemed entirely workable. That does not mean that it will work for everyone but with respect chrono, we can't accommodate every browser plugin - but you can make TabKit disappear with a single click and pull it back up with a mouse gesture.
Along these same lines, couldn't the user info area be about half as wide as it is now, pretty comfortably?
Yes that is right and I have taken 20px out of that frame. However, even on my laptop, text now runs on for quite a while - don't forget that some things that help on small screens can be detrimental in a different setting.