I have no immediate connection with the site owners but I understand that they are trying to produce a uniform look and feel to their sites - also standardising on a single server platform having merged the original site which hosted this board and their previous sites.
Obviously it is the advertising carried in the top banner etc that provides the revenue to host the site.
Personally I'm quite happy with the new layout though I do miss the old email notification when a reply has been posted.
WRT browsers - if you are happy with Microsoft stick with it but installing mozilla is very easy